After successful completion of the course, students are able to understand cities as forerunners of social change and as centres of political and economic changes of the last millennia. They are generally informed about the prevailing dynamics of the urban living space and in particular about the developments of the urban fringe areas, which are characterised by suburbanisation and structural change. The students should recognise that it is increasingly necessary to understand planning as a dynamic development process. They are also able to work on complex design tasks from the field of urban planning independently, systematically and with an original, contemporary design approach based on a precise design language. They have the competence to recognise fields of action in the urban context and to develop corresponding urban planning solutions. The students are able to conduct independent research and collect topic-related basics. They are able to create design concepts and to comprehensively present them in the form of strategy, design and detail plans.
The railway-oriented city: Laaer Ostbahn
How multimodal passenger and material cycles are shaping the territories of the transportation transition
Connector and/or barrier
Rails connect neighborhoods, move metropolitan areas closer together, link ports with landlocked states, and cities with their hinterlands. For the spaces in their immediate vicinity, however, rail infrastructures often represent barriers: impassable tracks and closed-off railway yards separate neighborhoods, cut up entire sections of the landscape, and cause long detours for people and animals.
Territories of the transportation turnaround
Rail is seen as the beacon of hope for the transportation revolution: as an affordable and environmentally friendly mode of mobility that can meet the mobility needs of the population and ensure the logistics requirements of manufacturing and commercial enterprises without releasing large quantities of greenhouse gases in the face of the worsening climate crisis. Despite knowledge of the benefits of rail, planning, both in urban and rural contexts, focuses on the requirements of road-based transportation. At the same time, the rail network has been shrinking for decades and the existing rail infrastructure is not being used everywhere: Stops are being abandoned, tracks decommissioned and industrial sidings dismantled. Instead of railroads, buses, cars and trucks take over the transport of people or goods, with negative consequences for the environment and urban spaces.
Issues
In the context of the design studio "The railway-oriented city: Laaer Ostbahn" we want to explore together the question of how the territories of the transportation transition in favor of rail-bound means of transport could look like? How can we deal with the apparent spatial contradiction of connection and barrier in urban design? How can complex rail infrastructures be integrated into its spatial context? What do the nodes and transitions to other mobility systems look like? How can the diverse and multifunctional requirements of these infrastructure axes be planned in an integrated way? And how can infrastructure axes be understood as continuous planning spaces that extend across district, municipal and state boundaries, thus counteracting fragmented planning competencies?
Laaer Ostbahn
To find answers to these questions, we examine the areas along the Laaer Ostbahn. This high-level rail line runs from Vienna's main station to Laa an der Thaya. A variety of spaces line up along the route, allowing us to engage with a wide range of spatial contexts and themes: from the glass houses of Simmeringer Haide, to the riverscapes along the Danube, the large urban development areas and commercial zones of Donaustadt, to the suburbs, fields and wind farms in Vienna's northern hinterland.
Design Scales (preliminary program)
We will traverse a wide variety of scale levels during the semester:
Large (individual and group work) / October
Joint analysis of the territories along the line: which potentials, which (disappeared) structures, repeating motifs, chances, possibilities, ... are to be found
Delivery: joint mapping on large map (2-3 x A0)
06.10. kick-off
13.10. first sketches and common excursion
19.10 - 20.10 Mapping-WS: common mapping on large map (2-3 x A0)
27.10. Finalization map, joint discussion / task: Small
Small (individual work) / November
How to embed rail infrastructures in the spatial context: Stations, stops, underpasses, bridges, green bridges, terminals, ...
Submission: individual designs on a scale of 1:500
03.11. feedback
10.11. feedback
17.11. feedback
Medium (coordinated individual works, which are processed and coordinated in groups with regard to the interfaces) / December
What do the territories of the traffic turnaround look like?
Submission: urban designs based on the findings from the previous steps.
24.11. Presentation Small / task: Medium
01.12. feedback
14-16.12. Concept-WS
22.12. feedback
Small-Medium-Large (group work) / January
Consolidation of the different findings, analyses and drafts
11-12.01. Draft-WS
19.01. feedback
26.01. Final critique
02.02. digital hand-in / model delivery
Creation of joint graphic analyses or mappings (manually, digitally); discussions about own attitudes, motives, insights; designs in different scales (individual and group work); model construction
