EISENSTADT

WINNER ER008 – HEAL THE VOID

Esther Escribano (ES), Miguel Ángel Rosique (ES), architects

The project demonstrates a comprehensive strategy of re-use dealing with (infra-)structure, scale and programme. Instead of adding building mass to the site it reactivates it as a new central amenity for Oberberg/Unterberg offering living, working, gardening and visiting. Above all, a strategy of activating the in-between creates a promising starting point fort he revitalization of the whole area. By splitting programmes, such as the hotel, into small dispersed units the project replaces the big building by a number of small destinations so that the streets and squares participate actively in the use-logics of large programs. In addition to this strategy of splitting the specific profile of the new European Museum of Horticulture provides another fertile ground for the local intensification and revitalization: the museum’s topic of garden history is used as a productive force that can activate and design the in-between spaces of the area by its very substance – vegetation. The superimposition of „exhibiting“, „filling“, and designing public spaces introduces an innovative notion of landscape which could endow the whole area with a new identity. At the same time the project demonstrates an economy of means by appropriating the museum’s mission in an intelligent way – the maintenance of the public space becomes part of the exhibition itself. The project thus extends and transforms the issue of densification and its well-known investor-calculations, integrating the process of „healing“as an intensification of local qualities and activities. Thus, the idea of growth is seen in a different light beyond the narrow profit-calculations which are driven by a mere concept of „adding“/high density. (Excerpt from jury report)

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