Archive: INNENaussenINNEN/ the non-digital virtual space
Opening 19 09 2013
Perception and the sensing of the forms of our environment are experiencing new digital values. The analogue space is markedly diffusing and changing. In 1980 at the Linz Design Forum, Lucius Burckhardt was already postulating that “design is invisible”. With the essay of the same name he was the source of inspiration for the term “social design”. “Reduction”, “density”, “pause” symbolise a current societal development. The exhibition addresses the incorporation of social fields, regional forms of action and local optimums in the drafting and design process and focuses its attention on the “analogue inner space” and the human body as a precise instrument for the perception of surrounding information spaces.
The structural design of our environment likewise increasingly defines itself through the usually digitally shaped “non-real” values. It therefore seems all the more important to us, alongside the “analogue inner space”, to direct the invisible materials of architecture and its effects on the sensory and sensitive set of perception instruments of “sensation” (in contrast to the mental space of the “conceived”).
Since the turn of the 19th/20th century, architecture in Austria has been closely linked to the design of the interior. At the same time, the psychic interior was also discovered by Sigmund Freud, a discovery that provided an intense impulse to restructure and to create literary, artistic and philosophical inner worlds anew.
“The sign that a building arises from a genuine feel for architecture is that it makes no impression as a two-dimensional representation. . . . a true building makes no impression as a picture reduced to two dimensions.” Adolf Loos, Architecture, 1910.
Many architects of the last century developed their works on the basis of interiors and only afterwards built “real” buildings. Many “interior spaces” later became icons of their work.
Adolf Loos – Café Museum / 1899
Anton Plischke – flat for Lucie Rie, Vienna / 1928
Hans Hollein – Retti Candle Shop / 1965
Hermann Czech – Kleines Café / 1970
Coop Himmelb(l)au – ReissBar / 1977
RichterGerngross – Kiang / 1982
With the positions presented the exhibition invites people also theoretically to explore the invisible materials of design. Companions, for example, would be: Ernst Mach, Analysis of Sensations; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Compossibility; Alain de Botton Atheism 2.0; Lucius Burckhardt, Design is Invisible; Leopold Kohr, Small is Beautiful.
“Architecture is taking new paths: away from the shrill facades towards a search for reduction, renewal, depth, content. The new architecture develops as an “inside” and produces a bulge on the surface, not the other way round.” From a discussion with Sabine Oppolzer (Ö1 Austrian radio).
Curator: Christian Knechtl
