Lecture “garten>HOF Housing Development in Southwest Viena”

Conference “Public space and the challenges of urban transformation in Europe: politics and culture”, SKUOR

Vienna, November 2010.

 

Here is an extract from the Project summary that we presented::

This presented work is inteded as a critical review on the central-european suburban developments, which show the dissolution of the contemporary city with highly privatetized, fragmented fabrics.

SITE: in the southeast of Vienna, surrounded by the trainline, a cementary and a small area of private residential gardens, the site is presented as an example of suburban structure.

STRATEGY: What is the role in a city that is disolved, and shown as a complex and changing reality? We understand the planning of suburban contexts as the generation of support for the different processes that constitute the city, not just the building.

OWNERSHIP: Initially the area is structured as a matrix of gardens, a framework that regulates the changing relationship between public and private. You can build around the gardens, not within them.

PARTIES: different parties colonize these ‘extrovert plots’: those between the public, private developers, cooperatives and individuals, etc The structure is open to different interests, talents, investments, scales, etc.

MARKET: Private ownership is the biggest structre of the suburb. Concious of this context, we use the market as a tool to generate a complex, pluralistic and heterogeneous development.

PROCESS: we propose controlled growth, not a pre-designed fabric: a liquid city that Works as a complete urban configuration in every stage and continues to adapt to the needs of its inhabitants.