An invitation to celebrate our city’s festivities together: To coincide with the anniversary of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, the Erste Bank Social Design Prize will be presented this year as part of a garage party.
 
This year marks the twelfth time the Erste Bank Social Design Prize will be awarded in the format Stadtarbeit. The prize enables the realization of social design interventions as part of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. At the awards ceremony, the three projects selected for this year will be presented once again and honored with prizes totaling € 6,000. Embedded within Leon Theodor’s project CAUTION, GATE OPENS AUTOMATICALLY!, in which he uses rollable party tables to cross the threshold into private parking garages, the award ceremony followed by a garage party vividly illustrates the spirit of the Stadtarbeit format: fostering greater community, active social responsibility, and civic engagement in the city. This spirit also permeates the two other Stadtarbeit projects at the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2026. Drawing on rituals such as the Chinese Moon Festival, harvest festivals in Europe, and festivals of light like the Indian Diwali, the project DARK TIMES – GATHER, GLOW, GO by Saliva Collective taps into the potential of darkness from a cosmopolitan perspective. In a glass passageway by artist Michaela Rotsch, the collective Your Club Is Not My Club creates A GLASS OF WAVES – a multisensory club designed to explore art, inclusion, and urban research in public space.
 
Sat 3.10., 6pm–10pm

Award ceremony and presentation of the three winning projects: 7.30pm–8pm
Garage Party: 6pm–10pm