Again and again Vienna has been voted one of the most livable cities in the world. The city’s approach to urban development, which focuses mostly on urban regeneration, affordable housing and a well-developed public transport system, has successfully made the life quality of its inhabitants a priority. Vienna is growing, and in a healthy way. Yet it still has two speeds – sometimes blessedly slow and sometimes travelling in the fast lane.
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It has been almost exactly 30 years to the day that I got off the train at the Südbahnhof. A direct connection from an upland village in South Tyrol at the Italian-Austrian border. The first challenge was the escalators; I had never seen anything like it before. I had arrived in Vienna and I was here to stay, as it turned out.
“Vienna is growing and is getting a lot of things right.”
The Südbahhof doesn’t exist anymore, having made space for the central station. This boasts yet more escalators and is more shopping centre than train station, in line with the global trend of commercialisation. The plot of the former station has become one of Vienna’s most important urban development sites, and so has the area of the former Nordbahnhof. The development of the Nordwestbahnhof is next in line and ideas and visions for the Westbahnhof are in discussion. Vienna is growing and is getting a lot of things right. It is growing comprehensively, not just on the outskirts but also in the centre. Through redensification in the city centre, conservation and restoration, and the use of reserves freed up by the restructuring of the traffic system. The development of the Nordbahnhof following the model and masterplan of StudioVlayStreeruwitz „Free centre – versatile edge“ seems to me especially ambitious and promising: The strong densification of outskirts bordering the growing city, for the benefit of the wild and sprawling free spaces in the centre of an area, mostly unused since World War II. And further out you can find the creation of the satellite city Seestadt Aspern, where once more the city of Vienna is doing everything right. First the underground was extended, then facilities for business and education were built. Only then were large numbers of flats added simultaneously. Of course large development projects such as these take time. Like the trees that were newly planted there life needs to grow, but the soil is well prepared.
“It has a voice in privately financed projects through urban development contracts – a giving and taking.”
Vienna is a great place to live, in every phase of life. That is because in contrast to other well-situated megapolises, Vienna is affordable. The city government has a say, even playing a central role. It hands out parts of its extensive estate for subsidised social housing to the bidder with the best development concept, as opposed to aiming to maximise profits. So even with rising rents and property prices, there is no dramatic shortage of housing. It also has a voice in privately financed projects through urban development contracts – a giving and taking. As is the case everywhere, students and young creative people are moving to areas with cheaper rents, resulting in urban improvement and gentrification so that other residents have to look elsewhere. But no entire district of Vienna has been replaced as a result, instead they are more strongly mixed. It is easy to travel around Vienna without a car, paid parking is the rule in most areas of the city. In return, the city provides an excellent public transportation network with an annual travelcard costing 365 euros. Cycling is on the rise, thanks to an expansion of the cyclepath network and initiatives such as bike lanes allowing two-directional travel on one-way streets.
Vienna is beautiful. Worth living in and worth loving. Once it starts getting warmer, usually by the end of April, you can find me at the Alte Donau, at the freely accessible wooden boardwalks opposite the Gänsehäufel, Austria’s most visited open air swimming pool. And as soon as the standing water of the Alte Donau gets too warm, I can be in Bad Fischau within 45 minutes; a small historical spa town from imperial times with cold flowing spring water.
“Never static, but never hasty.”
My love for the city centre is more recent. It took a while until the mass of tourists no longer ruined my pleasure in the impressive urban beauty of the Old Town. I used to avoid the city centre and preferred to spend my evenings in the Flex, the WUK or the Arena, the Chelsea, B72 or the Rhiz; with new and wild music, deafening and exciting like life in this otherwise cosy city. In the 90s bars formerly hidden and dispersed relocated to the railway arches near the outer ring road “Gürtel”, with the logic that it is loud and dirty there anyway. One constant are the art house cinemas. The Filmcasino, the Votivkino, the Stadtkino, now in the Künstlerhaus, the Gartenbaukino. Vienna always feels to be slowly in motion. You don’t notice the continuous change during everyday life. Only if you look back you discover how much has changed in the 30 years since my arrival. And this is precisely one of the strengths of this city: never static, but never hasty. Just like life here. In constant adjustment and still always in the right place.
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Friedrich Passler was born and raised in the Puster Valley, South Tyrol. He studied architecture at the TU Vienna as well as at McGill University, Montreal, CA. In 1999 he founded AllesWirdGut together with his fellow students Andreas Marth, Christian Waldner and Herwig Spiegl. AllesWirdGut is an internationally operating architecture and urban planning office based in Vienna and Munich.
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This Metropolis Explained can be find in topos 109.
A conference on landscape architecture and public space will take place in Vienna from 7 to 9 June under the title PARK POLITICS.
x-LArch 2018 is the 5th edition of an international conference series organized by the Institute of Landscape Architecture at BOKU Vienna under the direction of Lilli Lička.
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Numerous experts from landscape architecture, design, urbanism, geography, political science and sociology will for the first time examine the social interrelationships that are decisive for the design, use and management of parks as public space.
The 3-day conference is a cooperation with Az W and brings together interdisciplinary speakers from theory and practice such as Ruedi Baur, Naama Meishar, Isolde Rajek, Emily Eliza Scott and Alan Tate. A dense program includes 35 lectures, discussions, garden parties and excursions.
X-LArch focuses on free spaces
Social models are reflected in the park, whether behavioural norms or opinions about the correct treatment of nature. As a discipline that shapes the environment, landscape architecture is subject to similar framework conditions as other creative production processes. The conference examines the question of which rules are reflected in the design, who formulates them and on which ideal foundations they stand.
Find the Conference-Website & Tickets here.
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The Stephansplatz in Vienna is frequented by up to 80,000 people every day. Now the 40 year old pavement was redesigned and restructured by local architects Clemens Kirsch Architektur.
Their concept merges seamlessly with the design of the pedestrian precinct in the Vienna city centre that was already set up in 2009. The repaved area consists of the entire square including the adjacent junctions of Rotenturmstraße, Brandstätte, Schulergasse and the area spanning Churhausgasse and from Stephansplatz to Singerstraße.
The deficit in freely available seating is solved by new benches, and the lighting was renewed and improved as well. The non-directional space of the square received a new structure using the Roman paving technique pattern with differently colored, flagged granite slabs and ornamental stones in abstract cruciform arrangement. The paving comprises roughly 36.400 tiles, and the material used originates in the Austrian Waldviertel area.
The new Stephansplatz in Vienna
“Outdoor public space is the stage for people’s activities, its subtle yet robust design forming the backdrop for all conceivable usages”, the team of Clemens Kirsch explains. “The new design offers better comfort of walking, better lighting and four times the previously available seating.”
As a result of these measures, the newly designed pedestrian precinct will be a unique, attractive urban space for both residents and tourists in the heart of Vienna. Toni Faber, pastor of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, agrees: “Our Cathedral reaches up to the sky. Now the square as well offers a space for constructive, uplifting encounters between people seeking answers to questions on the meaning of life.”
“Building land tends to appear of its own accord, even when one is not looking to designate it. Open spaces on the other hand, have the tendency to disappear if one fails to take active care of them!” Fritz Schumacher, 1932.
With this, still up to date quotation, the Vienna University of Technology invites on 28 and 29 September 2017 to an international conference under the title „Urban Densification – The Challenge for Open Space“. The event is concerned with the sustained growth of European metropolitan areas and the resulting shortage of public free space. Well-known planners are invited and present various strategies for sustainable urban spatial planning.
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Urban Space Shortage
European city planners are confronted with a paradox: as the rural population continues to move into the cities, the desire for larger and higher-quality residential and leisure areas increases. Since the available space – especially in dense areas – is only available to a limited extent, this results in a space shortage. Dealing with this topic, the Department of Landscape Planning and Gardening at the Vienna University of Technology launched the conference. The following question is the focus:
How will it be possible to do justice to the increasing importance of urban green and open spaces despite the need for denser development in towns and cities? Can we resolve this apparent contradiction?
Lectures and Excursions
Strategies for dealing with the dwindling space reserves will be presented on the first day of the conference. Well-known experts from planning offices and city planning offices describe their approach in eight lectures. On the second day, the participants go outside: on two trips to the Stuwerviertel in Vienna and the Seestadt Aspern, various strategies of spacial planning are presented. Participants must pay a fee of 120 € (100 € early bird, until 31.05.17), whereby students can participate for free.
Registration is available here and is possible until 8th September 2017.
In Vienna, architect Nerma Linsberger developed the social housing project “Sakura” and got awarded by the American Architecture Prize (AAP) 2016. The facade of the unique residential building reminds of the famous Japanese cherry blossom, after which the project is named. Major goals were the reduction of costs and a social suitability. The apartments are designed in a compact way and are economically optimized.
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Innovative Architecture
On one side a V-shaped courtyard is cut into the building, creating a bright atrium, where the sun can enter the structure. Because of the particular body shape of the building, a large variety of apartment ground plans can be offered. For further adjustments for the renters, the compact apartments can be merged together. Also, rooms can be connected to create larger spaces. Every unit comes with its own loggia with a balcony. To lower the cost of the complex, the number of elevators and staircases was minimized and the sanitation core copes with a short pipe system. The building has an energy efficient design and uses low-maintenance and durable materials, like the wood-aluminium windows with triple isolation, which also protects the residents from the noises of the adjacent busy intersection.
Focus on the Community
Because of the compactness of flats, Sakura offers a wide variety of shareable community spaces, which can be used as communal kitchens or in- and outdoor areas for children to play. The meeting and communication spaces have a varying degree of privacy and allow the residents to interact in different ways. Through the community, the identification of the inhabitants with their social housing complex should be strengthened and prejudice reduced. The social housing project is secured by a 100-year construction law agreement, which ensures low rents for the residents.
Walking around the new Vienna University of Economics and Business campus is not only like moving through a spatial composition but is also like visiting an architectural exhibition. What’s more, although no longer in evidence, the campus is on the site of the 1873 world exhibition. Now another kind of world architecture exhibition has shaped the space of the new “agora” for around 23,000 business students, a project developed by the Austrian federal real estate company.
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Following the winning competition entry by BUSarchitektur for a masterplan in 2008, several buildings were defined by way of separate architectural competitions. The Teaching Center, the masterplan and the design of open spaces remained in the hands of BUSarchitektur, however. This gave the designers tight control over the spatial sequence of the “walk along park”, as they had named the open space. By carefully positioning the entrance points, almost all activities could be concentrated along a central axis. The spatial concept of the campus looks inwards, which is further stressed by a border of gingko trees. Both end points connect directly to underground stations. As a result of this layout, the link to Vienna’s largest park – the Prater – is purely visual. However, the view from the projecting building element of Zaha Hadid’s Learning Center is impressive.
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BUSarchitektur and BOA büro für offensive aleatorik designed the open space in cooperation with landscape architects Hannes Batik and Stefan Schmidt as well as Philipp Schönfeld, who was responsible for the perennial planting design. The space is perceived as having a cinematic structure offering a linear sequence of images of the hugely diverse buildings. Along its length lie several functional islands within waved stripes of stone paving and perennials. These islands, named Lounge, Relax, Expo, Stage, Patio and Forum, accompany the expressive architecture designed by NO.MAD, CRABstudi, Estudio Carme Pinós, Zaha Hadid, BUSarchitektur and Atelier Hitoshi Abe.
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The space is more a linear promenade than a park. The challenging task of designing open spaces next to architecturally expressive buildings has been handled well by choosing a limited palette of materials and using them in a formal layout. The central axis is clearly defined and the appearance of all paths leading to the back of the buildings is softened by using a resin bound surface. The islands differ in material in an attempt to make them stand out against the buildings around them. Some of the formal furniture along the path seems overdone, however, but this does not apply for the islands: Folded wooden elements that can be used in many different ways are assembled on the Forum.
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The Patio, with its stairs and ramps, is accompanied by pleached plane trees and resembles a small grove in front of the corten steel facade of the dominating Teaching Center. The Stage vis-a-vis the Learning Center serves as a small counterpart at the widest part of the square. At the Expo the wooden elements reappear in a different form, to provide outdoor learning areas. The Relax space in front of the department building is an elevated terrace above a water basin, which is paved in natural stone. Finally, or immediately as one enters the campus from the west, the Lounge offers an undulating green sports surface (EPDM) which accommodates many different uses.
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At this point the site seems to interact with the surrounding city and its people, as kids and youngsters skate and bike across the hilly area. And thus the new campus has become an island of urban activity right next to Vienna’s largest green oasis.
Images: BOAnet.at
