Designs for the Real World

This book, published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at the Generali Foundation, brings together exemplary projects by four artists from different backgrounds and generations who explore the design of our living environment and are particularly characterized by their interdisciplinary approach. Utopian and ecological design, designs for the so-called Third World, social engineering, urban development, urban areas of conflicts and the question of the responsibility of art in a “new genre public art” were addressed in different ways in the respective artistic projects.

Using the example of the Arizona market, the largest black market in the Balkans, Azra Akšamija (1976 Sarajevo, BA—Boston, US) analyses and visualizes the development of a city. Growing along the north-south traffic axis in northern Bosnia, which was named Arizona road by the American SFOR troops, the market reveals new political, social, economic and urban situations that have arisen as a result of the war.

Also trained as an architect and visual artist, Marjetica Potrč (1953 Ljubljana, SI) deals with the continuous change of the city and the dialog between planned and unregulated neighbourhoods, including the constantly growing poor settlements. Like an urban anthropologist, she examines individual initiatives from different geographical and social areas that overcome high-tech problems with low-tech solutions, in particular the Butterfly House by Samuel Mockbee (1944–2001) and his Rural Studio architecture practice.

Florian Pumhösl (1971 Vienna) reconstructs designs by Victor Papanek, who in the 1960s wrote Design for the Real World, a pioneering publication on questions of design in connection with ecology and social responsibility. By re-reading this classic, it becomes clear what concepts are now being marketed in mass production. Pumhösl’s model-like reconstructions also become clear as a medium for the transportation of ideas and ideology of such a design concept.

Since the 1970s, Krzysztof Wodiczko (1943 Warsaw, PL—New York, Cambridge, US) has been developing “vehicles” that combine functions such as mobility, communication and protection. In the Xenology series (since 1992), he developed devices for use by migrants to support them in their presence and communication. Wodiczko is best known for his large-scale projections on public buildings, with which he temporarily inscribes political content into them.