CITY STRATEGY
Vienna’s south is characterized by the suburban logics of a diffused field providing possibilities for large scale industrial developments as well as for inexpensive housing with a considerable amount of green space. Especially for this suburban archipelago the city has developed a strategy that should allow the coexistence of trade uses and housing in order to support a mixed use development. Especially the regeneration of large abandoned industrial plots marks the transition from extensive mono-structures to compact plot-developments of mixed or residential use. The projects also integrate collective values such as soft mobility, quality of street- and pedestrian spaces, the improvement of public transport and the increase of facilities for everyday needs. The now still poorly equipped area is therefore under an ongoing process of transformation.


SITE DEFINITION
Originally, the enclave was a pig-feeding factory in the 1930’s that was later converted to a quarantine-institute for infected animals. A concentration of urban facilities exists along Breitenfurter Strasse (linear distance about 500 meters) on the other (east) side of the barrier-like railway track separating large scale industrial areas (under conversion) from the small scaled surroundings of the site (cemetery and allotment gardens which function legally as single family homes). A trade-strip along the railway track introduces a different scale creating a puffer between project site and railway. Local infrastructure for soft mobility, as well as public transport facilities and amenities for daily life are still underdeveloped. Improvements can be expected in the course of the ongoing overall district development. Moreover, a possible new railway stop close to the site and the introduction of a tram line in Breitenfurter Strasse are options that would definitely boost the local development.
An assembly of green islands, partly public, partly private, such as Hetzendorf-Castle, Erlaa-Castle, Rosehill and Liesing-Creek can be found in the further surroundings.


NEW URBAN MOBILITY
In addition to public transport improvements various soft “low-speed-mobilities”
and their impact on the future urban development have to be considered: ->the strengthening of the local micro-net for pedestrians and bicycles; ->the creation of public poles attract and and intensify local mobility ->the impact of housing types for special living models (slow-living, travel-living, living-working).


NEW SOCIAL LIFE
How can housing ensure that the current range of different ways of living and requirements i.e. various types of households like old folks’ communities, family units, single persons, one parent households, people with special needs (temporarily or permanent) will be fully guaranteed? The specific social aptitudes inherent to different generations could lead to the establishment of neighbourhood models, thus offering social links whilst supporting urban lifestyles.


NEW ECOLOGY
1. “Socio-Urban Sustainability”: Highly challenging is the paradox between growth and standstill: after calm decades of non-transformation the insertion of a big project leads to the necessity of negotiating qualities with the neighbors thus introducing collective values that go beyond private estate development.
2. On the basis of an extended understanding of energy-balances the project has to consider a progressive understanding of energy-concepts going further than the mainstream-understanding of the popular passive-house-concept.