Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh offer an engaging multimedia exhibition for the pleasure of beauty. The exhibition spreads across the entire MAK premise, investigating why people feel attracted to beauty, how they can handle it, and which positive effects beauty can have.

Almost throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, beauty has had rather a negative connotation in the design discourse. Sagmeister & Walsh oppose this antipathy with impressive arguments and make beauty a central and functional aspect of appealing design. The exhibition plays with all of the visitors senses and clearly shows that beauty is more than just a superficial strategy.

Sagmeister & Walsh use examples through graphics, product design, architecture and urban planning to demonstrate that beautiful objects, buildings and strategies not only make things more enjoyable, but actually work better, and that the form does not just follow the function, but in many cases, is the function itself.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the Sensory Room, designed together with Swarovski. A sensually designed white cube that invites you to enter a room filled with thousands of Swarovski crystals in an ornament designed by Sagmeister & Walsh. Inside, the visitors – wrapped in fog – encounter constantly changing colours of the sunset accompanied with citrus scents and an acoustic backdrop of the song of the Malaysian tree frog.It is an incomparable experience of beauty, that leaves you with a peaceful and tranquil feeling.

Sagmeister & Walsh answer the question: “What is beauty?” with facts.  Beautiful things have a direct effect on our dopamine receptors and on our feelings, meaning that beautiful design can indeed be perceived as effective. Let yourself be enchanted by the stupefying exhibition: Beauty, on display until March 31st and uncover the finer details on our app.