Off to the Third!

On the one hand, you have an ostentatious city palace, embassies, and sights of interest such as the Schloss Belvedere or the Hundertwasser House. On the other, there’s industry, commerce, and the onetime military complex of the arsenal, not to mention the research and media center near the former slaughterhouses. Which goes to show how varied the Landstrasse district is. The latter dates back to the first expansion of Vienna in 1850 and unlike all the other inner-city districts does not end at the ring-road. Moreover, the headquarters of the upcoming Vienna Design Week will be set in the middle of this diverse urban structure. From there it aims to spread out across the district and once again embrace the entire city with its program, true to the motto "A City Full of Design".

This year rather than appropriating for interim use a building that has served its original purpose, the festival headquarters of Vienna Design Week will move to a new build in Austrian Real Estate’s “Docks” complex. Designed by Artec Architekten, the building extends along the Landstrasse belt and will in future offer 9,000 square meters of space for loft offices and commerce but also exhibition spaces as well as local amenities and restaurants. It is part of the urban quarter Village in the Third District, the development of which will form the focus of the Vienna Design Week.

Carefully selected exhibitions will also be on show at the festival headquarters: For example, in collaboration with Ikea, installations have been created on the topic of sleep, inviting visitors to indulge in sensory experiences with cradle beds for adults or extensive reclining landscapes, while the Rado Moving Materials competition is an audio-visual event. The six nominated submissions by young talented designers from the field of motion design will present their proposals on the video wall of the Rado Boutique in Vienna – with the winner being announced on September 25.

The studio_dreiSt collective was awarded the contract to design the hospitality area. The trio’s concept incorporates bricks made from building rubble and surfaces from rice husks – and won over the Vienna Business Agency and Vienna Design Week with its proposal. The collective’s design ties in directly with the outcome of the pilot project Biofabrique at the Vienna Climate Biennale. The organic, regional materials are the basis for their version of a pop-up café as a place for shared enjoyment and interaction where people will enjoying lingering.

Away from the headquarters, new nooks and crannies can be explored, say in the "Wiener Klimahöfe" (Vienna Climate Courtyards) project. As part of the social-design format entitled "Stadtarbeit" or "city work" the project examines the potential interior courtyards offer for the microclimate of the Austrian capital with interventions in public spaces.

The Passionswege format is known for the remarkable collaboration it encourages between local artisans and young designers. The current Passionswege contribution with Flora Lechner and Lobmeyr presents the joint project "Tamed Imbalance" in the workshop in Salesianergasse.

To mark the 10th anniversary of its first collaboration, the highly traditional Vienna glass manufacturer has also invited the duo BXCSY into its archive. The resulting "Archive Lights" is a luminaire composed of pieces from Lobmeyr’s 200-year production history – and given a completely new interpretation.

As the campaign themes of Bueronardin studio explicitly communicate: This Vienna Design Week has set itself the task of forging a link between design and the realities of urban life. To this end, the program put together by the festival team led by Gabriel Roland, explores the role the work of designers plays for our living together in the city. Founded in 2007 and organized by an independent association the eighteenth edition of the interdisciplinary festival will include some 200 items that are open to the anticipated 40,000 or so visitors, most of whom will have free admission. The aim is also visualized in the campaign or in the words of Vienna Design Week’s Art Director, Christof Nardin: "With a lot of sunshine in its heart: Vienna Design Week is setting up camp in the 3rd District. The campaign is about mobility, open space, architecture, location and amenities, artificial intelligence, and the real world. Design as a kit, scheme and pattern." We can look forward to a city filled with design.


VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2024
September 20–29, 2024