Dirty Hands: Harald Gründl
Harald Gründl is a founding partner of the Vienna-based design studio EOOS and leads the Institute of Design Research Vienna (IDRV). He teaches design theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, with a focus on social and sustainable design. His expertise ranges from circular design strategies to WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) in the Global South. He has collaborated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on this topic for the last fifteen years. Founded more than thirty years ago by Martin Bergmann, Gernot Bohmann, and Harald Gründl, EOOS has achieved international recognition in furniture, product, and social design. The studio’s work explores the poetic, social, and cultural impact of design, earning numerous awards and exhibitions at venues such as the MAK in Vienna, the Milan Design Triennale, and the Venice Architecture Biennale.
In his lecture, Harald Gründl will share insights into EOOS’s design practice and the publicatio EOOS: Designing Impact, the recently published monograph by Lars Müller Publishers. The publication reflects on thirty years of EOOS’s work, documenting the studio’s evolution from internationally acclaimed furniture and product design to socially engaged projects addressing global challenges, and highlighting how design can combine aesthetic quality with meaningful impact on society and the environment.
www.socialdesign.eoos.com
@eoos_social_design
www.idrv.org
EOOS: Designing Impact, Lars Müller Publishers
The event will take place on Wednesday, November 12, 2025, at 5 PM in 5. K12 - Kunstraum, ZHdK, Toni Areal.
Dirty Hands is an invitation to explore new ways of working—ways that are hands-on and reflective, experimental and critical, proactive and self-aware, deeply rooted in practice. It embraces contradiction, the tension between creation and consequence, and the need for design to evolve.
This lecture series explores the entangled relationships between design, ecology, technology, and society. It highlights the urgent need for approaches that bridge the gap between planetary limitations and human action.
We invite thinkers and makers to navigate these uncertainties with us—to get their hands dirty, share their practice, and rethink what design can and can't do.
