Fallow Land Vienna
"Fallow Land" project is the result of reacting against a palimpsest of boundary site conditions and the profound suburban problematic that menace the modern city urban extensions . The suburban challenge is faced through density, diversity, ecoeficiency and identity. On the other side, the complex site particularities are figure out through the importation/manipulation of the former farmer Viennese countryside landscape (fallow land) into the plot.
A new landmark arises from the Viennese outskirts’ skyline bringing together a new approach to deal with the suburban pattern by creating a new piece of livable city.
“Dealing with Infrastructures” was the topic of Europan 7 site located in Vienna: a triangular plot, placed in the outskirts of the city, surrounded by a heavy traffic way, an elevated underground line and crossed by a middle tension power line.
The proposal applied the landscape system surrounding Vienna as a method to draw the project by alluding to the structure of the farmlands (fallow land), as a formal strategy capable to assume the multiple border conditions.
Our architectonical response was to create three different levels: first the ground floor, where different public or semi-public spaces were linked to small green areas, secondly what we called “the cloud”, where we planned a lively green roof mat of patio housing, incorporating to Vienna a different kind of living and also isolating the inner uses from the power-line influence, and finally five towers that opened inner spaces to the surrounding landscape (the Viennese country and downtown).
The project also responds to the mainstream "suburban challenge” through creating a new “intermediate” density urban mesh (mixing sprawled and vertical) based on the social redensification, the typology diversity, the high environmental sustainability and the amplification of the current and historical Viennese landscape. Therefore, against the usual suburban nonidentity, we respond by creating not only a new urban city specie but also a specific own imaginary: the Vienna’s lemons.
