Papanek Symposium 2015
Émigré Design Culture: Histories of the Social in Design
University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria

This international symposium examines the significance of Austrian and
Central European émigré and exile architects/designers in promoting a
progressive culture of debate in the USA, around the needs of society
and strategies for social inclusion. The culture of the social in design
that emerged in the US from the 1920s to the 1960s was defined by
collaboration. The symposium is the first to address the pivotal role
played by émigré and exile networks, in New York, Boston, Chicago,
Aspen, and L.A., in shaping a new social agenda within design.

Cutting-edge research will bring to the fore the ways in which
architects and designers utilized their Viennese and European schooling
to confront political realities of World War II and beyond. The lessons
adapted by prominent figures such as Josef Frank, Richard Neutra,
Frederick Kiesler, Eva Zeisel, Bernard Rudofsky and Victor Papanek
prompt the revisiting of discussions that originated on Vienna's famous
Ringstrasse; illuminating design's role in the creation of progressive
social communities.

Leading scholars in the fields of cultural, design and architectural
history consider the critical contribution of émigrés and exiles in
forming new humanistic directions in design. This historical appraisal
opens a new forum in which to debate the role of the social in design
and its relevance for today's global perspective.


PROGRAMME

27 May 2015

09.00-10.00
Registration

10.00-10.30
Welcome

10.30-12.30
Reconsidering the Viennese Heritage
Chair: Monika Platzer (Architekturzentrum Wien)

10.30-11.00
Eve Blau (Harvard University, USA)
Isotype and Architecture in Red Vienna and Beyond

11.00-11.30
Oliver Kühschelm (University of Vienna, Austria)
(Mis)understanding Consumption: Consumer Experts and the Austrofascist
Regime

11.30-12.00
Barnaby Haran (University of Hull, UK)
Shaping the Mass Mind: Frederick Kiesler and Edward Bernays in New York
in the 1920s

12.00-12.30 Discussion

12.30-13.45 Lunch Break


14.00-17.00
Exile and Émigré Culture: Psychology and the Politics of Inclusion
Chair: Todd Cronan (Emory University, USA)

14.00-14.30
Christopher Long (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Josef Frank and Paul T. Frankl: Two Tales of the Wiener Moderne Abroad

14.30-15.00
Ruth Hanisch (Independent Architectural Historian, Germany)
Freud's Armchair: Felix Augenfeld and the Psychoanalysis Movement in
Vienna and New York

15.00-15.30 Discussion/ Break

15.30-16.00
Pat Kirkham (Bard Graduate Center, USA)
Eva Zeisel's Vienna, Budapest, New York: Wanderlust, Imprisonment, Exile
and Emigration

16.00-16.30
Alison J. Clarke (University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria)
Ethnography and Design Revolution: Observations from the Émigré's Gaze

16.30-17.00 Discussion


18.00-19.00
Papanek Lecture
Felicity D. Scott (Columbia University, USA)
Planetary and Interplanetary Housekeeping

19.00-20.00
Reception


28 May 2015

10.00-13.00
Exile and Émigré Networks: Designing a Better Society?
Chair: Christopher Long (University of Texas at Austin, USA)

10.00-10.30
Robin Schuldenfrei (The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK)
László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and the Social Usefulness of Art

10.30-11.00
Anna Vallye (Washington University in St. Louis, USA)
Educating the Citizen's Mind: György Kepes at MIT

11.00-11.30 Discussion/ Break

11.30-12.00
Elana Shapira (University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria)
The Question of Gender: Kiesler, Rudofsky, Papanek and Surrealism

12.00-12.30
Monica Penick (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Paul László and the Atomic Future

12.30-13.00 Discussion

13.00-14.00 Lunch Break


14.00-15.30
Émigrés and Exiles and the Global Turn
Chair: Gerd Zillner (Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private
Foundation)

14.00-14.30
Felicity D. Scott (Columbia University, USA)
Bernard Rudofsky and Architecture without Architects

14.30-15.00
Todd Cronan (Emory University, USA)
Schindler vs. Neutra or Architecture at the End of History

15.00-15.30 Discussion/ Break

15.30-16.30
Roundtable discussion
"Ruptures and Continuities – Émigrés and Exiles and the Social in
Design"


Convened & Curated by: Dr. Elana Shapira
Directed by: Prof. Dr. Alison J. Clarke
Supported by: Bryleigh Morsink

Organised as part of the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) research project
award ‘Émigré Cultural Networks and the Founding of Social Design',
Department of Design History & Theory, University of Applied Arts,
Vienna.

Public event, free of charge, registration required.
http://papanek.org/symposium/