abstract – concrete – prize-winning

The red dot design museum presents Austrian product design

Mozart, Falco, Viennese Schnitzel and coffee house tradition – most Germans will have these associations when thinking of Austria. This notion is as likeable as it is clichéd and incomplete. Today, Austria is one of the EU countries with the highest export growth rates and this is also the result of its investment in design. An insight into prize-winning Austrian product design is provided from 9 April until 4 May 2008 by the red dot design museum in Essen with the “abstrakt – konkret – ausgezeichnet (abstract – concrete – prize-winning)” exhibition. In co-operation with the Austrian association of designers ‘Design Austria’ it presents the prize-winning and award-winning projects of the Adolf Loos State Prize for Design 2007, Austria’s most important design prize with the largest prize purse, which was created to make the outstanding achievements of the Austrian design scene visible. The vernissage will take place on 8 April from 6:30pm.

The spectrum of the exhibited objects ranges from an elegant water glass and a multi-functional curtain made of concrete to stacking chairs with a novel connection system. Supplemented by further outstanding Austrian design solutions, among them prize-winners of past years, the exhibition presents some 50 works by Austrian designers. In the “abstract” section the originals are contrasted with models which are all of the same size and have the same surface structure – thus creating completely new, surprising perspectives on the “concrete” objects.

In autumn the red dot design museum will pay a return visit to Vienna and present an exhibition in the Museum Quarter. The collaboration between the red dot design museum and Design Austria is the continuation of a long series of successful co-operations between the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen and other design promoting institutions such as the British Design Council, the Czech Design Centre or, most recently, the Seoul Design Centre.

The Adolf Loos State Prize
The Adolf Loos State Prize for Design is an “umbrella” brand honouring a large spectrum of outstanding contemporary design solutions with several prizes and awards: Product design in the sectors consumer and investment goods, projects from the fields of interior and exterior design, and experimental design.

Structured as a public-private partnership, which was created based on an initiative of the Raiffeisenlandesbank (federal state bank) Lower Austria-Vienna in 2001, the Adolf Loos State Prize for Design is unique in its kind: Besides the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Labour, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Art and Culture also entered the partnership in 2007. Design Austria, the professional association of Austrian designers, which curates this exhibition, has been a partner and organiser from the start. As the fifth partner the James Dyson Foundation also joined in 2007.

The red dot design museum
The red dot design museum presents the largest and probably most unusual exhibition of contemporary design worldwide. On an area of more than 4,000sqm approximately 1,500 products from all around the world are exhibited, all of which have received the red dot design award. The red dot design museum is located in one of the most important pieces of industrial architecture, the boiler house of the ‘Zeche Zollverein’ colliery, which has been listed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site since 2001. The museum’s new home was designed by the British architect Lord Norman Foster.