In 2016, KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien and WIENER LINIEN chose a discursive procedure for finding a design solution for the U1 subway station Troststraße in Vienna’s 10th district. The artistic design intends to make the station permanently more attractive for its users, create a present-day modern atmosphere, and lend the location an unmistakable identity with high recognition value. The jury of the discursive procedure selected Michael Kienzer’s project as winner.

Interpreting the extant elevator as part of a sculpture, the artist continues and extends its construction. The elevator construction is studied, analyzed, deconstructed, reassembled or rebuilt, dovetailed, shifted, and deformed. The sculpture into which the given construction is transformed by the new structure takes its orientation from the specific features and dimensions of the location in question. The glass car also presents itself as a vehicle unfolding the installation vertically from the ground to a height of eight meters. The “third” deconstructed elevator shaft is no “chaotic wood of poles” but permits different models of association through to figurative suggestions. Michael Kienzer’s work highlights the difference between an object and its aesthetic presentation. Converting a construction by shifting or continuing it questions its architecture, offers a commentary on it, and reflects the possibilities of art in public space by dealing with the space at the artist’s disposal. By analogy with the installation at the elevator shaft, the walls available for artistic intervention are dealt with in a similar way: the given grid of panels is taken up, changed, and deconstructed.