CityFacotry 2018

A cooperation between the MAK and the Vienna Business Agency

“What are all these cities compared with Vienna? he said. We hate Vienna, and yet we love it like no other city.”
Thomas Bernhard, Wood Cutters, 1988

The CityFactory is a “real-time” research laboratory for new fields of work in the creative industries, which focuses on discovering and visualizing future urban opportunities. In cooperation with the IDRV – Institute of Design Research Vienna, the MAK and the Business Agency are developing the Design Future Map Vienna for the CityFactory 2018.

Some say that Vienna is slow, at best leisurely. The shops are shut on Sundays and trends arrive here years later—if at all. Yet this does not have to be a disadvantage. For a sustainable and forward-looking lifestyle in a city where time and a quality of life spanning generations play an important role, it is precisely these characteristics that can fulfil their potential. Why not learn from the Viennese?

Thus the Design Future Map Vienna helps identify the drivers of change and where best to apply them in order to get things rolling. The focus is not on radical upheaval but on sustainably raising awareness about the potential of alternative forms of work, production, and consumption, such as the circular economy and commoning strategies.

Further, new kinds of networking and cooperation are required: in the run-up to the project, the MAK and the Business Agency call upon the city’s visionary players to pool their strengths. As a common interest group for new design strategies, the CityFactory 2018 is to run a structured campaign, workshops, and events as part of the MAK FUTURE LAB, as well as create an innovative visualization of the Design Future Map Vienna, with a view to establishing, step-by-step, a new understanding of the values that are specific to Vienna and providing a voice to those protagonists who have done pioneering work in this respect.

www.MAK.at/stadtfabrik2018

Project Management (Content):
IDRV – Institute of Design Research Vienna: Harald Gruendl, Viktoria Heinrich
MAK: Marlies Wirth, Curator, Digital Culture and MAK Design Collection, Janina Falkner, New Concepts for Learning, Assistance: Ivana Andrejic-Djukic, MAK Design Collection
Vienna Business Agency: Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör (Head of creative center departure), Alice Jacubasch (Project Manager)

Photo:  “Work on Wheels” by IDEO