REFERENCE TO THE UNDEFINED

mandate for experimenting with the future.
work in progress example design now* factory in saint p.
(initiator and commissionar: cornelius grupp)

design now® is a unique research facility which makes possible boundary-defying projects, deals with issues of our times and spends today developing that upon which tomorrow will be based.

Design – a central category

As a central, comprehensive and creative category, design is exempt from existing classifications. It involves architecture, art, science and many other areas, activating complex approaches. It gives utopias a form. It reflects culture and furthers its development. Design bursts through the walls of a society defined and confined by specialization to become an investment in the future. Design is vision and intervention. Design is thinking.

Research institution for perspectives on the future

design now© represents a new sort of institution conceived specifically for the task of research on contemporary design. Its free and flexible structure is defined above all by outstanding universalists who work on clear perspectives for the future within a context of increasingly complex social and economic structures. design now © de- fends the freedom to experiment. It opens up new spaces and also opens up different perspectives.

design now® Strategy

design now ® is a research institution that anchors design in theory and experiment, in experiment and practice. It conducts a type of design research which has not yet been done by any university or museum.

● The objective is to clearly position design, architecture, art and industry as a society-changing and future-shaping power in Austria and internationally.

This means setting up an institution which substantially improves the conditions under which design can develop.

● In doing so, another objective is creating an institution capable of liberating design from the dictate of necessities (ranging from economics to materiality), a plat- form upon which to deal openly, playfully and experimentally with the demands of a future society.

● The New Design University in St. Pölten will play a central role in initiating the necessary process between science, technology and business in order to place the idea of design on a new fundament.

design now® Research Center

consists of 3 components:

● design now© Laboratory

A testing grounds for experimentation and practice. A place in which new ideas, visions and strategies can be tested temporarily and in a model fashion. A place in which percepts, projects and objects which do not—and may never—exist can be dealt with. An idea of design (as a central category)that explicitly includes social criticism and technological innovation.

● design now© Information Agency

Research and distribution of relevant, specially selected information. Precisely due to the overabundance of informational offerings, it is crucial in dealing ith questions of design that a “clearing center” of sorts be present.
A design database, a design archive and material-libraries (which constantly collect new materials and document their characteristics), as well as an information center for designers and companies.

● design now © Camp

In the form of a limited-time stay as a “designer/artist-in-residence,” the city of St. Pölten affords designers, futurists, artists and architects the opportunity to research and experiment at their own discretion, independent of the mandates of professional practice. One possibility would be to set up project-related exchange programs between various occupational areas in order to promote interdisciplinarity. In practice, this could entail natural scientists developing new traffic systems or designers developing new animal species predestined for public transport.

Publicly effective, identity-forming projects

Suggestions

● nighttime use of St. Pölten’s administrative district
● coin-operated electro-cars
● coin-electro-“Vespas”
● specially designed city-bikes
● rent-a-design now® helicopter
● new brands such as: “saint PO green product line”
● organizing school gardens
● organic-electronic public parks
● environmental education in public places
● large-scale recycling program
● design now® competitions (design – a central strategy) for schools, the hospitality industry, shops, public space, private space, office, apparel, sports and leisure, taste-of-the-nation, top-of-the-industry, midnight walking
● public art
● healthy yummies

● saint PO style weekly
● www.design-now interactive – development of new programs and strategies
● Shops-on-wheels
● One Night in St. Pölten / design now© night once a year
● design now© Duonale
● City Guide (by) St. Pölten
The most important international design centers / cities.
● Postcard series
● Brainchildren
● Austrian Lexicon (of creative potential)
● Urban planning / city design
● Urban interventions in St. P.
● Art & Money
Media artists develop programs using existing electronic equipment (such as ATMs, etc.)