Unit F  büro für mode ARCHIVE   ECONOMOY   PROJECT   SUPPORT   INFORMATION Unit F ~ARCHIVE will be Austria's first archive dealing exclusively with contemporary fashion design. A special feature will be the network enabling fashion to act as a cultural mediator and visual system of communication. Contemporary fashion designers work more and more often in cooperation with related fields like graphic design, web design, photography, industrial design, architecture, styling, electronic music, music video, etc. and in that way they act as catalysts for artistic cooperation. Unit F ~ARCHIVE will especially throw light upon this kind of crossover and will document and archivate the interdisciplinary projects between fashion and the before mentioned fields. As examples for such cooperations the artistic design of the Comme des Garçons-shop in New York's Meatpacking District, the video by Mark Borthwick for the presentation of Martin Margiela's collection or the common development of fabrics by designer Hussein Chalayan together with architect Zaha Hadid can be mentioned. Additionally Unit F ~ARCHIVE will offer information about the designers and their recent collections. All the investigated and collected material, which will mainly consist of photos, videos, text- and soundfiles, will be open to the public in the form of handfiles and simultaneously as a digital archive in the World Wide Web. As the archive is working mainly with original footage (photo, video, text, sound) and its digital transposition, it will be able to operate using minimal space. Simultaneously, because of its connection to the WWW, the archive will be able to be used quickly, uncomplicatedly and worldwide. Unit F ~ARCHIVE with the means of a choice of positions offers both a clearly structured survey of the contemporary fashion scene for the interested amateur and detailed information about projects, collections and cooperations. The management of the Unit F ~ARCHIVE as to the contents will be conducted by Ulrike Tschabitzer and Andreas Bergbaur. The actual realisation and concept will be handled by Carmen Buchacher and the digital processing by web designer Boris Kopeinig. schedule Unit F ~ARCHIVE will begin its work with regards to the contents in October 2000. At the same time the structure of the visual surface for its performance in the WWW will be developed. In the first half of 2001 the first and foundational part of Unit F ~ARCHIVE will go online with a selection of 20-30 national and international fashion designers.