Visionary Vienna: Design and Society 1918-1934

The research Visionary Vienna: Design and Society 1918-1934 explores how ideas of rational, scientific progress and progressive social attitudes were shaped in Vienna through cross-fertilization between design and aesthetic practices and anthropological theory. It examines how groundbreaking design and aesthetic practices visualized ideas of social progress and how social theories considered aesthetic habit as part of their findings, and further design as essential to communicating their results. The term Visionary Vienna refers to scientific and design projects and individual works that envisioned a progressive society and further better relations between individual and society. Cultural conflicts between a socialist secular camp and a conservative Catholic camp greatly defined the period of the first Austrian Republic 1918-1934, a period of political democracy, and affected design practices. This study reviews how deeply design and social constructs, as well as questions of identity, were implicated with each other, and offers a historical precedent for how we understand complex networks of design and society today. The study will examine scientific and design projects and their impact on society and the urban space between1918-1934. It further considers how progressive ideas regarding design and society were further developed by Austrian émigrés and exiles after 1934/1938. Importantly, drawing on research previously examined as well as unexplored original archival material in Viennese cultural institutions, it will consider the relevance of the legacy of Visionary Vienna. It builds upon seminal research on Red Vienna, on the social position and contributions of women, and recent work on the role of Jews and Jewish difference in shaping Austrian culture; furthermore, it re-contextualizes forgotten literature and art avant- garde from the interwar period. Through analysis of buildings, interiors, design objects, documentary photos, as well as scientific and theoretical texts I argue that both aesthetic and anthropological interventions were made in the fashioning of Viennese society at the time. The interdisciplinary approach of this analysis uses cultural studies, social psychology, and aesthetic theory to examine how these interventions granted empowerment to weaker sections in society, advocated shared communal responsibility, redefined gender roles and redressed questions of cultural Otherness. Challenging the favor given to the Wiener Modernes popular decorative world, this project re-frames cultural collaborated projects, scientific theories and individual design/ artworks in relation to each others output, and maps the revolutionary heritage of Visionary Vienna.

The research 'Visionary Vienna: Design and Society 1918-1934' addresses the significance of cross-fertilization between design/aesthetic practice and anthropological theory in interwar Vienna in expressions engaging art and science and that aim at promoting cultures of diversity, empowering different groups in society, and challenging gender roles. The research explores how design and aesthetics practices and cultural theories were further applied to formulate varied educational models of democratic citizenship. The study offers a contemporary scholarly perspective on the role of psychologists, journalists, architects and artists in shaping critical perspectives on the relationship between the individual and society, and consequently influencing new forms of public and private architecture and socially-oriented design. Reconstructing biographies and careers of émigré designers and authors after their voluntary and forced emigration to the US and Britain from the 1920s to the 1950s resulted in documenting cultural networks. The émigrés and their networks played a critical role in securing transfer of knowledge and helped to transform shared progressive ideas into social activism in the new environment. The research further examines how modern identities evolved in relation to conflicts between nationalist ideologies and international aspirations in Vienna. 'Visionary Vienna' sheds new light on the importance of integrating women into Viennese design and art history by examining their active participation in interrelated fields of cultural production. A critical part of the research is to re-contextualize primary objects and texts authored by women, held in different collections within and beyond the city border, and to examine how objects (housing, furniture pieces, ceramics, exhibition display) and texts (in journals, scientific and literary books) emphasized each other's significance respectively. The results include three symposia, 'Freud and the Émigré - Austrian Émigrés, Exiles and the Legacy of Psychoanalysis in Britain' (2018) 'Designing Transformation: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism' (2019) and 'Gestalterinnen - Women, Design and Society in Interwar Vienna' (2021), workshop 'Rediscovering Architect Ella Briggs' (2022), and a forthcoming symposium 'Austrian Identity and Modernity' (2022); publications include two edited volumes Design Dialogue (2018), and Designing Transformation (2021) and three co-edited volumes, Freud and the Émigré (2020), and two forthcoming Gestalterinnen (2023) and Ella Briggs (2024).