Both Saint-Etienne and Graz are UNESCO cities of design. This year, Saint-Etienne was invited to present its city’s design works at the DesignMonat Graz. The project was a collaboration between different design institutions: Cité du design Saint-Etienne as the curators, Creative Industries Styria as the host, FH Joanneum as the educational institution, with Erika Thümmel as project coordinator.
Design and thinking are two concepts, which are strongly connected. They combine the main guideline of the exhibition. „Exploring, searching, discovering“ this motto divided the exhibition into two layers – the tangible and the floating.
The visitor’s experience starts in the introduction area, which is visualized through the recognizable triangular shapes of the “Cité du Design” building, which form the exhibition’s framework.
The transition is continued circularly around the exhibition’s space into the tangible area, where realized projects from Saint-Etienne are shown on horizontally directed tables, displaying eight topics with different aspects and directions of design in Saint-Etienne.
The Saint-Etienne inhabitants understand design as an integral part of the everyday life.
The circular landscape of the exhibition guides one through the floating area. This area’s scenography contrasts through its vertical alignment. The visitor moves through soft falling cloths, which let one literally search, explore and find design messages, statements and Saint-Etienne’s future vision for the city, which can be found in form of large words on the translucent fabrics. All sentences were written in French and German.
The visitor moves through these cloths, touches them and thus brings dynamism into the exhibition.
One then continues circularly through the floating area and flows finally into the heart of the exhibition, the clearing, where one can settle on the “floating chairs” to revisit the experiences and lessons of the exhibition. Bathed in poetic light one s
