The Urban Kilometre
With which manoeuvres can the innocent freshness of a Europan project live on in the regime of Viennese housing?
Within the framework of a cooperative working structure, the procedure was intended to concretize the urban planning and typological concept of the Europan 12 prize-winning project at the Siemensäcker site in Vienna, so that the foundations for a project that can be implemented within the framework of affordable and subsidized housing construction in Vienna can be laid while maintaining the appropriate qualities. The aim of the procedure was to develop a project that would provide the basis for zoning and development planning and also formulate criteria for safeguarding important qualities.
DIVERSITY OF HOUSING FORMS AND LOW-THRESHOLD URBANITY Different grain sizes of the structure, from large to small, promote the mixing of different forms of housing and enable different development models: from cooperative buildings to building communities to privately financed residential buildings. Thus, a certain mix can be provoked also in the almost “purely” residential area. The “urban kilometre” bundles the active areas on the ground floor, such as attractive building entrances and common spaces, along the “urban alleys”, in order to create there low-threshold urbanity with the existing means of residential use, which turns the housing estate into a vibrant urban quarter.