After successful completion of the course, students are able to develop architectural solutions in their complexity of spatial, cultural, constructive and atmospheric conditions. They can place conceptual specifications in relation to spatial principles and cultural framework conditions and formulate these in architectural designs.
Through independent research, students can also record existing structures in architectural and planning terms and use these as a basis for developing conceptual and spatial solutions. They can establish interrelationships between the individual building and the urban and landscape spatial bodies and comprehend them through documentary analyses.
Based on their own research and concepts, they are able to create, discuss and comprehensively present design projects in plan, image, model and text.
A century after the Viennese homestead movement and the emergence of the first “Gemeindebauten” (residential buildings erected by the municipality) in Vienna, the concept of “commoning” in the urban context is more multifaceted than ever. Searching for new alternatives to the capitalist solution of home ownership and the strict demarcation between private and public, the concept of commoning, of communal, self-organised production and use, is being discussed in many different ways.
In the architectural discourse, a rethinking of socio-spatial aspects of living together plays an important role. On the one hand, in private living space, which despite intensive critical consideration is still too often laid out in the standard model of the classic flat for a nuclear family and is thought of as a household of reproductive work organised for one person – often the housewife. On the other hand, in the understanding of an urban-public typology – the house of literature – and its strictly drawn separation from the individual-private zone. A reconsideration of the programming and the relationship of these boundaries is a central part of the design task.
The program focus of the design task is a residential house of literature in the 10th district of Vienna. The concepts of public and private space are challenged with a functional composite of public space, shared living space and urban open space. New approaches in the overlapping of uses and in the spatial organization of neighborly coexistence are being researched in the design: The arrangement of an openly accessible library and education area is to be harmonized with the residential function in order to be integrated into the existing urban morphology of the existing factory and commercial buildings to create a new spatial composition. The result is a forward-looking architectural design for the corner at Siccardsburggasse-Buchengasse, which enhances the existing context as a superposition of old and new.
Based on contemporary texts of feminist theories, positions will first be developed in the form of group presentations and used as a basis for the spatial development of the projects on the construction site. For this purpose, feminist texts by authors such as Elke Krasny, Silvia Federici or Kim Trogal, among others, will be read and discussed on the topic of space, family and community.
The aim is to develop an urban planning solution for the building site that reconciles the interests of different actors and users on site. These are translated into architectural spaces.
Teams of two people then choose a focus and work on it in depth as a project. The results are to be implemented as a composition on the building site in all scales; in the process, the interfaces, too, are to be critically examined.
Basic research of existing spatial and social structures and principles. Analyses of typological, cultural, constructive, spatial and atmospheric aspects. Basic research on aspects of the commons in the current architectural discourse.
Planning, textual and graphic implementation of a subsequent concept and design in the various scales. Site plans, floor plans, sections, views, façade sections, details, spatial principle representations, perspectives, models.
