The objective pursued here is to create small-scale projects that can be staged, portrayed, and carried out in the public space of “streets” in the City of Vienna. The spectrum ranges from quiet interventions to active interaction with passersby or performances. The projects are united by exploring relations between urban public space and its users. The focus here is placed on various feasible forms of mobility for the future.
Students from the fields of spatial planning and architecture are invited to collaboratively develop a project for the revised use of this public space. The idea is to take an experimental approach to discussing and enlivening streets and squares in a broader sense.
What was the genesis of this project?
This year, in 2015, the Vienna Biennale for Art, Design, and Architecture is being held for the first time under the title of “Ideas of Change.” The future.lab was invited to collaborate with students of architecture and spatial planning in thinking about the future meaning of “streets” as part of urban public space and urban society.
In addition to lectures by experts who deal with the class topic on both theoretical and practical levels, workspace is made available to the students enabling them to work intensively on this project during the entire semester. Subsequently the students are given an exceptional opportunity to gain an audience for their own work and to put it up for discussion through official participation in the Vienna Biennale with a so-called demonstrator as one or more interventions in public space.