After successful completion of the course, students are able to develop architectural solutions in all their complexity of spatial, constructive, structural and atmospheric conditions. They can establish a relationship between material-specific standards and spatial principles and can formulate these in technical-constructive details and spatial-architectural principles.
Through independent research, the students are able to understand existing structures from an architectural and planning perspective and can use these as a basis for developing conceptual and spatial solutions. They can establish interrelationships between the constructive detail and the individual building, as well as between the spatial object of urban and rural building, and can understand these through documentary analysis.
Based on their own research and concepts they will be able to create design projects in plans, images, models and text, and to discuss these and present them comprehensively.
For centuries, the House of God has served as a community centre in monotheistic cultures: it defined cities and villages and, in its uniform interpretation, dominated the sacred rituals and spatialisations of spirituality in the community. Since the Enlightenment, the hegemonial role of the church has been questioned in the European city and today, at the beginning of the 21st century with an intensified awareness of a multi-ethnic society, we also experience a search for new forms of sacred architecture that can give expression to cultural heterogeneity. At the same time as a building typology the church is still the decisive element in the spatial morphology of the village, and the region around Vienna is an apt example for this: the outskirts of the city and the surrounding rural environment of Lower Austria are characterised by traditional village structures determined by the sacred monolith of the Catholic church.
Based on these considerations, the Integral Design Village Composition course will carry out a search for a new architecture of spirituality for today’s pluralistic society, to be realised at two specific locations in the outskirts of Vienna, the Johanneskirche Unterlaa,as well as the village centre Obersiebenbrunn. In a dialogue with the existing sacred spaces, we are looking for an architectural form that explores traditional and new forms of sacredness beyond confessional boundaries.
In this context, rooms of worship should exist side by side with rooms of culture for the village community, and the sacred and profane should be combined in a dialogue with existing buildings. A composition of cooperation is intended that is thought through in all dimensions, from the village to the details, and constitutes a space for action that manifests itself as an identity-founding location of spirituality for a multi-ethnic and heterogeneous village community at the borders of the city.
As Integral Design, the course is based on the examination of architecture as a phenomenon that is at once spatial, social, constructive and structural/ecological. In the process, the design is to be developed based on a monolithic building method, i.e. on homogenous solid building of timber, stone, concrete, brick or lime whose architectural potential is explored and applied in a constructive and ecological as well as spatial perspective.
Beginning with a comprehensive analysis of existing buildings, architecture is understood as a process that explores and transforms morphological-typological contexts as well as social structures. By working at different scales, from village morphology, to the composition of particular buildings, to detailed materialisation and construction development, architecture is understood and implemented as a multi-layered discipline in all dimensions.
Intro 07.10 10:00 Uhr digital via Zoom: https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/99685168198
Site visit Johanneskirche 07.10 - 14:00 Uhr
Site visit Obersiebenbrunn 11.10 - 10:00 Uhr
Excursion Oberösterreich: 14.10. all-day
Precise basic research into existing spatial and social structures and principles. Analyses of the monolithic building method based on the constructive, structural, spatial and atmospheric aspects of each material. Evidence of research is kept throughout in a logbook.
Planning, textual and graphic realisation of a subsequent concept and design at the scales 1:5000 to 1:1. Layout plans, ground plans, sectional views, outside views, sectional views of facades, details, spatial schematic diagrams, perspectives, models.
