IKA REVIEW WINTER 2020

INSTITUT FÜR KUNST UND ARCHITEKTUR

ADP ANALOGUE DIGITAL PRODUCTION CMT CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY

www.akbild.ac.at/ika

ESC ECOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY CULTURAL HERITAGE

INSTITUTE REVIEW FOR ART WINTER AND 2020 ARCHITECTURE could however be rearranged vertically.

How can I repack my room, or what do I leave out? How do I move in this new space?

LIVING DURING LOCKDOWN – VERTICAL DUETS FIRST YEAR Christina Condak Daniela Herold Sofia Abendstein Arda Arin Vladislava Bugaeva Rosa Dotzer Jakob Draz Planinsek Elliott Griffith Luke Handen Paula Hauschildt Lucia Herber Justa Jasaityte Jule Jungblut Marie Lang Robin Lindner Paul Mittnik Majed Naserie Malea Noll Laurin Saied Florentin Schumann Moritz Tischendorf Xaver Wizany Reviewers and guests Ariella Katz Linda Lackner Antje Lehn Sabina Riss Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Hannes Stiefel Wolfgang Tschapeller

The cell, the cabin, the shelter, the tent, the cabinet, the pod, the shed, the chamber, the room, the frame – at what point does a small space, or a piece of furniture even, become something that is part of architecture? What kinds of questions and ideas in design raise the disciple and make the distinction? How is the human body intertwined with patterns of making space and things around us? This past semester, we challenged typical dimensions of domestic spaces and ideas of comfort in the urban setting by carefully studying the body in movement doing ordinary things. Pushed into an already precarious situation, being a student today, moving from city to city in Europe, knowing another lockdown would be imminent, the private room and the “livework” life became the focus of our studio through a series of calculated explorations. Drawn from above, students’ rooms and belongings were surveyed, almost archaeologically. Living patterns mapped and daily routines traced into linear representations revealed aspects of space and repetitions of use.

We questioned what we need and can share – in terms of furniture, objects and space. What is the difference between just “making do” and living a decent life under any circumstances? What do the terms adaptability or flexibility really imply? As the semester inevitably rolled on from hybrid mode to the second lockdown, we allowed this extreme condition to challenge us. The room drawings led to the idea of “shrinking”: the original room was shrunk to fit into a square plan of 222 x 222 centimetres (about the size of a large bed). The room shrank, but the objects and furniture did not. The room

Since mental health and physical fitness are extremely important when confined, as we learned from the first lockdown, the project brief evolved: Now the body must move and use the space differently, forcing a change of habits and conventions by rearranging the order of things, and thereby changing many patterns. The final exercise was a design project called the “Vertical Duet”. In an imaginary “slot site” (also 222 centimetres wide, but up to 15 metres high) between two buildings, and in teams of two, the students were asked to design a private live-work unit for themselves, with spaces to share in this confined site condition. They wrote their own briefs for living together, with adaptable plans for lockdown measures. Some projects dealt with temporary spaces of light construction, some had more seasonal designs, others were designed for permanent living. The imaginary slot site allowed the concentration of designing from the inside out, from the focus of use, the body, extending dimensions as the primary force of space and form.

The students could concentrate on their ideas of coming and going, living in transitional spaces, unconstrained by the complexity of a real site.

One of the vertical duet projects introduced the idea of a cupboard that would serve not only as a space for storing all the personal belongings of two people, but also include all facilities for living, i.e. a bath, toilet, kitchen elements, niches for beds, as well as circulation spaces. With a width of about 70 cm, pushed to one side of the slot along the neighbouring building, the compressed “cupboard” took up one third of the given site width.

The remaining interstice became a kind of service space or space for manipulation. Equipped with sliding doors and removable elements, certain areas of the cupboard could be opened up and activated, for example a folding dining table or a tilting work table. Due to needs and daily routines, the cupboard reflects the performative aspect of living.

Another duet project concentrated on the relation between living and gardening.

The idea was to minimize the area of enclosed spaces in order to gain as much outdoor space as possible. Each activity, such as sleeping, working, cooking, bathing and studying, took the form of a floating “pavilion” or room, caught in the slot site, connected by the outdoors and by stairs. The live-work unit became a fragmented sequence of indoor and outdoor spaces, with gardens along the way. Each pavilion has a specific relation to “green” – whether as a roof extension for planting herbs and vegetables, or a terrace added to the private unit for growing a rose garden, or by opening up the bathroom to take a shower in the “ivy forest”. Together, they form one common vertical garden that becomes part of this shared life.

The aspect of designing from the inside out was a core strategy of another duet project. Starting with the body’s performance of daily routines, the students decided on several units that were linked to one another, some of them for individual use, some shared. Since the units

were reduced to a minimum, there was no space left for mobile furniture. Therefore, furniture became an integrated part of the walls, floors and ceilings. Wherever a table, a seat, a bed or storage was needed, the built envelope was pushed outward as far as possible to permit each use.

Through these manipulations, each unit wound up with a specific form, and the façade reached a certain thickness and topography.

A topography was also generated by an-other project called a “stairway landscape”. Here, living is integrated along a ramp-like stair, extending all the way up the site, where the uses programmed the rise and run in irregular ways. Sometimes steeper and arranged in quick succession, one after the other, as stairs will be, sometimes flatter and further apart, evoking a spatial impression of a fluid landscape and creating a spatial sequence with specifically set views outward. The stair was seen not as an element to connect living spaces, but a surface to live on.

Christina Condak, Daniela Herold Design Studio BArch1

→ fig. 1–2 / p. 5 → fig. 30 / p. 11 → fig. 39 / p. 13 → fig. 50 / p. 16

AN EXPLORATION OF THE SAVAGE, CHANGEFUL, NATURAL, GROTESQUE, RIGID & REDUNDANT IN ST. STEPHEN'S CATHEDRAL CMT Michelle Howard Luciano Parodi Olivia Ahn Lucas Fischötter Maximilian Gallo Alexander Groiss Paula Hattenkerl Felix Knoll Armin Maierhofer Jonathan Moser Diana Mudrak Anna-Elina Pieber Dana Radzhibaeva Paul Schurich Roxane Seckauer Marie Teufel Reviewers, guests and supporters Sandra Bartoli Lily Chi Günther Dreger Julian Goethe Roland Kollnitz Linda Lackner Miguel Paredes Maldonado Samuel Seger Nikolaus Studnicka Barbara Schedl Franz Zehetner Wolfgang Zehetner Marmor-Industrie Kiefer RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems Solnhofen Stone Group Steinmetz- und Steinbruchbetriebe Gustav Hummel

SMASHUP spanned one semester from October 2020 to January 2021 – a short time right at the epicentre of a period of enormous social, political and environmental change.1 Indeed, one

HTC HISTORY THEORY CRITICISM GLC GEOGRAPHY LANDSCAPES CITIES

could compare it to that which produced what we now call Gothic architecture (although the increased temperatures of the early Middle Ages were the result of natural forces and their effects benevolent2). SMASHUP was conducted within the CMT Platform, which resolutely embraces the heuristic path of empirical experimentation in the discovery of constructions, materials and technologies.

Things that are implemented are usually born of practice, not theory. A good example of this is the ambition and adventurousness of Early Gothic cathedrals (according to the historian Guy Beaujouan, until the 13th century no more than five people in the whole of Europe knew how to do division). We actively seek out previously underestimated and partly forgotten methods, materials and ways of thinking.

Much as an archaeologist uses new tools to unlock old mysteries in wellknown fossils, we seek to unlock new ways of constructing our lived environment.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus3 and the resulting lockdowns have called into question long-established systems, including those that underpin the architectural establishment. Our restricted sphere of movement gave us the opportunity to discover Saint Stephen’s Cathedral. Indeed, it was one of the few places to remain open during lockdown. Three people generously shared their intimate knowledge of the cathedral: Wolfgang Zehetner, the Dombaumeister, part of an uninterrupted line dating from the 13th century, took us on a marathon seven-hour tour of the cathedral which rendered us breathless from wonder and exhaustion. Franz Z ehetner, the cathedral archivist, opened up the archives to us. Barbara Schedl introduced us to the social and historical context in which the cathedral and its building process was embedded.

Our prototypes this semester, produced against a background of minimal access to workshops and materials, are a collective book and model. The book, through its many authors, collects thoughts, constructs stories, excavates history, and connects foibles of the Middle Ages with the present day, using Saint Stephen’s Cathedral as a vehicle. Each student dealt with one specific SMASHUP of constructed elements together with their often manifold social and historical contexts. Each chapter or contribution embodies a small unit in the understanding of a larger collective endeavour. Its accomplice, the model, collects the objects of our research into scaffolding resembling the cathedral. Each piece is crafted by the students, collectively in the sense that they have all been scanned from reality and reconstructed digitally, and individually in the sense that the final analogue piece was not necessarily a result of collective preparation.

Both book and model are unreasonable, inefficient and idiosyncratic: The book uses the paper format “Royal” (440 x 608 mm), established by the Bologna statutes of 13894, folded in two. It is a little bit shorter and a little bit wider than the standard DIN-A3 format. Because of this choice, all pages had to be printed in sets of two on a large-scale plotter, then cut to size and folded. Not all pages adhered to the Bologna format or even to the use of paper. This necessitated the development of devices to facilitate the process of assembly and adapt to the many

exceptions. The book is carried in an unwieldy box that is also a sort of lectern and support. It takes over 15 minutes to unwrap the book and set it up for reading.

It weighs over 20 kilos and is at least 20 centimetres thick. There are no page numbers, but each separate study can be found with the help of bookmarks inscribed with masons’ marks.

The model is at 1:125 scale, chosen because its dimensions in plan would closely match those of the opened book. In a sort of mystical logic, the model connects to the book by sitting on it rather snugly, a book-model SMASHUP. Scaling was surprising and confusing because during the process, we discovered that documents on the cathedral were often contradictory. So the minutely detailed, reconstructed medieval roof structure did not really fit on the scaffolding of the base.

Dimensions in plans from the 17th century didn’t match those from the reconstruction after the fire of 1945, which also disagreed with contemporary plans, sometimes by over three metres. So the scaffolding carried insert models a little bit too tightly or a little bit too loosely, and often, elements that were intended to connect or overlay just didn’t.

The book and the model, while the result of collective discussion and construction, are not free of physical and intellectual collisions. In this manner, they are perhaps a fitting tribute to the early Gothic period and the buildings that emerged from it.

Gothic buildings are born from a specific context, an intertwining of the social, political, environmental and technological, each embedded in the difference, uniqueness, particularity and specificity of a society, situation and topography. Nevertheless, notwithstanding their manifold differences, they all share a common identity, a kind of counter-international style born out of the medieval warm period5 and the emergence of scholasticism on a bed of limestone reaching from Central Europe to England, with origins reaching to Northern Africa, Asia, India and the surprisingly extensive trade routes of the early medieval world.

SMASHUP perceives all entities as elastic, exchanging influences and exerting attractive powers. SMASHUP supercharges argument, bounces against taste, preconceived ideas and laissez-faire politics. SMASHUP is not aggressive or threatening, confronting strong propositions, requiring them to coexist and improve. SMASHUP is antifragile6 and wears the badge of imperfection with pride. SMASHUP is the dialogue between balance and awareness, flying buttresses, custom-made tools and stereotomy …

Michelle Howard, Luciano Parodi Design Studio BArch3

→ fig. 17–25 / p. 9 → fig. 48–49 / p. 15 1 A global pandemic has to date taken nearly three million lives and forced us to keep our distance from one another for over a year. The resulting collapse of travel, cultural and social activities or human contact has not reduced CO2 output enough to slow our pace towards climate disaster. An overtly racist and misogynist former reality star lost his bid to serve a second term as U.S. President and subsequently incited a coup on the seat of government. While abortion was legalised in Argentina, new laws in Poland made it al­most impossible. Women in Belarus rose up to protest

2

REVIEW WINTER 2020

against their dictator and continue to resist while democracy has, to all intents and purposes, been cancelled in Hong Kong.

2 www.co2science.org/subject/g/summaries/ globalmwp.php [18.03.2021] 3 COVID-19 is a contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.

4 The Bologna stone shows four standard paper sizes, circa 1389. The original marble hung on the façade of the Palazzo d’Accursio on Piazza Maggiore.

The surviving limestone replica is kept in the lapidarium of Bologna‘s Museo Civico Medievale.

5 www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-andplanetary-sciences/medieval-warm-period [18.03.2021] 6 Nassim Taleb: Antifragile. Things That Gain From Disorder, Penguin Random House Trade, 2014

HTC Aristide Antonas Eva Sommeregger Antonia Autischer Annick-Sophie Bächle Leonard Vincent Behrens Daniel Bracher Sidika Cupuroglu Alexander Czernin David Degasper Yoka Halbwidl Tim Handl Alice Hoffmann Claire Yvonne Kaiser Ji Yun Lee Celina Mandl Elias Martinez Moreno Paul Mielke Abigail Miodownick Heloise Peyre Lisa Maria Prosegger Moritz Schafschetzy Helena Schenavsky Salome Schramm Sebastian Scheib Johanna Maria Syré Atias Tapia Johannes Wiener Julia Maria Wiesiollek Catherina Zesch

ESC Hannes Stiefel Damjan Minovski Veronika Behawetz Julian Berger Florian Berrar Katherina Duller Katharina Eder Marie Eham Jakob Grabher Shrey Gupta Felix Kofler Katherina Kunzova Lovisa Lorén Prima Mathawabhan Alina Meyer Nils Neuböck Anna Orbanic Magdalena Stainer Lin Vedsoe Dilan Vural Vincent Wörndl

Using Gilles Deleuze’s model of the desert, we explored existing Greek islands; these desert islands can also be found in the real estate market. The studio was also an examination of forms of resistance to this process of understanding the islands as financial assets, as well as an experiment with a hypothesis on how autonomous life can be lived on a desert island while maintaining its desert character, ultimately leading to some fragmented architectural responses to self-proposed programmes and to the production of short films.

Aristide Antonas

The current condition of Kinkplatz is interpreted as bona vacantia – a place whose owner, the Municipality of Vienna, has all but given it up.

In order to neither lose the tectonic (e.g. constructed) and atmospheric qualities nor the experimental character of the built environment at Kinkplatz, an open common terrain rather than a public terrain is proposed. Embedded in the common terrain are dwelling units for its caretakers, who take care of the structure and the beings in the surrounding environment. A collective of caretakers lives at Kinkplatz, and in return, its members offer their time and particular skills to maintain the surrounding environment.

Vincent Wörndl

THE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL FOR THE CITY

What more can you say. The tragedy of the apparently orchestrated decay of the seminal building Schule am Kinkplatz by Helmut Richter was, and still is, the subject of discussions and negotiations in many formats and contexts1. In the face of their futility, ESC is exploring yet other attempts to contribute to vital initiatives in order to support not “just” a single building but rather a general architectural culture in this city altogether.

The studio investigated perspectives on the modern-day social sphere taken from the experience of a so-called “personal cockpit” – an individual everyday replacement of the household, understood as an assumed position and a selection of objects: screens, beds, microphones, desks, etc. – from which we gaze upon the material world. This material view of the world is mediated by the immateriality of the data infrastructure. Through this observation, both the material and immaterial worlds increasingly resemble systems of overlapping deserts; some new definitions of a desert emerge from this perception, and a question arises about these new deserts: What are these deserts depriving us of?

→ fig. 7–8 / p. 6 → fig. 15–16 / p. 8 → fig. 26 / p. 9

SHADOW, WIND AND MIRROR TALES

Reviewers and guests Maria Auböck Anna Paul Bika Rebek Franz Sam Brian Tabolt Silja Tillner Thomas Vass Alfred Willinger René Ziegler John Zissovici

Reviewers and guests Valentina Karga Armin Linke Mona Mahal Asli Serbest Theo Triantafyllidis Alvaro Velasco Perez

Design Studio BArch5

The caretaker is of further interest because the role, as originally understood, is disappearing. This is happening due to purely economic considerations, and qualities that are difficult to quantify – or simply not of economic interest – are thus ignored. Furthermore, as minimum wage earners, caretakers are especially vulnerable in cities with rising rents.

With KINKPLATZ EXPERIMENTS we’ve approached the task from two sides. First, we want to support architecture through architecture – architectural projects and models are to plumb the potentialities of the abandoned school. Second, through programme: at the platform ESC, we understand the task of Cultural Heritage as a transformative practice, as opposed to conservation. So if it turns out that the reinstallation of an educational programme is not feasible, other forms of programmes that mirror the experimental character of the building’s conception, programming and construction must be tested. Here, the term “experiment” has an explicitly positive connotation. The projects constitute an architectural “test that is done in order to study what happens and to gain new knowledge”2.

After Vienna Reflections (2014), KINKPLATZ EXPERIMENTS is ESC’s second attempt to sustain Helmut Richter’s main architectural legacy. It needs and deserves our attention, support and labour – on an ongoing basis.

Hannes Stiefel

KINKPLATZ AS BONA VACANTIA 3 Caretaker : one that gives physical or emotional care and support : one that takes care of the house or land of an owner who may be absent : one temporarily fulfilling the function of office4 The project’s initial starting point of investigation is the concept of “Schulwart*in” as a caretaker of mostly public schools who lives on the grounds of the institution. As the former school at Kinkplatz was a public school, such a caretaker’s dwelling was planned and embedded in the structure

by Helmut Richter. The caretaker’s role is seen as crucial for sustaining the existence of the built environment at Kinkplatz.

The aim of studying the caretaker in the context of Kinkplatz is to explore: - the necessity of considering social infrastructure in architecture in order for it to be sustainable in the broadest sense; - care as a relationship among individuals as well as between individuals and architecture.

The right to the city: David Harvey argues in his Book Rebel Cities that “[t]he right to the city is, therefore, far more than a right of individual or group access to the resources that the city embodies: it is a right to change and reinvent the city more after our hearts’ desire.” The freedom to make and remake ourselves and our cities is, I would argue, one of the most precious, yet most neglected of our human rights. How best, then, to exercise that right? It is a right that has always been discussed. But in the end, the question remains: To whom does the city we live in belong, and how can we create a more participatory discussion of what the city is and how it is going to be shaped? The Independent School for the City is a sanctuary, a learning community, open to everyone who is involved with the city. This is rooted in the practice of combining a critical and activist approach to the city with effecting real change through architectural and planning projects. The Independent School for the City is founded on a strong belief in an incremental approach – instead of a tabula rasa approach – to city planning that blurs the lines between critique and practice on the one hand, and research and policy on the other. It also builds on the conviction that strategies for the city – architectural and economic, spatial and social – should be based on actual first-hand empirical research. The school is fully independent, has an unaccredited status by choice and sees the right to the city as a fundamental human right. It is precisely this participatory programme that enables a state in which Helmut Richter’s architecture itself operates as the main facilitator, and the participants are constantly reacting to the building and its facilities. Like the city in which it originated, the building offers interesting conflicts and unpredictable synergies to learn from and build upon. Allowing experimentation with the building as a permanent part of the city – as the city itself – will give us a chance to have seemingly coincidental encounters with parts or aspects of the city where various kinds of clashes take place, where otherwise invisible realities reveal themselves.

A series of design interventions were made to enable, test and play with the topic of city making: 1. The city trombone is rooted in the idea of the power of speech. The school should work as a resonance chamber for the citizens, and that has to be loud as hell.

2. The flying classroom is inspired by Vilém Flusser’s amphitheatre discourse model, which is simply more effective than frontal teaching and enables fluid discussions.

It also makes it possible to see the complexity of the city from above, which of course stimulates the discourse in itself.

3. Being water self-sufficient can be a thing for a community. Moreover, seeing the entire circulation process could be an interesting tool for education. “Make water great again” is the most subtle facility in the school. Simply put, it enables the school to be water self-sufficient, and this allows more freedom in terms of policy.

4. The “Façade Occupier” is one of the tools that can be used all over the city. It

makes it possible to swarm out and squat vacancies immediately.

5. Last but not least, the urban think tank.

This is rooted in the idea of using the heat problems of the building to facilitate a place of reflection and discussion. In order to enable a relational and sensory experience between the body and its urban environment, the baths function as a filter of the city’s ever-changing cycles.

This creates a tidal state between decay and regeneration. The attempt to consider built structures morphologically necessitated by this tidal state serves the search for articulation surfaces in urban spaces, as a kind of joint or catalyst between people in their (built) environment – a bore line between the city and its residents.

This contrast between passive and active calls for thinking of the bathhouse as a programmatic mash-up or a hybrid organization that can lend itself to more than just being a place for bathing.

All the tools mentioned above were developed to transform the institution into a catalytic urban cultural hub. Besides that, it was important to quickly and cheaply preserve the existing building. So you can see the scaffolding, which is easily extendable to the needs of the school, and in turn preserves the building’s structure and provides a low-cost basis for future repairs. The scaffolding will not only create new spaces between and around the current footprint, but also provide a framework for additional walkways and platforms, for example for outdoor classes.

The infrastructure permits the insertion of new access points and openings. The intervention supports the school’s move to open itself up to the city, while also activating the site through new programming possibilities. The Independent School for the City wants to be just as complex, useful and stubborn as the city in which it originated. Ultimately, the Independent School provides a platform for facing the challenges of the city with an open mind, without hiding behind any windows.

Julian Berger Design Studio MArch

→ fig. 11–14 / p. 8 → fig. 27–28 / p. 10 → fig. 51 / p. 16 → fig. 53 / p. 18 1 See i.a.: www.oegfa.at/initiativen-1/kinkplatz 2 Definition “experiment”: www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/experiment_1 3 Something is referred to as “bona vacantia” if it never had an owner or possessor, or if he/she gave up his/her ownership and possession (dereliction).

4 www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caretaker

HTC Angelika Schnell Pia Bauer Philipp Behawy Daron Chiu Chiara Desbordes Dilâ Kırmızıtoprak Stepan Nesterenko Ruben Stadler Sophia Stemshorn Reviewers and guests Waltraud Indrist Anne Isopp Linda Lackner Monika Platzer Andreas Spiegl Paula Strunden

Even in digital times, making books remains a popular way of making completed projects accessible to the public.

Since the Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA) at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna devoted the entire academic year 2019/2020 to the topic of increasing heat in the city of Vienna, it made sense to synthesise the many and manifold results of the students’ projects in a book.

At the HTC platform (History,Theory, Criticism), a separate Master's studio titled Book of Hitze was engaged in preparatory thinking. Therefore, the book now presented is an intermediate step, not a summary of the approximately 130 works by students from all years and ten design studios at all platforms of the IKA.

Instead, the book consists of eight individual essays by eight students, stating both their individual and common positions on HITZE TAKES COMMAND, the title of the year’s theme. They consider the theme and their fellow students’ heterogeneous projects often not from the classical perspective of interpretation or critique, i.e. from an elevated and distant perspective. After all, Pia Bauer, Philipp Behawy, Daron Chiu, Chiara Desbordes, Dilâ Kırmızıtoprak, Stepan Nesterenko, Ruben Stadler and Sophia Stemshorn were themselves part of the “Year of Hitze” at IKA. As Master’s students, they also developed, designed or advised on projects, and these have an effect on the way in which they approach the topic: through a personal lens, rather from the sidelines or prompted by the observation of a specific phenomenon that allows the discussion of only a small number of projects.

This approach has the advantage of directing attention to peculiarities and sometimes hidden connections or critical questions externally imposed on the projects and their contexts. It allows itself its own position and does not shy away from risks.

The instability of this position is reflected in the content. Despite different topics, all essays seem to take it as more or less given that in view of the crisis in store not just for a Central European city like Vienna due to climate change, architecture cannot hold on to its role, traditional since modernism, as a vector of change for the better. The good life, or the ever better life even, that it was supposed to bring about may perhaps have to be redefined, or even relinquished.

Philipp Behawy clearly makes this case, taking as his point of departure Giorgio Agamben’s thesis of a “state of exception”, as well as a number of student projects in which people live in cellars or birds rebelliously reclaim their space, in order to ask if the role of architecture in the future will be to manage the constant crisis. #STATE OF EXCEPTION Dilâ Kırmızıtoprak, though identifying many utopian approaches from the “Year of Hitze” at IKA – as if architecture were remembering its own heroic past – still highlights that these are ambivalent. Depending on perspective, they also reveal their dystopian potential. Reading the essay feels like constantly going back and forth, similar to an optical illusion. #BEAUTIFUL DYSTOPIAS Pia Bauer and Ruben Stadler also take an oscillating and open position. Their point of departure is their design project jointly developed in the summer term of 2020, for which, in the context of so-called heat islands, they identified residual sites in public space in the area of Thaliastrasse in the 16th district, which could be appropriated by the inhabitants as (cooler) compensation for the city heating up. Pia Bauer advocates for public space, which will remain important in the future despite all conceptual uncertainties, as it represents the intersection of challenges of ecology and political democracy. Ruben Stadler reflects on the related political contradictions and legal problems that require constant discussion and negotiation. #POWER TO THE PUBLIC SPACE #ILLEGAL PLACEMAKING Sophia Stemshorn likewise addresses politically defined spaces. She also criticises the traditional role of architecture, in this case for its normative inscription of male, heterosexual, white bodies in the production of space, which will supply no useful responses to the critical developments caused by climate change. She uses queer feminist theories to analyse projects that seek to escape classical dichotomies or criticise them. #ASYMMETRIES OF POWER Stepan Nesterenko was struck by the fact that many students abandoned even the canonical format of plan presentation and instead took up storytelling of all kinds in order to emphasise the fluid, indeterminate and ever-mutable nature of their designs.

This also applies to some projects that use contemporary game engine software and appear to take a first-person

REVIEW WINTER 2020

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perspective, unusual in architecture. However, fantastically animated settings barely reminiscent of the real Vienna environment can theoretically be manipulated by their beholders as well, so that no coherent subjectivity emerges in this case, either.

We are also experiencing a state in which the tangible reality that surrounds us is being invisibly organized by Big Data and Big Tech, simultaneously producing the impression of an endless flow of information (hence of opportunity) marketed as fully and neutrally accessible, and a state of potentially permanent surveillance in a borderless environment of algorithms yet to be fully regulated by laws.

#PHA(N)TOM’S JOY[STICK] Daron Chiu and Chiara Desbordes therefore propose a concluding position, each in a different way. After an appeal to finally take the long-known theses of the Club of Rome seriously and to establish “bio economics” as developed by economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, in which architecture would be a sub-discipline deprived of its autonomy, Daron Chiu discusses the specific question of if and how low carbon architecture could be possible. And Chiara Desbordes takes a number of student projects from the “Year of Hitze”, extrapolates them to a future in the year 2120 and tells a story of city dwellers who may seem familiar to us in rather uncomfortable ways: when they protest against large-scale space parks above the roofs of the city of Vienna (enraged citizens), when the affluent residents of privileged districts insist on their cooling privileges (gentrification), when people manage to make do somehow in small, underground rooms (force of habit). Here, architecture lacks the power to change people, though we enjoy strolling through the new environments. #ENTROPIA #A VISION OF A RADICAL ARCHITECTURE What the eight essays have in common is that they see architecture as part of the crisis. They interpret the students’ designs as attempts to fundamentally question the role of architecture. This puts the latter in an unstable situation, and the theme of the book is the identification of this balancing act. It is explored, developed and debated in eight essays; it insists on being endured, and sometimes also enjoyed.

Angelika Schnell Design Studio MArch

→ fig. 40–47 / p. 14

Increasingly scarce resources – from the biosphere to the economy – and (perhaps too) extreme imbalances in their distribution call for a global, swift and, importantly, a coordinated plan of action. Yet we observe the resurgence of new nationalism marketed on promises to close borders – either temporarily or less temporarily – and to restore societies to a past, nostalgic, pre-global sameness and uniformity. The delusional promise of a Better Life. Paradise Lost.

The ongoing pandemic exposes the crucial need for access to nature, landscapes, health, (decent) housing, civil rights, shelter, safety and opportunity, in short, to the εὖ ζῆν2, the Good Life, meant as a political project. If crises are opportunities to discern and examine, what is the Good Life now?

Under the current, rapidly changing conditions, one question is how architecture and territory may (or may not) be able to evolve and gain relevance in a global arena. How can architecture not only contribute to a critical understanding of reality, but also, importantly, advocate for new models of praxis? The projects developed in this research driven studio explored alternative media and examined all of the above issues and propose a wide variety of solutions for a Good Life.

Alessandra Cianchetta

Design Studio MArch

→ fig. 9–10 / p. 7 → fig. 31–36 / p. 12 → fig. 52 / p. 17 → fig. 56–60 / p. 19 1 See Giorgio Agamben, The Omnibus: Homo Sacer, 2017 2 See “Good Life” in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

THESIS

THESIS

ABOUT THE TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESSES OF ANTHROPOGENIC LANDSCAPES Thesis project Elisa Mazagg Advisors Hannes Stiefel Luciano Parodi

In the past centuries, we humans have become the main geological agents transforming and moving the materials of the Earth to a vast and unprecedented extent.

New artificial landscapes have emerged, leaving immensely powerful features and traces, and turning landscapes into the cultural heritage of humanity. Remote observation methods have become a useful way of documenting and analysing these dynamic phenomena and their constant development from a distance and without the need for any physical interaction. This thesis is therefore based on the territory’s state of constant change, focusing on the interaction between human forces and their resulting built environments. Combined with the enormous increase in data availability and accessibility of the present, this leads to a more complex and multi-layered approach to depicting and representing landscapes in their continuous transformation.

In this way, the thesis acts as a translator between the static visual perception of landscape and the dynamic processes that are its creators. By inventing new strategies of representation and evaluating multiple forms of data, the thesis augments the familiar perception of landscapes. Starting from a single observation of the opal landscape in Coober Pedy, it enables a new understanding of landscape dynamics and creates a basis for a deeper and enhanced analysis of our human impact on the Earth. → fig. 37–38 / p. 13

THESIS

GLC Alessandra Cianchetta Oscar Daniel Binder Andreas Brandstetter Thuy Chang Dang Maja Jankov Ferdinand Klopfer Mert Özkan Nikolaus Podlaha Max Rubach Patricio Sota Renero Mona Steinmetzer Ilinca Urziceanu Santiago Vásquez López Reviewers and guests: Matteo Cainer Andrea Lenardin Madden Enrico Molteni

Thesis project Ella Felber Advisors Wolfgang Tschapeller Lisa Schmidt-Colinet

The 58th Venice Art Biennale 2019, curated by Ralph Rugoff, was titled – presciently – May You Live in Interesting Times.

Significant crises are currently shaking the world. Geopolitical shifts, global political and civil unrest, increasing uncertainty and volatility, unprecedented migrations and diasporas, climate crises, health crises, and last but not least, looming recessions and depressions are all colliding in this moment in time.

This thesis is an experiment. It consists of multiple attempts to construct a place within architecture and poetry, as an exception to the distinction. In a case study – a reading – of Tiefer Graben/ Hohe Brücke, various writings are assembled in this book. While digging in this place, an essay, a sequence of encounters and a sketchbook arise: a reflective investigation, directed explorations and raw, intimate approaches.

In such complex and menacing times, oversimplification, populism, fear and a semi-permanent state of exception, to put it with philosopher Giorgio Agamben or with controversial political theorist Carl Schmitt – Ausnahmezustand – might prevail. A state in which the law is suspended for an indefinite time, but not abrogated. If the power of law is to distinguish political beings, citizens from “bare bodies” (ζωή)1, recent events show the notion is too often overlooked.

By writing for a place, the work uncovers potentials and sets up possibilities of entering, interacting and practising in the ambiguous space within architecture and poetry. → fig. 54–55 / p. 18

The aim of this thesis is to document and critically examine the historical development of multi-family and social housing in the settlement areas of Vorarlberg.

The social status associated with it by the population of Vorarlberg, as well as related political and societal developments, will also be examined. Based on examples of projects and extensive literature research, analysis of historical aerial photographs, several site visits and various interviews, the topic is explored with a broad, architecturally interested audience in mind. Text, pictures, plans and maps are used to show that multi-family and social housing has been around for a long time in Vorarlberg. A further aim is to stress the importance of densification for Vorarlberg’s increasingly urban settlements, and to help remove the stigma from multi-family housing in Vorarlberg using the diverse examples of projects.

The result is a historical counter-narrative to the popular narrative of Vorarlberg as a paradise of single-family houses. → fig. 3–4 / p. 5 THESIS

PLACEMAKING IN THE ERA OF MIGRATION Thesis project Doris Scheicher Advisors Aristide Antonas Antje Lehn

It is estimated that by 2050, over 140 million people may be at risk of displacement as a consequence of climate change.1 Climate cannot be reduced to its meteorological and ecological effects, however, as it entails serious consequences in the biogeographical and sociocultural realms, as well in economic and politic relations.

The increase in extreme weather events and disparity in the allocation of resources will become precursors to migration flows from various strata of society.

Due to cumulated vulnerabilities, the Sahel region has been dubbed “ground zero”2 for climate induced migration.

Indeed, a majority of migrants arriving in Europe originate in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The conceptions of “mobile space”3 and “multi-sited territory”4 are rooted in the history of Sahelian populations, who recognized the potential of mobility as an adaptive strategy against uncertainty.

DIGGING IN A DITCH, WRITING FOR A PLACE

There is a place shared by architecture and poetry. It emerges from their overlap, and requires us to enter, to adapt and to actively participate in its configuration. By perceiving, using, engaging and acting, we create realities, and we change them.

By interacting with our environment, be it physical or written, our experiences inscribe meaning, and thereby we create a place.

in Vorarlberg dates back to long before the marked spread of single-family housing developments began.

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MULTI-FAMILY AND SOCIAL HOUSING IN VORARLBERG Thesis project Naomi Mittempergher Advisors Angelika Schnell Lisa Schmidt-Colinet

That Vorarlberg is a paradise of singlefamily houses is a common perception.

Single-family houses have in fact been the most popular form of housing in Vorarlberg since the mid-20th century, and the main form of housing for many years. Multi-family and social housing, on the other hand, long played only a minor role. It is largely underrepresented in the spatial perception of settlement areas in Vorarlberg, as well as in publications and media, and therefore often depicted as an atypical and novel form of construction. In fact, however, the historical development of multi-family and social housing

Research conducted on mapping the flows and forces of migration revealed the subjectivity inherent to maps. Instead of being objective representations of geographic space, their layers are capable of aligning a wealth of interdisciplinary information along multiple scales and timelines. Their author is involved in the construction of an environment that goes beyond the illustration of something naturally given.

Through alternative mapping, the thesis aims to counter the prevailing narrative of migration as a crisis and puts an emphasis on migration’s relevance to the production of space. In an era of accelerated mobility, displacements are no longer bounded by city limits or traditional ruralto-urban movements, and it might become necessary to consider the concept of “placemaking”5 on a global scale.

1 Kumari Rigaud, Kanta; Alex de Sherbinin, Bryan Jones, Jonas Bergmann, Viviane Clement, Kayly Ober, Jacob Schewe, Susana Adamo, Brent McCusker, Silke Heuser, and Amelia Midgley (2018): Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration 2 Vigil, Sara (2017): Climate Change and Migration: Insights from the Sahel 3 Retaillé, Denis; Walther, Olivier (2011): Spaces of uncertainty: A model of mobile space in the Sahel.

4 Lima, Stéphanie (2013): Multi-Sited Territories and Migratory Circulation 5 www.pps.org/article/jjacobs-2 [18.3.2021]

SEMINAR

A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE ON AUTHENTICITY AND INTIMACY IN PERFORMANCE AND POLITICS The first question put to students at the beginning of the seminar series was, why did you choose it? The overall consensus: the title, it sounded interesting. Ibiza?! is a reference to the big scandal that shook Austria in the spring of 2019, a video secretly filmed on a holiday island in 2017 that caused the Austrian government to collapse. Ibiza?! indicates the focus on Austrian politics as part of the seminar.

But Ibiza?! is also intended to offer a perspective on other European countries such as Italy, whose political image in recent years has been characterised by a shirtless Matteo Salvini. The core of his political campaign was taking images of himself and his “amici” at the beach and posting them on Instagram. The beach was also what the ‘68 protest movement sought to find under the paving stones of Paris, as its famous slogan indicated.

So Ibiza?! signifies political scandals and a critical lens on the intellectual heritage of ‘68, including the search for authenticity and the liberation of intimacy. So what about authenticity and intimacy? The Ibiza video, among its content, showed an incredibly intimate perspective – a hidden camera pointed directly at the belly of the (now former) vice-chancellor lounging on a sofa. And this intimacy seemed to produce authenticity in a political figure, known for the virtuosity of his public performances – just like that, “zack, zack, zack”.

Owing to the circumstances of teaching online, the intimacy produced by a Zoom seminar in which many participants, including the lecturer, produced publicness via their private home spaces was an interesting side effect, enhancing the seminar’s subject; sofas became beaches with just a click.

One performance video work notoriously known for its staged intimacy, filmed in a hotel room and still raising a lot of controversy, is Andrea Fraser’s Untitled from 2001, pre-social media. Juxtaposed with the Ibiza video, it was discussed in the first seminar titled Untitled Affairs – shifting the focus from a horizontal secret camera perspective to one from above, from bellies to naked bottoms, from politics to performance art. The main point of controversy in Fraser’s Untitled, like in the Ibiza affair, was the question of the financial transaction (how much money did the collector pay?) and not the intimacy as such. A more recent feminist performance piece that provided intimate images of a young female artist taken from her bedroom, including a mental breakdown, is Amalia Ulman’s Excellences and Perfections (2014), an Instagram performance that many perceived as authentic rather than staged at the time of its posting. This work, which was at first considered too banal to be art by many of her followers, documents Ulman’s downfall and rise from girlish teen to drug addict to lifestyle guru, shortly after graduating from a London art university. In seminar 5, Beach Wear and Boob Jobs, Ulman’s work was discussed in juxtaposition with Matteo Salvini’s Instagram (performance). Like the Ibiza affair and its emanations, shirtless male and scantily dressed female bodies, staging their authentic selves, keep circulating on Instagram.

This seminar asked, who is allowed to stage what and why? And what does this online circulation generate? Who is it for? The feminist perspective on gender constructs sought to answer these questions using theoretical tools from political philosophy such as heterotopia (Michel Foucault, 1966), communicative capitalism (Jodi Dean, 2005) and agonistics (Chantal Mouffe, 2007). Like in a political campaign and performance art, it seems that picking a compelling title for a seminar is half the job done.

Denise Ackerl

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EXHIBITION

PUBLICATION

PUBLICATION

THE POLITICAL PAST AND THE POST-POLITICAL CITY

GLC Antje Lehn Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Olivia Ahn Pia Bauer Raphael Bayer Charlotte Beaudon-Römer Florian Berrar Annika Böcher Chiara Desbordes Lucas Fischötter Maximilian Gallo Yingqi (Jessie) Gao Alexander Groiss Paula Hattenkerl Luise Jannot Alexander Klapsch Ferdinand Klopfer Kateřina Kunzová Rachel Tsz Man Lee Tsz Shing (Jason) Liu Armin Maierhofer Prima Mathawabhan Martina Jole Moro Diana Mudrak Stepan Nesterenko Nils Neuböck Mert Özkan Maximilian Pertl Anna-Elina Pieber Pauls Rietums Paul Schurich Roxane Seckauer Mona Steinmetzer Sophia Stemshorn Marie Teufel Magdalena Triendl Vincent Wörndl Luca Wulf

Starting from a course on representation and mapping, students of the Institute for Art and Architecture presented a multimedia map composed of 35 fragments.

The site of research into the conditions of ownership, territory and buildings was set in the area of Althangrund/Spittelau in Vienna’s 9th district. The Althangrund area is characterized by a complex construction: with the placement of a gigantic platform above the existing train tracks, the area’s ground became multiplied. The result is a city fragment, multi-layered in terms of accessibility, ownership and usage rights.

The students started with investigations on-site in spring 2020. The restrictions that were introduced to control Covid-19 soon limited their opportunities to measure and map the area on site. Therefore, the descriptions became more and more imaginative. Italo Calvino’s stories of Invisible Cities entered the scene, and the students superimposed poetic speculations about imaginative urban layers on the relatively dry legal document of the cadastral map. Dislocated, the site was digitally reconstructed, reimagined and reinvented. Memories of the site collided with visual and acoustic materials, provided off-location, online or through historical maps. The outcome was a rich and complex portrait of the inaccessible and alienated Althangrund – approached from a distance.

The exhibition took place as a cooperation of the IKA with Architekturzentrum Wien in the context of the exhibition Land for Us All in February 2021. → fig. 5–6 / p. 6

A THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE WITH CONTRADICTIONS A new book by Angelika Schnell, published in Bauwelt Fundamente 163 by Birkhäuser, Basel 2019

“I understand history as the available material of architecture.”

Aldo Rossi

The architectural and theoretical legacy of Milanese architect Aldo Rossi (1931– 1997) remains divisive to this day. The search for a “rationalistic” method suitable for scientifically assessing architectural and urban history, and making it productive as the available material in architectural practice, occupied Rossi all his life.

Based on a precise and systematic analysis of Aldo Rossi’s main texts, Angelika Schnell’s new book explores which philosophical and theoretical foundations this reference back to past forms and types is based on, whether and how the architect developed a position in historical theory, and how it can be situated in the context of his contemporaries’ critique of modernity. Part of the difficulty, according to the author, comes from concepts such as history, past, tradition, culture, memory, remembrance, etc. being used as synonyms in architectural discourse, while the universal concept of history as such was called into question at the same time as the “post-modern” return of architects to “history”. Exploring Rossi’s “construction of reality” in focused textual interpretations, the research provides an opportunity to discuss imprecision and contradictions, but also present-day points of connection to Rossi’s complex oeuvre.

For an awareness of the methodical complexity of having recourse to what existed before seems to play very little part in the heated reconstruction debates of the present.

Gabriele Kaiser

PUBLICATION

A new book by Linda Lackner, published by adocs Verlag, Hamburg 2020

The Serbian capital city of Belgrade serves as the starting point for critical urban research that negotiates counter-hegemonic narratives and realities that are disregarded in favour of the currently dominant neoliberal consensus. It explores different mechanisms for the production of identities by means of architectural and urban planning measures that can be observed throughout all considered eras of Belgrade planning policy. The specific places in Old and New Belgrade that particularly stand out due to their radical transformation are referred to as radical edges. They are radical because they can (or could) be starting points for radically democratic (urban) policies. They are edges because they are situated at the margins of or outside the hegemonic order of the city, and do not (yet) correspond to any conception of the neoliberal order.

RESEARCH

DESIGN-LED XR RESEARCH WITHIN THE PHD FRAMEWORK TACK COMMUNITIES OF TACIT KNOWLEDGE: ARCHITECTURE AND ITS WAYS OF KNOWING After his death, Marcel Duchamp left an envelope with 46 handwritten notes describing what he referred to as “l’inframince” – the infra-thin. During his lifetime, Duchamp mentioned the term only twice.

He said that the notion escaped any scientific definition and was impossible to explain, but he could give examples1: Note 4 – Infra-thin is the warmth of a seat that has just been left.

Note 33 – Infra-thin is when the tobacco smoke also smells of the mouth that exhales it.

TOWARDS AN INTRA SPACE A new book edited by Christina Jauernik and Wolfgang Tschapeller, published by Sternberg Press, Berlin and Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2021

INTRA! INTRA! calls a variety of thinkers to revisit INTRA SPACE, an artistic research project that experiments with the substances, constructions, and manifestations of our bodies in the unchartered architectural waters of the near future.

INTRA SPAC E is a spatial, biological, technical, and conceptual infrastructure for shared encounters with Carla, Dame (maybe Vivienne), Bob, Old Man and friends.

INTRA SPACE is an experimental zone, set up to explore diaphanous relations between engineered virtual figures, humans, technical equipment, and machines.

Lingering between cameras, eyes, screens, mirrors, and images of selves, this book is full of movement and flicker, of decreation, of dwelling at the periphery of someone else's vision, of resolutions beyond the eye/I. Strange encounters act as springboards to unforeseen turns and perspectives. INTRA SPACE is the subject of this book, opening an arena for the companions and guests who walked in and out of this space in conversation with us.

With contributions by Fahim Amir, Clemens Apprich, Esther Balfe, Gabrielle Cram, Dennis Del Favero, Ursula Frohne, Christina Jauernik, Vicki Kirby, Ludwig Löckinger, Hannes Mayer, Diane Shooman, Susanne Thurow, Wolfgang Tschapeller, Birk Weiberg, John Zissovici.

Note 35 – Infra-thin is the difference that exists between two forms that have been cast from the same mould.

In very general terms, infra-thin describes a separation, a distance, a gap or delay between two things. According to the art historian Hector Obalk, it could be either a “difference that you easily imagine, but that does not exist, like the thickness of a shadow”, or “a distance […] that you cannot perceive, but only imagine”2.

Paula Strunden’s design-led analysis of the infra-thin notes through the practice of 1:1 drawing, performative re-enacting and real-time simulation led her to explore the “immeasurable gap”3 between our perception and imagination. By constructing a family of five mixed-reality artefacts that exist simultaneously in the physical and virtual realms, that can be touched, moved, smelled and listened to, Strunden engages her body in a series of ongoing experiments that question to what extent three-dimensional phenomenal space is merely a construction of our brain.

Through multisensory interactions, the sentient objects Peeping Hole, Sinking Seat, Seeing Orb, Stroking Bulb and Looking Glass become devices to grasp, reveal and unveil infra-thin space. Instead of experiencing the physical within the virtual, these objects allow us to experience the virtual physically – with and through our body. By rejecting the binary division between the actual and virtual worlds, between reality and imagination, Strunden’s embodied explorations aim to cross and merge the experience of the two and probe the fleeting sensation of being present in more than one realm at once.

Strunden gives an example of how to interact with object no. 3 Seeing Orb: “This one allows you to see from the perspective of the object seen. Upon crouching, pressing your heels into the ground and moving your weight forward to grab and lift the ceramic orb, your virtual vision shifts in between your hands. Now, you can turn your sight by moving the object from left to right. You can tilt it, and you will experience how space pivots around you.”

While our vestibular organs remain steady and our body equilibrium – exposed to forces of gravity and acceleration – has not shifted, our brain believes our environment to be turning instead of its eyes.

While our eyes have evolved as part of a complex perceptual system4, so has our understanding of the world surrounding us by using them.

Strunden continues to explain her intentions behind object no. 4 Stroking Bulb: “As my brain never experienced any space independent of my body, the act of scaling down, for example, my hands or increasing the length of my arms in virtual reality, completely changed my perceived dimensions of the environment I was immersed in, not only visually, but it actually made me move faster and quickened my perception of time. Since I have experienced measuring as a form of ruling, controlling or balancing, I started to understand on an intuitive level that the finely tuned multi-sensory interplay of our perceptual apparatus constantly stabilises the world around us.”5 What if we could measure the experience of the “unstable” world, the world independent of our perceptual system? Ultimately, could Virtual Reality, as a tool to embody other first-person perspectives – of not only other bodies but also other things – help us reveal different desires and develop a more empathetic approach to architectural design thinking?

These questions will be discussed, among other things, within the framework of the annual foundational TACK meeting at Bergische Universität Wuppertal in June 2021, where Strunden is planning to install and put to the test her object-oriented XR experience Exploring the Infra-thin.

Paula Strunden

→ fig. 29 / p. 11 1 Duchamp’s notes were posthumously published in French by Duchamp, M., Hultén, K. G. P., & Matisse, P. (1980). Marcel Duchamp Notes. The simplified translations are based on the notes 4, 33 and 35 taken from pp. 21 and 33.

2 Obalk, H. (2000). The unfindable readymade.

Tout-Fait The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, 1, p. 8.

3 “The margin [infrathin] measures is the immeasurable gap between two things as they transition or pass into one another.” Tucker, T. D. (2008).

Derridada: Duchamp as readymade deconstruction, Lexington Books, p. 66.

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fig. 1–2 Activity Collage. Sofia Abendstein.

The 222’s - Living During Lockdown. Vertical Duets → p. 1

fig. 3 View over the Rheintal.

Photo: Naomi Mittempergher. fig. 4 View into the book. Naomi Mittempergher.

Photo: Christina Ehrmann.

A counternarrative to the paradise of singlefamily houses → p. 3

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fig. 5–6 Exhibition view at Architekturzentrum Wien. Photo: Christina Ehmann.

Mapping the Ground of the City → p. 4

fig. 7 Bridging distances – attempted escape.

Tank. Sidika Cupuroglu, Lisa Prossegger, Salome Schramm.

Desert Theory → p. 2

fig. 8 Of head machines and tilting moments. A re-creation of Morel’s island. Remodelling of a fictional island from fragments of literature and film – most notably The Invention of Morel

by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Last Year in Marienbad by Alain Resnais. Tim Handl, Helena Schenavsky, Julia Wiesiollek.

Desert Theory → p. 2

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fig. 9 Waste mountains as a monument in the heart of the city of Vienna, Collage. Ferdinand Klopfer. fig. 10 Waste mountains with the city of Vienna in the background, Google Earth impression. Ferdinand Klopfer.

The Good Life → p. 3

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fig. 11–14 The Blackbody Commune.

Watertower 1&2, Circulation System & Hull / Space Appropriation / Space Allocation / Space Connection (Ductwork).

Nils Neuböck.

Kinkplatz Experiments.

Shadow, Wind and Mirror Tales → p. 2

fig. 15 Myth(s). A trilogy of myth(s) that are hovering around an island – an island that must appear philosophically normal to us. Ji Yun Lee. Desert Theory → p. 2

fig. 16 It seems as if the longer they look, the blurrier it gets. Psathoura lighthouse scene. Yoko Halbwidl, Avigael Miodownick.

Desert Theory → p. 2

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fig. 17–25 Film stills of the digital book presentation. Studio SMASHUP. SMASHUP. An Exploration of the Savage, Changeful, Natural, Grotesque, Rigid & Redundant in St. Stephen‘s Cathedral → p. 1

fig. 26 Of head machines and tilting moments. A re-creation of Morel’s island. Island fragment.

Tim Handl, Helena Schenavsky, Julia Wiesiollek.

Desert Theory → p. 2

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fig. 27–28 The loopHole. The loopHole is a project of coexistence. A constant exchange of the built and the growing environment – both acting as supports towards each other. Inspired by the termite mounds, the spreading void allows air circulation, as well as the growing environment to enter and spread its roots.

The newly constructed holes become the trigger for a looped system. Anna Orbanic.

Kinkplatz Experiments. Shadow, Wind and Mirror Tales → p. 2

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fig. 29 1:1 drawing and making process for the XR experience, 2021. Photo: Paula Strunden.

Exploring the Infra-thin → p. 4

fig. 30 Objects. Jule Jungblut.

The 222’s - Living During Lockdown. Vertical Duets → p. 1

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fig. 31–36 Altered Visions of Reality, scene 1-6.

Santiago Vásquez-López.

The Good Life → p. 3

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fig. 37 Devices 002. Elisa Mazagg. Photo: Christina Ehrmann. fig. 38 Device 002, Air Movement // The Wind.

Device 002 is focusing on the natural influences of wind measured live in the centre of Coober Pedy. It draws a line between several recordings highlighting the movement of wind in its speed and direction. […] The device is also connected to a sound installation which triggers an alarm every time the wind reaches a speed uncomfortable and dangerous for human life. This speed is scientifically determined at around 29 km/h and is averagely exceeded in five days per month in Coober Pedy. Elisa Mazagg.

The traces we leave behind → p. 3

fig. 39 Pavilions in the garden, entire scene. Robin Lindner, Elliott Griffith.

The 222’s Living During Lockdown.

Vertical Duets → p. 1

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„Öffentlicher Raum“ wird als Grundpfeiler einer funktionierenden Demokratie gehandelt, das geht so weit zurück, als dass das klassische Bild für den öffentlichen Raum die Agora der griechischen Polis bildet.Die Agora war ein Markt- und Versammlungsplatz und Mittelpunkt des öffentlichen Lebens der griechischen Antike. Eine weitläufige räumliche Anlage mit den Verwaltungsgebäuden, dem Gerichtshof, der Bibliothek und rituellen Plätzen. Hier wurden Geschäfte ausgehandelt, debattiert und Politik gemacht. [5] Die Agora wird immer als das „Idealbild“ für „öffentlichen Raums“ gehandelt, doch sollte nicht darüber hinweggesehen werden, dass auch hier Anführungszeichen angebracht erscheinen. Denn wer dort Teil des öffentlichen Lebens war, wurde auch ganz klar geregelt. Der „öffentliche Raum“ ist super politisch, weil sich genau dort weitgehend Diskurs entwickelt. Diskurs über verschiedenste Themen, meistens über die Missstände einer Demokratie. Im „öffentlichen Raum“ wird durch die Menschen, die ihn einnehmen und sich austauschen sichtbar, was die StadtbewohnerInnen brauchen und beschäftigt.

Großen politischen Aktionen, oft im Sinne des Widerstands und der Rebellion, bietet der „öffentliche Raum“ immer schon Platz, die Menschheitsgeschichte ist voll von Beispielen.

Von einer Demokratie wird erwartet, Widerstand im öffentlichen Raum zuzulassen. Demonstrationen, künstlerische Interventionen, Protestaktionen, all das wird durch ein demokratisches System nicht nur ermöglicht, sondern ist andersrum auch relevant für Bestand und die Weiterentwicklung des Systems.

Vor allem spontane, eigenmächtig entschiedene sowie zufällige Begegnung im „öffentlichen Raum“

PB

5:

Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit , Jürgen Habermas (1990)

zuzulassen wird durch zu viel Organisation und insbesondere zu viel Überwachung vielerorts verhindert. Wichtige soziale Prozesse gehen somit verloren und das schwächt eine demokratisch geführte Stadt. Verlieren wir „öffentlichen Raum“ an autokratisch bestimmte Systeme, ist auch die Meinungs- und Bewegungsfreiheit in Gefahr. Lässt man die StadtbewohnerInnen einander hauptsächlich in verwalteten und kontrollierten Räumen aufeinandertreffen, wird Austausch verhindert.

Dieser Austausch ist es aber doch, was Demokratie überhaupt entstehen ließ. –

Philipp Behawy

A r chi te k tur i m A usn a hme z usta n d

„...the assumption...governing people...are getting away from the idea, everything has to be done for momentary profit...all open space is... for real participation by citizens that also allows conflict... „ „..therefore we decided to devolop a collective space for democracy and urban forestation that performs both online and offline. The offline space...is a common space governed by the people who live there. The online space, a website forum,can be accessed from everywhere and acts as place for discussion and knowledge exchange.

Our goal was to collect the texts of our theoretical research and ake it accessible. The content ranges from imagining an alternative city beyond cars and towards a more equal system, to possible communities, questions of ownership regarding (public) space and nature. „“

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XXI

fig. 40 Excerpt from Power to the Public (Space).

Pia Bauer.

Angesichts der Zunahme und Gleichzeitigkeit globaler Krisen, angefangen von Kriegen, militärischen Auseinandersetzungen und terroristischen Bedrohungen über Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrisen bis hin zu Epidemien, Erdbeben, Vulkanausbrüchen oder anderen Naturgewalten stellt sich die Frage inwiefern aus Ausnahmesituationen wie den eben genannten, in Summe, beziehungsweise bei besonderer Schwere, Ausnahmezustände hervorgehen, die unsere Normalität, oder zumindest Teile davon, auf kurz oder lang außer Kraft setzen könnten. Auch die Disziplin Architektur wird hinsichtlich dieses Wandels gefordert sein. Es gilt zu hinterfragen inwiefern das Streben nach immer besser werdenden Lebensumständen, in der Tradition der Moderne, der Architektur noch als Leitmotiv dienen kann. Besonders unter dem Aspekt, dass gerade dieses Streben unweigerlich

PB

L

LI

fig. 41 Excerpt from Architektur im Ausnahmezustand.

Philipp Behawy.

Chiara Desbordes

Einleitung

Ei n e Vi s i o n e i n e r r a di k a l e n A r chi te k tur Wi e n , A ug ust 212o Ei n e Er z äh l un g

Im Jahre 2120 haben wir aufgehört, uns gegen die quälende Hitze zu wehren. Alle Versuche, gegen die steigenden Temperaturen anzukämpfen, sind gescheitert. Die Welt, wie wir sie vor hundert Jahren noch kannten, spiegelt heute eine Verschmelzung zwischen futuristischer Utopie und Dystopie wieder.

Die verheerenden Folgen auf die Umwelt, welche unser Verhalten mitgebracht hat, lassen sich nicht ignorieren - Hitzewellen, Waldbrände, Dürren, schwere Niederschläge und Überschwemmungen. Naturkatastrophen reihen sich an extreme Ereignisse und nichts ist mehr vorhersehbar. Unser blauer Planet hat sich um ganze 4.8 Grad Celsius erwärmt und die Hitze wird immer unerträglicher. Ein Ende ist noch lange nicht in Sicht.

Ein Großteil der Menschen hat die Flucht aufs Land ergriffen und sich fern von der Betonwüste eine kleine Unterkunft gesucht. Denn dort ist die Luft noch etwas angenehmer und der Blick in die Ferne noch weiter und klarer. Auch wenn die Unterschiede zur Stadt nur minimal scheinen, so wirkt es, als wären die langen Tage hier ein wenig erträglicher. Dies hat zur Folge, dass nur noch wenige Menschen in der Stadt leben. Zum Großteil wird sie von älteren Menschen bevölkert, welche an ihren Erinnerungen festhalten oder junge Familien haben sich angesiedelt, welche sich das teure Leben am Land nicht leisten können.

Die Anzahl der Menschen ist überschaubar, man kennt sich und grüßt sich.

Blickt man auf die Stadt hinunter, so findet man gespenstische Ruhe vor. Die uns ehemaligen bekannten Metropolen sind uns unbekannt geworden. Die Struktur der Stadt wurde zerstört und man trifft auf weitläufige, große verwaldete Flächen. Gigantische Megastrukturen erstrecken sich bis weit in den Himmel hinein und tauchen die Stadt in einen dunklen, trüben Schatten. Den Himmel und die Sonne bekommt man nur noch selten zu sehen, zu gefährlich ist das gleißend helle Licht für unsere Augen und die heißen Sonnenstrahlen verursachen schwere Verbrennungen auf unserer Haut.

Im Text finden sich folgende Projekte wieder:

Olivia Ahn: Seven States Of...

Pia Bauer & Ruben Stadler: alcove actionism.

Alieni Generis 01 - Maximilian Aelfers Studio: Raumpark

Florian Berrar & Lucas Fischötter: co(r)alescence.

Jákob Czinger & Oana-Alexandra Ionescu: Immersive journes through the forest.

Alieni Generis 01 beruht auf dem No Player Game Game of Life des Mathematikers John Conway, in dem in einer Simulation Zellen ohne externe Zuführung von Informationen auf einem Raster unter bestimmten Regeln leben und sterben. Diese Regeln fanden in Maximilian Aelfers Projekt auf den dreidimensionalen Raum angepasst Anwendung.

David Degasper: Raumpark as a void.

Chiara Desbordes: Growing Maze.

Chiara Desbordes & Lisa Penz : Raum dazwischen.

Katharina Eder: 46 degrees.

Alexander Groiss: my own atmosphere.

Alice Hoffman: Mo(h)n(d)landschaft.

Zoe Pianaro: Althan Au

Die ursprünglichen Regeln Conways:

Normunds Pune: Negative Form Garden.

Max Pertl: Inhabiting Climatic Bridges.

1.

2.

3.

4.

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Lebende Zellen mit weniger als zwei lebenden Nachbarn sterben in der Folgegeneration an Einsamkeit.

Eine lebende Zelle mit zwei oder drei lebenden Nachbarn bleibt in der Folgegeneration am Leben.

Lebende Zellen mit mehr als drei lebenden Nachbarn sterben in der Folgegeneration an Überbevölkerung.

Eine tote Zelle mit genau drei lebenden Nachbarn wird in der Folgegeneration neu geboren.

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Salome Schramm: A garden for Pollinators.

Fabian Schwarz: Water Veins.

Sebastian Seib: A mountain for a resilient future.

Martin Sturz: Tearing down the Walls.

Marie Teufel: Sink in.

Carla Veltman: Constructing a Myth.

Valeriia Weinrub: Bird Refugee Crisis.

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Studio ADP SS2020 MANGANESE NODULES

Epigraph:

” – –

project „Seed-Lungen“

by Dila Kirmizitoprak and Lisa Penz.

The images show the act of throwing seed-bombs aswell as a recipe.

Where are we landing, captain?

We are currently in between second- and post-digital turns, where the grass grows greener than ever before…

” – from the memoires of Tom A.4

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4

An epigraph refers to a fictional author. Tom A(rtificious) signature is used as a literature tool, while the actual name of the mentioned person is only partly revealed by targeting his or her persona via initials.

5

In the “Second Digital Turn” Carpo suggests a unique expertise architects gained with the use of technology and more specifically — software and machines for prototyping and serial-manufacturing of non-standardized unique elements for no higher cost. In his opinion, precisely these tools helped architectural discipline to transform itself into a true “envelope-pushing” and “boundary testing” warrior on the battlefield of a global market of a post-Fordist society.

6

“Less is Enough: On Architecture and Asceticism”, Pier Vittorio Aureli, 2014

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fig. 45 Excerpt from PHA(n)Tom’s JOY[stick]. Stepan Nesterenko

Within this essay I wanted to point out the positive impact and importance that braking laws and barriers can have. The public space is one of the areas where making a political statement for improvement for the common good can reach the most of the people. The political belief of the birds and the project of SeedLungen is not directly detectable out of the projects and can only be guessed into the left of the political realm. Nevertheless these techniques of unlawful place-making can be used on both sides of the political spectrum. Since the last decade and longer, the extremist-right in Europe more and more appropriate techniques of protest from the left. Not only that they started to wear the same style of clothes during demonstrations and actions to make the individuals harder to identify by the officials, but they also use the same methods of protest actions to get attention in the media and the public. In 2016 an extremist-right group relating themselves to the so called Identitäre Bewegung from Germany climbed the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin and dropped banners to get attention for their political agenda of closing the borders while Germany was facing the challenges of immigration.16 A similar action was brought out in the year of 2020 in Vienna. A group of masked individuals identifying themselves also with the Identitäre Bewegung were defacing the Markus Omofuma Memorial at the Platz für Menschenrechte in the center of the city, by covering it with a wooden box on which paroles were displayed, for the public to read.17 This action was also propagated as an answer to the “unfair” circumstances causing the placement of the Omofuma-Stein, because of it being illegaly mounted in front of the Wiener Staatsoper in the first place. The same group of extremist actionists is pursuing also other fields of public place making which can be seen in a project brought out in the Alps. Here a group of sympathisants of the international right-wing anti-migrant movement more or less symbolically built a wire fence on the french-italian border. 18

Ü b e r A r chi te k tur un d M a chta symme tr i e n Wikipedia (2021): Goldener Schnitt https://de.wikipedia. org/wiki/Goldener_ Schnitt [14.01.2021]

16 Bender, Justus. Spartanischer Aktivismus auf dem Brandenburger Tor. in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 28.08.2016 https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ protestaktionen-neurechter-bewegungen-in-berlin-14409902.html (6.02.2021)

18 Identitäre in Frankreich nach Anti-Flüchtlings-Aktion vor Gericht. in: die Welt 11.07.2019. https://www.welt.de/newsticker/news1/article196719583/Kriminalitaet-Identitaere-in-Frankreich-nach-Anti-Fluechtlings-Aktion-vor-Gericht.html (5.02.2021) CLXXXIX

fig. 46 Excerpt from Top Down/Bottom UP/Anarchy illegal placemaking and political expression.

Ruben Stadler.

Rechtfertigung für das Verhalten gegenüber dessen Lebensraums und dem all jener, die diesem konstruierten Ideal nicht entsprechen.

a

Le Corbusier, Unité d‘Habitation, Marseilles, Frankreich (1947)

Sophia Stemshorn

1

17 Lene. Rechtsradikale Aktivisten verhüllen Flüchtlings-Denkmal. in: Heute 06.12.2020. https://www.heute.at/s/rechtsradikale-aktivisten-verhuellen-fluechtlings-denkmal-100116329 (5.02.2021)

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tional ascetism and retreat6. No human and no algorithm can cope nor catch up with a current traffic of data and imposed emotional impact. One could therefore argue that there exists a paralyzing confusion, enhanced by global catastrophes, with climate change being already promoted from an “undeniable threat” to a “condition of a critical zone” we are all living in at the moment.

In these circumstances another kind of slowness, productive inefficiency or “lateness” appears, which might result in an alternative way of looking and close-reading reality. In this respect it is highly promising to confront the very apparatus of creative processes. For architecture this means — reflecting its own mechanisms of design and thinking, such as drawing, modelling and representation tools. One has to reflect the technology we have in hand and thereby recalibrate habits, goals

In the age of “posts” and “meta”, the one thing we might be assured of — is the ever-growing complexity. Following Socrates in upholding own wisdom by admitting the inability of a full comprehension, more and more do human species rely on extensions of their minds and bodies. Not only did technology and cybernetics offer an unprecedented level of feasible influence upon the material reality, drastically redefining earthly environments, but, furthermore, it helped to look at ourselves from a critical distance — from the perspective of “the other” with a help of avatars.

Architecture, meanwhile, always tried to respond quickly. Even more so, one can say, starting with the turn of the century, architects tended to be in the forefront — to actually reimagine social relationships through radical experiments with the build form and resulting spatial conditions. According to Mario Carpo, only in the last quarter of the xx century did architecture finally got to be an actual “avant-garde”5, in the sense of reshaping globally the material culture as well as mentality of societies. But even if an achievement of that groundbreaking position of architecture appears to be a “new normal” according to some of the theoreticians, one has to admit that architecture, as a profession, by all means predominantly serves neoliberal market mechanisms. That is why from the side of the discipline and self-reflective academic discourses — quite often one can hear voices of critical doubt and increasing political as well as environmental concern.

Moreover, an enormously increasing tempo of change and updates (being it news, literal transformations in cities, economic and political landscapes, or just online status bars in the media accounts), requires a “step-aside”, or even informa-

fig. 44 Excerpt from ]Beautiful Dystopias[.

Dilâ Kırmızıtoprak.

can have different origins: agricultural, industrial, urban, tourist, etc. Abandoned land and fallow land are synonymous.“15 (Clément, 2010, p.07) They were producing so called seed-bombs with seeds for plants which based on their research would have a positive feedback on the climate of the region.

They for themselves claimed these spaces by throwing those seed-bombs and populating the area with plants the owner of the sites did not have planned to have there. But not only for themselves but for the common good.

To archive what they wanted to archive they were also forced to break the barriers of property.

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[What’s going on with architecture at the moment? Subjective recap.]

] algea steaks [

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Julia Wiesiollek: Raumpark Baum.

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00.1 FIRST INTRO

sides where can they meet ? Down below, the surface of the earth is covered with new species of ferns and other plants.

One has no idea where a swamp starts and the very dangerous animals might eat you alive. Vienna is unrecognizable. It doesn’t matter where P. is.

Earth regenerates without the human existence. In her representation, Scene 3, one can recognize a built structure or some pipes. An image of nostalgia, a neo-romantic feeling. For a human to be left down there might be a disaster. But above, looking down, being separated from the ground calms P down. She/He doesn’t need to be there, all one needs is in the capsule and in the virtual reality. In scene 3, P stands on her capsule and looks down, she/he sees his/her lunch from yesterday, floating down the tube. She/he sees the ventilation pipe and the tesselation of his/her own capsule. What Roxanne is doing, in a way looking through an eye of another specie of a human.

When humans would leave the world because of environmental disasters, nature stays alone. It flourishes and thrives to cover all human-made things. Roxanne imagines that time to come. It is given by the studio brief that the scenerio takes place in the year 2100, Vienna. She envisions that the humans have evacuated the planet Earth and moved out into virtual spaces.

She creates a scenerio following the individual called P., thinking and reflecting on his/her life. P is nostalgic, P is sad, but P is very glad too. Humanity left the planet earth in 2100 but only mentally. The body of P and lots of others are still on earth, inside capsules that are high above ground. The chamber of solitude, endless rest and the bodies are fed by the algea and fungus that are pumped in by big pipes. The virtual simulation that one is plugged in gives off the taste of steak if one codes it accordingly. P can meet others and interact too, in the virtual reality simulation of course. The pysical meeting is impossible.

One doesn’t know where the other capsules are anymore, be-

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fig. 43 Excerpt from Eine Vision einer radikalen Architektur Wien, August 2120. Eine Erzählung.

Chiara Desbordes.

fig. 42 Excerpt from Entropia. Architektur am Ende globalen Wachstums. Ein Plädoyer für eine antikapitalistische und antikoloniale Architekturdisziplin der Zukunft.

Daron Chiu.

Algalfuture

by Roxane Seckauer

Irgendwann in naher Zukunft, an einem Zeitpunkt an dem die Oberfläche der Stadt unbewohnbar geworden ist, haben die Einwohner Wiens ihr Leben in die Keller verlagert. Räume unterschiedlicher Größe wurden über die Jahre zu einem immer weiterwachsenden, unterirdischen Keller-Labyrinth vernetzt. Waren es anfangs nur schmale Gänge, sind es jetzt Räume die bis zu 3 Stockwerke in den Untergrund reichen. Wuchsen die Bauwerke der Stadt an der Oberfläche in immer größere Höhen, so vollzieht sich dieser Trend jetzt in entgegengesetzte Richtung.

Ich beginne meinen Vortrag mit diesem Ausschnitt aus einem Studioprojekt von Chiara Desbordes mit dem Titel GROWING MAZE, das sie im Rahmen des HEAT TAKES COMMAND Jahres 2019/20 an der Akademie der bildenden Künste erarbeitete.

Der Keller ist normalerweise der Ort, an dem man Dinge verstaut, die man nicht mehr braucht. Es ist auch ein Ort um sich zu verstecken oder etwas, das nicht gesehen werden, soll zu verstauen. Doch alles, was dort verstaut, versteckt oder vergessen wird, kann wieder hervorgeholt werden.

Ganz anders im Projekt von Chiara. Die Krise zwingt die Bewohner der Stadt in die Sphären des Untergrunds und sie werden dort so lange bleiben müssen bis die Oberfläche wieder bewohnbar ist.

SS

Die ständige Reproduktion und Optimierung von, zum Scheitern verurteilten Strukturen, seien sie architektonischer oder gesellschaftlicher Art, sollte keine zeitgenössische und progressive Methode sein, dem Klimawandel entgegenzutreten. Das Proportionsschema in Modulor (Le Corbusier, 1948) verarbeitet die Tradition des vitruvischen Menschens (da Vinci, ca. 1490) und schlägt einen harmonischen Maßstab vor, der universell auf Architektur übertragbar sei. Als Grundlage bedient sich Le Corbusier einem maskulinistischen, ableistischen, weißen und anthropozentrischen Maßstab und verbindet diesen mit dem Goldenen Schnitt, ein, bis ins 19. Jahrhundert hinein, als göttliches Naturgesetz bezeichnetes Proportionsschema.1 Bis heute gelehrt und reproduziert, prägt dieses oder ein ähnliches Verständnis von Ideal nicht nur unsere gebaute Umwelt. Wie vor 70 Jahren entspricht der gesunde, weiße, patriarchale – ich erlaube mir heteronormativ, binär, kolonialistisch und rassistisch hinzuzufügen – Körper den idealen Zustand der westlichen, eurozentristischen Gesellschaft.

Der ideale Mensch sieht sich im Mittelpunkt eines anthropozentrischen Weltverständnisses und findet dort a

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fig. 47 Excerpt from Über Architektur und Machtasymmetrien. Sophia Stemshorn.

Book of Hitze → p. 2–3

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REVIEW WINTER 2020

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fig. 48–49 Collective book and model of St. Stephen's Cathedral. Studio SMASHUP. Photo: Christina Ehrmann.

SMASHUP. An Exploration of the Savage, Changeful, Natural, Grotesque, Rigid & Redundant in St. Stephen's Cathedral → p. 1

REVIEW WINTER 2020

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fig. 50 Shrink it, body section.

Jule Jungblut.

The 222’s - Living During Lockdown. Vertical Duets → p. 1

fig. 51 Kinkplatz as bona vacantia, CrossSection. Vincent Wörndl.

Kinkplatz Experiments. Shadow, Wind and Mirror Tales → p. 2

REVIEW WINTER 2020

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fig. 52 Electric Garden, Terza Natura.

Ferdinand Klopfer.

The Good Life → p. 3

REVIEW WINTER 2020

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fig. 53 The Blackbody Commune. Game view. Nils Neuböck.

Kinkplatz Experiments.

Shadow, Wind and Mirror Tales → p. 2

fig. 54 Thesis presentation.

Ella Felber. Photo: Christina Ehrmann fig. 55 View into the book.

Ella Felber. Photo: Helene-Streissler.

Unter der Hohen Brücke. Digging in a ditch, writing for a place → p. 3

REVIEW WINTER 2020

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fig. 56–60 On the commodification of the countryside, photo series of vacation homes in Styria. Oscar Binder.

The Good Life → p. 3

REVIEW WINTER 2020

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MANIFESTO

EVA SCHOBER

Head of the University Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

The first women architects working in Austria received their education at Kunstgewerbeschule Wien (University of Applied Arts Vienna); other study opportunities for women were at Technische Hochschule Wien (University of Technology Vienna), at Technische Hochschule Graz (University of Technology Graz), or outside Austria altogether.1 At the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, women were not allowed to study architecture until the academic year 1920/21.2 The student lists of Kunstgewerbeschule Wien 3 list seven female architecture students as early as the 1882/83 academic year, but it was not until 1916 that Elisabeth Niessen became the first woman to graduate from Heinrich Tessenow’s specialised class in architecture.

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky graduated in 1919 under Oskar Strnad; she is considered the first Austrian female architect of international standing.

Only a few of the women who graduated with a diploma in architecture from Kunstgewerbeschule Wien then actually turned to architecture as a profession. Contemporary critics considered women unsuited to the profession of architecture – both because the female gender was considered incapable of abstraction and analytical mathematical thinking, and because the roles of women in society were limited to a stereotypically narrow range. Accordingly, most of the early female architects in Austria struggled to establish themselves as interior designers, working in the field of design and decoration or in association with a male partner.4

Johannes Itten’s private art school and later worked for Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus in Weimar), whose successful work and lives, like those of so many others, were brutally ended by persecution and forced displacement during the Nazi era.

enrolled in the general department and took a number of mathematics subjects.

During the following academic year, she changed her field of study and took technical physics. She was enrolled for a total of four academic years until 1931/3216.

It was not until the academic year 1920/21 that women were admitted as students at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. A total of 14 women enrolled at the Academy in the winter semester of 1920/21, most of them in painting and sculpture classes.

Only two women were admitted to the master school for architecture. However, it is noteworthy that the very first woman to enrol at the Academy in the first year women were admitted was a student of architecture, namely Helene Duczyńska8.

Helene (Ilona) Duczyńska, the first female student (of architecture) at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, was also an extremely interesting person with a fascinating life.17 On her father’s side, she was descended from an aristocratic Polish military family; her mother was Hungarian. At the age of 18, she got involved with left-wing intellectual groups and Hungarian revolutionaries. In Zurich, she is said to have been friends with Russian Marxist Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, as well as Polish and Russian revolutionaries. After her studies at ETH Zurich, she went back to Vienna, collaborated with Austrian communists, was sentenced to prison, and is considered a co-founder of the Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP). She worked for several years as a journalist, and was a member of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (SDAPÖ) and later of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ). In 1936, she moved to Great Britain and became active in the British war effort. Eventually, in 1947, she emigrated to Canada with her husband Karl Polanyi and their daughter – economist Kari Polanyi-Levitt, born in 1923 – where she went on to author publications on social science and history. She died at the age of 81 in Pickering on Lake Ontario on 24th April 1978.

Helene Marie “Ilona” Duczyńska9, born on 11th March 1897 in Brunn-Maria Enzersdorf, studied for three semesters at the master school for architecture10 under Professor Friedrich Ohmann, starting in the winter semester of 1920/21.

In the summer semester of 1922, a note was made in her student file: “On the instruction of the prof. cancelled 6th May 1922.” This entry means that she apparently no longer attended classes in the summer semester of 1922.

Women were admitted to Technische Hochschule Wien 5 as regular students from 1919 onwards, and the first female graduate was Friederike Neumann in 1923.

Helene Koller-Buchwieser graduated from there in 1937 and, in 1940, became the first woman to take the master builder’s examination. The first woman to take the civil engineer exam was Liane Zimbler in 1938; she is considered the most consistently employed female architect of the interwar period. From 1920 to 1940, 43 women graduated from Technische Hochschule Wien.6

In the student file, her previous education is listed as higher vocational school, one semester at the school of architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, and one semester at a technical school for mathematics. The classes in scientific subjects that she had completed at ETH Zurich11 and at Technische Hochschule Wien12 were credited towards her studies. In general, the women who were admitted to the Academy in those early years all had a high level of education. A search in the archives of ETH Zurich revealed that Helene Duczyńska13 first studied at the school of architecture (1st department) for one semester starting in October 1915 and transferred to the school for specialist teachers in mathematics and physics (8th department) in March 1916. On 3rd October 1916, she de-registered.

Anna-Lülja Praun was the first woman to enrol in architecture at Technische Hochschule Graz7 in 1925; Hertha RottleutnerFrauneder graduated in 1934. Important female architects of the time were, among others, Ella Briggs-Baumfeld (who studied painting at Kunstgewerbeschule and architecture in Munich, where she graduated with a diploma in 1920) and Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (who attended

In the academic year 1920/21 and in the winter semester 1921/22, i.e. at the same time as her studies at the Academy, Helene Duczyńska was enrolled as an external student at Technische Hochschule Wien14 and took subjects in the field of construction. A few years later, she returned to study at Technische Hochschule Wien under her married surname, Polanyi15; in the academic year 1928/29, she was

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA) Temporary premises of IKA: Augasse 2–6, 1090 Vienna 1st floor, core A

Office: Room 1.3.11, 1st floor, core A Ulrike Auer +43 (1) 58816-5101 u.auer@akbild.ac.at Gabriele Mayer +43 (1) 58816-5102 g.mayer@akbild.ac.at

Like Wilhelmine Ohmann18, who was the second woman to be admitted to the Academy, Helene Duczyńska did not work as an architect after leaving the Academy.

The gender ratio in architecture at the time was striking: two female students compared to 88 male students, with little change in subsequent years. The number of female students entering the master schools each academic year was no more than one or two; it was not until the 1950s that the ratio of women gradually increased. In fact, Martha BolldorfReitstätter19, who later became a successful architect, was the first female graduate in architecture at the Academy (receiving her diploma in 1934 under Clemens Holzmeister), followed by Susanne (Zsuszanna) Bánki20 (who received her diploma in 1936, also under Holzmeister).

It took even longer for women to be appointed as teachers in the architecture programme. The first was probably

www.akbild.ac.at/ika arch@ akbild.ac.at Postal address: Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Elisabeth Baudisch, who was an assistant to Lois Welzenbacher from 1953. If we count the master class for scenic art founded by Clemens Holzmeister in 1936 as part of architectural studies, then Erika Schepelmann-Rieder would be the first assistant; she taught from 1942 onwards at the specialised master school for stage design and event design directed

by Emil Pirchan. Later, from 1976 onwards, Erika Zangerl taught at Roland Rainer’s master school. The first female professor of architecture was Martha Schreieck (visiting professor from 1995 onwards); other visiting professors were Catrin Pichler and Petra Gruber (both from 1998 onwards). The first full professor was Nasrine Seraji-Bozorgzad (from 1996/97 onwards), the second Farshid Moussavi (from 2002 onwards).21 The current gender ratio of architecture students is almost balanced, with 84 female to 85 male students (winter semester 2020) and 60 female graduates to 71 male graduates (between 2010 and 2020)22. However, looking at the numbers of self-employed architects in Austria – according to the Federal Chamber of Architects and Consulting Engineers, of currently 4,494 licensed and active architects, 2,782 are male and only 601 are female (the remaining 1,111 are companies), and among the currently 1,393 inactive architects, the ratio is 1,065 male to 328 female – the imbalance does not seem to have been corrected at all.

1 See Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Künstlerinnen in Österreich 1897–1938: Malerei – Plastik – Architektur, Vienna 1994; ARGE Architektinnen und Ingenieurkonsulentinnen (eds.), Frauen in der Technik von 1900 bis 2000. Das Schaffen der österreichischen Architektinnen und Ingenieurkonsulentinnen. [exhib. cat.] Vienna 1999; Anne Bauer/Ingrid I. Gumpinger/ Eleonore Kleindienst, Frauenarchitektouren. Arbeiten von Architektinnen in Österreich, Salzburg-München 2004.

2 On the troubled history of the admission of women to the Academy, see Barbara Doser, Das Frauenkunststudium in Österreich. 1870-1935, dissertation, Innsbruck 1988; archivist’s selection, https://www.akbild.ac.at/resolveuid/b52b8f95b639b74292a8fdfa0aa50436.

3 Discussed in detail in Plakolm-Forsthuber, Künstlerinnen in Österreich, p. 237ff.

4 Patricia Zacek, Introduction. Denkspur - Exkurs zur weiblichen Intelligenz, in: Frauen in der Technik, p.

20f; Plakolm-Forsthuber, Künstlerinnen in Österreich, p. 237ff.

5 Juliane Mikoletzky, Eine Erfolgsstory mit Hindernissen. Zur Entwicklung des technischen Frauenstudiums in Österreich, in: Frauen in der Technik, p. 22f. On individual woman architects, see Plakolm-Forsthuber, Künstlerinnen in Österreich, p. 250ff.; Frauen in der Technik, p. 25ff.; Bauer/ Gumpinger/Kleindienst, Frauenarchitektouren, p. 11ff.

Chair / Deputies: Wolfgang Tschapeller Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Werner Skvara

6 In contrast, eight women graduated from the two master schools for architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna during the same period.

7 Bauer/Gumpinger/Kleindienst, Frauenarchitektouren, p. 11ff; Plakolm-Forsthuber, Künstlerinnen in Österreich, p. 250ff; Frauen in der Technik, p. 25ff.

8 The early student files do not have matriculation numbers, but consecutive registration numbers.

Going by these numbers, Helene Duczyńska, with the number 296, would have been the very first female student officially admitted and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

9 University Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (UAAbKW), student file (Stud) 296 Helene Duczynska. She used her maiden name, although she was still married to her first husband Tivadar Sugar at the time, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ilona_Duczyńska.

10 Called the specialised school for architecture until 1921/22, subsequently master school for architecture.

11 Higher mathematics, descriptive geometry, architectural design, introduction to architecture, perspective and art history.

12 Accordingly, in 1920/21 she completed courses in theory of forms, history of architecture, structural engineering, ornamental drawing and construction exercises.

13 Information according to the student file of ETH Zurich: Helene von Duczyńska, from Lemberg (Galicia) (sic!). It states graduation from Landes-Oberrealschule in Baden (Lower Austria) (with distinction) as her previous education.

14 Information kindly provided by Dr. Paulus Ebner, Archive of the University of Technology Vienna.

15 Her husband was the Hungarian-Austrian economist and social scientist Karl Polanyi.

16 Matriculation number 633/1928-29; interestingly, the three semesters of study at the Academy are not indicated.

17 Information in the following taken from: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilona_Duczyńska.

18 Daughter of the head of the master school for architecture at the Academy, Friedrich Ohmann, and married to architect Hans Pfann; she remained at the Academy for only one semester. UAAbKW, Stud 355 Wilhelmine Ohmann.

19 UAAbKW, Stud 1213 Martha Reitstätter; AKL XII, 1996, 390.

20 UAAbKW, Stud 1385A Susanne Bánki.

21 Cf. Walter Wagner, Die Geschichte der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien, Vienna 1967; Martin Bilek/Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (ed.), Die Akademie der bildenden Künste 1967/68 bis 1991/92 - Statistik der Meisterschulen und Instituten, Vienna 1992; Anja Weiberg/Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (ed.), Die Akademie in der Zeitenwende, Vienna 2002.

22 https://unidata.gv.at/

Review Winter 2020 Editor: Linda Lackner Translation: Judith Wolfframm Proofreading: Judith Wolfframm Design: grafisches Büro