As a part of the Passionswege project during the Vienna design week Daphna Laurens worked with Wittmann. Passionswege is a major focal point of Vienna design week. The program invites young, emerging designers to work with selected Vienna-based firms and manufacturers, exchanging design ideas and producing a tangible outcome, be it a product or installation.

Originally a saddlery, the Wittmann Company with its headquarters in Etsdorf not far from Vienna has grown in a hundreds years to become the upholstery furniture specialist that it now is – and which has also retained its expertise in the field of leather processing. Precision, exactness and skill in handcraft are the qualities that distinguish the producers and the proverbial “genuine Wittmann” products.

Daphna Laurens chose an explorative and intuitive approach for their collaboration with Wittmann. Instead of taking a product representative of the producer as their starting point, the designers gathered color and mood images in the inner world of the production site and translated these into what was at first an abstract repertoire of forms (bed or sofa? side table? Or none of these?) Out of puzzle of variation options and ways of seeing things – and in a communication process between producer and designer – the eventually pieced it together and produced two furniture designs of striking character and with strong personality.

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