Its category-spanning, interdisciplinary approach and combination of artistic ambition and the creative economy open up new perspectives on central topics of our time and thus promote positive change in our society.

The VIENNA BIENNALE 2017: Robots. Work. Our Future focuses on the potential of art, design, and architecture to contribute to an environmentally and socially sustainable concept of the digital age that is also committed to a new humanism.

At various exhibition venues across the entire city, the VIENNA BIENNALE 2017 brings together some 300 designers, architects, artists, and other participants who draw a complex picture of our future digital world with their speculative and utopian (or dystopian) as well as auspicious practical scenarios.

The VIENNA BIENNALE is an initiative of the  MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. It is organized by the MAK, the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Kunsthalle Wien, the Architekturzentrum Wien, and the Vienna Business Agency, with support from the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology as an non-university research partner.

The VIENNA BIENNALE was established with the understanding that we are living in a new modernity in which the digital revolution penetrates all areas of our life and is thus fundamentally changing our civilization—it is comparable to the industrial revolution, the consequences of which the last era of Western modernism dealt with. Today’s Digital Modernity offers considerable potentials for lasting improvements in quality of life as well as innovative living concepts and business models in every sector. It presents a wide range of questions for the arts, including architecture and design, and is dependent on artistic and creative inputs.

This new biennale in Vienna was established with the recognition that Vienna was one of the centers of the previous era of Western Modernity around 1900, from which significant impulses emerged whose effects in some cases continue to be felt to this day. Thus, Vienna can be seen as an authentic, credible location for the search for new paths to positive change. By following in this extraordinary tradition of experimentation, the VIENNA BIENNALE aims to find answers to today’s most important issues and utilize the potentials of the creative revolution in order to offer people new insights for crucial areas of life.

The VIENNA BIENNALE is thus not only aimed at people interested in art, design, and architecture, but a wider audience, with the goal of raising awareness about the possibilities of fine art and the applied arts for the challenges of our time.

The Vienna Biennale Circle of eminent personalities living in Vienna, will provide an important connection to the city of Vienna and ensure that all the projects will be discussed and brought together with an interdisciplinary approach. The resulting insights will be presented in an additional exhibition.

The VIENNA BIENNALE was born of the conviction that Vienna is the right place to develop a new, coherent, and unique biennale. The focus will be on people, who need one thing above all in times of radical change: orientation!