Hasta La Ideas

Vienna Design Week 2010: Berlin designer Mark Braun presented a series of carafes engraved with images of lakes, glaciers and rivers of Austria for glass company Lobmeyr in Vienna earlier this month. 

Top: Pasterze glacier
Above: Stubaier Ferner glacier

Developed as part of the Vienna Design Week Passionswege project bringing together young designers and companies with a long tradition, Braun’s project involved etching the glass with three different processes.

Above: lake Rinnensee

The resulting pieces were displayed filled with water collected from the relevant site over the last year by the organisers of Vienna Design Week.

Above: lake Traunsee

Graphic designer Anna Sartorius created postcards showing each lake, river and glacier with images from Google Earth and information comparing the area of water with the amount of time the engraving took.

Above: river Mur

The installation at the Lobmeyr showroom was entitled Reichtum (wealth), and refers to the different prices of each carafe based on the time taken to engrave them.

Above: river Donau

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Above photo is by Kollektiv Fischka

Here’s some more information from Vienna Design Week:

The company J. & L. Lobmeyr has been working with the material glass for almost 200 years and continues until this day to rely on handcrafted perfection in creating its chandeliers and other lighting objects, its hand-blown and hand-cut crystal, and decorative glass.

Above photo is by Kollektiv Fischka

Starting from the Lobmeyr tradition of personalising glass objects with engraving or decorating them with eloquent patterns or ‘paintings’, the German designer Mark Braun has realised a series with the emphasis on water on the one hand, and glass on the other.

Two substances that are at least strongly related visually.

Using the copper wheel engraving technique, archetypical water carafes especially designed for this project have been decorated with the outlines of Austrian lakes, rivers, and glaciers.

For Mark Braun the sum total of these makes up the symbol of the essential wealth of everyday life.

The installation ‘Reichtum’ [Wealth], also the title of the presentation, stages the carafes filled with original water!

The PASSIONSWEGE format, a core component of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, brings designers together with Vienna shops and manufacturers with on-the-spot experimental projects and interventions.

Above photo is by Kollektiv Fischka

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Basket by Marco Dessí for Lobmeyr	Grip by Marco Dessi for Lobmeyr	More about Vienna Design Week

Vienna Design Week 2010: Dutch designers Studio Makkink & Bey present an installation combining sugar and silver at the Liechtenstein museum in Vienna.

Called Silver Sugar Spoon, the project involved delving into the history of sugar in Vienna, where its value was equal to that of silver during the Habsburg family’s reign.

The studio’s research is piped in icing on and around 42 square meters of fabric, laid out on the floor representing the 42 kilograms of sugar consumed by each Austrian in a year, while felt models of sugar beet plants help to tell the story of sugar’s manufacture.

Distorted drawings of cakes placed on a central tablecloth appear correctly when reflected in the surface of a silver vase filled with sugar flowers, which is surrounded by plates and cutlery modelled in icing and cast in silver.

Studio Makkink & Bey collaborated with Viennese bakery K.U.K. Demel and silversmiths Jarosinski & Vaugoin throughout the project.

The installation remains in place until 15 November.

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The following information is from Studio Makkink & Bey:

Studio Makkink & Bey invites you and your friends to the Silver Sugar Spoon exhibition at the Liechtentein museum in Vienna.

30th of september – 15th of november, Grand Opening of the Vienna design week, Thursday, 30th september 2010.

Studio Makkink & Bey are proposing to design tableware and products in answer to the Habsburg valuables found in the Imperial Silver Collection. To start the project our designers delved into the history of sugar and silver, Imperial conduct and pastry cooking. Sugar used to be equally valuable to silver and many affluent citizens were eager to display their wealth by presenting centerpieces entirely made of sugar and treat their guests to extravagant desserts. Studio Makkink and Bey will partner with two highly specialised companies, with roots dating back to the Habsburg era; Sugar Bakery K.U.K. Demel and silversmith company Jarosinski & Vaugoin. Both of which used to serve the Habsburg family during their reign, they will join us to build on the rich history of the Austrian legacy.

The studio has been a temporary sugar laboratory to test and sketch out objects before casting them in silver. A collection of six sugar spoons are transformed into silverware. A tablecloth serves as a chronicle of the sugar history, stories being embroidered or drawn on the textile cloth. A carpet of forty-two square meters lays around the tablecloth and represents the production process of sugar in correlation to the forty-two kilos of sugar consumed per person in Austria every year. Each kilo of sugar cubes requiring one square meter in order to be produced. The centerpiece is a big vase, containing a flower arrangement made of sugar.

The vase is a beautifull demonstration of the Silver making by its size, fifty centimeters high. Its shape has been drawn by the silhouette of a dessert spoon. Both vase and imagery, work together to create an optical illusion. The image on the tablecloth is deformed in such a way that the bulged reflection on the vase restores it back into original, coherent version (an optical illusion known as anamorphy). The Silver Sugar Spoon is a frozen scenery of a dessert ceremony in a sugar beet field.

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WashHouse by Studio Makkink & Bey	Repacked by Studio Makkink & Bey	More icing at Vienna Design Week

Vienna Design Week 2010: here’s another machine by Mischer’Traxler (see their Nespresso Battery in our earlier story), this time a device for automatically decorating cakes.

Visitors press a button to start the contraption, which pipes icing in a hypotrochoid pattern, like a Spirograph toy, until the visitor releases the button.

Silver balls are then added until the user presses stop.

In this way the user decides when enough decoration has been applied, since the machine cannot be restarted until a new cake is inserted.

Called Till You Stop, the project was presented as part of an exhibition entitled Design Criminals at the MAK museum of applied and contemporary arts, which revisits Adolf Loos’ 1908 essay Ornament and Crime.

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The following details are from the designers:

‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration

mischer’traxler

for the exhibition ‘Design Criminals or A new joy into the world’ – a cooperation of MAK and departure, curated by Sam Jacob.

confectioner – ‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration

How much is too much?

‘Till you stop’ – cake decoration is an idea for a cake decoration method that allows the costumer/visitor to decide how much decoration is applied onto the cake. A simple machine decorates the cake with lines and continuously decorates until the costumer/visitor decides to stop the decoration process. Then in a second process sugar pearls/decoration are dropped onto the glazing. The decor is continuously changing and the costumer/visitor decides whether he prefers a simple ornament or a more complex one. When is the right time to stop? Once the decoration machine is stopped it can not be started again.

The project reflects, on the one hand, the industry behind decoration (industrialised image vs. the romantic imagination) and on the other hand it should trigger people to think about the amount of decoration they actually like.

Process:

an automated cake decoration process (sugar glazing and sugar decoration) can be started and stopped by the buyer / visitor.

Step one: the cake rotates and the sugar glazing gets applied in lines. The pattern is similar to the ones of ‘Spirographs’ which can be applied over a longer period of time.

Step two:  the cake with glazing turns and single sugar pearls fall on the cake.

On Tuesday the 5th of October, 15 visitors at the ‘MAK Design NITE – eyes wide shut’ will have the possibility to decorate a cake with the decoration machine. The event is part of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2010

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An enormous cake made of bricks	A font made of sugar	The Idea of a Tree by Mischer’Traxler

Vienna Design Week 2010: Vienna designers Mischer’Traxler made batteries from 700 used coffee capsules to power clocks installed in the window of Nespresso Austria during Vienna Design Week.

Called Nespresso Battery, the installation uses aluminium  in the capsules together with strips of copper, coffee grounds and salt water to make batteries.

Six pots linked together power a clock, while the whole installation would run a small radio.

The design was one of three winning entires in a competition entitled SUSTAIN.ABILITY.DESIGN, sponsored by Vienna Design Week organisers Neigungsgruppe Design and Nespresso Austria.

See also: cups made of recycled aluminium capsules by Dottings

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Here’s some more information from Katharina Mischer and Thomas Traxler:

“Nespresso Battery – there is a lot of energy in Nespresso Capsules”

The installation ‘Nespresso-Battery’ demonstrates the energy in Nespresso Capsules. Invisible Energy becomes visual via ticking sweep hands and thus shows the importance of collecting and recycling the valuable material aluminium.

The energy for the movement of the sweep hands is powered by 17 simple, self made batteries. Each battery-block consists of used old aluminium capsules, coffee grounds, strips of copper and salt water. In this mixture between a soil battery and a salt water battery the aluminium functions as the anode, the copper as cathode and the salt water as electrolyte. Due to a chemical reactions a small, but usable, amount of energy is created. Each battery produces about 1,5 – 1,7 Volts of potential and enough power to run a electro – mechanical Quartz clockwork.

The content of all batteries (old capsules and coffee grounds) is about ~ 680 -700 Nespresso Capsules – an average year consumption of one person. All 17 batteries interconnected and well moistened would be able to power a small radio. The installation wants to encourage customers to bring their used Nespresso Capsules back to the Boutiques and other collection facilities, in order to be recycled.

Design Competition: SUSTAIN.ABILITY.DESIGN

As part of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2010, Nespresso Austria and the Neigungsgruppe Design are co-sponsoring their first invited contest. Accessories and coffee machines are just as much a part of the brand’s identity as the 16 Grands Crus, so Nespresso and the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK had to meet up. The designers Megumi Ito, Tina Lehner, Patrick Rampelotto, mischer’traxler, and dottings started off with free associations on urban living, lifestyle, and coffee. Aluminium accentuates the durability programme EcolaborationTM by Nespresso, based on work with 100-% recyclable materials and/or Nespresso capsules. Three projects selected by a panel of experts will be presented at the Nespresso Boutique during the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK.

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More about Mischer’Traxler	More about Vienna Design Week	Grand Crus Cup Parade by Dottings

Dezeen podcast: in this podcast recorded at Vienna Design Week, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister talks about his Austrian background, the benefits of keeping a diary and trying to prevent his studio growing.

Top portrait is by John Madere. Above: Worrying solves Nothing, made of coat hangers in Linz. Photograph is by Otto Saxinger

Can’t see the play bar? Click here.

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Sagmeister also introduces his ongoing project Things I have Learned in My Life So Far, in which notes from his own diary are emblazoned across billboards and magazine pages.

Above: Assuming is Stifling, for GGG / DDD gallery annual report. Photograph is by Matthias Ernstberger

During Vienna Design Week the Austrian-born, New York-based designer gave a lecture presenting this project, as well as launching a book he’s designed about the Viennese design scene, entitled New Vienna Now.

Above and below: Having Guts Always Works Out For Me, for .copy magazine. Photographs are by Bela Borsodi

Vienna Design Week took place 1-10 October.

Above: Having Guts Always Works Out For Me, for .copy magazine. Photographs are by Bela Borsodi

The information that follows is from Vienna Design Week:

“Everybody should talk about everything that’s everywhere. Design is everywhere.”

Stefan Sagmeister (b. Bregenz, 1962) set up his New York studio Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 and has designed for the Rolling Stones, HBO, and the Guggenheim Museum, et al.

Above: Having Guts Always Works Out For Me, for .copy magazine. Photographs are by Bela Borsodi

In 2008, Abrams published Things I have learned in my life so far by Sagmeister.

Above: Having Guts Always Works Out For Me, for .copy magazine. Photographs are by Bela Borsodi

Sagmeister Inc. has had solo shows in Zurich, Vienna, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Osaka, Prague, Cologne, Seoul, and Miami.

Above: Having Guts Always Works Out For Me, for .copy magazine. Photographs are by Bela Borsodi

Sagmeister currently teaches at the School of Visual Art in New York and lectures throughout the world.

Above: Having Guts Always Works Out For Me, for .copy magazine. Photographs are by Bela Borsodi

Nominated for eight Grammy awards, he finally won two: for the Talking Heads and Brian Eno & David Byrne.

Above and below: Keeping a Diary Supports Personal Development, one minute movie shot in Singapore

He has won practically every other significant design award.

Above: Keeping a Diary Supports Personal Development, one minute movie shot in Singapore

He studied at the Vienna University of Applied Arts, was a Fulbright Scholar, and received a Master’s degree from the Pratt Institute in New York.

Above: Keeping a Diary Supports Personal Development, one minute movie shot in Singapore

Above: Keeping a Diary Supports Personal Development, one minute movie shot in Singapore

Above: Keeping a Diary Supports Personal Development, one minute movie shot in Singapore

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Dezeen podcast: John Pawson	Dezeen podcast: Paul Smith	Dezeen podcast: Konstantin Grcic