Mozart, Falco, Viennese Schnitzel and coffee house tradition - most Germans will have these associations when thinking of Austria.
This notion is as likeable as it is cliched and incomplete.
Today, Austria is one of the EU countries with the highest export growth rates and this is also the result of its investment in design.
An insight into prize-winning Austrian product design is provided from 9 April until 4 May 2008 by the red dot design museum in Essen with the "abstrakt - konkret - ausgezeichnet (abstract - concrete - prize-winning)" exhibition.
In co-operation with the Austrian association of designers "Design Austria" it presents the prize-winning and award-winning projects of the Adolf Loos State Prize for Design 2007, Austria's most important design prize with the largest prize purse, which was created to make the outstanding achievements of the Austrian design scene visible.
The spectrum of the exhibited objects ranges from an elegant water glass and a multi-functional curtain made of concrete to stacking chairs with a novel connection system.
Supplemented by further outstanding Austrian design solutions, among them prize-winners of past years, the exhibition presents some 50 works by Austrian designers.
In the "abstract" section the originals are contrasted with models which are all of the same size and have the same surface structure - thus creating completely new, surprising perspectiveson the "concrete" objects.
more: en.red-dot.org (245)