Within the tradition and in continuation of the previous project, we have started to set up our new research lab at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
The first elements of the new infrastructure are large magnetic pin boards along the walls and a communal work and meeting table, all made exclusively from parts found around the university’s premises.
This time, the 3mm metal sheets, which will serve as our valuable magnetic pin boards again, are coated in blackboard lacquer, which adds the handy feature of being able to scribble or write directly onto them. They had been previously used in the course of an “Essence” (the yearly exhibition of the University of Applied Arts before the Angewandte Festival was implemented) and as information boards of the Department for Design, Architecture and Environment before their move to the new facilities here at Vordere Zollamtstraße 7.
For the table we adapted the „Baustellen-Eiermann“-design by Christoph Kaltenbrunner.
The base frame is made with found left-over pieces of standard construction scaffolding elements and the top frame is cut from plywood and MDF strips found in various workshops of the Angewandte.
Big thanks to Philipp Hornung from the ARL (Angewandte Robotics Lab), who has outdone himself once again in cutting the slits into these slats; with the circular saw toolhead of his KUKA robot. Pushing the boundaries is a basic prerequisite!
And as a table top we snatched back a huge formwork panel we used only briefly at the beginning of the previous project, during the construction of the former lab infrastructure. In between, up until now, it found a home in the studios of the art education department and collected some as Alexander Calder has termed it: “scars of labour”.
Instead of enduring an unsavoury smorgasbord of boringly generic, insipid, bland and wobbly card- and chip-board furniture, we are now able to cherish these scars, that tell the many stories of previous lives. Of course, we will add some more. To be told elsewhere one day.
Besides the purely functional benefits of the infrastructure – providing space(s) for displaying intermediate results and serving as an interface for exchange within the University of Applied Arts and with our collaboration partners – it is another kick-off project and meant to serve as a creative catalyst and infrastructure for the discovery process. We strongly believe that an inspiring (and dense) working environment, and a researcher’s physical well-being within, is the foundation of a successful explorative art-based and open-ended approach such as ours.
