Rethink­ing the Ele­ments of Architecture

Design­ers, engi­neers and crafts­men design prod­ucts as build­ing blocks for the archi­tec­ture and inte­ri­or of a build­ing. For cen­turies, these have been designed under the par­a­digm of effi­cien­cy, in the con­text of a lin­ear econ­o­my, and with an aware­ness of a coher­ent over­all pic­ture — both at the lev­el of build­ings and at the lev­el of the cityscape.

In terms of meet­ing the 2015 Paris Agree­ment, the build­ing sec­tor is cur­rent­ly under enor­mous pres­sure, as the con­struc­tion indus­try is respon­si­ble for more than one-third of the world’s ener­gy con­sump­tion and more than one-third of the world’s waste. Not only does the man­u­fac­ture and main­te­nance of archi­tec­ture need to be rein­vent­ed, but the reuse, dis­pos­al and recy­cling of these com­po­nents must also focus on the con­cerns of a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and C02 emis­sions, which are to be dras­ti­cal­ly reduced.

The lec­ture will be a jour­ney through Ste­fan Diez’s prac­tice as an indus­tri­al design­er, focus­ing on prod­ucts for a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, and a look at how he sees the role of indus­tri­al design­ers in col­lab­o­ra­tion with archi­tects. This top­ic has also been recent­ly explored in his teach­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Arts in Vien­na, where he works with his stu­dents on the design of archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments that will have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the cityscape of the future or that can change in a par­tic­u­lar way the way peo­ple live togeth­er and the way they live in these cities.

Dri­ven by curios­i­ty and sup­port­ed by a net­work of local crafts­men and spe­cial­ists, DIEZ OFFICE ded­i­cates itself with great care and com­pe­tence to turn­ing ideas into con­crete prod­ucts. Togeth­er with his team, Munich-based design­er Ste­fan Diez focus­es pri­mar­i­ly on the poten­tial of the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and devel­ops every­day prod­ucts whose com­po­nents can be eas­i­ly returned to the mate­r­i­al cycle. In 2020, his “Ayno” lamp, which con­sists of only three pri­ma­ry mate­ri­als, was award­ed the Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award.

The lec­ture and livestream start at 6:30 p.m.

After train­ing as a car­pen­ter, Ste­fan Diez stud­ied indus­tri­al design with Richard Sap­per at the State Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. After work­ing with Kon­stan­tin Grcic for sev­er­al years, he found­ed DIEZ OFFICE in Munich in 2002 and is now one of Germany’s most suc­cess­ful designers.

From 2007 Ste­fan Diez was pro­fes­sor of lndus­tri­al Design at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Design Karl­sruhe and moved to the School of lndus­tri­al Design Lund, Swe­den in 2015. Since 2018, Ste­fan Diez has been head of lndus­tri­al Design at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Arts in Vienna.

DIEZ OFFICE designs and devel­ops prod­ucts for every­day use, focus­ing in par­tic­u­lar on the poten­tial of the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my. The work­ing method is char­ac­ter­ized by inno­va­tion through tech­ni­cal exper­tise, instinct and a great will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment. This is how award-win­ning fur­ni­ture, light­ing and acces­sories are cre­at­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Rosen­thal, Thonet, Wilkhahn, HAY, e15, Magis, Vib­ia, Vic­carbe, Wag­n­er, Midgard, Brun­ner and many more.