After successful completion of the course, students are able to...
To recognise the potential and complexity of the built environment, to derive trend-setting planning questions from this and to answer these questions through the specific formulation of a conceptual urban planning and architectural design. Urban and spatial production is to be experienced as a holistic, transdisciplinary examination on the basis of a design-oriented task. Architecture and urban development should be understood as a cultural practice with social relevance and as a design challenge including its social, economic, ecological and process-related implications. The teaching of adequate methods of analysis, design and representation and the introduction to relevant discourses are an essential part of the course.
The aims of the course are to learn how closely infrastructure planning and urban planning are linked and to what extent they shape the urban body, as well as to recognise the loose co-existence and partial confusion of the periphery and its infrastructure buildings, some of which are spectacular, and their relevance for the production of space. Methods are developed to bring them into a productive co-existence. Infrastructure buildings are often surrounded by residual spaces. The task is to discuss how these can be made productive and usable.
The course will offer cross-over workshops with the two courses of the summer semester: Co-existence: Zentralfriedhof, between graves, allotments and large structures and Co-existence: Rautenweg, between urban edge, land fills and ponds, in order to offer students the opportunity to comparatively analyse similar phenomena in different peripheral situations.
https://tube1.it.tuwien.ac.at/videos/watch/7da35d0d-08d0-4d91-b3c5-9ed5b9c74f0a
Infrastructures are expansive and often spectacular. Mostly developed exclusively from a technical perspective, they often lack a design embedding in the built context. They are essential for the functioning of the city and shape its form both above and below ground. Infrastructural supply facilities are often placed on the edge, the periphery of the city. River spaces, track spaces, roads, but also supply infrastructures such as sewage treatment plants and public utilities, recycling stations, rubbish dumps and cemeteries are necessary for the functioning of the city as organs, veins and arteries are for living beings.
The progressive expansion of cities as a result of urbanisation processes has meanwhile incorporated many of these infrastructures into their urban bodies. First-generation railway stations are one of the best examples here, originally planned on the outskirts of the city but now inner-city hubs in the city's most urban locations.
The Limmattal, located between Zurich and Baden, has also undergone this development. The villages along the river Limmat, which used to be predominantly rural, have been transformed into a cohesive urban landscape with a strongly industrial character. Today, this heavily populated region is one of the most dynamic conurbations in Switzerland.
Hidden gems' in the Limmattal
River, hills, forests - despite being embedded in generous landscape spaces, it is surprising to what extent the Limmat and the other natural spaces in the urbanised fabric of the Limmat Valley are still considered the backside in many places. In addition, the infrastructural facilities (grey, blue and silver infrastructures) hardly form synergies with each other, as well as with landscape and urban space. Instead, they fragment the valley and create a wide variety of partial and residual spaces whose understanding as a resource has only recently gained relevance.
A re-vitalisation and re-integration of the infrastructures that cut through the valley several times offers enormous development potential to transform them into attractive adaptive spaces that allow an interlocking and overlapping with the adjacent settlement and open spaces. Above all, however, the accessibility and reactivation of the remaining spaces, as well as the local recreation area of the Limmat, make a significant contribution to this.
(Cultural) landscape as a key role
Global trends such as climate change, digitalisation, new forms of mobility and the highly topical COVID-19 are constantly changing our living space and our demands on it. At the same time, a comprehensive process of urbanisation and urban sprawl has taken place in recent decades. The (cultural) landscape and its infrastructures have a key role to play in this field of tension of coping with existing and future challenges of spatial development.
How do we live, work and relax in this cultural or urban landscape, in a society where these areas now (again) flow seamlessly into each other? The 'Productive City', in which all essential areas of life can be reached in 15 minutes, could offer an answer here. The 'Limmat City' could become an excellent model for this. Living and working, industries of various forms up to agribusiness are present, as well as the local recreational areas right on the doorstep. Thinking about all this in an integrated way with the ongoing urbanisation would make sense for both the settlement space and the natural space, with the aim of creating a heterogeneous, integrated resilient system in which infrastructures are spatially, functionally and aesthetically integrated to the maximum.
Application:
Portfolio via Email to dorothee.huber@tuwien.ac.at in-between 15.04. - 30.04.2021
Due to Corona pandemic restrictions, delivery of course will occur via TUWEL course, however, adaptation to hybrid teaching format will be sought if opportunity arises due to relaxations between now and course start date in summer.
Kick-Off Date:
26.5.2021, 2-5pm via Zoom: https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/99406333299
Preparation Date:
14.6.2021, 2-6pm via Zoom: https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/99406333299
Summerschool with 1 week field trip to Zurich:
5.7.-30.7.2021, 9am-6pm daily
Intermediate Correction Date:
2.8.2021. 2-6pm
Final presentation:
9.8.2021, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
Final Hand in until latest:
23.8.2021
