Hilbert`s Hotel // daily pleasure infrastructures
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A hotel with an infinite number of rooms is occupied.
An additional guest arrives in the evening. The hotel management makes room. They ask the guest in room 1 to move to room 2, guest 2 moves to room 3, guest 3 to room 4 and so on (n+1). Everyone moves up a room - room 1 becomes free.
The next evening, an endlessly long bus arrives with an endless number of guests. The hotel management makes room again. They ask all guests to move to the room with the double room number (2n). The guest in room 1 moves to room number 2, the guest in room 2 moves to room number 4, guest 3 moves to room number 6, guest 4 to 8, 5 to 10, 6 to 12, 7 to 14, 8 to 16, 9 to 18, 10 to 20, 11 to 22, 12 to 24, 13 to 26 and so on. This frees up all rooms with odd numbers.
Everyone can check in. There are never any free rooms in the infinite hotel and yet there is always space.
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So far so useless - for architecture. The image of the infinite hotel is an illustration, a thought experiment. Hilbert's hotel is just math. If it didn't touch on the idea that it could work out FOR EVERYONE. Without moving closer together, but through alternative distribution, by moving further away, through mobility and adaptability of people and perhaps also houses.
We are living in a fundamental conflict: ecological issues are being raised with vehemence due to the noticeable climatic changes and the CO2 reduction targets are shaking up our industry. The need for some things may be questionable, but certainly not for housing. Demand in urban areas is and remains high. Housing is fiercely contested, housing is the most political architecture, and nowhere is social morality more evident than in housing.
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Infrastructures are more or less stable "flow spaces into which we connect when necessary" and which serve to connect, distribute and transport people, goods and information.
from: Dietrich Erben. Infrastruktur, Architektur und politische Kommunikation. Eine Skizze. Arch+ 239, 2020
Hilberts Hotel is an infrastructure for sleeping, eating, swimming, reading, doing, for care and bodycare, for celebrating parties and relaxing. It is a guest house, an offer for temporary living. However, the length of guests' stay is indefinite or variable, or at least limited. You can't buy Hilbert's hotel, not even a little or a piece of it. The size, the scale, is also unknown. All we know is that it is for many.
Thinking of housing in temporary terms is free of cynicism if the supply situation is basically right. Thinking in terms of life phases and the changeability of things describes a more mobile society that no longer needs to be sedentary in order to experience security. And what does temporary even mean? A bunk to rest for 10 minutes, a bed for a night, a room for a year or a decade...
Hilbert's hotel is in Vienna, but could be in any other city. It is a prototype. It is strategically positioned in a well-developed location, on a railway line with a far-reaching view, for example, a waterway or other symbiotically fertile neighborhoods in Vienna. It nibbles on existing qualities, uses them. There is a good climate in and around Hilbert's hotel. The natural elements are very close, the seasons can be experienced. Appearance, structure and orientation are the result of its specific location. Hilbert's hotel could be energy self-sufficient or even more.
In any case, Hilbert's hotel is an urban type, hybrid in its program. In the dense urban fabric, Hilbert's hotel leaves room to breathe. Perhaps it even breathes itself. In terms of character: maximum openness - in contact with the world, minimized in terms of materials, intelligently structured, equipped with economic arguments, but without the need to save money. Hilbert's hotel has utopian intentions.
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Hilberts Hotel joins the series of daily pleasure infrastructures.(previous: Everything could be different, Staycation 1:1, Staycation #2).These are designs that ask for new programs and seek a more experimental ground.
* on all scales, * with humor and serious intentions, * affinity for utopia, * open-material and experimental, * intelligent use of resources
This semester, daily pleasure infrastructures focuses on living in the broadest sense.
Conceptual + structural idea, presentation of the project through sketch / plan (floorplan, sections, elevation), scale depending on the project
structural design and materialization, exemplary details 1:10
Spatial presentation of the project qualities, in- and exterior: sketches, perspectives, visualizations
Presentation model, scale depending on the project
Detailed delivery requirements in accordance with advisors
