SELLING SUNSET
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
&THE GUEST ROOMS
23–26.09.2026
Quellenhof, Zürich
Zurich Design Weeks
A project by RAW SENSES
Fabio Hendry (Hot Wire Extension), Giovanna Lisignoli (Second Nature Projects), Sarah Quan (Villa Nomad), Sebastian Vargas (Consigliery)
Selling Sunset takes the form of two experiments. For the Living Archive, people were invited to lend one object of their choice from home. The Guest Rooms began with an open call to claim space without a prescribed theme, medium or outcome. In both, the conditions were set; what entered the building, and what happened within it, were not.
THE LIVING ARCHIVE
Objects enter our homes for different reasons. We need them, desire them, inherit them or simply cannot resist them. They settle into the arrangements of daily life. For the Living Archive, people were invited to choose one object from their home and lend it to the project. The lenders were selected; the objects were not. The result is not a collection assembled by type, period or significance, but a glimpse of what happens between people and objects.
Design is usually presented at the beginning of an object’s life: new, finished, photographed, exhibited, priced and waiting to be wanted. The Living Archive begins further along. At home, other values emerge and categories become less stable. A piece of furniture can become something to look at; an industrial object can find its way into the living room; something once useful can remain indispensable when its original function no longer matters. Objects are used, ignored, protected, repaired or displayed. Traces of use appear and reasons for keeping things change. We make room for objects, adapt to them and sometimes keep them long after the reason we first wanted them has disappeared.
In the Living Archive, an object’s meaning is not settled. It shifts and accumulates through use, memory and circumstance. Where an object ends up, what it comes to mean and why it stays provide a reading of what happens to design once it leaves the context in which it was conceived.
Lenders
Reto Andri, Marco Antonini, Che Zara Blomfield, Karolina Dankow, Louisa Gagliardi, Nino Gadient, Claudia Gröflin Ziltener, Fanny Hauser, Christian Herren, Ida Héritier, Anik Hosmann, Susanna Koeberle, Hans-Ueli Maurer, Leandra Nef, Michelle Nicol, Mario Pellin, Martin Rinderknecht, Johanna Roth, Ralph Schelling, Sarah Schlagenhauf, Marc Spiegler, Nadja Stäubli, Pier Stuker, Manja Stuker, Céline Witzke, Robert Wettstein, Hanna Fredrika.
THE GUEST ROOMS
Guests
Jannik Achenbach, Claire Eppley, Future Pilots, Sina Lisa Grätzer, Larissa Hage, Yannis Hotz, Idan, Iiode, Dominic Kim, Ann-Kathrin Kuhn, Yael Landers, Fabio Lauria, Kim Pham, Alina Pinardi, Lisa Robertson, Noemi Rondanini.
Photography: Andrea Ammann