A project for the good life at home.

Under the motto S T A Y C A T I O N - daily pleasure infrastructures, we are looking for new programs and possible infrastructures to reactivate places that were thought to be lost and (so far) inaccessible space reserves. Public space must remain public and accessible to ALL. In this sense, it must be occupied and its qualities demonstrated - the possible must be created. Architecture is our means of choice for this.

Staycation is an architectural-urbanistic idea and sees itself at least as an ecological concept. Beyond that it is generally politically - socially motivated: S T A Y C A T I O N puts the (still) valid time concept of our working society up for discussion - as long as vacation means only the restoration of working power, the project of the good life has not yet succeeded. We want a permanent, everyday quality: facilities and places for the general good with a public program for the post-consumer society - the focus is on pleasure, joy, casual being.

S T A Y C A T I O N settles on the Danube Canal, Vienna's waterway in a privileged location, where commercial use, shipping and supposedly dirty water dominate. We regard the canal as a valuable reserve of space; here we want to exemplify the inner-city potential for an everyday vacation at home.

The kanalWAL is a response to the demands formulated by S T A Y C A T I O N for the further development of public space. The kanalWAL sees itself as a constructive-artistic object whose strength lies in the non-ordinary nature of its appearance. For passers-by along the Danube Canal, it emphasizes a restful place, a place to linger and to escape imaginatively from everyday life. As a link between land and water, it invites pedestrians and swimmers alike to use the space freely. Free of commercial use, its use remains largely open and dependent on the participation and creativity of the users. Its - at first glance - programlessness is by no means non-functional. The kanalWAL makes an offer, but gives little - it sees itself as a possible strategy to generate and activate public space.