WIEN
first prize: "swobodas go neustadlau"
team leader: Benni EDER (AT)
associates: Thereas KRENN (AT), Katharina URBANEK (AT)
The project reevaluates public space through a reframing of the area. On the one hand the insularity of the periphery is put forward in order to identify a new locality. On the other hand this locality is informed by different users ranging from “European inter-city-travelers” to “hyper-local walkers”. Based on a distinguished user profile Neustadlau is re-inhabited differently, as well on a public as on a private level. The life-stories of the different dwellers meet a series of strategic small-urban-design-interventions taking advantage of local capital which is already there: the home depot market provides the furniture for living in the streets, the 3D-zebra-crossing of the Erzherzog-Karl-Straße provides a new link between Neustadlau and Stadlau offering protective niches for the elderly people. Here, on the urban scale of the study site, the project demonstrates impressive solutions on a strategic and tactic level for the improvement of the public areas.
On the project site the meandering block shows an ambiguity of qualities: on the one hand it represents itself as a porous frame that defines an accessible inside-landscape with different zones. On the other hand, the “10 houses for a Halleluja” form a block that represents itself in a quite massive way whereas the ambitious program of the block contradicts this massiveness offering public uses and crossings on the ground floor as well as a scenic walkway (round trip) on the roof. The drawing of the ground floor shows that the potential of the broken block as a tool to re-frame the local qualities is promising and can be further developed.
(Excpert jury report)