KAPFENBERG
first prize: "ex-citizens"
team leader: Enrique ARENAS LAORGA (ES), Luis BASABE MONTALVO (ES)
collaborators: Luis PALACIOS (ES), Alejandra CLIMENT (ES)
The project reorganizes the elements of the detached private home in order to create a new relationship between intimate and collective spaces. By detaching the garden from the house the public landscape becomes a connective surface between the housing units and the patchwork of gardens. It is clear that this separation between home and garden is unusual. Nevertheless existing examples – e.g. in the northern part of Slovenia – show that this model could work quite well. Especially the potential of clustering within the overall patchwork could be developed further on in order to provide a grouping of several housing units. It is also clear that the question of borderlines, “defense-space” and social control have to be treated in depth in order to avoid an aggressive coding behind a nice look. One example for this negative coding can be given by the “lawn”: without any fences the suburban lawn defines heavy borders by social coding: a clean green carpet represents open but forbidden land. This invisible fencing would have to be faced in case of the project’s implementation. Only a careful development on all levels (clients, image, architecture, construction, infrastructure, and mediation) would enable Kapfenberg to approach its ambitious goal (“Fences are all around anyways – we need another world”), at least in certain parts of the large study site. The specificity of the project suggests a certain way of life that will only concern a few people in Kapfenberg. Nevertheless, the model could find “pilot-dwellers” that demonstrate its contemporariness. On the level of land consumption the project comments on the topic of colonization of space creating a contradictory disposition which is especially challenging: Can the occupation of the landscape privatize and create a new form of public/collective landscape at the same time? Concerning the costs for social housing agencies alternative development models could be conceived. In any case, the developers would have to implement a high quality in construction, landscaping and architecture.
(Excerpt jury report)