SELMA AM PARK. 

Colective Housing in Viena, Austria.

65 Housing units in the collaborative masterplan: ‘Siemensäcker’ (Evolution of the Europan 12 awarded project).

Built surface: 5.100 m2 (netto)

Local partners: Soyka-Silber-Soyka Architekten

Client: ARE (Austrian Real Estate)

COMPLETED

Our proposal ‘Urban Software’ was awarded in the Europan 12 competition thanks to a strategy that prioritised the process over the final result, based on the generation of a flexible support able to react to the various scales and contexct conditions.

This award allowed us to take part in the design of the Siemensäcker urban planning for a new 8 hectare residential neighbourhood in the north of Vienna. This urban project was developed through a collaborative process with a dozen or so offices of experts in urbanism, architecture, landscape, mobility, energy, etc.

Once the Masterplan was passed in December 2016, the owner of the land (Austrian Real Estate) comissioned us with the design of 65 housing units, distributed in three blocks of diferent dimensions (sizes S,M,L). The project takes advantage of the different building scales and free spaces foressen in the planning to connect itself to the diverse urban fabrics that surround it and to adapt to the topography and ladscape. The scale of the buildings is attenuated thanks to the volumes that project outwards from the façade, which also stablish specific relationships with the surrounding elements, spaces and axes.

In paralell to the design of the architecture, we are still involved in the ‘Qualitätenkatalog’ —the group of experts that collectively define the qualities of the free space, the landscape, the common parking space and the management of the non residential uses of the neighbourhood—. In this manner, individual decisions are made based on collective work, and vice versa: it is thus a design process that unifies the disciplines of architecture and urbanism, establishing guidelines at building and neighbourhood scales simultaneously.

Likewise, the architectural proyect is also defined through 5 qualities:

1.Bike-in city: The urban project is articulated aroud several collective parkings, that reduce to zero the presence of cars in surface. Thanks to this, the bike gains a lot of protagonism, whose common parking space takes advantage of the steep topography, organizing the relationship between the three residential blocks, while simultaneously opening to the green space.

 

2.Commons: The collective character of the collaborative planning design itself is also reflected in the architectural design. Common spaces —such as the great bike parking, a big collective kitchen open to the whole neighbourhood, or a solarium terrace with an associated playground area— are included in the three blocks as relationship spaces for the community.

3.In the park: The project incorporates an characterisctic feature of the contemporary viennese house: each of the 65 housing units has an associated ‘exterior room’, consisting of either a 10sqm balcony, gallery, terrace or garden, thus improving the quality of the home, which opens to a natural, green, pedestrian-friendly environent. The flats are strongly bonded to the tree-lined promenade, whose vegetation invades the spaces between blocks.

4.Serving furniture: Each housing unit is organizaed around a nucleus of furniture, which integrates within every storage, installation and serving unit. Thanks to this, all living spaces are conected to the exterior, reserving for the ‘day area’ (kitchen-sitting room-dining room) the area wich will enjoy, due to its two orientations, the most daylight hours.

5.Local materiality: The materiality of the buildings, characterized by larch-wood shutters in the outside and wood pannelings in the inside, reflects the use of local materials and construction systems (bearing concrete walls, thermal insulation in the outer side, selection of local wood, etc.). As does the choice of indegonous plants and trees, a necessary condition to preserve the sustainable and ecologic qualities of the construction proces of the new Siemensäcker neighbourhood.

Authors:

. Arenas Basabe Palacios, arquitectos, Madrid.

. Soyka-Silber-Soyka Architekten, arquitectos, Viena.

Collaborators: (in Arenas Basabe Palacios)

. Marta Guedán, Rosa Pérez, Lucía Leva, Lidia Fernández, Andreas Benéitez, Javier Ortiz, Franca Sonntag, Enrica di Toppa y Alejandro Fuentes.

Landscape:

. Idealice Landschaftsplanung, paisajismo, Viena.

Client:

. ARE (Austrian Real Estate).

Photos:

. Kurt Hoerbst