After its presentation at Milan Design Week, the exhibition House of Creatures – Objects that Refuse to Behave moved to Vienna, where it will be part of the Vienna Design Week’s programme from September 25 to October 4, 2026. The project of the Center for Creativity / Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), which is being created in collaboration with SKICA Vienna, has also received a new spatial interpretation in the new environment. The exhibition is located in this year’s Vienna Design Week festival center at Hietzinger Kai 101, in a former office building, which also significantly shapes the project’s layout with its distinctive office typology.

The exhibition brings together ten Slovenian design practices: Dan Adlešič, Lara Bohinc, Juicy Marbles, Nejc Prah, Lucija Rosc, Maruša Sagadin, Soft Baroque, Janez Suhadolc, Toasted Furniture and Sari Valenci. The curatorial and design team consists of Ryan Barriball, Sera Eravci, Urša Gantar, Tine Tribušon, Gašper Uršič and Vid Žnidaršič.

The basic premise of the exhibition remains the same as in Milan: the exhibited objects are not treated simply as functional objects, but as independent “beings” with their own presence, character and way of being. The project thus examines what happens when we momentarily stop understanding a design object primarily through the question of its utility and instead begin to read it through its behavior, materiality, scale, form and the relationships it establishes with other objects and with the visitor.

Opening in Vienna

The Vienna exhibition House of Creatures opened on 24 September, on the eve of the official start of Vienna Design Week. The opening was attended by, among others, Marko Štucin, Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia in Vienna, and Aljaž Arih, Head of the Slovenian Cultural and Information Centre SKICA Vienna. SKICA is an integral part of the Slovenian Embassy in Vienna and is responsible for the promotion of Slovenian culture in Austria.

The Centre for Creativity has been collaborating with SKICA Vienna for many years in the design and implementation of international presentations of Slovenian designers and other creators. In the House of Creatures project, the collaboration is not limited to the implementation framework of the exhibition, but represents a continuation of the long-term connection of the Slovenian creative sector with the Austrian and wider international environment.

The Vienna presentation is not a direct reconstruction of the Milan installation. The new location required a different spatial consideration and thus a different relationship between the individual works, the scenography and the visitor. While the “creatures” in Milan were united in a common habitat, in Vienna they are dispersed over a larger space and establish their own areas and mutual connections. The distance between them becomes as important as their proximity, and the empty spaces begin to actively shape the way the visitor moves through the exhibition and how they perceive individual objects in relation to others.

Same elements, different installation

An important part of the transfer of the exhibition from Milan to Vienna is the adaptation of the scenography. The soft foam landscape, which in the Milan installation connected the individual works into a more compact common habitat, in Vienna expands through the former office space.

The individual foam elements act as islands, pedestals, surfaces and spatial interventions, between which the visitor moves. Instead of a unified scenographic whole, a dispersed constellation is created, in which the individual objects have more autonomy, while still remaining part of a common system. The spatial dramaturgy is therefore no longer based primarily on density, but on distances, views and transitions.

The architectural basis of the installation is also important. The former office space was designed around human routines, organization, and productivity. The “Creatures” enter such a space as strangers: instead of adapting to its former logic, they inhabit it in their own way, transforming the relationships between bodies, objects, and architecture in the process. It is this tension between the rationally organized office environment and the more unpredictable logic of the exhibited “creatures” that is one of the key focuses of the Viennese installation.

Slovenian Delegation at Vienna Design Week

On Saturday, September 26, the Center for Creativity organized a group visit to Vienna Design Week for the Slovenian delegation. The main part of the program was the presentation of the House of Creatures exhibition and a closer look at the individual works and the process of transferring the project from Milan to Vienna.

The delegation was welcomed by Gabriel Roland, Director of Vienna Design Week, together with Anja Zorko, Head of the Center for Creativity, and Aljaž Arih, Head of SKICA Vienna.

The content of the exhibition was presented in more detail to the visitors by members of the curatorial team, Sera Eravci and Vid Žnidaršič. They presented the initial concept of the project and explained how it changed when it moved to a new architectural environment. They particularly highlighted the transition from a more compact shared habitat in Milan to a dispersed installation in Vienna, where individual works establish their own territories and react more directly to the architecture of the former office space.

The curatorial perspective was also complemented by two artists associated with the exhibition. Maruša Sagadin, a Slovenian artist living and working in Vienna, presented her practice and the work Die Flügelmutter (Schwarz), included in the House of Creatures. Nuša Jelenc presented the products of the Toasted Furniture collective and introduced visitors to their creation, material characteristics and the broader context of design practice.

The presentation thus connected the curatorial, design and authorial perspectives. Instead of a classic guided tour of individual exhibits, the visit provided an insight into the thinking behind the entire exhibition and into the concrete processes of creation of some of the presented works.

House of Creatures – Objects that Refuse to Behave is on display as part of Vienna Design Week 2026 from September 25 to October 4, 2026.

Flickr | Photo: Luka Karlin