TISCHLEIN DECK DICH STADTARBEIT
A project by Vitamin Architects
The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is Austria’s largest design festival – only last year’s edition, the 10th one, had around 160 events and 38.355 visitors in more than 70 locations. There have been 386 published articles related to the festival, 356.465 website hits and 83.735 website visitors. When it comes to social media, we can say VDW is quite popular – having 27.414 fans on Facebook, 3.429 followers on Instagram and about 2.500 on Twitter. Stadtarbeit is a format developed within VIENNA DESIGN WEEK that offers designers the chance during the festival to take part in a project dealing with social design. The projects take place partly in cooperation with Caritas Wien and are realized during the festival. For this year’s edition, we have submitted a project proposal to the open call for Stadtarbeit. There have been about 50 projects submitted; only 5 were chosen, ours being the only one from Romania, this year’s guest country.
WHO ARE WE? www.vitamina.ro
Vitamin Architects is an office for user friendly architecture and sustainable urbanism. It has been founded in Timisoara in 2006, the founders being graduates of both Schools of Architecture from Timisoara and Graz. Throughout their professional ascension, the office has developed projects of great public interest like the General Urban Plan for the city of Timisoara, various restorations of historical buildings, urban strategies and developments, competitions with external collaborations usually from Austria and Switzerland , as well as small scale projects like interior design. The office has also been involved in the academic activity of the Faculty of Architecture from Timisoara.
Paul Buchert
Graduated at TU Graz and co-founded Vitamin Architects with Rudolf Gräf. He’s always looking for new challenges in architecture and urban strategies. Always an optimist and organizing stuff.
Rudolf Gräf
Is co-fouder of Timisoara based architecture and urban planning office Vitamin Architects. He graduated at the TU Graz in 2005 with a work about Roma Architecture in Romania, since than being interested in the value of space as intercultural communicator. Since 2016 he is engaged in the Integrated Urban Development Project Ukraine as international expert for urban planning and climate change.
Alexandra Trofin
The youngest architect of the team, graduated this year from the Faculty of Architecture, Timișoara. Her first contact with the office was back in 2015 when as a student, she collaborated with VitaminA over some competition entries. She took a year to study in Portugal but once returned, she started again activating within the office, now being the project manager of Tischlein Deck Dich.
Raoul Chiricheș
Graduate of the same Faculty of Architecture, Timisoara, is always exploring into his practice up to date themes as affordable design, architecture as a vehicle of integration or sustainability and care towards the enviroment. Following this path of integration - education - minorities | unforunated social groups, he had his graduation project coordinated by Rudolf Gräf, author of Roma Palaces- architecture and culture, one of the founders of Vitamin Architects.
Sandra Andrei
Newcomer in the VitaminA team, Sandra has graduated this year from the Faculty or Architecture in Timișoara, having previously studied and worked as an intern abroad, in Portugal. Having already collaborated with VitaminA for a competition in 2015, she now explores further architecture competitions, currently dealing with school designs.
Pataki Farkas
Vitamin architect and an indie film maker, Pataki Farkas is involved both ways in projects regarding social issues in the urban landscape. Outside his work he is a passionate track and road cyclist.
Lavinia Popa
Member of VitaminA since the begining, studied architecture in Timișoara and Graz, where she developed her graduatian project on brazilian favelas. For 3 years she was a teacher at the Department of Interior Design of the Faculty of Architecture from Timisoara where Farkas was her student, currently a member of VitaminA as well.
And this is our working space.
The design was performed in a central heating system building, which is made of prefabricated elements, very common during the 70’s. Its role was to supply heat for one of the biggest collective housing neighborhoods in Timisoara. Together with the technical modernization of the facilities, the volume of the equipment diminished considerably, and the free space that resulted could receive another destination, a more flexible and versatile one. A transformation of this kind comes with many pitfalls for the building in question. Even if the value of the building is not a tremendous asset, it has a formal appearance due to its very striking and somehow imposing prefabricated structure. The project is driven mainly by the intention of keeping the structure and emphasizing the relationship between its elements with the sole purpose of obtaining a coherent appearance of the building without making too much of a fuss about the new purpose. To preserve the original atmosphere and avoid introducing elements devoid of context, all interventions aimed emphasizing the industrial character of the building while transposing it into a new purpose.
THE PROJECT
TISCHLEIN DECK DICH tischleindeckdich.vdw@gmail.com www.facebook.com/TDDatVDW www.instagram.com/tischleindeckdich.vdw
Tischlein Deck Dich explores the multicultural character of gastronomy, while creating an opportunity for interaction between social groups of different origins, offering the work frame for expressing cultural identity through the culinary art in the public space of Vienna. The chosen site is Braunhirschenpark, located in the 15th district of Vienna, the focus area of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2017. Each day of the festival, another cook is responsible with the cooking, being encouraged to share his stories, traditions, personal experiences with the visitors. We have decided to have in mind more or less 50 portions per day and don’t forget that this event is a FREE FOOD SHARING HAPPENING, so we can’t sell anything in the public space. Our main target group is made of the refugees living in Vienna, we aim emphazising their cultural richness rather than their social status. This is why we contacted on one hand refugees homes and restaurants with specific character and, on the other hand, embassies and cultural centres inviting them to host events within Tischlein Deck Dich. Our goal is to let this week full of events to be partly spontaneous, so usual visitors having the possibility to book the chief apron and cook in the public space during the week. The object will be donated so it can have a post-festival life as well. Braunhirschenpark - Braunhirschengasse, 1150 Wien, Austria
Full week schedule ~ to be completed ~
29.9 (Fri) - Object assembly | @Cafe PROSA 14:00 - 18:00 30.9 (Sat) - Romanian Cooking | @Braunhirschenpark 14:00 - 18:00 - Cocktail Party | @Cafe PROSA 19:00 - 22:00 1.10 (Sun) - Collaboration event with Community Cooking @Technisches Museum Wien 12:30 - 16:00 2.10 (Mon) - Multicultural Cooking | @Braunhirschenpark 16:00 - 20:00 Afganistan 4.10 (Wed) - Multicultural Cooking | @Braunhirschenpark 12:00 - 16:00 Brazil 5.10 (Thu) - Multicultural Cooking | @Braunhirschenpark 16:00 - 20:00 Habibi&Hawara restaurant 7.10 (Sat) - Local Cooking | @Braunhirschenpark 16:00 - 20:00 - closing party | @Werkstadt15 19:00 - 20:00 - Long night of Museums | @Rumänisches Kulturinstitute 8.10 (Sun) - Open for feedback | @Werkstadt15 12:00 -13:30 - VDW Talks | Alexandra Trofin | @Sparkassaplatz 4 14:00 - 15:00