Vienna International Center Square

Vienna International Center Square in Vienna, Austria by awg_AllesWirdGut, 2001


The following text and images are by Vienna, Austria's awg_AllesWirdGut (in cooperation with Marianna Milioni & Daniel Hora) for their urban study of Vienna International Center Square (Wien Mitte).

The initially occupied urban space of empty surfaces becomes a playground of urban actions through the strategy of subtly structuring the surface. The objective is not to design definite structures, but rather to design possibilities, that is, open structures, capable of relocating differentiated urban functions to adequate sites.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Wien Mitte is a space of streams. It is not only defined through physical creation of architectural boundaries, but also through its explicit pattern of streams moving at different speeds. For instance, pedestrians and bicycles vs. vehicles and trains. Defined at different levels but interacting, introverted at certain points, a complex image of the city emerges, which deals with speed and time in a particular manner.

The creation of this huge 'square' provides first of all a 'breathing' space in the city net. But Wien Mitte remains always a junction. The functions that already exist are now combined with other, new functions throughout the levels of the square. On the top of this, the sense of the square surface is not restricted only on the horizontal direction, the facades of the tower are also part of the square as much as the level where the trains and the underground are passing.