International Competition

Solid wood modular furniture from national park regions – a further stride towards regional sustainability.

 

Studia (Studienzentrum für internationale Analysen) has initiated an international ideas competition for design furnishings in cooperation with the furniture and timber construction cluster Upper Austria (Möbel- und Holzbau-Cluster Oberösterreich) and the Bavarian Forest promotion organisation (Bayerwald Marketing GmbH). 124 graduation classes at European art and design universities have been invited to participate.

 

Five of these top academic participants were selected for the competition:

• HEAD, Haute Ecole d'art et de design de Genève
• School of Art & Design Nottingham Trent University
• HDK Steneby Gothenburg University
• Facoltà del Design Politecnico di Milano
• Department of Interior Design Vilnius Academy of Arts

The competition results are intended to create entirely new furniture lines from the finest wood grown in forests of the national park regions. These will then be hand-crafted by cabinet maker firms in these regions.

 

This cross-border Interreg Project is financed by the European Union and has been launched in close cooperation with the management of the Bavarian Forest National Park and the Upper Austrian Limestone Alps National Park together with stakeholder groups from the regions. The project results will stay in the regions: in the interest of a fair price for wood and as a contribution to keeping the order books of domestic craftsmanship enterprises full.

 

The creative results of the contest will be presented in 2013. The implementing of the winning modular designs by cabinet maker firms in the regions will then be started at once.

 

 

The competition is being jointly financed by funds provided by the European Union and the European Fund for Regional Developement within the scope of the "INTERREG Bayern - Österreich 2007-2013" programme.