URBAN FOOD & DESIGN

This year, the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and the Vienna Business Agency are investigating the groundbreaking area of Urban Food & Design for the third time. The focuses for 2020 are new approaches to living together in the city and the potential of the local in an environment that continues to be shaped by the reality of global markets. The New Local is the slogan that has inspired the creative minds in and around the Festival Headquarters in the Amtshaus Theresienbadgasse to illustrate how the production, distribution and consumption of food can also be organized to be brutally local in the period both during and after COVID-19. The calls of the past two years addressed new sources of food, consumption patterns and forms of delivery. This year’s five selected projects are devoted to subjects such as the sharing economy, the circular economy and social participation. In spring 2020, the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and the Vienna Business Agency issued a challenge on the subject of Urban Food & Design. The five best concepts amongst all those submitted were selected by an expert jury and are being presented during the festival in the Festival Headquarters.

BRITISH COUNCIL CURATOR IN RESIDENCE: ROSA ROGINA

Curators enable a design event to ask questions and address subjects that go far beyond the reproduction of commercial content. The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is proud of the fact that, year after year, it is able to provide the framework for a curator commissioned to address the issue of design. It was a particular pleasure to be able to invite applications for a research residency for a curator from the United Kingdom as part of the Design Connections program of the British Council. Having reviewed the many submissions, a jury of experienced experts including the London design curator Jane Withers and the Vienna Studio Vandasye, which put together the DESIGN EVERYDAY exhibition selected Rosa Rogina, who is also Head of Program of the London Festival of Architecture. As part of an intense research process, Rogina is visiting the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and, alongside her general research into the curatorial potential of design festivals, is investigating ways of making them more democratic and accessible. Or, in the words of the curator herself, “I am delighted to be working with the team at the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and the British Council on a research project exploring the role of festivals in the city and ways of developing innovative and more democratic methods of research, curation and presentation. In a time of three unprecedented global emergencies – one of COVID-19, one of climate change and another one of protests against racial discrimination – we as curators and festival producers need to step up and creatively and collectively engage with the new social and urban reality.”