Asphalt Land

Competition entry "Redesigning the Viennese Town Hall Courtyard" Honourable Mention, Vienna 2002

In cooperation with
Andreas Rumpfhuber

Arcadia
Looking at initial visualisations of the Viennese Town Hall, one realizes the proposed distinction between arcades and square. The arcades enclose and frame a void. Furnished with benches and suspended lights, we read this 'alley' as an interior space with widows to the yard. The square as the centre of the town hall marks a cutting, a piece of Vienna.

Geoposition
+48° 12' 38.80", +16° 21' 24.78"

Idea
We implant an ideal urban space, thus creating an artificial and surreal world. This dreamscape will be charged programmatically with symbols. Mellow hills, a giant zebra crossing, garden furniture, green palm trees in summer, gas ovens in winter etc. establish parts of our Arcadian Vienna imagination. They are elements of a square construction kit.

Asphalt Land
The flow of urban space also takes the town hall’s former plinth, reinterpreting the historic posture of the building in a contemporary way by neutralising it.
In effect our proposal for the arcade square consists of order(s). Similar to a gym, structural gaps in the skin of the square are activated on demand. These gaps serve as drainage and infrastructural docking stations for gas water electricity and so on.