The project envisions the New Danube as a public water street.
„If one wants to pass through open doors easily, one must bear in mind that they have a solid frame: this principle, according to which the old professor had always lived, is simply a requirement of the sense of reality. But if there is such a thing as a sense of reality—and no one will doubt that it has its raison d’être—then there must also be something that one can call a sense of possibility.“
The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil
For the last one year we have been shown how the real can be substituted by the possible, even magical - think of massive state interventions, rapid vaccine production, social solidarity. We have also experienced what does it mean to have (or miss) a balcony, a park or a river nearby. In this sense, we believe that the magical is not only possible, but necessary.
We propose three projects for the city of Vienna - Main Alley, Public Fora, New Danube Stations. Each project consists of one precisely situated intervention, which brings the existing fragments into a bigger whole. Thus our proposal does not envision a new public infrastructure per se, but a new thinking of the already existing one.
New Danube Stations
At the moment the New Danube is being mostly visited in the area of the U6, U1, U2 lines - a coastline that barely amounts to one third of the whole. By imagining the New Danube as a water street we propose to extend the city’s citybike network into the water - via cityboats. The already existing public infrastructure (waterbays, platforms, metro lines) would be enriched by cityboat stations. From here on, one is able to rent a boat for free and travel along the 18km water street or just escape the burning sun to the other coast.
