Festival Headquarters North & South

Bipartite district, bipartite Festival Headquarters. The 15th district is unique for being divided into two halves. In the north: the more densely populated part, first urbanized in 1850. In the south: the historic part that goes back to the Middle Ages. In between: tracks. In 2017, the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK responded to this by setting up two Festival Headquarters at once. While the Blaues Haus near Westbahnhof was used quite recently as an emergency refugee quarter and will soon be transformed by IKEA into a sensational architectural entrance gate to the district, the building on Sparkassaplatz was remodeled by Johann Georg Gsteu in the 1970s to act as a branch of the Zentralsparkasse. It invited visitors to come on board into a jewel of urban architecture with keel-shaped ground plan. True to the dictum: Design connects. Also the 15th district.