The curtains on the 2016 edition of Vienna Design Week closed yesterday, after a very important edition that celebrated the tenth anniversary of the largest design festival of the country. The first decade edition featured a rich program of over 150 on-topic events, as well as the participation of many national institutions all over the world such as the Austrian Cultural Forum of NYC which staged an exhibition in the same days. Started on September 30th, the Vienna Design Week 2016 focused mainly on two branches of design, graphic and industrial, giving also ever-growing room to architecture and most of all technology. Over the years, many designers contributed to shaping the festival, including Katharina Mischer, Thomas Traxler, Robert Stadler and Robert Rüf.

The key trait of Vienna Design Week is the keen focus on the practical side of design (rather than the aesthetic one) and its results in Vienna's life: this has always led to a wide range of on-topic seminars, workshops, labs, exhibitions, projects and even guided tours, and this latest edition made no exception. Cutting edge, experimental projects of product, graphic and social design by national and international designers were one of the main features of the 2016 edition, as two of the leading keywords of Vienna Design Weeks are multiculturalism and innovation. Therefore, the design week embraced, like many others, the Guest Country initiative, which this year resulted in the participation of Czech Republic. With an unprecedented wide program that actually gave a new identity to the whole city, the tenth edition of Vienna Design Week contributed to creating a new standard for the design weeks of the world.

INFO: viennadesignweek.at

PHOTO COURTESY: Markus Guschelbauer; Kollektiv Fischka, Gregor Buchhaus, Petra Rautenstrauch, Kramar