11.11.2009—31.1.2010
MAK Design Space

design> new strategies. A cooperation between MAK and departure.

Gregor Eichinger devotes his lecture to a kind of history of the development of the Viennese coffee house. The architect and designer thus sees himself as an intermediary between awareness of history and visions of the future. The title, with its overtones of evolutionary biology, already hints at the fact that in order to survive and not just to become a trip down culinary memory lane, the coffee house must continue to evolve. While in his talk Eichinger recalls the evolution of the Viennese coffee house, he is already sending the next generation - Dottings, Graulicht, KIM+HEEP, POLKA and Robert Rüf - off with a challenging design task: to come up with "The Shape of the Café to Come" for the MAK DESIGN SPACE.

Exhibition Gregor Eichinger
Curator Sebastian Hackenschmidt, MAK Curator Furniture and Woodworks
Curatorial assistance Karin Ferrari

Kindly supported by J. & L. Lobmeyr and Naber Kaffee.


The cooperation agreed upon for 2009 between MAK and departure aims to establish a new platform in Vienna for future-oriented projects that expand the concept of design. Also presented in the MAK DESIGN SPACE under the title "START_UP: Designer's New Projects," will be prototypes and innovative ideas by young Austrian designers.