After successful completion of the course, students are able to develop architectural strategies that do justice to the complexity of building in existing urban contexts. They will be able to create a design that synthesises the complex requirements of the urban realm, urban open space, the adjacent space-creating façades, the constructional parameters of the loadbearing structure and sustainability.The students will be able to carry out autonomous research in order to architecturally capture existing urban spatial structures, represent these in plans and analytical models and, on this basis, develop conceptual spatial solutions. They will understand both the interaction between the urban fabric and buildings and the ways in which this can be transformed through documentary analysis.The students will be in a position to draw up concepts and design projects in plan, image, model and text on the basis of their own research, and to position, discuss and present these projects in the context of a specialist discussion.
URBANES BAUENSEMBLEA resilient and sustainable city emerges from the situative repair of established structures through the selective and precise remodelling and densification of the existing morphology. Many places in the city require not a masterplan but, much more, our situative awareness of the potential that can result from addressing the existing from a new perspective.The combination of and relationship between two or more individual buildings forms a built ensemble. And the spaces between the buildings of a built ensemble become streets and squares, which are thus transformed from background elements into spatial figures. As large-scale living rooms and public spaces, streets and squares have been used in many new and different ways over the generations. It is the fascinating relationships between buildings and these urban spaces that create the dense European city, with the help of walls, windows, entrances – the thresholds between inside and outside – and the carefully designed spaces between buildings. The design of a built ensemble should pay particular attention to two elements: The first element is the space-creating façade, with all its contentual ambiguity: as a climate-regulating envelope and threshold, as an intermediary between public and private space, as the expression of a building. The second element is the urban open space: determined by the materiality of its surfaces, topography and planting. Research-based design investigates the sensitive relationship between buildings and open spaces as the key to transforming the city into a climate-resilient and user-oriented place. BAUENSEMBLE AM KARLSPLATZIn its current state, the urban hinge at the transition between the Naschmarkt, Karlsplatz and Getreidemarkt and tram line 2 represents an urban fracture. In terms of urban history, this fracture results from the reluctance to build directly on top of the Wien River. The late 19th-century perimeter blocks of the 1st, 4th, and 6th districts are currently confronted with a gap in the city that is dominated by roads generating five traffic islands of varying size. These leftover spaces in the urban fabric carry the potential for repairing the city at this central Vienna location.The islands are adjacent to public educational and cultural facilities: the Academy of Fine Arts, the Vienna University of Technology, Secession and the Kunsthalle on Karlsplatz. These all need space for exhibitions and events, which can be created by the densification on Karlsplatz. Studios, drawing halls and exhibition spaces for the Architecture Faculty of the Vienna University of Technology form the main spatial programme for the buildings of the built ensemble on Karlsplatz: Models for these include the typologies of the warehouse and the collective studio building. The most prominent example of this typology in Vienna is the former scenery store of the k.k. court theatre, now the Semperdepot, which is located close by in Lehárgasse.
From the strategic starting point of a transformation that repairs the urban spatial situation, the potential of the existing open space will be investigated in the context of such issues as consumption-free, public space for all and the climate resilience of the city. The basis for the development of the concept will be a precise analysis of the urban morphology and the reading and description of the significant elements and traces in the urban context.We will develop action-oriented documentation related to a new practice of dealing with the urban realm and sustainable strategies for repairing existing urban spaces. The rapprochement with the existing urban realm and its spatial sequences of open spaces, infrastructure and buildings – as well as between public and private space – will take place with the help of conceptual and working models. Urban interfaces will be investigated in the same way. A design practice will be formulated with the objective of developing permanently usable built structures: functionally-neutral, flexibly occupiable structures that make an architectural contribution to the avoidance of demolition.
TIMETABLE AND PRESENCE
Support meetings every Friday from 10:00 to 18:00.
Kick-off event on 6th October from 10:00, followed by a site visit at 14:00.
Special dates:
Detailed research into existing urban structures and the principles of urban repair through the transformation of urban space in the context of the discussion topics: climate-resilient cities, resource-friendly buildings, permanently usable built structures. Evidence of this research in the form of a continuously kept logbook.The plan-based, pictorial, graphic and textual implementation of a concept developed from this research at scales ranging from 1:5,000 to 1:10. Site plans, floor plans, sections, elevations, façade sections, details, presentations of conceptual principles, visualisations, models.
