After successful completion of the course, students are able to analyse an urban planning task in the context of affordable housing and create an integral solution concept. On the basis of an urban planning design and its fictitious embedding into the urban planning reality, complexity and challenges of planning processes become visible, and different interests within urban planning and from the city administration can be identified.
Similar to musical composition, the city can also be seen as a symbiosis of various instruments or actors in order to be liveable, affordable and sustainable. Who and what does it take to allow harmony as well as dissonance? Which areas of tension open up and how can different uses lead to mixing and urbanity. In the south of Vienna, it will be tested how affordable and urban living and urban space can be developed by involving various actors in the process. In Wien Süd Favoriten, experiments and design will be carried out, thus creating a contribution to the Viennese discussion on affordable housing.
An important focus in the design lies in the joint work of different actors. Therefore, the City of Vienna acts as a central cooperation partner in the course and enables networking with the partners. In the series of lectures accompanying the design (in collaboration with the lecture series "Zukunft Stadt"), numerous actors in urban planning will appear, talk about their daily routine and talk to each other and the students.
The course is offered both in the master's program in architecture and in spatial planning. Based on the practice, work will be carried out in interdisciplinary teams in order to incorporate the different perspectives into the design. Together they are looking for a focus that the teams devote to and put in the course of the semester. Topics such as the resilient city, inclusiveness and affordability, new models of financing, free space and leisure, living and working, allocation procedures, densification of single-family housing estates, work in existing buildings, and much more. are conceivable. The students are required to comprehensively question the city and its planning and development and to explore new approaches.
As a processing room serves the south of Vienna / Favoriten. Based on the selected topic, an adequate planning area is defined in the appropriate scale. Favoriten, as the most populated district in Vienna, has a great diversity in the building and open space structure and is one of the central areas of Vienna's future and current urban development. With the subway extension to Oberlaa new areas are networked with other areas of the city and made attractive for social living. Numerous reserve areas, but also potential for densification can be found.
Favoriten Süd: We are located on the heterogeneous outskirts of Vienna. The old Wilhelminian town, commercial areas and settlement islands, the old town center of Oberlaas and agrarian landscape go into rural Lower Austria. Topics such as the importance of city boundaries and building boundaries are facing the need for rest and tranquility. The city of short distances is being replaced by shopping centers and the share of car trips on the outskirts (in and out of the urban area) is still growing. Conversely, switching to public transport or cycling is not very attractive. Vienna, as a very green city that still has a large number of high-quality recreational areas, sets itself the condition of never cultivating more than 50% of the urban area (currently at 48%). Based on the goals that the city has set itself, (new) city must be meaningfully designed.
Exposing problems and questioning what is familiar, exploring familiar paths and presenting new ones, putting theory into practice and researching space, learning proven tools and trying new ones - we look forward to an exciting process with you!
As part of Wahlmodul 2/As Großes Entwerfen this design exercise will be accompanied by a lecture series (280.294 Entwurf und Gestaltung urbaner Transformationsprozesse: STADTKOMPOSITION). It offers the theoretical-contextual framework for the practical design exercise. Participation in the Design Exercise is only possible when following the lecture series.
In small groups, the planning steps, actors and interests are to be modelled and internalised in relation to a concrete urban space in the south of Vienna in order to critically question the design and, if necessary, adapt it and thus strengthen it.
The following points will be relevant during the semester:
- Inspection of the project area
- Supervision of the iterative design process within the framework of design workshops and weekly feedbackappointments
- Discussion of reference examples
- Model making and sketching
- Intermediate presentations with feedback
- Final presentation and discussion of the works
