# Leo Mühlfeld

> Vienna-based designer working with museums, research institutions, and cultural organizations. Translating complex ideas into tangible exhibitions, objects, interfaces, and workshops.

## Identity
- Name: Leo Mühlfeld
- Also known as: Mag. Leo Mühlfeld
- Role: Designer for Industry, Science & Culture
- Based in: Vienna, Austria
- Practice founded: 2016
- Affiliations: LMGI, Redflag Design, Design in Gesellschaft (board member), Gemeindebau (design collective)
- Education: University of Applied Arts Vienna (Design Investigations), Die Graphische
- Recognition: S+T+ARTS Prize 2025 Nominee; AI Creative Awards Tokyo Honoree; Falstaff Living Newcomer Nominee
- Selected partners: MAK Vienna, MDW Vienna, IST Austria, Vienna Design Week, Superflux, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Crafting Plastics Studio
- Profiles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leomuehlfeld/, https://medium.com/@leomuehlfeld
- Canonical site: https://leomuehlfeld.at

## About
- [About Leo Mühlfeld](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/about): Role, training, practice partners, philosophy, selected writing

## Projects
- [Sound of Insight](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/sound-of-insight.md): An exhibition at Foto Wien 2025 that turns research from MDW Vienna's institutes into something you can see and hear.
- [AI in Science Futures](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/ai-in-science-futures.md): A two-hour workshop at VISTA where visitors used roleplay and craft to talk through what AI is doing to science.
- [Snapdragon](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/snapdragon.md): A film about the wonder researchers feel at the frontier of science, made so a broad audience can feel it too.
- [AI the Scientist](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/ai-the-scientist.md): An interactive exhibit for VISTA that makes AI-driven protein research tangible, built from talks with the scientists.
- [Vienna Design Week 2025](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/vienna-design-week-2025.md): The wayfinding system for Vienna Design Week 2025, Austria's largest design festival, guiding around 50,000 visitors.
- [Valhelmland](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/valhelmland.md): Visual identity for Valhelm, a summer residency of ten Viennese designers at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg.
- [Valley of the Hearts Delight](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/valley-of-the-hearts-delight.md): Set design, glass structures and media control for a three-channel video work by Felix Lenz at Triennale Milano 2025.
- [Liminal Cycles](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/liminal-cycles.md): Sensors and sound that let Crafting Plastics' sculptural steering wheels respond to visitors at Miami Art Week 2024.
- [Blockchain Unchained](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/blockchain-unchained.md): A playful exhibition at the MAK Vienna that lets visitors try out DAOs and blockchain as tools for democracy.
- [Large Language Writer](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/large-language-writer.md): How will we write with language models? Honest interfaces for creative writing that show what the AI is doing.
- [Stromkilometer](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/stromkilometer.md): A graduation gift in an edition of 90 for the Schulschiff on the Danube, about the class that ends when school does.
- [Design with a Purpose](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/design-with-a-purpose.md): Exhibition design for over 20 circular design projects at Vienna Design Week, part of the first Vienna Climate Biennale.
- [Serpentine](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/serpentine.md): Bent aluminum lamps made with local fabricators in Vienna and Lower Austria, from open files anyone can modify.
- [Reality Goggles](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/reality-goggles.md): A 3D-printed headset that shows AI-generated images of the city above you while you ride the Vienna subway.
- [Hümme](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/huemme.md): An AI music video for CeKo & Freunde's song Hümme, setting Wienerlied melancholy against a flood of generated images.
- [Tiny Art Run](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/tiny-artrun.md): Our stretch of the Tiny Art Run in 2023: a closed box where a passing RC car plays sounds elsewhere in the building.
- [KEB Branding](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/keb-branding.md): Identity and website for the Kaisermühlen Electric Band, a Vienna band named after their corner of the 22nd district.
- [VLF Antenna](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/vlf-antenna.md): A hand-wound antenna that makes very low frequencies like lightning audible, built for an installation by Felix Lenz.
- [Die Letzten ihrer Art](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/bonn-die-letzten-ihrer-art.md): Animations on endangered professions for the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, including 500 kinds of bread set by script.
- [Navigational Superpowers](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/navigational-superpowers.md): A headset that guides you through the city by sound, borrowing from the way bats find their way. No screen needed.
- [Heating Habits](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/heating-habits.md): Prototypes that use zeolite and salt solutions as small, local heat sources, bringing some ritual back to heating.
- [Renunciation Rebellion](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/renunciation-rebellion.md): Costumes, props and a portable altar for the performance of a made-up religion that worships giving things up.
- [Wood-e Videos](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/wood-e-videos.md): Videos for Cartbrothers' solar-powered wooden vehicle, including one where it runs a toaster off its own battery.
- [Talking House](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/talking-house.md): An audio installation in Glarus where you turn a dial to hear a place as it sounds today or as it once did.
- [Centaur Design](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/centaur-design.md): In 2021, children designed their own toys together with text-to-image AI. An early try at sharing design with machines.
- [Kite Like Display 21](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/kld-21.md): Short films for dform's Kite Like Display 21, a wooden trade show stand that goes up and comes down without tools.
- [Norbert Kure](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/norbert-kure.md): Business cards for Norbert Kure, a Viennese furniture restorer, in DIN green with drawings of old everyday objects.
- [Soul Sweeper](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/soul-sweeper.md): A fake teleshopping film and a working light brush, made to understand how pseudoscience sells itself in a crisis.
- [Political Atmosphere](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/political-atmosphere.md): Live flight data for an installation by Felix Lenz: the more planes in the sky, the more often the siren goes off.
- [Zoetrope](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/zoetrope.md): A motorized zoetrope with a synced strobe that brings small 3D scenes to life, built for the studio Maresch & Sturm.
- [Schienenwagen](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/schienenwagen.md): A Euro pallet on wheels for Vienna's tram tracks at night: a soapbox for the rail network once the last tram has gone.
- [Overcoming Disgust](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/overcoming-disgust.md): La Nourriture du Futur, an over-the-top show kitchen that cooks insects with liquid nitrogen to get past the disgust.
- [Retropia](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/retropia.md): A video of Retropia at the Volkskundemuseum Wien, an exhibition on the images that shape how we see the countryside.
- [Democrazy](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/democrazy.md): We tried to take one idea from a Viennese coffee house to local politicians. This brochure shows how that went.
- [Credit Criminals](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/credit-criminals.md): Austria, 2030. A speculative video essay about a social credit system that scores every citizen on sustainability.
- [Turbine Wings](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/turbine-wing.md): A Grasshopper script that turns freeform turbine wings into laser-cut plywood ribs you can assemble in two hours.
- [Ruhmeshalle-VR](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/ruhmeshalle-vr.md): Filming dform's VR installation that brings the Ruhmeshalle frescoes up close at the Military History Museum Vienna.
- [Subtext: Typedesign](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/subtext.md): A short film on Subtext, an exhibition of over 50 type designers with ties to Austria, scored with a sampled typewriter.
- [The best is yet to come](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/the-best-is-yet-to-come.md): A 15-minute animated film built from Viennese people's ideas about the future, collected in schools and parks.

## Optional
- [Full archive (HTML)](https://leomuehlfeld.at/en/projects): Browsable project archive
- [Full corpus (Markdown)](https://leomuehlfeld.at/api/llms-full): Every project concatenated for single-fetch ingestion
- [Projects (JSON)](https://leomuehlfeld.at/api/projects): Structured project database
- [German site](https://leomuehlfeld.at/): Austrian German (de-AT) version of all content