Foto: Westermann

Gerald Bast

Rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna

Anyone who wishes design to become a truly relevant theme in the fields of culture and business in Austria must undertake the appropriate initiatives. What institution can better do this than the art universities, the main holders of responsibility for the cultural climate of the country?

With this year’s international design conference “DESIGN 07 – The Middle” the University of Applied Arts Vienna builds on the success of last year’s pilot conference “DESIGN 06 – Time Zones”, and is again inviting experts to Vienna, in numbers and of an eminence hardly matched at any other similar gathering. For a brief two-day period intensive face-to-face interdisciplinary dialogues will take place on the roof-top floor of the University and will explore the theme of design in the numerous areas where it is of relevance: training and career, development, production, distribution, technology, collecting, and educating and media work.

This year’s theme “The Middle” will form the crystallisation point of the dialogues, open a lively, critical design discourse and offer new opportunities to reflect on design. The aim is to expand the definition of the term design, to give this theme more weight and to attract more attention for it at the level of society as a whole.

The University of Applied Arts Vienna, which is hosting the conference, has again commissioned the excellent curators from the “Tendency Group Design” to look after the planning and preparation work. Through DESIGN 07 the university this year once more stakes its claim to be the centre of competence in matters relating to design in Austria, where the networking of design training, practice, theory, education and business takes place at an international level and with international participation.