LIVING LAB: CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS

Living Lab:

Constructing The commons Editors: Tom Avermaete Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Daniela Herold

IKA | Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

This catalogue is published on the occasion of LIVING LAB: CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS, a cooperation between the IBA_Vienna 2022, International Building Exhibition – New Social Housing, the IKA, Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Technical University Delft.

Catalogue LIVING LAB: CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS Editors: Tom Avermaete (TU Delft|ETH Zürich), Lisa Schmidt-Colinet (IKA), Daniela Herold (IKA) Graphic design: Burak Genc, Christopher Gruber, Ferdinand Klopfer Translation and copy editing: Judith Wolfframm Publisher: IKA, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 03, 1010 Vienna ISBN: 978-3-9503211-6-6 © 2018: IBA_Vienna 2022, International Building Exhibition – New Social Housing and Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Exhibition CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS Curators: Tom Avermaete, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Daniela Herold Exhibition display: Nils Neuböck, Christopher Gruber Production team: Nils Neuböck, Christopher Gruber, Nathaniel Loretz, Jakob Jakubowski, Madina Mussayeva, Patricia Tibu, Anna Krumpholz Workshop AMBIGUOUS EDGES Teaching: Tom Avermaete, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Daniela Herold Guests: Tamara Brajovic (GB* Urban Renewal Office), Simonetta Ferfoglia (gangart), Karoline Streeruwitz (StudioVlayStreeruwitz), Hannes Gröblacher, Kristian Koreman (ZUS, Rotterdam), Marthijn Pool (Space&Matter, Amsterdam) Debate THE ROLE OF ARCHITECTURE FOR THE URBAN COMMONS Simonetta Ferfoglia, Wolfgang Förster (initiator of IBA_Vienna 2022), Kristian Koreman, Marthijn Pool, Bernd Vlay (StudioVlayStreeruwitz), students of the workshop, Tom Avermaete, Daniela Herold, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet.

LIVING LAB: CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS is supported by : IBA_Vienna 2022, International Building Exhibition – New Social Housing Academy of Fine Arts Vienna GB* Urban Renewal Office

Living Lab:

Constructing The commons Editors: Tom Avermaete Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Daniela Herold

Contents Preface Wolfgang Fรถrster

07

Introduction Tom Avermaete, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Daniela Herold

09

Constructing the Commons: Architecture as Unlocking Shared Resources Tom Avermaete

13

What Kind of Housing for What Kind of City?

Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Daniela Herold

17

COMMON GROUND

19

COLLECTIVE STRUCTURE

43

SHARED KNOWLEDGE

63

UNLOCKING SPACES

83

MULTIPLICITY OF COMMUNITIES

95

Ambiguous Edges

105

RIGHTS OF WAY

117

Illustration Credits

134

Acknowledgements

135

preface

The declared goal of the IBA_Vienna 2022, International Building Exhibition – New Social Housing is to advance social housing construction in the context of the 21st century.

Although Vienna’s subsidised housing, which accommodates more than 60% of its population, is considered exemplary around the world, it faces major new challenges today: population growth and urban expansion, demographic change, globalization, migration, social segregation, an increasing diversity of society and lifestyles, new ways of working, digitalization and the rising importance of virtual communication, and climate change, to name only the most significant challenges.

To promote social cohesion in this context, Vienna has relied on encouraging a social mix in all neighbourhoods. In the process, the affordability of high-quality housing for all has been in the foreground – with the goal of “affordable housing” increasingly complemented, in the context of the IBA_Vienna, by that of an “affordable city” (or affordable neighbourhood), also including transportation and access to open areas, playgrounds and sports facilities as “non-consumer spaces”.

The studies of the commons undertaken by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Delft University of Technology inspired the idea to invite both universities to actively contribute to the IBA_Vienna as part of the focus “IBA meets university”.

The designated test area for this is the Sonnwendviertel development, the new residential and business district around Vienna Central Station. The specific challenge to address here is how a new, predominantly mid-market neighbourhood can be integrated with the inner 10th district, traditionally a working-class district with a high number of immigrants, in such a way that the commons of both areas benefit new and old residents alike in a win-win situation.

existing or yet to be unlocked, and to make proposals for how these can be integrated into the district’s continuing participatory development.

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On behalf of the IBA_Vienna, I would like to thank all those involved, especially the students from Vienna and Delft, Prof. Tom Avermaete, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet and Daniela Herold, as well as the staff of the Urban Renewal Office, for their dedication, and I hope that this report will contribute to implementing the objectives of the IBA_Vienna in a further participatory process.

Dr. Wolfgang Förster IBA_Vienna initiator PUSH-Consulting KG Vienna September 2018

We therefore expect the students from Vienna and the Netherlands to take stock without bias of the commons

INTRO

The theory of welfare economics demonstrates the value added by urban design and housing planning when they are not geared towards maximizing private profits, but instead invite all stakeholders to actively participate in the process of urban development.

Introduction

The commons are intensively discussed in the contemporary debate on the city. New social, economic and political perspectives on urban life have emerged. However, it is less clear what role the architecture of the city – as a common resource par excellence – can play in processes of commoning.

This living laboratory wants to explicitly address the role of architecture and architects in creating urban commons. It seeks to explore how architectural interventions can play a role in unlocking common grounds in our contemporary cities, and how new theoretical concepts of thinking the commons in relation to the contemporary city might emerge from this. The exhibition Constructing

the Commons is based on the results of three research and design studios that took place at the Institute for Art and Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna between 2016 and 2018.

It brings together present-day and historical architectural projects, exploring in a broad way the question of what we can share in the contemporary city: What can be held in common between different neighbourhoods and between different citizens? How can architecture and spatial design contribute to the unlocking of spaces, and to their maintenance in the long term? Evocative questions structure the case studies. They illustrate how the relationship between the commons and the architecture of the city is not solidly defined, but rather a rich field of reflection that needs to be further discussed and developed. Seven new thematic fields emerged from these questions: Common Ground focuses on the accessibility of the ground level of our cities.

Collective Structure examines the ways in which a

INTRO

LIVING LAB: CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS comprises an exhibition, a workshop and a debate. It takes as its point of departure the question of what is to be considered as common in the city. More specifically, questions are raised about how commonality can be defined in relation to housing and the urban environment.

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common building code allows for individual appropriation.

Shared Knowledge deals with the common role of practical and intellectual skills.

Unlocking Spaces looks at the forgotten rooms in our cities as a joint spatial resource.

Multiplicity of Communities engages with places of encounter for various groups.

Ambiguous Edges probes the role of undefined urban logic and Rights of Way explores urban porosity as a condition for common practice.

The project starts from two different, but overlapping agendas: In 2016, Tom Avermaete began his lecture series “Constructing the Commons – Another Approach to Architecture and Urbanism” at the IKA, claiming that the new conception of the “commons” can radically alter the way we think about the role of the architect, the character of the project, and the relationship between architecture and the city.1 In parallel, Lisa SchmidtColinet and Daniela Herold had launched a research and design studio on the platform History | Theory | Criticism, exploring transitions, interlocking and threshold spaces between housing and the surrounding spaces of the city. This studio

set-up aimed to contribute to the housing debate in Vienna, which had gained momentum with the announcement of the IBA_Vienna 2022.2 The proposal of Wolfgang Förster and the IBA team for a workshop on the area of Sonnwendviertel and the adjacent neighbourhood was the occasion that brought these two interests together.

The workshop, entitled Ambiguous Edges, extended the knowledge presented in the exhibition through artistic interventions in urban space.

During a one-week workshop, real-life scenarios for recognising, marking and enhancing potentials of the commons along Sonnwendgasse and Gudrunstrasse in Vienna’s 10th district were developed: these streets mark the rupture between two distinct areas, the recently completed housing development Sonnwendviertel and the existing block structure of the inner 10th district. Students explored points of transition, ruptures and connections between these two differently shaped urban environments.

An insight into the workshop is presented on several inlay posters inserted into this catalogue.

The project is rounded off by the debate THE ROLE OF

1 During the academic year 2016/17 Tom Avermaete was appointed as Endowed Professor for Visionary Forms of Cities at the IKA, supported by the City of Vienna.

2 Two other studios followed in the summer term of 2017 and the winter term of 2017/18: UNLOCKING THE COMMONS: Rethinking the Architecture of the Future City, a studio project, platform Geography|Landscapes|Cities (Tom Avermaete, Daniela Herold) and INHABITING THE CITY, a studio project, platform History| Theory|Criticism (Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Daniela Herold)

and perspectives to the urban debate. In this sense, it offers a valuable lesson for the future explorations of the IBA_Vienna and beyond: it illustrates the value of also opening up the discussion to experimental design approaches, which can be developed in learning environments like the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

LIVING LAB: CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS has explored a variety of issues concerning the relationship between the commons and the architecture of the city. Many of these issues need to be further explored and discussed in future projects, also – we hope – within the context of the IBA_Vienna 2022. If one thing has become clear from the LIVING LAB, it is the role of experimental architecture. While cities such as Vienna undoubtedly have a long tradition of providing solid architectural design solutions for important urban questions, they might have less experience with the role of experimental interventions.

Tom Avermaete Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Daniela Herold

However, as Living lab: constructing THE COMMONS illustrates, these innovative design approaches can contribute new viewpoints

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INTRO

ARCHITECTURE FOR THE URBAN COMMONS, which seeks to explicitly address the role of architecture and architects in creating an urban commons.

Relying on experiences in the Netherlands and Austria, the debate wants to explore how architectural interventions can play a role in unlocking common resources (be they spatial, practical or material) in our contemporary cities.

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CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS: ARCHITECTURE AS UNLOCKING SHARED RESOURCES

Experiments with shared resources In contemporary architectural design practice, important experiments are taking place, which are challenging the traditional approach to the urban project. Many of these experiments can be understood as practices of commoning.

Design projects such as the NDSM Wharf and De Ceuvel in Amsterdam, the Luchtsingel in Rotterdam, the Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin, the Yale Building Project in New Haven, and so on and so forth, have called into question the character of the architectural project by

1 Manfredo Tafuri, Progetto e utopia. Architettura e sviluppo capitalistico, Rome/Bari 1973. For a further discussion of these ideas, see: Mikael Bergquist, ‘Transformation’, in: Crucial Words, eds.

Gert Wingårdh and Rasmus Waern, Basel 2008, p. 172.

INTRO

Tafuri contrasts the avant-garde with experimental architecture, which he recognizes in, among others, the Gothic and Mannerism. It does battle with the existing architectural language, but its eventual aim is not a complete revolution. Rather, experimental architecture aims to introduce shifts, cracks and new connotations into the existing code. As a result, the architectural project takes on an interrogative or investigative character; it is not a statement.

Both approaches may still be at work in contemporary architecture, but in recent years, the centre of gravity seems to have shifted from a deep-rooted notion that architecture is primarily an avant-garde activity, to a more experimental approach to architecture.

0: INTRO

A few decades ago, the Italian theorist Manfredo Tafuri drew a distinction between avant-garde and experimental architecture.1 Avant-garde movements, whether they concern eighteenth-century revolutionary architecture or certain trends in twentieth-century modernism, are always exclusive and absolute, according to Tafuri. They do not enter into any fundamental association with reality, but instead attempt to construct a completely new reality.

emphasizing co-production in development and realisation.

In such projects, the praxis of the architect is increasingly linked to the multiple actions of other actors: emphasis is placed on the co-productive nature of the enterprise. Various elements of the urban territory, as well as the knowledge and skills of citizens, are understood as immanent resources that are unlocked, activated and managed by the architectural project.

Are the impulses we detect in these projects the prefiguration of a broader new interpretation of the architectural project?

In future, can we regard the interventions of architects as the unlocking and management of such important communal resources as territory, time and action? It would seem so, but there is an urgent need for more reflection, discussion and even theory about such a new conception of the architectural project.

New definitions, roles and dependencies What notions can we use to interpret the character of the new project as intervention in a communality? Since the Middle Ages, the Netherlands has had an interesting landscape term for such a communality:

the ‘meent’, the equivalent of the English ‘common’. The related word ‘commons’ refers to land or resources belonging to or affecting the whole of the community. The notion of the ‘meent’ also refers to the communal use of a part of the landscape, and to how it is collectively maintained, treated and used.2 Communal resources and communal actions are brought together in the notion of the ‘meent’ and inextricably linked.

Perhaps the notion of the ‘commons’ could offer an initial starting point from which to develop such a new definition of the architectural project.

Against this background, an architecture of the commons should be understood as an intervention in these common resources, and in the series of collective actions that are part of them.

This definition of architecture as working with available resources is vaguely reminiscent of the discourse about sustainability. But what is interesting about the above-mentioned designs is that they are not about energy flows or consumption, but about resources like territory, time, and human knowledge and behaviour in the built environment.

2 Anton Kos, Van meenten tot marken, Hilversum 2010.

A new definition like this also entails a number of challenges.

It requires a different articulation of the role of the architect.

Architects will need to be seen less as the inventors of radical forms or atmospheres, and more as the cultivators of a number of resources that have always been there: territory, time, action, as well as materiality, form and technical skill.

From this perspective, architecture appears as a bit more of an archaic activity. Writing about his own work, the French poet Paul Valéry commented, “I consider my archaisms innovations which may or may not establish themselves, depending on the advantages of use and on the energy of action and the field.”3 The second part of that quotation points to another important aspect of an architecture of the commons: it is dependent on

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the field of common resources and actions in which it intervenes. In the past, the fact that architecture depends on specific, existing resources – material, typological or spatial – or on the actions of others, has sometimes been negatively interpreted. A new conception of the project could instead emphasize the cultivation of that dependence, and elevate working with it to the objective of architecture.

In this way, architecture could be understood more as the coordination of these dependencies. Finally, a different definition of the architectural project also calls for a new kind of architecture criticism: one that no longer confines its accolades to formal innovation, but regards the cultivation of resources like territory, time, action and knowledge as a valuable criterion in judging a design. What would happen if from now on, we were to judge buildings based on the way they deal with the common resources we have at our disposal? Would that lead us to new criteria, conceptual frameworks and approaches for architecture?

Tom Avermaete

3 Paul Valéry, ‘The Crisis of the Mind’, in: The Collected Works of Paul Valery, ed. Jackson Mathews, vol. 10: History and Criticism, New York 1962.

Op. cit. Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, in: Codes and Continuities (Oase #92), Rotterdam 2014, p. 24.

INTRO

They illustrate how the architectural project can be understood as the cultivation of these common resources by way of accommodating, transforming and activating them. Thus architecture gives shape to the commons, but is also shaped by it. It becomes partner in and part of a common territory, time and action.

WHAT KIND OF HOUSING FOR WHAT KIND OF CITY? At the kick-off meeting for the development of the upcoming IBA Vienna, the increasing challenges of providing affordable space to live in the city were outlined. Today, Vienna faces not only population growth, but also an economic situation in which rent prices are rising sharply in relation to the incomes of its inhabitants.

As a consequence, issues of efficiency, optimization and reduction are predominant in ongoing housing production. In a climate where the minimum requirements, once outlined, tend to become the standard or even the maximum to be achieved (in terms of floor area, percentage of glazing or balconies, etc.), we propose a detour to look at the housing question from a different perspective: What if – for a moment – we turn the question around?

Instead of elaborating the best spatial solutions for reduced living environments, we could require a different kind of performance, and we could ask for more: How can living space expand, transgress the bound-

aries of the unit, and become an integral part of the city?

How can it provide additional value for the surroundings, thus creating enduring qualities for the urban realm? How can housing contribute effectively to the spaces of the city, and vice versa?

During two semesters at the Institute for Art and Architecture, we focused with students on the relationship between city planning and housing production, the thresholds between domestic and urban life, and the transitions between the retreat of the individual and the articulation of a collective.1 Through research and design experiments, students worked on living environments and urban spaces in parallel. Visions for the city and models for living were discussed and generated in a vibrant exchange.

The city of Vienna is tackling the housing shortage by following a strategy of massive, subsidised housing construction, taking place in new development areas as well as on larger terrains within the city. The volume of housing planned by the city in

1

The studio project “What Kind of Housing for What Kind of City?” took place in the winter term of 2016/17, and the studio project “Inhabiting the City - Ambiguous Edges - Conflictual Spaces” in the winter term of 2017/18; both were offered by the platform History | Theory | Criticism at the IKA, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Within this context of densification and increasing value of the city’s ground, the students developed spatial proposals that re-think transitions between the street and the bed: as an experiment, the idea of a housing complex as an enclosed entity was left behind. By diluting the structure of the block and assuming a more fluid state of living and the city, what new spatial entities could crystallise?

What new forms of threshold spaces can be developed, transgressing the categorizations of private and public? Can these spaces provoke an active exchange between different individual and common interests, and contribute to a multiplicity of users? Through which means could these spaces be kept open for different interpretations, and invite unforeseen development and participation in the long term? How can the architectural setting contribute to achieving ambiguous spaces, places resistant to increasing over-determination within the city?

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Vienna might have the capacity for further densification if the city is kept open – if the condition of porosity can be met. Here, we refer to Richard Sennett’s description of an open city: “Closed means over-determined, balanced, integrated, linear. Open means incomplete, errant, conflictual, non-linear.

The closed city is full of boundaries and walls; the open city possesses more borders and membranes [...]. Yet to design the modern city well, I believe we have to challenge unthinking assumptions now made about urban life, assumptions which favor closure.

"I believe we have to embrace less re-assuring, more febrile ideas of living together, those stimulations of differences, both visual and social, which produce openness.”2 The projects outlined by the students reveal and articulate situations and spatial qualities as essential resources within the urban realm, as potential common goods within the city. New practices of commoning might offer the basis for maintaining such qualities and keeping them accessible to citizens in the long term.

Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Daniela Herold

2 Richard Sennett, Harvard Lecture, 2013

INTRO

the years to come will have a significant impact on the urban fabric. It will not only increase the density of built structures and housing units, but also put enormous pressure on the spaces in between.

How can a commonly governed ground provoke new types of spaces, uses and communities?

Who are the initiators and protagonists, what roles do they take, which responsibilities?

What rules have to be established, which rights of usage, and to whom is a common ground accessible?

COMMON GROUND

How to keep alive the custom of common grounds in an urban environment?

...one open space, originally used as an area for collective agricultural production, unlocked as a place for political assemblage, encounter, recreation and play.

COMMON GROUND

Boston Commons

21

Which strategy turns vacant ground floor spaces into a common ground for the neighbourhood?

...One street; 23 unused entities; new alliances between the city and the owners: each space is transformed by a specifically designed intervention and therefore made accessible. No defined programmes.

Open towards the unforeseen, relying on the activity of the players. Can the special character of a space launch a process of appropriation?

COMMON GROUND

Stimulus of porosity / Christopher Gruber

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fig.1

fig.3

zone

COMMON GROUND

Stimulus of porosity / Christopher Gruber

25

fig.2

COMMON GROUND

Stimulus of porosity / Christopher Gruber

27

What if faรงades of vacant ground floor spaces are opened entirely?

The sidewalk expands to form a new common ground. A new kind of transitional space emerges between the street and the courtyard of the urban block, between public and private access, offering new options for use and movement through the city.

COMMON GROUND

Breaking through walls / Aysen Sulmaz

29

Can spaces for inhabitation integrate with a common ground?

...living as a basic right; the dweller is part of a mobile society, based on rights of usage rather than property. The living environment becomes a collective infrastructure. Individual rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, furniture and objects are used temporarily. Moving is possible on a daily basis; everything is shared.

COMMON GROUND

Continuous surfaces / Nathaniel Loretz

31

COMMON GROUND

Continuous surfaces / Nathaniel Loretz

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Form, scale, intimacy of space: can a street enhance an atmosphere of living together?

...How can architectural form contribute to a community? How can the spatial expression of a social idea enable a neighbourhood to configure itself?

COMMON GROUND

ALEXANDRA ROAD ESTATE / Neave Brown

35

Alexandra Road housing estate in London, designed in 1968, completed in 1978; Neave Brown. Drawings by Silvester Kreil & Stepan Nesterenko.

COMMON GROUND

ALEXANDRA ROAD ESTATE / Neave Brown

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How is the common ground affected by surrounding buildings and faรงades?

Toilets and bathrooms are exposed along the faรงade. How does visibility of usage influence the character of the in-between space?

COMMON GROUND

Co-Existence / Burak Genc & Clara Maria Fickl

39

COMMON GROUND

Co-Existence / Burak Genc & Clara Maria Fickl

41

How can a common structure stimulate urban diversity?

Which structural elements, rules and basic types engender variety without compromising the idea of a collective form?

How can architects enable autonomous and self-determined ways of inhabiting space within a common structure?

Collective structure

Support and infill: How can the definition of a simple structural framework allow for a participatory process?

...a construction of columns, slabs and roofs provides differently sized parcels; empty volumes with blank walls; the layout of the unit itself as well as its facade are developed in a participative design process. The architect and future residents work together to achieve 123 units and 67 individual floor plans.

COLLECTIVE Structure

MOLENVLIET PROJECT / Frans van der Werft

45

Support and Infill, John Habraken and Molenvliet Project, Papendrecht, Netherlands, 1974 by Frans van der Werf.

Leporello and drawings by Jakob Jakubowski, Madeleine Malle, Sonja Wipfler.

COLLECTIVE Structure

MOLENVLIET PROJECT / Support and infill

47

Building together: What if a common structure enables a collective process of individual settlement?

Once the superstructure, including platforms and circulation areas, is provided, a process of settling is launched.

The building process is collectively governed on the scale of a neighbourhood unit. Individual design and construction takes place on the scale of the housing unit.

COLLECTIVE Structure

The Line / Ferdinand Klopfer

49

COLLECTIVE Structure

The Line / Ferdinand Klopfer

51

COLLECTIVE Structure

The Line / Ferdinand Klopfer

53

How can a grid based on the dimensions of a vernacular patio house form a common structure for new urban development?

8mx8m, a grid as an enduring urban structure. 8mx8m, a perimeter wall of 2.8m height, 2 or 3 rooms, a patio 5mx5m.

Architecture is transformed and replaced according to the material’s lifespan and the needs of inhabitants.

The structure of the urban grid persists in time. The possibility of extensions went beyond what was imaginable...

COLLECTIVE Structure

Carrières Centrales / Michel Ecochard

55

Carrières Centrales, urban development in Casablanca, 1947; Michel Ecochard. Leporello and drawings by Aysen Sulmaz, Christopher Gruber, Jean Makhlouta.

COLLECTIVE Structure

Carrières Centrales / Michel Ecochard

57

How can infrastructural elements and building rules form a common structure and create formal coherence?

A common structure for a new neighbourhood is formed by elevated service ducts referencing the historical aqueduct of the area.

A set of simple elements allows for variations of one typology, the back-to-back patio house. Rules defined: parcel size, maximum built volume, volume of the patio, variations in heights of walls, openings and maximum size for doors towards the street. The rules were designed by an architect, the quarter was maintained by communities...

COLLECTIVE Structure

Quinta da Malagueira / Ă lvaro Siza Vieira

59

Quinta da Malagueira housing estate in Évora, Portugal, 1977; Álvaro Siza Vieira.

Drawings by Elisabeth Fölsche, Madeleine Malle.

COLLECTIVE Structure

Quinta da Malagueira / Ă lvaro Siza Vieira

61

How can the exchange of knowledge, the learning of techniques and the circulation of practices become a common resource pool?

Shared Knowledge

How can real-life housing experiments and experiences of inhabitants contribute to a common knowledge of living together?

A place never completed and kept open for a permanent process of common experimentation. How could this experience be shared and contribute to a broader discussion of how we live within the city?

And what kind of building structure allows for a ground floor that is constituted, built and adapted by a collective building process?

Shared knowledge

KOATH / Nils Neubรถck

65

Shared knowledge

KOATH / Nils Neubรถck

67

Shared knowledge

KOATH / Nils Neubรถck

69

Can an exhibition and a laboratory on building techniques contribute to the preservation of the city by its inhabitants?

...installed in the centre of a historic town, introducing methods and practical knowledge of restoration, applied to old, existing building resources. The workshop activates the participation of residents, to gain knowledge and therefore to be able to maintain their homes.

This “learning by doing“ method enhances the relationship with the built structure of the city and social cohesion. The role of the architect oscillates between that of a mediator and an educator.

Shared knowledge

KOATH / Nils Neubรถck Urban Regeneration Workshop / Renzo Piano

71

Urban Regeneration Workshop Otranto, Italy, 1973; Renzo Piano. Leporello and drawings by Aysen Sulmaz, Christopher Gruber, Jean Makhlouta.

Shared knowledge

Urban Regeneration Workshop / Renzo Piano

73

What if a network of manufacturing knowledge becomes visible in the urban fabric, and invites integration and learning?

...bringing back production facilities to the city or highlighting the existing structures; introducing spaces as a symbiosis of an open workshop and a fabrication laboratory open to all who need practical knowledge, tools or to exchange ideas; placed in urban niches, on tiny plots, on roofs, in courtyards...

Architecture is a spatial tool to encourage people to make and produce, to spread knowledge and to establish a community.

Shared knowledge

What happened to crafts? / Iklim Dogan

75

Shared knowledge

What happened to crafts? / Iklim Dogan

77

How can the details of wooden frame connections enable a neighbourhood to grow?

Simple construction principles are provided by the architect handed over to self-builders without building experience; courses are held in the in the workshop, to build up confidence in using tools and to learn the basic techniques of timbering, plumbing and wiring; basic products of the industry are used; information is passed to one another and allows the common techniques to alter due to individual requirements.

Shared knowledge SHARED KNOWLEDGE

What happened to crafts? / Iklim Dogan THE SEGAL SELF-BUILD METHOD / Walter Segal WHAT HAPPENED TO CRAFTS? / IKLIM DOGAN THE SEGAL SELF-BUILD METHOD / Walter Segal

7979

Shared knowledge

THE SEGAL SELF-BUILD METHOD / Walter Segal

81

How can existing spaces be made commonly accessible on a temporary basis?

Which rules and which spatial conditions encourage individuals or a community to open their space to the neighbourhood, and create alternating or overlapping usages?

Unlocking spaces

A set of stairs is inserted in the urban realm. They allow new visual and practical access to the existing urban spaces, suggesting new understandings and uses of the city.

Can disused ground floor spaces be turned into communal facilities for a city block?

A sauna, a guestroom, a playground and a kitchen... Vacant ground floor spaces in the Viennese 19th century block structure are appropriated and developed by the inhabitants of the block. Thus, communal spaces are incorporated into the dense fabric of the city.

Unlocking spaces

Patchwork living / Jean Maklouta

playground

87

sauna

kitchen

How can hidden and unused urban layers be made accessible and become an open space for the neighbourhood?

Forgotten underground spaces are transformed into a threshold space, interwoven into a horizontal landscape. A park is created. This is a place where existing communities and associations, as well as the inhabitants of the city, have temporary access.

Unlocking spaces

Smashed to pieces / Simon Hirtz

89

Unlocking spaces

Smashed to pieces / Simon Hirtz

91

Cohabitation in apartments far bigger then we are used to.

A floor plan that offers a variety of spaces and makes it easy to retreat.

Would you open your livingroom and invite people from the neighbourhood to use it?

To give space to yoga classes or after-school care?

Unlocking spaces

Invitation Room / Madina Mussayeva

93

Which spatial means can allow for a multiplicity of users and communities to arise?

Places accessible to people with diverse interests, backgrounds and habits. Rather than consensual planning – aimed at smoothing conflicts and segregating uses – planning based on a multiplicity of users acknowledges the potential of friction to achieve active common spaces.

MULTIPLICITY OF COMMUNITIES

A simple connector; a path, a stair, a bridge‌ The relationship between different buildings and neighbourhoods creates an encounter of communities.

Luchtsingel Rotterdam, 2015; ZUS architects

Multiplicity of communities

Luchtsingel / ZUS architects

97

Can the provision of space and furniture create a threshold space between inhabitation, production and the city?

...a table to sit at, a storage shelf to be used, or office infrastructure to be rented...

A transition space in between circulation areas and apartments. Different times of use, for the inhabitants, for the guests of the surrounding city. New modes of producing.

Multiplicity of communities

Shifts and Changes / Mira Keipke

99

LIBRARY for residents and neighbourhood

EXISTING PRODUCTION AREAS are integrated into the complex

GROUNDFLOOR production and open workshops

101

Shifts and Changes / Mira Keipke

LIVING apartments with 1-5 rooms, extendable into the inbetween space

FOR RENT office spaces, 10 - 100 m2, extendable into the inbetween space micro spaces 2 -10 m2 extendable into the inbetween space lockers for users form the neighbourhood

Multiplicity of communities

INBETWEEN SPACE space for working, producing, meeting, used by inhabitants, office users, neighbourhood; access according to opening hours

How can different forms of access provoke a multiplicity of users?

A structure of linked platforms. Three different ways to access them: from a private apartment, from a university campus, from the street – at different heights. Next to each other: private terraces as extensions of apartments, a vertical garden, open rooms to be temporarily used.

Multiplicity of communities

Urban Mediator / Patricia Tibu

103

Ambiguous space defies clear legibility and assignment to the public or private realm. It stays open in the long term to different interpretations and thus offers opportunities to be used in very different ways.

Ambiguous spaces can be described as spaces in a process of constituting, consolidating and collapsing, continuously kept open and inviting unforeseen development.

Through which means can the ambiguity of such a space be maintained? This also raises the question of how to keep open the process of appropriation, and how to prevent exclusivity for small communities.

AMBIGUOUS EDGES

What if the idea of the defined household is replaced by cohabitation of overlapping and shifting communities?

...two different forms of living are generated: compact cohabitations and spatially extended living. Rooms of the everyday are spread in the city. Distance is seen as a quality. This fosters unknown situations, crossing the path of unfamiliar people each day anew, along the way from the bedroom to the kitchen...

AMBIGUOUS EDGES

The quality of distance / Marcella Brunner

107

AMBIGUOUS EDGES

The quality of distance / Marcella Brunner

109

No corridors, no hallways, no streets. One space connects to another. What if use and activity of such spaces form a continuously changing pattern of passages within the city?

...once a room is no longer occupied, it is cleared for access; it is an environment of non-fixed sequences of spaces, rather a constantly changing organism...

AMBIGUOUS EDGES

The city as connecting room / Maximilian Pertl

111

AMBIGUOUS EDGES

THE The CITY city AS as CONNECTING connecting ROOM room / Maximilian Pertl

113

An old factory hall made accessible to the public, but without clear programmatic definitions.

A roof, a floor, some elements to sit on...

The creation of an open realm, the ambiguity of which constantly invites new forms of appropriation.

Transformation of a factory building in São Paulo, 1982; Lina Bo Bardi

AMBIGUOUS EDGES

SESC POMPÉIA / Lina Bo Bardi

115

The right of way is a formal articulation of what had been a common practice for having access to and crossing territories. Many rights of way were introduced in the context of shifting property rights and the division of commonly used land.

They call into question the duality between the street as circulation space and the block as an entity with limited access.

Rights of way have the potential to create threshold space by stimulating interaction and friction between different entities.

RIGHTS OF WAY

On demolished private plots, new rights of way were created in the form of playgrounds — creating new passageways and trajectories in the city, installing new places of encounter.

Playgrounds Amsterdam, 1947; Aldo van Eyck

RightS of way

Playgrounds / Aldo van Eyck

119

What if free access to the rooftops becomes a right for all citizens?

An expanded staircase, far bigger than standard. The extra space invites the inhabitants as well as other citizens to appropriate it temporarily. A schedule and a housekeeper ensure organisation... The extension of the public realm into the building challenges the notion of private access for the house community.

RightS of way

Equilibrium of Voids / Christopher Gruber, Jakob Jakubowski

121

RightS of way

Equilibrium of Voids / Christopher Gruber, Jakob Jakubowski

123

RIGHTS RightS OF of WAY way

EQUILIBRIUM Equilibrium OF of VOIDS Voids / Christopher Gruber, Jakob Jakubowski

125

What if I reach the supermarket by passing through the library every day?

...rearranging an existing library and retail facilities to generate spatial and social symbiosis: a library, bookshelves, tables, study spaces are positioned in between a supermarket, a bank, sports facilities, a hairdresser’s shop. The limits of these spaces shift according to the intensity of use, allowing for growth and shrinking...

RightS of way

Remixing the knowledge resource / Tobias Rรถmer

127

How can the relationship between neighbours create unusual porosity within the city?

No hallways as merely functional circulation spaces. Every apartment has two doors towards the outside, creating different configurations of neighbours on the two sides.

Apartments can also operate connecting rooms between shared patios. Access to apartments via platforms and spaces shared and open to the public, some equipped with programmes available to everyone.

What if the entrance of the school is placed on the 5th floor?

What if the ground of the city that is accessible to all citizens is not limited to a horizontal section, but provides public access on different levels as an elevated element?

RightS of way

Perpendicular City / Sophie Hartmann, Sonja Wipfler

133

ILLUSTRATION Credits

If not differently indicated the copyright of the illustrations is with the respective authors.

View of the Water Celebration on Boston Common, October 25th 1848.

Lithograph by P. Hyman and David Bigelow; p.21 Corner entrance, photo by Christopher Gruber; p.23 Alexandra Road Estate, photo by Silvester Kreil; p.35 Molenvliet project, John Habraken, 1974, source: Collection, Het Nieuwe Instituut; p.45 Quinta da Malagueira, photo by Lisa Schmidt-Colinet; p.59 Luchtsingel Rotterdam, ZUS architects, 2015, photo by Philip Mallis, CC BY-SA 2.0; p.97 SESC Pompeia, Lina Bo Bardi, photo by Paulisson Miura, CC BY 2.0; p.115 Playground, Aldo van Eyck, 1947, source: Collection, Het Nieuwe Instituut; p.119

Acknowledgements

We want to express our thanks to the IBA_Vienna, International Building Exhibition – New Social Housing, especially to Wolfgang Förster, who initiated the workshop in the Sonnwendviertel/10th district and was open to extend this project into the living laboratory as well as to Kurt Hofstetter, who followed with interest the work of the students at the IKA. Special thanks also to Daniel Glaser for being supportive to the entire project.

We thank the GB* Urban Renewal Office for welcoming us in their space and for giving input to the workhop.

Special thanks to Nils Neuböck, Christopher Gruber, Ferdinand Klopfer and Burak Genc for their engagement and enthusiasm in preparing the exhibition and this catalogue.

Further we want to thank: Eva Blimlinger, Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Andrea Braidt, Vice-Rector for Art|Research Gabriele Mayer and Ulrike Auer, office management of the IKA The students of the design studios and the workshop AMBIGUOUS EDGES: Pia Bauer, Anna Barbieri, Philipp Behawy, Oscar Binder, Frederik Braüner Nygaard, Marcella Brunner, Johannes Daiberl, Marija Katrina Dambe, Iklim Dogan, Martin Eichler, Ella Felber, Clara Fickl, Elisabeth Fölsche, Burak Genc, Christopher Gruber, Sophie Hartmann, Maria Heinrich, Simon Hirtz, Jakob Jakubowski, Amina Karahodzic, Une Kavaliauskaite, Mira Keipke, Ferdinand Klopfer, Felix Kofler, Silvester Kreil, Felix Künkel, Simon Lesina Debiasi, Nathaniel Loretz, Jean Makhlouta, Madeleine Malle, Brina Meze-Petric, Naomi Mithempergher, Madina Mussayeva, Nils Neuböck, Stepan Nesterenko, Urban Niedermayr, Lilo Nöske, Julia Obleitner, Maximilian Pertl, Katja Puschnik, Fabian Puttinger, Alberte Hyttel Reddersen, Tobias Römer, Mikkel Rostrup, Doris Scheicher, Svetlana Starygina, Martin Sturz, Aysen Sulmaz, Patricia Tibu, Julie Timm Vejleaa, Sonia Wipfler, Daniel van der Woude