Viennese Measurements
My point of departure for this project was a concern about the perception of time itself, which gets constantly influenced by rationality – rationality that people won’t let go, not even for a moment. Conversations became constricted by the desperate search for efficiency. Growing up in Austria where efficiency keeps being put aside by valuable idleness – is often performed in its coffee culture.
My friends and I always find an arrangement to fit all of us around a small coffee table, it has no limitation of participants. My response to this became a study in form of a handbook that captured my friends body dimensions measurements and their individual use of a seat. This lead to the design of the chair that can be opened out for new participants.
The Austrian sector for Design and Architecture funded me to build my project 1:1. The pavilion is meant to be a traveling object. Therefore, one can assemble the whole construction sliding each part into one another. The fact that it can be built up easily with two hands allows the Viennese culture to be portable, enabling people to participate at different sites and environments. It encourages a gathering focusing on shared words, often forgotten in our rational world.
‘I have been using the metal to fabricate the chairs and the main skeleton of the pavilion. Claddings are made out of plaster bandages on sheets of canvas. These have been constructed on a bent steel frame with a clamped timber panel which became the foundation for the clay molds. The molding is referencing the facade of my case study building in Vienna.