VIENNA.- This room was the crowd pleaser at graphic designers Stefan Sagmeister & Jessica Walsh’s multimedia exhibition Beauty at MAK Vienna in 2018. Why? Because in a matter of seconds it playfully demonstrated how our perception is influenced by light. With a single click, the Color Room, which was completely covered with garish pink-grey colour patterns on the walls, ceiling and furnishings, mutated into monochrome grey monotony along with the viewers. This astonishing transformation was achieved through the use of a cadmium lamp (estimate € 10,000 - 15,000).

The complete room, which can currently be seen and experienced at Palais Dorotheum, is one of the 215 objects listed at the design auction. The auction features a Woosh sofa by Zaha Hadid, furniture by Studio Superego, and an Aldo Tura sideboard amongst other items. Online bidding is available until 19 January 2023.

Visitors were asked to vote repeatedly on their perception of beauty at the Beauty exhibition (subtitled "Beauty as a Key Concept for Shaping the Future"). Some of these over two-metre-high voting walls by Sagmeister & Walsh are also available at this auction (€ 7,000 - 10,000 each).

Beauty, which also exhibited in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cognac and Bregenz, posed questions about beauty and its positive effects. In the early 20th century, beauty was discarded in favour of functionality in architecture and product design, among others. The Vorarlberg-born, New York-based design grand master Stefan Sagmeister notes a change in thinking: form does not simply follow function, but in many cases is itself the function.