As part of the redesign of the entire Praterstern area, an artistic design for the pedestrian and bicycle underpass was sought in an invited artistic competition in cooperation with MA 29 - Brückenbau und Grundbau. The underpass is to become the new main route into the Prater, especially for pedestrians, in order to disentangle the flow of visitors to the square and to distribute people more evenly. It plays an important role as a connecting element of the Praterstern as a traffic junction with the Prater and its various leisure facilities. The new design should enhance its value and give the site a specific identity.

On October 28, 2021, the six-member jury decided in favor of the design by the artist duo Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout.

Winning design: Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout - o.T. - New stars for the Prater

"With their design o.T. - New Stars for the Prater the artist duo succeeds in transferring urban space into an underpass. Through the spatial activation of the area, the design by Irena Eden and Stijn Lernout appears almost architectural and manages to give the underpass a new inner skin and to connote the space in a new way. The space in between Praterstern and the green Prater is appealingly articulated by the bright and friendly color scheme.

The color design refers to the sight of stars from different distances and enables passers-by to see a starry sky inside the tunnel. The design refers to the new developments on site, at the same time there are also historical references in the generation of the star shapes. These are all directly connected to the star on site, the Praterstern, which was the source of ideas and name for that form."

-- Jury Statement

Seven axes come together at Praterstern, the largest traffic circle in Vienna. The streets, now heavily trafficked, were laid out as avenues in the late 18th century, giving this square a gesture of grandeur from its inception, which at the time was still associated with the idea of monarchical imperialism. The historically quite intentional orientation of the site towards monumentality is palpable through extensive visual axes, important traffic connections, traffic flows and thousands of passers-by per day.
The Praterstern is a noisy, restless and very urban place. With the redesign of the entire area, an expansion of use is now to be created. In addition to the square as a "traffic junction", it is also to become a meeting zone and "lounge oasis". For this purpose, the area will be figuratively "framed" and the view or the orientation will be increasingly directed towards the "interior". This will be achieved in particular by the green area that will enclose the entire square.
In the course of the redesign and redefinition, Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout want to literally create something shining and new for the underpass, while remaining connected to the name and the historical urban planning idea: Three new stars are born with the design, which in their derivation and shaping refer to both the past and the future. In simplified terms, stars come into being by appropriating, absorbing and condensing surrounding "material" in the cosmos. This process is transferred to the design. Information from the surrounding space, such as urban axes, coordinates, and locations of existing and newly planted trees, is brought together and condensed into drawings. One drawing will refer to the axes and street coordinates, another to the locations of the trees.

Other competition entries:

Nikolaus Gansterer - under__line
The underpass is a highly dynamic transition zone, but it is also the eye of a needle and a focal point. The contrast could not be greater between the respective starting and ending points of the passenger and bicycle tunnels. The structure is not a vertical building, but a transversal through the subsoil of the urban topography.
Three aspects are constitutive for the site and form the basis of the design under__line, both to respond to the site-specific situation and to reshape its identity: The incision in the landscape and its topography, the bi-directional passage situation (transit space) and the meeting and appropriation zone of diverse users. These site-specific aspects resonate with the artistic practice of Gansterer, who for years has been intensively engaged with the line, drawing, and also fundamental questions of the recordability and visualization of "almost invisible or subtle" processes.
The two-phase design consists of a public participatory workshop, in which lines are applied by interested parties, as well as Gansterer's artistic intervention, who reacts to the first phase of line application on site with mental terms, associations, designations, suggestions for interpretation, but also abstract or humorous concepts. Similar motifs and designations are to be applied to the north and south walls, each at the same height, in order to emphasize the aspect of the spatial cross-section through the underground. The goal is to thereby create an enhanced three-dimensional spatial experience rather than remain on the flat plane of an image. The constriction of the passage is expanded into the imaginative.

Sabine Jelinek - Kaiserºinnenpanorama
The Prater, as a place of leisure, is by and large about the jumble of all bodily senses and the forgetting of everyday life. For example, one of the earlier attractions in Wurstelprater was also the "Kaiserpanorama". People sitting in a circle could watch stereoscopic picture series through a peephole.
The round, which is also found numerous times in the surroundings, is a basic element of the design, another is the work with photographic images as well as the deception or the play of the senses. In the early days of photography, the photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge captured sequences of movements (chronophotography) in individual segments on a round disc - the so-called "sulky wheel". If one lets the photographed single pictures play one after the other, the movement results again.
Two such "chronophotographic" images are shown in the Kaiser°innenpanorama. They are abstracted into roughly enlarged crystalline forms in imitation of the crystals of the film of black-and-white photography. Two sequences of movements are depicted in opposite directions in colored segments and unwound on the two long walls in the respective other direction. Also in segments and combined with the round is the ceiling and the two endings of the walls of the tunnels - this as a reference to the Kaiserpanorama and sulky wheel. The division into segments is intended to give the long room a calming effect and to slow down the passage. The colors are based on the graffiti previously present there, but changed to very light shades to create a friendlier atmosphere.
In passing or driving by, the individual movements of the figures can be put together and reconstructed without necessarily having to stop. Our senses receive the image sequences and then instinctively reassemble them into a flowing sequence of movements.

Pfelder - DURCHLAUFERHITZER & TEILCHENBESCHLEUNIGER
Familiar signs and codes from our everyday life lead from the functional traffic hotspot to a visual and contextual confrontation with this "non-place". If one drives or walks into the underpass, the red warning arrows literally pull one into the sloping path from both sides. The design is derived from the traffic sign for Dangerous or Sharp Curve, and in addition to its strict graphic surface design, it also has the same familiar warning. The arrow-like red prongs extend from the ground to the top of the wall and become steeper as they progress into the underpass, creating a visual acceleration downhill. Uphill, on the other hand, you run or ride against the direction of the arrows and are literally slowed down again.
Once you reach the tunnel area, the design of the wall abruptly changes to an oversized bar code on both walls. Thus, a very special space of its own is formed in this covered area, which is characterized by the rhythm of the black bars of different thicknesses. The barcode is in fact a functional barcode, which is also applied in a small way and links to a website with information about the Praterstern.
Above the tunnel entrances in the direction of the Prater is the word DURCHLAUFERHITZER, and in the direction of the city and train station is the word TEILCHENBESCHLEUNIGER. The covered space defined by the barcodes thus gets a definition depending on the direction of movement, which humorously describes this place of passage and highlights it from the "normal" (non)perception of a banal street underpass.

Markus Tripolt & EDUCULT - paintback! praterstern
paintback! praterstern creates a processual artistic dialogue with people seeking meaning and work, as well as with anonymous street artists, in order to achieve acceptance, sustainability, and identification of the new artistic concept.
The passage will be painted on both sides with a friendly cream-white color. In the process, the areas which will be excluded from the cream-white coloring will be defined by magnifying glasses or "bubbles". These provide a view of sections of the existing graffiti and paintings. Thus, fundamental respect is shown to the commitment of anonymous street artists in public space, their works are not simply painted over and destroyed, but rather reinterpreted. At the same time, a surprising and unified body of work emerges from the erratic and disjointed tags, writings, images, and paintings.
The ten former poster panels in the underpass become individual canvases for self-portraits, which are prepared in three-day workshops with ten clients of Job-TransFair and then transferred to the facade by the artist.
In total, the work will be renewed twice after the initial design (2024/2026) by reintegrating newly created graffiti on the light surfaces as "bubbles" into the existing composition. In each case, new self-portraits with other workshop participants will also be created and transferred.