“When the end of the world comes, I’ll go to Vienna. Everything happens ten years later there.”
There might be a kernel of truth to this shot of vitriol the writer Karl Kraus is said to have fired against the backwardness of his home of many years, Vienna. Could it be that the veil of lethargy, morbidity, and misanthropy Vienna is so joyously cultivating has immunised the city against the apocalypse? That, like a vaccine, there’s enough flirtation with death to scare real death away, if only for a while?
It’s no coincidence that Vienna’s most popular era, the fin-de-siècle of the 19th century seems to be a time eagerly, albeit passively, waiting for its own end and all the further horrible ends of the 20th century. Even its name has an ‘end’ in itself. Of course, by now Vienna is a lively and diverse city thriving on its social consensus, its hospitality and creative industry. Still, notwithstanding their brutal cousins, here the polite shadows of the past brush past you with a gentle “Memento mori” on their pursed lips more often than in other places. So, you better get a dose of decadently raw beauty straight from the best Viennese workshops to prep against any coming small apocalypses. And where better to celebrate our heated ennui as the world around us goes under than the famous Viennese coffee houses. That’s an institution that will surely survive the world’s end. In fact, they will be better than ever, once ‘Wien ohne Wiener’, the Vienna without the Viennese desired by every real Viennese person, is achieved.
Jokes aside, the objects of our “Postapocalyptic Kaffeehaus” are poetic interventions contemplating what remains of our rituals when circumstances change. As sensitive observers, the designers open a variety of windows: radical, humorous, intuitive or conceptual, raw or refined, they all strive not to wallow in cynic dystopianism but to reimagine, build, and focus on what we cherish.
Read our interview with curator Gabriel Roland on Adorno Editorial.
Postapocalyptic Kaffehaus
Curated by Gabriel Roland
Kaffeehaus
by Onka Allmayer-Beck
Responding to the theme of “Postapocalyptic Kaffeehaus”, ceramic artist Onka Allmayer-Beck’s “Kaffeehaus” takes the form of a living room-sized coffeehouse. A ceramic centrepiece in the shape of a house on legs that contains vessels to enjoy coffee. The piece enables its owners to symbolically relive the experience of going to a café without having to leave the safety of their home.
Plateable
by Anna Paul
“Plateable” is a ceramic table with embedded plates across its surface. In her work, designer Anna Paul builds sculptural participatory environments that negotiate everyday rituals and the relationship between society and its products. This piece does not include legs.
Dry Bodies
by Daniel Stuhlpfarrer
“Dry Bodies” is an assemblage of ceramic objects that speculate about an inconceivable time. The amount of materials for production has been reduced to an absolute minimum to reflect on a threatening scarcity of resources. Instead of using malleable clay, wild kaolin and feldspar (except the red platter) were used for clay body and glaze. The cracked platters have been fixed with old beer bottles and cans. Limitation of the materials of production complicates the technical feasibility and has a major impact on scale and shape.
Rare Cacti
by MADAME Architects
“Rare Cacti” are a special mixture of light and minerals formed into monolithic photon emitting rocks. The stability of the object is ensured as the gradient of the mixture mass increases towards the base. With a variety of different elastic shapes and mineral mixtures, the effect ranges from translucent rock to pure light.
Mokkup
by studionero
“Mokkup” describes a vessel following a function that isn’t instantly recognizable. Turned upside down, the “Mokkup” is perceived as a worthless rock while hiding its glazed and smooth heart – which is designed to hold 50 – 60 milliliters of coffee. The “Mokkups” are made from unprocessed raw clay and reflect the necessity of their time. Resource-saving, handmade, raw, sustainable, resistant, and 100 % made of locally available, self-dug natural materials. Each piece of this limited edition series is unique and can hopefully make the user think about needs and habits, excess, luxury, and hierarchies.
“Spezerei”, Limited Dystopia Edition
by KIM+HEEP
“Spezerei” is a family of spice grinders that breaks away from the dogma of turned traditional models. The set consists of a salt and pepper mill, a nutmeg grinder, and a salt box. Deliberately additive and architectural, these everyday objects do not immediately reveal what they are. These small sculptures arouse curiosity and invite you to touch and explore them. Since they don’t look like kitchen utensils at first glance, they also cut a fine figure on the dining table.
Babylon Chandelier
by Peter Sandbichler
The “Babylon” Chandelier represents a moment of suspense by the look and feel of six identically constructed objects kept in balance by a perfect formula. To enhance the specific appeal of the construction, the light tubes are connected directly with tension wires which, at the same time, are the power transmitting cables. The result is a chandelier configured with six 360° degree tubes made of Polycarbonat, each equipped with LED strips – all together covered from a silicon hose – and held together by the ambiguous meaning of tension.
Baiser
by studio högl borowski
Baiser is celebrating the beauty of material. This little doorstop stimulates not only the senses but also the discourse on the materials that surround us. It invites us to explore and comprehend materiality and questions notions of materials from naturally grown to artificially produced, unique combinations of materials and their values. “Baiser” is a bold AND delicate version of its fluffy lightweight edible role model. Made in sand-cast aluminum and with a polished finish surface, the meringue piece weighs a good kilo. Shining on its sculptural own or as a doorstop.
20post’wares’20
by Katrina Schneider
Post apocalypse: the abandoned factories – liberated from the monotony of mass production – develop a spirit and, thus, herald a new era of the possible and the impossible. Coffee, the epitome of earlier meritocracies, in which a farce of cosiness was layed on forced activation, now flows only within the mechanical, transformed body. To liquid as a solid shell, as a perfect symbiosis of entrance and exit, as mutual penetration within closed walls, the postwares are producing. The coffee house, once the activation site of the most modern automats, autonomises from its shards and becomes, in the body of a smoky factory building, a post-apocalyptic coffee house.
