Although as a general rule we don’t want to think about Vienna Design Week during Milan Design Week – as it means thinking beyond the summer, and that before we’ve really felt the warmth of the sun on our milk white skin – the touring exhibition Werkstadt Vienna showing at Ventura Lambrate is a delightful exception.

Because it brought back so many memories and ultimately reminded us just why we put ourselves through this.

Milan Design Week 2013: Werkstadt Vienna

Curated by Sophie Lovell and featuring an exhibition design by Studio Makkink & Bey, Werkstadt Vienna presents a selection of Vienna Design Week Passionswege projects from the past half dozen years or so.

For all new readers, Passionswege is an event within Vienna Design Week which pairs young designers with long established, traditional Viennese manufacturers/craft workshops to develop a new project.

The designer gets the chance to experiment and work with new materials, the company gets an injection of new ideas, new ways of looking at the company, its traditions and processes. And when all works as planned it is a genuine win-win situation.

Ideally we’d like to call Werkstadt Vienna a Greatest Hits; but for that too many truly excellent projects are missing.

However as an “Abridged Greatest Hits” Werkstadt Vienna provides a brief insight into just why Passionswege is one of the best design festival events anywhere. And by extrapolation why Vienna Design Week is always such a joy.

And as we say, for us it was just one memory after the other. If not all especially good or proud.

When for example we saw Charlotte Talbot’s Landscape series for and with Wiener Silber Manufactur we were reminded of the horrifically incompetent way we attempted to, and ultimately failed to, organise a “Making Off” report with Charlotte. Or standing in front of the results of LucidiPevere’s collaboration with Woka Lamps we saw once again how in our tired, hungry fatigue we got all stroppy because the exhibition was being presented at two locations. And stubbornly refused to visit the second. Something we obviously regretted an hour or two later. But by then it was too late.

And no, we’re not proud of such moments

But then there are also those memories that make this all truly worthwhile. The hour we and the official Vienna Design Week photographer spent “competing” with one another to get at least one usable shot in J & L Lobmeyr’s mirrored vitrines of someone looking at Mark Braun’s Fortune water carafes. We didn’t. If we remember correctly, he did. Or running half drunk through Hernals to get to Julia Landsiedl at Erwin Perzy’s Original Schneekugeln. Before returning, euphoric, to Herr Gruber and his far too welcoming bar.

As Ken Dodd would no doubt say “I’ve got no silver and I’ve got no gold. But I’ve got happiness in my soul”

Werkstadt Vienna. In the foreground Julia Landsiedl at Erwin Perzy's Original Schneekugeln

For all who haven’t seen the projects “in situ” in Vienna, and haven’t, for example, smelt the grease in Petz Hornmanufaktur or spent twenty minutes eaves dropping on conversations in Karl Sterkl Fleischwaren, it will be hard to fully place the projects in context and so to truly understand the magic of Passionswege.

However the information boards provide a good introduction, and ultimately all objects on display are strong enough in their own right to exist and be enjoyed outwith the Passionswege context. A fact that is especially true of Daphna Laurens furniture for Wittmann Möbelwerkstätten. Objects that still look as fresh and exciting as when we first saw them.

For all who feel inspired by the exhibition, we can thoroughly recommend Vienna Design Week. Late summer on the Danube is a truly wonderful thing.

And for all who can’t make it, we’ll be bringing you the highlights of Passionswege 2013 in October.

To be honest. We can’t wait.

Werkstadt Vienna can be viewed at Via Privata Oslavia 17, 20134 Milan until Sunday April 14th 2013.

And Vienna Design Week runs from 27th September until 6th October 2013.

Before we pack up our Yurt and leave Vienna Design Week 2012 to move on to design pastures new, a quick mention of the “Hartz IV Furniture” Workshop the Berlin designer Van Bo Le-Mentzel hosted at the Wien Museum.

Originating in 2010 Van Bo Le-Mentzel’s “Hartz IV Furniture” collection is…. well, we’ve never really been that sure.

In essence it is a very good Open Design project, featuring as it does a comprehensive range and mix of objects, all of which can be easily constructed, even by those of us who have trouble doing anything more technical than spreading butter on toast.

Its also a project that has had more than its share of very positive media coverage.

But not a project we have ever really understood. We’ve never really seen the background idea, the motivation, the aim. The point.

Following the workshop we understand a little better.

Van Bo Le-Mentzel studied architecture in Berlin and currently works for a “strategic creative agency” in the German capital.

In 2009/2010 he had trouble putting up a shelf at home, and so to try to convince his then fiancé, now wife, that he wasn’t a complete incompetent he joined a woodworking course at the local Volkshochschule and built his first chair, the so-called 24 Euro Chair. So-called because that is what it cost.

And then, we lose the story a little.

Buoyed by the positive reaction of friends and family Van Bo put plans for the chair online, and people all over Europe started downloading and building it.

We still don’t really understand why Van Bo put the plans online or how people found them.

But he did, they did and then Van Bo started designing and publishing the rest of the collection. With great success.

The only shadow on the project for us is the name . “Hartz IV” is an especially brutal approach to social security/unemployment benefit currently practised in Germany.

As such the name sounds really offensive. Its almost as if he’d called the project “Homeless Stinking Old Man Furniture” or “Refugee Furniture”

It turns out that the name was meant to irritate the likes of us.

Hartz IV is bad, Furniture is good. So Van Bo decided to combine the two. Not just in a provocative project title but much more as a new approach to breaking out of our current consumption heavy society.

“Build More. Buy Less” is the sub-title to the project and Van Bo hopes to inspire through the furniture. Van Bo believes, largely on account of what he himself has experienced, that the process of building the furniture and the feeling of success from having completed it can motivate and inspire across other areas of your life.

Buying things as a path to dependency and social apathy: making your own as a path to self-confidence, creativity and good health.

The “Hartz IV” in the title being a metaphor for the worst situation you could possibly find yourself in, but still one the furniture can help release you from. At least spiritually.

As we say, we still have a few open questions about the Hartz IV Furniture collection, but having listened to Van Bo and experienced the workshop we understand it a lot better.

And no, we didn’t build anything at the workshop.

We’re still working out how to combine honey and butter on toast……

Vienna Design Week 2012: Van Bo Le-Mentzel Hartz IV Furniture Workshop at Wien Museum

Hartz IV Furniture Workshop at Wien Museum. Build your own Berliner Hocker.

Van Bo Le-Mentzel address the participants ahead of the workshop

A few years ago the phrase “food design” suddenly started cropping up a lot.

It’s the sort of phrase that makes us uneasy. It just sounds like the sort of shallow, self-indulgent thing Guardian readers get excited about and then book weekend courses in Tuscany to learn.

We don’t trust things like “food design”.

Fortunately for his Passionswege 2012 project with the Viennese jam and pickle maker Staud’s, London based designer Mathias Hahn chose to ignore the food and concentrate on the vessels that store it.

Which is good because we’ve long been fans of Mathias’ work and would hate to have to give up on him over something as petty bourgeoisie and fleetingly irrelevant as food design.

For Vienna Design Week Mathias created five mixed material food storage vessels, one could say glass jars – but that really, really would be doing them an injustice.

For us the highlights of the collection were the object with the wooden base and ceramic lid that contained jam, and the smoked glass vessel which stored preserves in a suspended interior glass container. Both items having an uncomplicated lightness, and almost irreverence, that made them highly congenial.

But all five objects were well thought through, neatly executed and seen together the five represented a complete, homogeneous set. What more could you ask for.

Although we do fear that if they were to be commercially produced they’d invariably fall into the hands of “foodies” and others who would misuse them for their own narcissistic manifesto.

Which is something neither they nor Mathias deserve.

Vienna Design Week Passionswege 2012: Mathias Hahn @ Staud’s Wien

Vienna Design Week Passionswege 2012: Mathias Hahn @ Staud’s Wien

Vienna Design Week Passionswege 2012: Mathias Hahn @ Staud’s Wien

We missed “Croatian Holiday 2012″ when it was originally shown in Milan, and so were suitably pleased to find it on the Vienna Design Week programme.

Featuring 15 projects inspired by tourism, Croatian Holiday 2012 understands its main aim as stimulating a debate about the role, function and importance of design in tourism. Principally in Croatia, somewhat obviously.

The objects presented could, broadly speaking, be split into two groups: those that base themselves on aspects of Croatia’s cultural history, and those that base themselves on (very cheap) jokes.

Both groups contained one or the other notable project, those that most caught our eye being the chair and table system Katriga by Neven Kovačić, the “warming blanket” BRRR by Manufakturist and the tote bag range “Croatia – As It Is” by Superstudio.

But do the project instigators have a point when they say that design has an important role to play in establishing cultural identity and that by incorporating contemporary designers into the tourist industry one can help establish the national identity abroad?

No. In our opinion.

Tourists aren’t interested in modern interpretations of national identities. The tourist gaze isn’t that well developed, isn’t that mature. And never will be.

Tourists want the traditional, the expected, but mainly the things other people have and did.

In contrast people who travel to a land to discover the country beyond the tourist cliches generally share Eric Cantona’s view on national identity.

What designers can do however is make the history and the modern reality of a land visible and understandable. If they want to incorporate aspects of the national identity into their work, that’s fine. One just needs to define “national identity”…

Which of course isn’t to diss Croatian Holiday 2012 as pointless exercise. The projects that have resulted thus far are largely excellent, and would never have seen the light of day with Croatian Holiday 2012. And who knows how far the designers will now take the experience and research.

Or how many of the resulting commercial objects may eventually be snapped up by tourists; not because of any cultural identification but because they are high quality, original objects.

Vienna Design Week 2012: Croatian Holiday 2012

Vienna Design Week 2012: Croatian Holiday 2012. Katriga by Neven Kovačić

Vienna Design Week 2012: Croatian Holiday 2012. Bukaleta by Sabina Barbiš and Mario Depicolzuane

Vienna Design Week 2012: Croatian Holiday 2012. BRRR by Manufakturist and Croatia - As It Is by Superstudio

Pretty much ever since we first saw Tafelstukken by Daphna Laurens at DMY Berlin 2010 we’ve had a bit of thing for them.

A fact that we are completely unapolgetic about.

There is something wonderfully eloquent, dignified and timeless about their work. Something that draws you to them. Their works invariably comprise a mix of materials, a mix of materials which is always central to the objects, yet is understated in the design, almost as if it doesn’t want to draw attention to itself.

For Vienna Design Week Passionswege 2012, Daphna Laurens teamed up with Wittmann Möbelwerkstätten – an Austrian upholsterer who can look back on a history spanning over 100 years.

We’re not going to claim to fully understand exactly what Daphna and Laurens did when in the research and planning phase they ” …gathered colour and mood images in the inner world of the production site…”

But we do like the results.

So we’ll assume that what ever they were up to they did it correctly.

“Chair 1″ is perhaps the most accessible of the two products. In essence nothing more complicated than a steel wire chair with  textile/leather cushions, Chair 1 has an almost childish fantasy character about it. By which we mean it looks as though it belongs in an enchanted forest somewhere. That may be because the reduced size of the cushions combined with the open metal frame make Chair 1 appear a lot smaller, more compact than it really is. Like an elf.

“Stool 1″ – love the names  – is in contrast a little more complicated.  A combination of stool and side table, Stool 1 is constructed from steel tubing, wood and leather, and from afar resembles a rocking horse. If we’re honest we’re not 100% convinced that the space next to the seat is suitable for its intended function. We like the idea. We like the realisation. We’re just not convinced its practical.

Unless of course we’ve completely misunderstood it and the open surface should be used as a side table when the stool section is not in use. For example by someone sat on a sofa.

But independent of the functionality, as with Chair 1 Daphna Laurens have created in Stool 1 an object with a form that is as unique as it is charming and familiar.  And two objects that not only wonderfully complement one another but which would work in any given space.

And so, once again, we have a new project from Daphna Laurens which impresses us and, once again, underscores all that is good, dynamic, fresh and genial about the pair.

Vienna Design Week Passionswege 2012: Daphna Laurens at Wittmann Möbelwerkstätten. The research....

... Chair 1...

...Stool 1.

Vienna Design Week Passionswege 2012: Daphna Laurens at Wittmann Möbelwerkstätten

Was it not Pulp who in 1995 prophesied that the world would soon be dominated and controlled by mis-shapes, mistakes and misfits: the great silent majority who feel themselves intimidated by their alleged imperfections and deviations from society’s norm. If only they could realise that they were so numerous, that they have something to offer and that society’s imposed ideas of perfection were our modern golden calf, their future would be so promising…..

Under the title “Misfits Revisited” Vienna based design studio breadedEscalope have teamed up with Vienna originating manufacturer Thonet to explore in how far furniture mis-shapes, mistakes and misfits can help us better understand, develop and use materials, form, processes and tradition.

“Misfits Revisited” kicked-off at Vienna Design Week 2012 with a series of “Pimp my Thonet Waste” workshops.

The idea was very simple, Thonet brought a load of production waste from Frankenberg to Vienna. And design week visitors built new pieces of furniture.

With some truly excellent results. And an awful lof of works that even Victor Frankenstein would have problems loving.

But the workshops were of course about more than simply gluing faulty Thonet parts together.

They were about experimenting with form and function. Deciding yourself  how you realise a particularly functionality. Looking at a challenge and finding a solution. Demystifying iconography. Having fun with the creative process.

The workshops in Vienna were just the start of what is and should be a longer and more multi-faceted co-opertaion between breadedEscalope and Thonet. We’ll keep you updated.

And if we’ve read correctly between the lines the workshops will be repeated elsewhere soon.

Watch local press for details, as it were…

The outer edges of the (smow)blog galaxy recently witnessed some pretty ugly scenes.

A new, Windows Seven, laptop was bought. The unfortunate purchaser’s printer however wasn’t Windows Seven compatible.

And the manufacturer had no plans to release the necessary driver.

Consequently a functional, reliable printer was rendered useless. And a new machine had to be bought.

Manufacturer 1 – Consumer 0

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued.

But it’s not just software alone that is responsible for the fact that in our modern world ever more objects become ever quicker obsolete.

Many modern appliances are built, designed, so that they cannot be repaired. The electric tooth brush is great example, the battery may be rechargeable but is so firmly encased it means that when its lifetime is up a complete new toothbrush needs to be bought rather than simply replacing the battery.

Most of us accept such situations as a price to be paid for our modern world; although we all know that a different reality is possible.

The Austrian duo Mathak + Mahlknecht have used a very simple installation at Vienna Design Week 2012 to force us think about such themes.

A series of fish tanks slowly fill with water, over time the tanks reach a volume that means they become unstable and topple from the table. Their life-cycle is over. Each tank has a different life-cycle determined by the reason it becomes obsolete; for example, new collection, new standards, new system – as with the aforementioned printer.

We don’t need to buy ever more products, but industry wants us to. And so we do.

The situation is clearly mad, but how can the situation be changed? Ultimately finding a balance between the two is a key component to ensuring we enjoy a truly socially and environmentally responsible future.

“Best by … about built-in obsolescence” by Mathak + Mahlknecht doesn’t provide any answers. But then it doesn’t set out to.

What it sets out to do, and beautifully achieves, is to illustrate the problem and so, hopefully, stimulate a little self-reflection in all who see it.

Because ultimately the responsibility lies with us, not with those who force us to buy new printers.

Far less new docking stations just because the mobile phone producer changed the size of the dock on the latest model.

Or to mildly misquote the question we asked in our review of  “One Hundred An Experiment on Myself: A Designer’s Reckoning With Things” by Moritz Grund, “How do you justify your contribution to a situation you know is unjustifiable?”

Vienna Design Week 2012: Mathak + Mahlknecht. Best by … about built-in obsolescence

Three victims of progress....

Vienna Design Week 2012: Mathak + Mahlknecht. Best by … about built-in obsolescence

Do we need to repeat why we are such committed fans of the annual Vienna Design Week Passionswege programme?

We hope not.

But if we do, Matylda Krzykowski @ Norbert Meier Brushmaker and Petz Horn Manufacturer provides the perfect answer.

Norbert Meier has been making brushes of all shapes and functions since 1973.

And his workshop looks like it. Not that that is a criticism. It’s lovely to see.

For Passionswege 2012 the Dutch/German designer/curator/journalist/good egg Matylda Krzykowski worked with Norber Meier to develop a series of new products in co-operation with the horn craftsman Thomas Petz.

A co-operation that is more than pure business.

Norbert Meier is the last brushmaker in Vienna. When in a couple of years he retires there will be no brushmakers in Vienna.

Is that important? Is that something we should be concerned about?

We think so, because when traditional crafts die out knowledge and information about materials and processes are lost. Even in our modern internet age.

That it needn’t be so is shown by Thomas Petz, a young man who learned the noble craft of horn manufacturer from his grandad – who was Vienna’s last horn craftsman before he retired. His grandson has now has revived a trade that was dead.

And through Matylda a co-operation with brushmaker Maier with whom his grandfather previously co-operated.

Back in the day. When horn brushes were the height of civility.

The products created by Matylda are unlikely to rekindle flames of such glory, but they are cheeky, fresh products that bring more life and personality to the horn brush than certainly we thought possible.

And they beautifully illustrate one of the main functions of the Passionswege programme – bringing young talent into contact with seasoned professionals and seeing what arises.

The highlights for us are the make-up brush, which with its mix of squirrel and pony hair in a  horn tip is a piece of Gothic poetry as good as anything Robert Browning could have composed, and we were also especially taken with the little dustpan to accompany the table brush:  A wonderful horn set suitable for any modern home.

But of course if you’d like one, you’ve got to be quick.

In 2014  Norber Maier brushes off, as it were.

Vienna Design Week Passionswege 2012: Matylda Krzykowski @ Norbert Meier Brushmaker and Petz Horn Manufacturer

The make-up brush

Norbert Meier - Vienna's last professional brushmaker

One of our favourite projects during Vienna Design Week was the Passionswege project “The Swing” by Warsaw based Beza Projekt at Atelier Telliez.

Philippe Telliez is a “tapessier” – a profession that can only be truly described in paragraphs, but essentially is an upholsterer who primarily works with wall hangings, tapestries and the like.

Anna Łoskiewicz and Zofia Strumiłło-Sukiennik from Beza Projekt combined this “hanging” aspect  with the materials Atelier Telliez’s use on a daily basis to create a luxurious swing – designed for adults looking to escape their laborious adult world by fleeing to a  children’s world. A flight that, ironically, is only possible thanks to the riches the laborious adult world has brought them.

And of course, as a bit unadulterated rococo exuberance in the midst of a city that almost invented the phrase “ostentatious consumerism” a geographically relevant project.

Just delightful!

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.

Commissioned to undertake a Vienna Design Week Passionswege project with Viennese hat maker Mühlbauer Hutmanufaktur, Slovakian designer Tomas Kral focused on the visual – and in many languages linguistic – closeness of a lamp shade and cap visor to create a delightful series of hat themed table lamps.

All the lamps have a ceramic base; and the shades are created from “normal” hat making materials using “normal” hat making processes

A real fun project that made a nice diversion from many of the more serious and philosophical projects that were on display in Vienna.