Dezeen Magazine

Designer Werktag 2012

Designer Werktag 2012

Dezeen promotion: this year interiors show Designer Werktag took place in Munich and featured an installation by SOFTlab.

Designer Werktag 2012

The New York designers transformed one floor of the listed Fruchthof building by illuminating threads hung from polygon-shaped ceiling frames.

Designer Werktag 2012

The event featured a lecture series presented by design journalist Oliver Herwig and included talks by Kathrin Susanna Gimmel of jaja architects, Jennifer Chen of Heatherwick Studio and Michael Szivos of SOFTlab (pictured left to right above) amongst others.

Designer Werktag 2012

The venue and installation were retained as a temporary showroom titled Designer Werkschau after the show ended.

Designer Werktag 2012

Designer Werktag took place on 11 May 2012.

Here are some more details from the organisers:


6TH Designer Werktag attracts the creative scene in Munich’s Fruchthof Exhibition continues as Designer Werkschau

The special mixture of exciting lectures, product presentations staged in an atmospheric setting and the subsequent celebration has been the concept for the success of the Designer Werktag since 2007. Having attracted a total of more than 2,600 enthusiastic visitors in previous years, this year it gained many new followers amongst the architects, interior designers and designers in Munich, nearly 900 in all. The New York-based design agency SOFTlab provided a special spatial experience: one entire floor of the Fruchthof, a listed building, was translated into a spatial structure reminiscent of fruit sacs by the experimental spatial scenographers. Filigree threads, suspended from polygon-shaped ceiling frames and illuminated in vibrant colours turn the space into something like a journey inside a piece of fruit for the visitors. A range of colour hues and shimmering reflected light lent the venue a mystic feeling, encouraging the visitors to go on a journey of discovery through the permeable cell structure.

On the tour the partners offered a versatile “harvest” for all design enthusiasts, with new materials, products and creative ideas. The compact compilation of Anker, Création Baumann, DORMA, Glas Trösch, girsberger, hansgrohe, Hasenkopf, Jasba, Kährs, Lista Office, nora systems, Thermopal, VARIO, Vectorworks, Villeroy & Boch and Warema gave the visitors an extensive overview of the trends and developments in interior design.

The highlights of the programme were provided by the international work reports which were followed by the auditorium on individually interlocking wood cell bodies. At lunchtime Kathrin Susanna Gimmel of jaja architects (Copenhagen), Jennifer Chen of the Heatherwick Studio and Michael Szivos of SOFTlab (New York City) talked about current projects and made themselves available for an audience question and answer session. For the “night shift” Aurel Aebi of Atelier Oi (La Neuveville), Michael Becker of becker architekten (Kempten) and Michael Szivos, again, gave presentations on selected projects and explained their method of working.

An innovation gave the Designer Werktag time to grow and flourish: under the title of Designer Werkschau, the event venue, including the spatial setting and exhibition partner companies, was retained as a temporary showroom stimulating the design scene as a new creative cell in Munich.

Photographs by Glas Trösch and Ronny Buck.

www.designerwerktag.de