Graz as a UNESCO City of Design

Graz has been a UNESCO City of Design for over 10 years and is therefore part of an international network that consists of 43 cities worldwide and links the global creative scene.

There are now 295 UNESCO Creative Cities in total. Graz is host to networking events on a regular basis, and Creative Industries Styria also oversees content management for the joint website of UNESCO Cities of Design.

Since becoming a UNESCO City of Design, Graz has increasingly participated in numerous events, conferences, calls and competitions, establishing itself as a popular design hotspot. At the same time, membership in the UNESCO City of Design network facilitated knowledge transfer with other UNESCO Creative Cities and opened up new markets.

Creative Industries Styria is also responsible for networking and subsequently communicating invitations to par ticipate in calls and competitions from the UNESCO Cities of Design and other UNESCO Creative Cities.

Awareness & Location

Conferences and meetings

The Annual Meeting took place from July 8 to 22 in Santos, Brazil. Additional online meetings were held throughout the year. The first post-pandemic UNESCO Cities of Design in-person Subnetwork Meeting was held in Kaunas, Lithuania from October 11 to 15. On behalf of Graz, Creative Industries Styria also leads the Design & Business working group together with Kortrijk.

Around Autofiction

The exhibition Around Autofiction is a longstanding collaborative project of a number of Cities of Design famous with strong ties to the automotive sector. It presents a snapshot of the various activities and initiatives associated with the mobility of the future in the form of a traveling exhibition.

For presentation in Lendhafen, Creative Industries Styria nominated companies and their projects such as the WoodC.A.R (Computer-Aided Research) research project, which aimed to promote the use of wood as a lightweight material in vehicle construction. Other represented companies included AVL List GmbH with current developments related to hydrogen-powered cars, Moodley Industrial Design for SIEMENS with the mobility vision “one for all” and the degree program Industrial Design of FH JOANNEUM Univer sity of Applied Science Graz with cur rent mobility projects. The traveling exhibition made stops in Kortrijk, Dubai, Turin and Detroit, as well as at the Design Month Graz, among other places.

Awareness & Location