Vienna Design Week 10th anniversary party at Hotel InterContinental sparks controversy over planned skyscraper

The 10th anniversary of Vienna Design Week was celebrated with a party at the Hotel InterContinental, hosted by the hotel's owner. The event featured the symbolic totem of the festival—a vintage ministerial office chair, repainted white for the decade milestone—suspended above a pyramid of champagne bottles. However, the celebration was overshadowed by controversy: the hotel's owner plans to add a nearly 100-meter tower designed by Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, winner of an international competition. This proposal has drawn fierce criticism from Viennese architects and urbanists, who argue it would violate environmental regulations and threaten Vienna's UNESCO World Heritage status. At a meeting, Weinfeld faced unprecedented criticism. The party saw a notable absence of Vienna's architectural elite and many designers. Lilli Hollein, director of Vienna Design Week, presented a voluminous anthology of the festival's history and thanked the host. A graphic designer present remarked that the anniversary would have been better celebrated with beer cans, reflecting a different worldview.