After successful completion of the course, students are able to work on a design task from the field of interior design and planning, in which the concept of space and the understanding of spatial correlations form the starting point of design issues. They learn to critically examine basic questions of museum space, especially the question of how art and cultural institutions relate to and influence the development of the city. They will be able to derive appropriate design principles through scientific and methodological research on artistic positions, curatorial approaches and historical as well as contemporary art spaces and to apply these to their own design work. They will be able to comprehensively represent and present their project concepts in the form of draft and detailed plans.
Urban space is in a permanent process of change. Through the further construction, reconstruction, redensifying and reoccupation of existing urban spaces, cityscapes, social relationships and codes are constantly being reconstructed. In the growing city, art locations are not developing in the same density as new residential quarters and schools. In Vienna, therefore, exhibition and event spaces for art are found to an above-average extent in the vicinity of the Ring and hardly outside the centre. The centralistic model optimises the tourist development of the city, but makes it more difficult for many city dwellers to access cultural facilities. As examples from other large cities and also independent projects in Vienna show, there are alternatives to this: decentralised exhibition spaces such as the MoMA PS1 in Queens, NY shift the cultural hierarchies of a city and create new locations of density.
At the same time, the aim is not to create satellites of the existing Kunsthalle or to install art as a front for investor projects, but to rethink the Kunsthalle as a multi-tiered institution as a whole. What role does contemporary art play in the context of the city? Can new sites be created in which space is created for the relationship between contemporary art and the public? To what extent is art a medium for tracing and addressing social and urban fault-lines? The Kunsthalle is a place in which discontinuity and change can be the focus of attention: the motto “To each era its art. To art its freedom” of the Vienna Secession, which is considered the prototype for all Kunsthallen, is reinterpreted from a contemporary perspective.
We will pursue the basic questions of the design project in an interdisciplinary way with artists, cultural workers, urban planners and architects. Based on urban explorations/site analyses in Vienna on the one hand and typological studies and analyses of artistic positions on the other, we will create designs for a network of sites in the city, which will interactively develop a new type of Kunsthalle. Based on Lucius Burkhardt’s approaches, spatial axes and areas of urban development will be explored in the context of walks that lead to a reflection on social and cultural connections between architecture and planning.
The introduction takes place on Fri. 6.03.20 in project room 15.
Design meetings take place weekly on Friday between 9:00 and 16:00. Participation in the design meetings is obligatory!
Applications with a portfolio will be preferred!
