• Preview of Vienna Design Week and Dutch Design Week - Europe has designs on you

By Ania Dardas

Now in its second edition and well on the way to becoming a cultural fixture in Vienna, the Vienna Design Week from October 2 to 12, 2008, offers 10 design-packed days spread all over the city in various venues – more of a design jamboree than a traditional trade fair. The subject area is product-, furniture- and industrial-design and this year’s focus is on central and eastern Europe. The Vienna Design Week has invited not only Austrian design, but also that of neighboring countries and serves to emphasize the need for and importance of international cooperation and networking in this field.

The design week has been organized with the cooperation of many partners – from Vienna museums to production and retail companies to designers from all over the world. The whole of Vienna will become a platform and showplace of design throughout the ten days of the festival. The week’s events underline the role of design in everyday life: less an aesthetic phenomenon and more a cultural shaping factor.

Visitors can look forward to exhibitions, venue-specific installations, themed special events, discussion panels, a program of films and, of course, many opportunities to network and simply have fun. Materials and moods, fashion and lifestyle, aesthetics and experimental design – you’ll find it all in Vienna during the Vienna Design Week.