The European design of the future speaks Slavic. Reboot in Zagreb

Biro, an architecture studio founded in 2016 by Sasa Kosuta, Mario Kralj and Dora Loncaric, was commissioned by the Festival Design District Zagreb, now in its third edition, to create the exhibition design of “Reboot: backstage of progress”. The group show is dedicated to the youngest and breakthrough brands of Balkan design. The challenge was to set up the exhibition inside the abandoned Old Military Hospital.

Therefore Biro has decided to tell a story of opposites: the warmth of refined wooden artifacts and natural materials in the cold and inhospitable environment of a decaying military building; handmade red carpets – the stylistic code of Reboot’s identity – as a set on torn floors and peeling walls; white metal grids such as table display panels, prototypes, photos and other verbal-visual content. 

The visual identity of the exhibition was designed by Iva Hrvatin, designer, illustrator and visual artist for Superstudio, capturing a simple, technical, black and white aesthetic focused solely on function. The brands selected by the curator Tatjana Bartakovic – Zanat and Artisan from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mitja and Rex-Kralj from Slovenia, Prostoria, Grupa, Vau, Regeneracja and Element from Croatia – are those who, through the most innovative and commercial look of design, have contributed significantly to relaunch the local manufacturing tradition on an international scale. 

“For each of them, I’ve singled-out their key product or a collection which signified its important cultural, manufacturing and business progress led by design”, Bartakovic explains. Not only final products but also design and manufacturing processes and prototypes in the sign of materials, wood, metal and wool.