ENTRY2006: 100 Days of Fantastic Glimpses Into the Future

How will we live tomorrow? With what products? In what sort of houses? And what is design anyway? You can find the answers to these questions at the 100-day major design exhibition, ENTRY2006 on perspectives and design, staged in the redesigned coal washing plant on the Zollverein World Cultural Heritage Site in Essen. From 26th August to 3rd December 2006, visitors will be able to see 300 objects from 20 countries, including innovative products, materials and technologies, ideas and experiments for tomorrow's world.

Thanks to ENTRY2006 the future Cultural Capital of Europe is going to be on the lips of very many people well beyond the immediate boundaries of the Ruhrgebiet. The Zollverein World Cultural Heritage site will be transformed into the key international centre for designers and architects. Personalities from the world of design and architecture and international institutions in culture and science will be creating a force field for new possibilities - on a site which, almost more than anywhere else in the world, is a symbol of the transformation of the industrialised world.

The spectacular exhibition site and the heart of ENTRY2006 is the coal washing plant which has been redesigned by Floris Alkemade on the Zollverein World Cultural Heritage site in Essen. The listed building will be opened for the first time to the general public, to coincide with the completion of the three-year construction work and the start of ENTRY2006. The "ascent" to the exhibition is alone worth a visit. Guests reach the coal washing plant via a 58 metre-long gangway, from the top of which there is a breathtaking view of the World Cultural Heritage site.

What makes ENTRY2006 so unique is the mixture of a "curated" exhibition and almost 60 accompanying events, from trade conferences via further thematic exhibitions to round table discussions featuring top-class specialists. ENTRY2006 is simultaneously a cultural event and a forum for specialists - a brand new format which has never been seen before.

Design as a Recipe for Business Success
With ENTRY2006 the Federal State of North-Rhine Westphalia is breaking new ground in business promotion and location development. As Christa Thoben, Minister for Business, Medium-Sized Firms and Power, from the Federal State of North-Rhine Westphalia puts it: "We understand design as an important driving force for economic development. There are a mass of reciprocal effects between the business world, architecture and design, which will be further deepened and built on at ENTRY2006 in many different ways. The old truism about trying to launch new products on the market is more valid nowadays than ever before: "Ugliness does not sell". Inventive attractive design, combined with a high degree of functionality and the very best quality is a recipe for business success. Thus good design is always a sales argument. ENTRY2006 offers businesses an ideal platform in which they can recognise trends in the next ten to twenty years at an early stage, prepare themselves for future business challenges, and get a lead on their competitors in terms of innovation."

Design und technological developments: Products for tomorrow's world Technological developments play a decisive role in design disciplines - architecture, landscape architecture, product design and communication design. Here ENTRY2006 will also be providing answers: for example to the question of how marketable products for tomorrow's world arise from current research and experiments in business and further education establishments: in biotechnology, metallurgy, research into artificial materials and nanotechnology. The same goes for architecture, a branch in which new materials for future buildings are gradually increasing in importance.

Accompanying Programme of Events
There will be almost 60 other events taking place all over the Zollverein site at the same time as the ENTRY exhibition in the coal washing plant. They start on the opening day with a fashion performance on the theme of "modern skin", followed by an exhibition on Swedish design. These are succeeded by a photo exhibition on climate change, a joint project developed by the British Council and German BP. This will show pictures by world-class photographers from the renowned "Magnum" photo agency. Furthermore there will be countless product presentations by business companies and trade conferences Amongst these will be a major presentation by ThyssenKrupp AG on the theme of design.

Looking to the Future on an Old Industrial Site
"Zollverein might have been specially made for a major exhibition on future design trends like ENTRY2006", says Gerhard Seltmann, CEO of the Zollverein Exhibition Company: "Design and Zollverein would make a perfect match, if only we could rid ourselves of the idea that Zollverein is nothing but an old industrial site. Zollverein can and should become a forward-looking site pointing to the future. It goes without saying that the site has its own historically significant architecture, and has been recognised as a World Heritage site for good reasons. But there are already around 60 design-oriented businesses on the site, which have created 1000 new jobs. ENTRY2006 is yet another contribution to promoting a site which already offers many opportunities for employment and is in the process of creating even more. For this reason the real question should be: Where else should ENTRY2006 take place, if not at Zollverein?"



The Five Theme Worlds of "ENTRY2006 - How Will We Live Tomorrow?"

ENTRYPARADISE
leads guests from the classical industrial and emotional design of the 20th century to the future of bits, atoms, neurons and genetic technology; the bang design. The exhibition makes the visitor more sensitive to questions on perspectives and visions in design. Under the motto "Design becomes invisible. Design makes visible", ENTRYPARADISE reveals the potentials hidden in creative work. New technologies extend the canon of design. Many have a direct effect on important sectors of live. But is everything allowed, simply because it is feasible? Design on a journey through virtual worlds to a utopian wonderland. Curator: Werner Lippert, Projects, Düsseldorf, in cooperation with Prof. Peter Wippermann, trendbüro Hamburg, Germany. Exhibition design: Büro Hamburg, Hamburg Netherlands..
Exhibition level: stairway and all exhibition levels (incl. 24)

Talking Cities
is a collective statement on contemporary cities and urban landscapes, their public spaces and peripheries. International protagonists from many different disciplines analyse the social and political dimensions of architecture, and urban and spatial designs. The densely packed collage of contributions and installations is intended to stimulate a reciprocal dialogue on the opportunities to revive and design the urban environment - often with minimal means. Curator: Francesca Ferguson, urban drift productions Ltd., Berlin.
Exhibition level: 17

Open House - Architecture and Technology for intelligent living
presents fifteen visionary architecture projects for living in the future. The outlines include inspiring suggestions for the inclusion of new places and experiential worlds, concepts for the use of variable and networked living spaces, and innovative ideas for intelligent building shells. By contrast with the projects conceived especially for the exhibition, there is a retrospective on some of the 20th century's most important "future" houses and visions of living in the future.
Curators: Alexander von Vegesack, Jochen Eisenbrand and Susanne Jaschko, the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein; Gloria Gerace, the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, USA.
Exhibition level: 12

Second Skin
is dedicated to new materials in the areas of furniture, fashion, architecture, health and media. New materials and technologies allow designers to create multifaceted lifelike objects which react to external stimuli and human touch. Curator: Ellen Lupton, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York City, USA.
Exhibition level: 06

Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape
will be showing current landscape projects and concepts for the quasi-natural regeneration of disused industrial sites and the revitalisation of urban spaces. These come from North America, Europe, Asia and the Near East. Innovative projects by contemporary architects will be presented - from small squares and gardens to broad areas of parkland which have been created on former industrial sites, thereby endowing them with completely new features.
Curator: Peter Reed, in cooperation with Irene Shum, curatorial assistant at the department of Architecture and Design, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.
Exhibition level: 06

http://www.entry-2006.de/

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