1/9/22

RAUMPARK – FAUX TERRAIN VIENNA

Raumpark Faux Terrain Vienna Model 1:2000 (Photo: M. Pillhofer)


Raumpark Lerchenfelder Gürtel , Vienna (Drawing Alexander Klapsch)


The globally effective New Climatic Regime came along with problematic legacies that constitute precarious environmental situations – ubiquitously. One of them is the increasing overheating of our cities even in the temperate zones. The critical conditions of their ecological systems call for new types of spatial and environmental structures – forms of architectural interventions that allow us to adjust cities to shifted and persistently altering climates. These structures will be characterized by the needs and qualities of urbanity on the one hand, and those of “nature” and wilderness on the other.

RAUMPARKS serve as populated/inhabited climatic devices, consequently orienting radiation, wind, precipitation and evaporation. They are constructions of various sizes, operating on diverse scales, offering multi-dimensional inhabited parks, gardens and (“wild”) forests in and above our cities. The conception of such structures will unavoidably expose and negotiate dichotomies between the consequences of the need for more liveable space for a rapidly growing population (migration: another consequence of global warming) and the importance of accepting human beings as an integral part of the larger ecosphere. RAUMPARKS with its pervasive flora and fauna will not only cool down the local and regional climatic conditions (micro-climates/ meso-climates), they also have the potential to thoroughly challenge the ecological function of architecture in densifying urban areas.

RAUMPARK – Faux Terrain Vienna is a proposal for an ecological megastructure. It provides multitudes of hybrid programs – habitats for Raumparkians of a wide range of species. Program includes dwellings and spaces of recreation, production and trade, agricultural areas, “urban” infrastructures etc. The structure connects the UNESCO Biosphere Park Wienerwald at Vienna’s western edge with the forests of Prater and the adjacent Nationalpark Donau-Auen in the East of the city. It bridges Vienna over 12 km, reconnecting a missing link of the natural habitat in Central Europe with a new resilient urban typology of inhabited forestation that mitigates environmental harm upon the city. Thus it establishes an urban counterpart to Austria’s most sustainable structure: the 21 km long Donauinsel (Danube Island) that is part of Vienna‘s highly sophisticated flood protection system.

The concept of RAUMPARK – Faux Terrain Vienna is of intrinsic diverse, inclusive and collective nature. Drastically altering climates inevitably require radical changes of lifestyles, new concepts for sharing environments and unprecedented forms of true democratic and diverse communities. The proposed new structure’s relation to the existing city is spatially, atmospherically, organizationally and politically reciprocal and supportive, and thus they together form a new entity: Cultural Heritage is understood as a transformative practice rather than a means of conservation. The collaboratively developed RAUMPARK Arrangements, a sort of dynamic building code for a semi-informally growing megastructure provides for recycling economies and for an ongoing adaption of Vienna’s built/growing environments in times of unstable climates and societies – towards ever changing Desirable Futures.