There is no city, no urban space
without a garden or park,
without the simulation of nature,
without labyrinths,
the evocation of the ocean or forest,
without trees tormented into strange human
and inhuman shapes.

– Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution

More than half of the world's population already lives in metropolitan areas. And while we are taking up more and more space and gradually taking up more ground, the land is becoming more and more important for our metropolitan existence as an existential basis of life and material reservoir. The resulting and permanent interventions in the landscape have led to irreversible changes in its shape and form. In the Anthropocene, this growing use of land not only polarizes the relationship between urban and rural territories but at the same time reveals our profound dependence on the finite resource of land.

Vienna does not seem to be spared from this trend either. On the contrary - the current construction activities are a reflection of never-ending land utilization. Many »Wiener Gstettn« were rediscovered as areas for development and are increasingly subject to neoliberal urbanism. The green and undeveloped empty spaces, which are among the valuable habitats of the urban jungle, are often neglected. But climate change, globalization, excessive consumption of resources, and never-ending greed are pushing our earthly world to its limits and are demanding alternative and integrative solutions increasingly.

The waiting room of the future offers the opportunity to rethink urban vacancies and to place an infrastructure fallow in a new context. The diploma »Land schafft Stadt« follows the legacy of Vienna's urban development and the urban-rural dichotomy and dares to attempt a transformation of the 60-hectare Westbahn area with its three spatial units (Hütteldorf-Penzing-Westbahnhof) in the middle of the Viennese urban landscape. The antithesis proposes an alternative development scenario and positions itself against conservative urban development strategies by using this area for agriculture. The concept presents a scenario that grows with the city, creating new tensions and identities through the contrast between a dense city and a productive landscape. In addition, an urban interior with architectural elements, pavilions, and interventions creates new uses for this location and thus becomes part of Vienna's urban space. It is an attempt to understand the landscape as an adventure, an experience, a risk, and to re-understand an urban-rural identity through a staged transformation: the city as the periphery of nature.

New contrasts are created. A dense city is confronted with productive land and creates new tensions with landscapes that flow into the inner city. The collision between usability and poetics, as well as conceptuality and reality, allows this landscape to be understood as an adventure, an experience, or a risk. 

The antithesis dares to attempt a dramaturgical transformation of this linear territory. The provocation as a new narrative of this territory manifests the discrepancy between the two maxims: urban–rural. As a performative spatial narrative, the new territory finally merges into an urban landscape scenario and reveals three different identities (a poplar forest, an orchard & a field mosaic). Additionally, an urban interior of architecture is placed strategically and brings new potential uses to this site. These platforms of formal and informal programs are concentrated at specific locations and become the icons or beacons of the landscape.

Diploma in architecture
mentor Tina Gregoric Dekleva
Vienna University of Technology, March 2022

(c) Felix Redmann 2022