Danube Island
Bike Excursion
Wednesday, September 3rd, 10am.
Join us for a cycling journey with Daniela Lehner and Michael Klein along one of Vienna’s most unusual urban landscapes: the Danube Island.
Stretching 22 kilometers through the city, this vast artificial strip of land was originally engineered as part of Vienna’s flood protection system between 1972 and 1988. Yet over the decades it has grown far beyond its technical origins. Today, the island is a living, shifting environment – a stage for countless temporary uses, interspecies encounters, and small-scale architectures.
Between public bbq zones and protected wetlands, the island is shared by human and non-human life. Communities of all kinds co-exist, largely without conflict, in a place that resists commercial exploitation and real-estate speculation – an increasingly rare condition along Europe’s urban waterfronts.
Our ride will be both a physical and a spatial exploration, tracing the island’s layered history, its flexible planning, and the subtle decisions that have kept it open to all.