Hasta La Ideas

The Viennese design group breadedEscalope (Sascha Mikel, Martin Schnabl und Michael Tatschl) transformed the entrance area of the Vienna outpost of Stilwerk into a temporary workshop in order to turn ‘misfits’ of the THONET chair production into make-shift, one-off chair designs. For those who might not be familiar, Stilwerk is a design retailer that houses 160 shops and over 1000 brands across their four locations—Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf and Vienna.

Members of the public were encouraged to join in and build their own Thonet chair with the help of a few (power) tools, cable binders, glue, screws and assisted by the designers.

The cooperation does not work on the basis of a briefing but on the freedom of communicating an analysis of the form, material, tradition and processes involved in inventing a product.

The popularity of this workshop, conducted during Vienna Design Week, manifested in the outcome of more than 50 chairs, which could be taken home by their makers. Check out the video showing most pieces as well as breadedEscalope talking about their project in collaboration with Thonet.

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