Celebrating more than 300 years since its foundation in Vienna by Emperor Joseph I in 1707, Dorotheum is today the largest auction house in German-speaking Europe as well as a leader in central Europe and one of the oldest and largest auction houses in the world. As a contribution to this year’s Vienna Design Week, the Dorotheum—which regularly holds widely noted design-themed auctions—will be showing an installation with the masterpiece “Sphere”, custom-designed for the Dorotheum by Austrian designer Thomas Feichtner. “Sphere” is a bench consisting of computer-generated splines that was realized by welding together fine stainless steel wires (and nothing else) to form the complex final structure. It was only possible to create this spherical surface as it now exists by using digital production methods and the most modern welding technology by H+S Zauntechnik. With its a hexagonal overall structure, this asymmetrical bench stands on three unequal legs but even so distributes its load equally on the fine wires from which it is made, resulting in an interplay of foreground and background.
