Austrian-Spanish Architecture and Design Symposium at the Zaragoza World Expo 2008
On September 8, 2008, a joint Austrian-Spanish architecture and design symposium entitled LIQUID SKY - Horizons of Architecture and Design of the 21st Century will be held in Zaragoza's Palacio de Congresos. The symposium is based on a concept developed by ART&IDEA's Robert Punkenhofer and will be curated by Uli Marchsteiner. The event is generously sponsored by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture.
The symposium targets a design and architecture-interested audience and is organized into the topic areas of architecture, product and corporate design, and experimental concepts. Six teams made up of Austrian and Spanish architects and designers will have the opportunity to express theme-related positions and opinions using their current work. However, instead of concentrating on the presentation of individual projects, the symposium will rather focus on identifying a vision for future working approaches based on the team members' personal design philosophies.
The fluid materiality of water will serve as the symposium's "protagonist," in reinforcement of the Expo's theme, "Water and sustainable Development". In addition, the event will be guided by the words of Bruce Lee: "Empty your mind! Be shapeless, like water!" For the invited speakers, water is not only a key topic within the environmental discourse, but also a metaphor for a new aesthetic: one where fluid architectural and design concepts will lead the way toward a future in which design concerns itself even more with social issues and needs. To achieve this, the idea of creating collective and interlinked working methods must prevail over purely individual strategies. Thus, the one-day LIQUID SKY symposium supports an exchange between participants from the creative industry, in an effort to identify experimental approaches for developing such working methods.
In addition to key note addresses by Dietmar Steiner (Director, Architecture Center Vienna) and Peter Noever (Director, MAK Vienna), the following contributors are scheduled to appear:
• Span Architects: Sandra Manninger (AT)
• Cloud 9: Enric Ruiz Geli (ES)
• Porsche Design: Christian Schwamkrug (AT+DE)
• Radi Designers: Robert Stadler (AT)
• Emiliana: Ana Mir (ES)
• ReD Architects: Marta Malé-Alemany (ES)
Austria´s Expo presence, within the scope of which the symposium takes place, is directed by ART&IDEA´s Robert Punkenhofer on behalf of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour and the Federal Economic Chamber. For more information on Expo 2008 and the Austrian pavilion, please visit www.expoaustria.at
To get information and order the recent Hatje Cantz book and special edition ART&IDEA – connecting different worlds, with works by Vito Acconci, Santiago Sierra, Teresa Margolles and others, please contact Reanne Leuning.