The designers conjuring 21st-century creations in a 12th-century castle

On a hill in southern Austria, surrounded by verdant fields, vineyards and forests, lies Schloss Hollenegg, a castle dating to the 12th century. Although currently residence to a branch of the House of Liechtenstein, Schloss Hollenegg has become an unlikely hub for experimental contemporary design, hosting annual residencies for emerging designers as well as themed exhibitions.

This unusual transformation of a castle home into a design incubator is all thanks to Alice Stori Liechtenstein, an Italian design curator who married into the family two decades ago.

This year’s exhibition Ashes & Sand (May 6-28) explores the medium of glass in all its forms and expressions. It unfolds primarily across the northern wing of the castle, a part which is not currently lived in, with other
site-specific works dotted around elsewhere. Along with a selection of 22 contemporary designers working in glass, the exhibition showcases the work of five young creatives who undertook Schloss Hollenegg’s three-week design residency last summer: Tamara Barrage, Antrei Hartikainen, Christian + Jade, Germans Ermičs and Tadeas Podracky.

When Stori Liechtenstein and her family moved in full-time in 2014, the castle — which the Liechtenstein family acquired in 1821 — had been merely a holiday and weekend retreat for almost four decades. Living there, however, planted the seed of an idea. Building on a career as an exhibition designer and curator, Stori Liechtenstein wanted to stage exhibitions in response to the castle’s extensive collection — including ceramics, glassware, tapestries, furniture and art — as well as open up the place to locals.

“I was struck by how much the people in the area identified with the castle,” she says. “They were so happy it was inhabited again.”

Stori Liechtenstein established the design residency in 2015 and the first exhibition took place the following year. Through the residency, she aims to support the next generation of designers. But she also wants to encourage a dialogue between the castle and contemporary design: each year, the selected residents are tasked with creating work in direct response to Schloss Hollenegg.

Over three weeks in summer, the residents experience tours, activities and talks that engage with the building, its collection and the local area. Following exploration and research, they must propose a castle-inspired design piece before leaving, going on to produce the work off-site for the following spring’s exhibition. After being displayed, those pieces stay as part of the permanent collection of the castle.

Residents are not short on inspiration as they seek to generate new contextual work. The castle’s architecture blends 12th-century foundations and 14th-century stone towers with an arcaded Renaissance courtyard, an imposing Baroque church and other alterations and additions throughout the centuries. Inside, 17th-century Belgian tapestries mingle with Renaissance wooden doors, and 19th-century historicist murals meet 16th-century ceramic-tiled stoves.

Each exhibition theme — which drives the residents’ works as well as the curation — relates to Schloss Hollenegg’s context, history and collection. “The theme roots it in the place . . . and then it really makes sense for the designers to spend time there, because they have a research ground,” says Stori Liechtenstein. Previous years’ themes include East to West, Earth and Fire, Legacy and Morphosis.

This year, Ashes & Sand relates not just to Schloss Hollenegg’s extensive collection of glass, including Venetian chandeliers and Biedermeier glassware, but also to the area’s history as a hub of glassmaking from the late Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. The exhibition has been curated by Stori Liechtenstein alongside Rainald Franz, curator of glass and ceramic at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Walking through the show as it’s being set up in April, the featured pieces simultaneously stand out and fit in; remarkable yet perfectly situated. In the high-ceilinged Great Hall sit two glass candelabras by Lebanese designer Tamara Barrage. Inspired by the 18th-century bronze and ceramic candelabras flanking the hall’s entrance, the works have tentacle-like forms in green, pink and yellow hues that reflect the colour palette of the trompe l’oeil painted interior done in 1750.

“Being in the castle heavily influenced the pieces I created,” Barrage says of her residency. “I walked around it every day, visited every room, and every time I discovered something new. Being surrounded by objects from many different eras, I was immersed in craftsmanship, materiality and forms.”

Barrage, who produced her work with Viennese glassblower Studio Comploj, had never worked with glass before, “so the residency was a big learning experience for me. I got to learn about the material and its history but also experiment with it.”

In a grand drawing room following on from the hall, Copenhagen-based design studio Christian + Jade’s work forms a table centrepiece. Described as a “wine fountain”, Shifting Sands is made using sand that had been recently excavated from the castle’s grounds for the creation of a train tunnel. The work has a rich green colour, resulting from the iron oxides within the local sand and referencing the forest glass that was traditionally made locally.

The exhibition’s objects and installations continue throughout the sequence of Baroque stately rooms, before reaching a library and reading room, where a large-scale mirror by Latvian designer Germans Ermičs references the illusory effects of the castle’s trompe l’oeil paintings.

Beyond the sun-filled gallery space, the exhibition continues upstairs and into the neo-medieval-style bedrooms, where the Czech designer Tadeas Podracky’s sculptural charred wood and glass chandelier has a commanding presence.

Outside, Antrei Hartikainen’s rippling glass vessels appear in nooks and crannies across 16th-century stone staircases; the Finnish designer 3D-scanned different surfaces of the castle, made moulds and created the vessels to fit into those specific places. “The glass is married to the architecture,” says Stori Liechtenstein.

Being in the castle heavily influenced the pieces I created. I walked around it every day, visited every room, and every time I discovered something new

Although the resident designers’ works are the only pieces that need to respond to the castle, Stori Liechtenstein has found that increasingly, the other designers invited to exhibit want to make new, context-specific work.

In Ashes & Sand, colourful Murano glass vessels were specially blown by design studio Stories of Italy to reference the frescoed marble patterns depicted in Schloss Hollenegg’s Great Hall, while Canadian designer Sarah Roseman created “knitted” fibreglass works that respond to the castle’s textiles and patterns.

Journeying through the exhibition, the pieces for Ashes & Sand also intermingle with the permanent works remaining from previous years’ resident designers. In one room, a decorative silk-screened and hand-painted bed canopy was designed by Hanna-Kaisa Korolainen, resident in 2020. Outside, in a loggia space overlooking the surrounding countryside, a large communal wooden table by 2017 resident breaded Escalope Design Studio is made from a sequoia at Schloss Hollenegg that had been hit by lightning and died.

Through the design programme, Stori Liechtenstein is expanding the castle’s collection in a curated and site-responsive way. “Every generation has added something to Hollenegg over the centuries,” she says. “We are adding contemporary things — and they are made especially, so they really fit in.”

There is a sense of stewardship that underpins her approach to the castle, as well as the design residency. “Whenever we decide to do something in the castle, it’s not about the next few months or next few years. It’s about: what is it going to be like in 50 years?”

Stori Liechtenstein has built up “a community” around the design programme, both of designers — some of whom she invites back repeatedly to participate in the exhibition — and of locals, who come to the annual shows as well as other design events hosted at Schloss Hollenegg. “For them the castle is their castle, it’s part of their identity,” she says. “We’re just looking after it.”

Until May 28; schlosshollenegg.at

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