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Manufaktur für Ungreifbares is a Berlin based multidisciplinary communication & design practice. It exists as an open team with professions in the fields of communication design, UI/UX design, architecture, curation, writing, philosophy and economics. We believe communication and design strategies should be applied from day one of your endeavor. Be it physical, digital or a social cause – we help you to find & refine your product, to design & build it and to bring forth its voice, no matter the medium.

 

Exhibitions,
Workshops, Festivals (Excerpt)

2006, 08 — Group Exhibition „Essen für‘s Auge“ Max-Planck-Institut, Munich, Germany
2007, 12 — Group Exhibition „Player One vs. Player Two“ Färberei, Munich, Germany
2011, 10 — SIMULTAN FESTIVAL #7 – „Imaginary“ Timisoara, Romania
2011, 11 — PNEM Sound Art Festival, Netherlands
2011, 11 — Fucking Good Art, LindeNow Festival. Leipzig, Germany
2011, 11 — Beautiful Art – Public Talk with Bildetage, Kuhturm, Leipzig, Germany
2012, 02 — Switch 2012, Video-Art Festival, Nenagh, Ireland
2012, 03 — Traverse Video Festival, Toulouse, France
2012, 05 — Festival für Klang und Bewegte Visuelle Kunst, Hannover, Germany
2012, 09 — Façade Video Festival 2012, Plovdiv, Bulgaria
2013, 05 — Ornament & Concealment, Berlin, Germany
2014, 12 — kontinuum, Patrick Parrish Gallery, New York, US
2015, 03 — SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2015, New York, US
2016, 04 — PLANETARY URBANISM – The Transformative Power of Cities, German Pavilion, UN-HABITAT III, Quito, Ecuador

 

Print Publications (Excerpt)

2010 — Featured in Esquire Magazine, Korea
2010 — Review in Giant Robot Magazine, USA
2010 — Gallery Mag – 5 Pieces of work published
2010 — Carne Magazine – 2 Pieces of work published
2011 — Index Book, Typo Shirt One, Spain
2011 — Wow! – Leading-edge Designers, China
2013 — ARCH+ 213, Out of Balance, Germany
2015 — ARCH+, The Rush on Foreign Land, Germany

 
Blogs, etc. (Excerpt)

graphic-exchange.com, thedieline.com, thecoolhunter.com, designyoutrust.com,
daily-design-news.com, greenmuze.com, siteinspired.com, thedailymeal.org,
graficacolectiva.org, posterous.com, xpaider.com, thestrangeattractor.com,
thisisduty.com, typojungle.net, lettercult.com, trendhunter.com, baubauhaus.com,
theworldsbestever.com, thisisnthappiness.com, thestrangeattractor.com,
thinkingforaliving.org, theworldsbestever.com, minimalexhibit.com,
pixelperfectportfolios.com, joshspear.com, theimport.co.uk, inpursuitofsilence.com,
motionserved.com, thisisduty.com, …


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    We are honored to partner with 3E, a long-standing client renowned for optimizing the performance of renewable energy assets through data intelligence, digital innovation, and advisory services. Building upon our ongoing collaboration on their product design, 3E has entrusted us with a comprehensive brand refresh. We promptly recognized the challenge and opportunity in crafting an identity that simultaneously conveyed their unwavering reliability, rooted in 40 years of expertise, and their openness and drive for innovation. The initiative encompassed the design of a custom font, crafted to balance the technical demands of their software products with the dynamic requirements of their marketing endeavors. Furthermore, their primary color palette has been expanded to a versatile library of over 50 shades, strategically designed to enhance their data visualization capabilities and amplify their voice within the renewable energy sector.

    Laufschrift is a custom-made news ticker installed on the facade of a former café in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district, now a restaurant. Referencing the iconic Café Savigny—a lively hub of conversation, newspaper browsing, and fleeting exchanges—the installation echoes its atmosphere. Streaming a mix of global news and AI-generated fragments, the ticker captures the interplay of fact, fiction, and overheard chatter that once defined the café experience. An online platform allows the restaurant owners as the artist alike to contribute their own messages to the loop.

    Anna Roberta Vattes, Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt

    Anna Roberta Vattes is a painter with a strong procedural approach. She asked for a psychoanalytically informed text for her series Alien Fragments, which would diverge from the style and language commonly applied when writing about the arts. Anna was selected by Goldrausch for this years exhibition, a program devoted to the professionalization of women in the arts. It can be visited from Sept 10th 2022 – Oct 3th 2022 at Kommunale Galerie Berlin. Opening: Sept 9th, 5 – 10 pm. For more information on the exhibition click here.

    The text can be found here:
    Felix von der Weppen, Alien Fragments – German Version

    Pars Pralinen

    Our friends at Pars Pralinen asked for a relaunch of their online presence. Pars is bringing a new dynamic into a field which was long governed by conservative and unimaginative practitioners. In the heart of Berlin, Pars is manufacturing the finest and most exciting pralines. It is hard to say, these are still chocolates or sweets as they invite to journeys, like perfumes or fine wines would. Pars took their work and contacts to like-minded sustainable and regional producers and collaborators as a basis for extending their business into fine dining and consultancy. We realized that Pars‘ communication was not anymore up to par with its values and range of activities. Together we concluded, the company needed a comprehensive relaunch. As a first step, the new custom logotype includes alternative stylesets to play with expressively. Redesigned packagings and a new online presence are on the way.

    MyORB New York put together a team for CANA’s brand identity. CANA is developing a molecular printer to reimagine the way beverages are being produced and consumed. Together we developed a communication and design strategy. More soon.

    Self-Initiated
    Felix v. d. Weppen
    Charlotte Spiegelfeld
    Pujan Shakupa
    Nele Obermüller
    • by
    • Felix v. d. Weppen /
      Architectural Design, Site Supervision, Web Design & Development
    • Photography
    • Photography
    • Nele Obermüller /
      Text

    Casa del Viento is both an artist residency and a tranquil vacation retreat. Nestled in the peaceful enclave of Betlem, far from Mallorca’s bustling tourist hubs, this serene architectural home is located just steps from the Mediterranean Sea and a breathtaking mountainous nature reserve. Once a neglected structure, the house was completely transformed under our design and oversight, including the renovation of the architecture, the design of the kitchen, and much of the custom furniture. To complement the physical space, we also designed a website serving as a digital gateway to its unique offerings.

    Official Website

    SmartAsApps / Monikit
    Felix v. d. Weppen
    SmartAsApps
    • by
    • Product Design, UI/UX Design, Animation
    • SmartAsApps /
      Product Design, Development

    Monikit developed an innovative system to monitor epileptic seizures, providing critical support for patients and their doctors. SmartAsApps entrusted us with designing the Monikit app to ensure all users—patients, caregivers, and medical professionals—would not only be safe but also feel secure in its use.

    The system uses a body-worn sensor and advanced machine learning algorithms to detect patterns of generalized and focal epileptic seizures, distinguishing them from everyday activities like exercise or stress. Detected seizures are automatically documented and analyzed in the app, while users can also manually log any seizures that go unrecognized.

    Our focus was on creating a seamless and intuitive UI/UX, where every interaction is thoughtfully designed to minimize errors. Key features include robust access management, detailed seizure statistics, and a notification system for detected seizures. Special care was given to alarm handling, ensuring users can cancel false alarms without the risk of accidental dismissal.

    Anna Veit

    Stiftung Stadtkultur

    The Stadtwerkstätten (SWS) bring neighbors together in underserved urban areas, creating spaces for exchange and community-driven activities focused on topics like ecology, social issues, and technology. Under the motto “Sharing time. Acting together.”, they foster creative solutions for everyday challenges.

    We designed a series of posters with infographics explaining the key themes of the Stadtwerkstätten. These posters served as a framework for the events, marking the locations in the city and creating a kind of virtual, open zone in public spaces, inviting people to participate and connect.

    Self-Initiated

    While cities are growing rapidly, arable land is shrinking at a drastic rate. Instead of focusing investments on the manufacturing of the image of ‚the modern city‘, pragmatic measures should be taken towards the development of socially, economically and ecologically sustainable cities. To prevent urban sprawl, cities should grow vertically instead of horizontally. A radical shift in city development guidelines and imposts seems necessary and could bring about a radical shift towards a better quality of living, reduction of inequality and risks of cultural segregation, without the need for a larger political shift. Guidelines for the production of public space in vertical structures, enabling connectivity for vertical and horizontal extension, a guaranteed amount of sunlight and fresh air for residential units, a shift from a 2-dimensional square meter approach towards a 3-dimensional volumetric approach and others could be among the first to help bringing about that change. Megastructures, cities which grow constantly in all directions, have been around as concepts since the 1960s and the Japanese Metabolist movement came close to the realization of it’s ideas, but for economic, political and cultural reasons, none of the projects have been realized on a scale larger than a few buildings. This might also have been due to the complexity of the designs which starkly contrasted existing technologies. With contemporary technologies, which brought about cost reduction of building, computer aided and parametric design, new production techniques, complex simulation and visualization, economic and technical aspects shouldn’t be in the way. The question comes down to if we can find a good set of rather simple rules which find wide social acceptance, manage to accelerate hope and optimism while ensuring a healthy long term city development. These rules could then be implemented into web based software, to which any city planner, architect or any other individual would have access to in order to lay out and to simulate his or her building project. Small piloting projects along a developed web software version to test layouts and changes to the cities designs shall help to communicate the idea and to put pressure on city planners and politicians in charge who haven’t yet realized the growing need and pressure towards what Henri Lefebvre once famously called the ‚Right to the City‘.

    Since the year 2000 an increasing number of international land-investments have been documented. The investors, whether private or governmental, seek large-scale land areas around the globe. They focus on long-term leases (60–99 years) and purchase to produce food and non-food commodities. Once the deals are signed and vast acres cultivated, the produced goods are generally exported and sold on the world market or transferred to the investor’s country. These land investments are primarily located in less developed countries of the Global South. Little information about the contract details is accessible to the public. Still, the impact on economic, social and ecological aspects in countries that host such investments (provider countries) seems inevitable. This map, commissioned by ARCH+, displays the worldwide activity of investors and providers of land, linking the Top 10 Investors to the Top 10 Provider Countries.

    Installation:
    3 wood boxes with 27” Monitors
    35” x 45” x 10” + feet

    Video Edition 8/10
    2 Artist Proof with Boxes

    Video:
    3.53 min loop

    Book:
    192 pages + 6 inserts/ 8.25”x 6”
    Includes sleeve with blind emboss
    Sewn bound & offset printed
    Edition of 500/ Numbered $48

    The book can be ordered here

     

    kontinuum is a 3 channel video installation and book project by Lucie Kim and Felix von der Weppen.


    Project Statement:

    kontinuum is the idea of an unavoidable continuous repetition of three psychological states: Anticipation, Manifestation and Reflection. A project that explores our relationship to impermanence and transitoriness.

    In order to lay out this arc, we invited a dancer to give a performance confined only by a set of conditions: walls, paper and a circle of graphite powder on the floor. During the performance the dancer touches the graphite and leaves marks on the ground. Each step is improvised and builds the ground she walks on. She continuously leaves new traces and overrides previous ones as the graphite leaves marks on her. The book, encases the dancer’s traces chronologically. The video splits the three stages into three screens: While the center screen shows her movement through all the stages, the screen on the left anticipates the upcoming performance and the one on the right reflects on the performance itself.

    The Arc

    During the stage of Anticipation, we (as humans) experience the most obvious form of desire: Something that grabs our attention and draws us in. Something that both, guides us and drags us towards a point in the future. Lacan suggested that we are born with an irreducible lack that can never be filled. While we can never fulfill this longing, we might reach objects that stand for it only symbolically: the person or thing that we assume will complete us.

    Manifestation is the stage of fulfilling this desire. During this stage we are able to fully focus on the present – making it happen (whatever it might be) – actions and thoughts seem to align perfectly. In its most intense form, this stage can portray what is often called an “Event” in continental philosophy – a transgression of the already known. Alain Badiou describes “an Event [as] a rapture in personal or collective history” 1. He states the Subject itself is something a group or individual only gets to touch, but can never hold on to. Like a cloud of intensity one goes through, fully identifies with and loses again. For him there are only amorous, artistic, political and scientific Subjects, or rather „a relation between an Event and the world“ 2. After an Event has occurred, there is no way back into the naive state that existed before the rapture. Any such attempt inevitably leads to nostalgia or an active denial of the past. This theory is a good explanation for why we think, we come close to the feeling of being complete. Badiou suggests it is not us as individuals, but rather we feel complete because we become entirely absorbed with what we do: To the extent of becoming indistinguishable from our actions for a moment. This stage is an absolute gain as well as absolute loss because of the emptiness it leaves us with.

    When either the strong feeling of presence, the Event, the Subject one identified with, or rather the object of desire is gone, a void sets in until a new desire has been formed.
    Depending on the intensity of this state, one has not only lost the object of desire, but also the feeling one identified with that lead one there. Bataille gave the first of the two the term “la petite mort” (the little death), subsequently the latter would be the big death – one has to reinvent oneself entirely after such an Event.

    The stage of Reflection is the handling of the loss described above. The focus here lies on the past. Remaining traces and artifacts become highly seductive because they seemingly hold the potential to solidify the impermanent. But this remains a symbolic effort. The repetition of the act is another strategy to deal with the loss and might bring some relief, but both, repeating an Event or simply holding onto the stage of Manifestation, seem to be impossible by nature. As Heraclitus said “You can never step into the same river twice”.

    Embracing the Arc

    We were aware that capturing this performance on film and paper, would remain purely symbolic. We willfully followed this desire to do both, embrace and reveal the arc simultaneously.

    In the installation, the final part of the project, we tried to emphasize the overall spatial, temporal and symbolic instability. It aims to point at the invisibility of the vessel the kontinuum moves in. Such a vessel can only be described in negative terms: The inability to do anything beyond the contingency and our inability to point at it from an outside perspective.

    kontinuum is in all it’s elements both, a symbol for this arc, as well the material remain or trace of a multitude of such arcs.

    1, 2)  Badiou, Alain. „The Subject of Art“ in The Symptom – http://www.lacan.com/symptom6_articles/badiou.html

    Self-Initiated
    Felix v. d. Weppen
    Oliver Lippert

    BigRead is a javascript plugin that helps structuring and reading long texts or entire One-Pagers such as this website. It is easy to set up and has been implemented in several websites. As soon as it leaves Beta version, it will be available for download for personal and non-profit projects for free and in exchange for a little fee also for commercial use.

    Architecture is often used and invoked as the central hallmark of modernization. Cities around the world are rapidly redefining themselves through their architecture in a bid to capture some part of that elusive essence that is “the modern city”. Simultaneously, the attempt to define a local identity in the midst of an international architectural identity leads to a strange emphasis on conservation. Despite this, the materials and tools used to construct and preserve them mainly stay the same. Physically and symbolically they make up one of the most constant elements to our time. Ironically it is structures, ones that were, in and of themselves, intended as a transitional state, who act as relics of a perpetual present within the constantly shifting modern urban environment.

    In the midst of modernization, taking the risk of letting go appears to be an almost radical act. Ornament and Concealment aimed to lead the viewer into the very nature of this contradiction, creating an atmosphere of shelter and defenselessness. Instead of a backup preventing a possible future blackout, the installation directed the gaze to a black box of an accident which never happened, but continuously happens.

    The complete project text can be read here:
    ornament-and-concealment.m-f-u.com

    FROST Festival, Competition

    Winter as catalyst for the recoding of the public domain — Heavy snowfall holds the potential to sort of clear public spaces from an overload of information and societal codes. In addition, low temperatures put people of all classes and income on an approximately equal level. Everyone shares the experience of freezing, longing for a warm place and some sun. ‚Warming up to Strangers‘ aims to unlock winter’s potential for the reappropriation of the public space and to generate pro-urban, productive friction through encounter.

    The houses are intended to invite passengers to pause for a moment and to share a cup of tea and maybe some thoughts with strangers.

    Thermal blankets are normally used for providing first aid in open space and by homeless people to keep warm outside, meanwhile the same material is used for the furthest outreach of human activity: space programmes and satellites. The design aims to amplify this contradictory notion in two ways. On the one hand by using supporting structures made of square timber for simple cabins. These are combined with thermal foil as an effective, low-cost high-tech solution for isolation. And on the other hand treating the overly complex urban condition by responding to our most basic needs: warmth and shelter through the pre-civilisatory invention of a centered hearth.

     

    ARCH+ / Le Monde Diplomatique Competition: Out of Balance

    Remap(p) is an interactive investigation into the effects that foreign land acquisition has on the rural populations of the countries in which it is most prevalent or most heavily practiced. Our primary focus with the Remap(p) project is to raise awareness and to assist in mapping the effects of Foreign Land acquisition on the livelihood of the population living in host nations. We want to compare the conditions of the involved investor and host countries and governments. This data will be crowd sourced from various resources including Land Matrix and Grain, with the hopes of showing the interactions between the variables of each unique situation, (population density, renewable freshwater amount, need for development, and so forth), while simultaneously giving an overview of the agricultural population which is being studied.

    The website is in its apha stage. We aim to publish a beta version by the end of this year.

    Visit:
    remapp.de

    Featured in:
    ARCH+ 213: Out of Balance – Kritik der Gegenwart

    Arch+

    BEC-Engineering GmbH

    BEC-Engineering GmbH asked for a massive relaunch of its website. Together we developed an extensible structure, similar to a periodic table, for the companies vast service portfolio. Based on this structure we then developed a largely animated and interactive information platform with an educational character, giving in-depth explanations on troubleshooting and quality maintenance strategies for PV modules and PV power plants and energy optimization techniques.

    Update: The website is currently offline.

    BEC-Engineering GmbH

    BEC is a consulting and engineering company in the field of Photovoltaics with a focus on troubleshooting PV-modules and PV power plants. This card was created to inform about hidden flaws inside of photovoltaic modules. These flaws are invisible to the human eye and need electroluminescence imaging technique to be detected. That idea was transformed to a printed piece. It took some weeks to find a printer who was willing to print on ’spy mirror film‘. When holding the the foil against a source of light, the card reveals a compilation of electroluminescence images of broken PV cells, shining through from behind, which get used to explain and indicate various types of damages.

    This was the second time Hintmag asked MyORB to produce an animated lookbook. We created a make-believe darkroom and took the images back to the pre-digital era and it’s alchemistic approach to image-making.

    Click here to view

    MyORB / Black Umbrella


Felix von der Weppen

Felix is a Berlin-based designer, product strategist, and writer with over 20 years of experience crafting solutions at the intersection of communication design, product design and architecture. Graduating summa cum laude in Communication Design, his career spans roles as an art director in New York, self-taught front-end developer and independent creative professional. He has led projects in branding, product design, design systems and architectural design, with a strong focus on the renewable energy sector.

Driven by a passion for interdisciplinary exploration, he has published works on aesthetics, urbanism, and psychoanalysis. His work has been featured in prominent publications like ARCH+Esquire, and Giant Robot, alongside exhibitions and festivals around the globe. Through Manufaktur für Ungreifbares he aims to deliver meaningful solutions that span physical, digital, and social domains, grounded in principles of design thinking and a commitment to impactful results.

Learn More


If you happen to want to work or collaborate with us
or if you have any other inquiry, please contact:

info@m-f-u.org
+49.176.249.359.65

Manufaktur für Ungreifbares
c/o Felix von der Weppen
Cuvrystr. 32
D-10997 Berlin


Angaben gemäß § 5 TMG,
Verantwortlich für den Inhalt nach § 55 Abs. 2 RStV:

Manufaktur für Ungreifbares
Felix von der Weppen
Cuvrystraße 32
D—10997 Berlin

mail info@m-f-u.org
fon +49.176.249.359.65
Design &
Development
M-F-U
AGB Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen

All work depicted is copyright © MFU / Felix von der Weppen, 2009 – 2014


Responsible body in the sense of the data protection laws, in particular the EU data protection basic regulation (DSGVO), is:

Felix von der Weppen
Cuvrystraße 32
D-10997 Berlin
Germany

Your victims rights

You can always exercise the following rights under the contact details of our data protection officer:

  • Information about your stored data and their processing,
  • Correction of incorrect personal data,
  • Deletion of your stored data,
  • Restriction of data processing, if we are not yet allowed to delete your data due to legal obligations,
  • Objection to the processing of your data by us and
  • Data portability, if you have consented to the data processing or have concluded a – contract with us.
  • If you have given us your consent, you can withdraw it at any time with effect for the future.

You can always contact the supervisory authority responsible for you with a complaint. Your competent supervisory authority will depend on the state of your domicile, work or alleged violation. A list of the supervisory authorities (for the non-public area) can be found at: https://www.bfdi.bund.de/DE/Infothek/Anschriften_Links/anschriften_links-node.html.

Purposes of data processing by the responsible body and third parties

We process your personal data only for the purposes stated in this privacy policy. A transfer of your personal data to third parties for purposes other than those mentioned does not take place. We only share your personal information with third parties if:

  • You have given your express consent to
  • the processing is required to execute a contract with you,
  • the processing is necessary to fulfill a legal obligation,
  • processing is necessary to protect legitimate interests and there is no reason to believe that you have an
  • overriding legitimate interest in not disclosing your information.

Deletion or blocking of data

We adhere to the principles of data avoidance and data economy. Therefore, we only use your personal data for as long as it is necessary to do so. After discontinuation of the respective deadlines, the corresponding data will be routinely and in accordance with the statutory provisions.

Collecting general information when visiting our website

When you access our website, a cookie automatically records information of a general nature. This information (server log files) includes, for example, the type of web browser, the operating system used, the domain name of your Internet service provider and the like. This is only information that does not allow conclusions about your person.

This information is technically necessary to correctly deliver the contents of web pages requested by you and is mandatory when using the internet. They are processed in particular for the following purposes:

  • Ensuring a hassle-free connection of the website,
  • Ensuring a smooth use of our website,
  • Evaluation of system security and stability as well
  • for further administrative purposes.
  • The processing of your personal data is based on our legitimate interest for the aforementioned purposes of data collection. We do not use your information to draw conclusions about you. The recipient of the data is only the responsible body and possibly the processor.

Anonymous information of this kind may be statistically evaluated by us to optimize our website and the underlying technology.

Using Script Libraries (Google Webfonts)

In order to render our content correctly and graphically appealing across browsers, we use script libraries and font libraries on this website, such as: Google Webfonts (https://www.google.com/webfonts/). Google web fonts are transferred to the cache of your browser to prevent multiple loading. If the browser does not support Google Web fonts or prohibits access, content will be displayed in a standard font.

The call of script libraries or font libraries automatically triggers a connection to the operator of the library. It is theoretically possible – but currently also unclear whether and if so for what purposes – that operators of such libraries collect data.

The privacy policy of the library operator Google can be found here: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

Using Adobe Typekit

We use Adobe Typekit for the visual design of our website. Typekit is a service of Adobe Systems Software Ireland Ltd. which grants us access to a font library. To integrate the fonts we use, your browser needs to connect to an Adobe server in the US and download the font we need for our website. Adobe receives the information that your website has been called from your IP address. For more information about Adobe Typekit, see the Adobe privacy policy, which can be found here: www.adobe.com/privacy/typekit.html

Vimeo

Our website uses plugins from the video portal Vimeo. Provider is Vimeo Inc., 555 West 18th Street, NY, New York 10011, USA.

If you visit any of our sites equipped with a Vimeo plugin, you will be connected to Vimeo’s servers. This tells the Vimeo server which of our pages you have visited. In addition, Vimeo obtains your IP address. This also applies if you are not logged in to Vimeo or do not have an account with Vimeo. The information collected by Vimeo is transmitted to the Vimeo server in the United States.

If you are logged in to your Vimeo account, you allow Vimeo to associate your surfing behavior directly with your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your Vimeo account.

For more information on how to deal with user data, see the Vimeo Privacy Policy at https://vimeo.com/privacy.

Change of our privacy policy

We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy to always comply with the latest legal requirements or to implement changes to our services in the privacy policy, e.g. when introducing new services. Your new visit will be subject to the new privacy policy.

Questions to the data protection officer

If you have any questions about privacy, please email us or contact the person responsible for privacy in our organization:

Felix von der Weppen
(please find contact details in the contact section or the imprint)

Apart from the Adobe Typekit and Vimeo sections, the privacy policy has been created with the privacy statement generator of activeMind AG and was then translated.