Connecting the past with the future in Europe’s most colourful tunnel / Tom Koch

Connecting the past with the future
in Europe’s most colourful tunnel

Favoriten is the largest of Vienna’s 23 districts and would be Austria’s second largest city in terms of population. On its outskirts lies the historic district of Oberlaa with its popular thermal baths and the site of the 1974 Vienna International Garden Show (WIG 74), now a spacious park. The Kästenbaum Tunnel connects the historic district of Oberlaa with the Therme Wien thermal baths and the Oberlaa spa gardens. The almost 100-metre-long tunnel between rural and urban areas was long considered an unsightly and frightening place. On the occasion of a whole series of anniversaries (700 years of Oberlaa, 150 years of Favoriten and 50 years of the Vienna International Garden Show), WSE (Vienna’s City Development Company) commissioned me to redesign the tunnel.

On 18 April 2024, the time had come. Exactly 50 years to the day after the opening of the WIG 74, the exhibition and redesign of the tunnel were presented to the public. Twelve displays with around 100 images tell the story of the eventful history of this place between city and countryside, between yesterday and tomorrow. The design of the tunnel takes up motifs from the “exhibition in passing” in an abstract form and transforms the former “place of fear” into the “most colourful tunnel in Europe”.

In the light of a city development project planned by WSE in the immediate vicinity of the tunnel, the surprisingly rich history of this site on the outskirts can now be experienced as you pass by.