Description
The triangular wedge of the site lies between the busy Prager Straße and the raised roadway of the A22 motorway. The development plan presented an additional challenge: the plan foresaw a 23-metre wide strip of building land parallel to the motorway, which to meet the calculations of the Vienna Housing Fund would need to be used to the maximum but also prohibited living rooms facing the motorway – a combination that rules out practically all common residential typologies. The division of the planning tasks on the site was already a product of the competition: Bernd Vlay and Lina Streeruwitz designed the taller building flanking the motorway, Regina Freimüller-Söllinger the point buildings behind it on the site. The overall project – christened “Florasdorf am Anger” – is flanked by two green “garden shelves” parallel to the traffic artery.
The solution for the 23-metre deep block along the motorway is the product of a combination of stacking different housing typologies and creatively interpreting the legal requirements. On top of front-to-back apartments on the ground floor is a mix of single-aspect single-level and maisonette apartments accessed via an internal corridor that receives light from the terraces above. From the 5th floor upwards the apartments are fronted by a buffer zone with terraces, balconies and loggias facing the motorway, and on the 6th and 7th floors, storage boxes are attached to the access corridor like rucksacks hung in front of the building. Typologically and sociologically, the stacked housing encompasses a range of types from apartments with additional uses to shared flats or apartments for reintegrating the homeless into society. Greened courtyards were originally planned for the 5th floor but fell victim to budget limitations. In their place are inhospitable gravel areas that await future development – or the residents’ own initiative. To mitigate the problem of living spaces oriented in the direction of the motorway, the architects employed the device of placing terraces and patios in front of the apartments that end in a concrete wall the height and width of the window. As such, the apartments do not face directly onto the motorway but still receive adequate daylight.
The residential blocks designed by Freimüller Söllinger in the interior of the site are much less restricted in their disposition of rooms and functions. Four six-storey blocks are distributed on the site, turned at an angle to each other to avoid the formation of “canyons” between them. In addition, each cuboid block is rotated by 90 degrees after a few floors to break down the scale of the building. Each block has a communal space with terrace on the ground floor facing onto the block interior, as does the roadside block, to promote social interaction in the outdoor areas of the site. The complex articulation of the façade facing the motorway was only possible by making the cuboid blocks in the interior simpler in their construction – but not at the expense of too drastic compromises in quality. The fact that the two teams of architects entered the competition jointly gave them a stronger negotiating position.
For the outdoors spaces, the architects worked together with the landscape architect Carla Lo to develop a “productive landscape” that goes beyond being merely decorative. The concept includes fruit trees, beans and a greenhouse as well as so-called “garden shelves” that screen the residential complex from the adjacent petrol station on the Prager Strasse. These facilities are managed by GIN, an association promoting integration in society, and there is also a food co-op. As with almost all the more complex mixed-purpose housing projects developed in recent years in Vienna, “Florasdorf am Anger” is also accompanied by the experienced team of supervisors at realitylab for a period of two years after the first residents moved in. The competition also takes into account a possible next phase of development: the cuboid blocks are positioned in such a way that a possible future redevelopment of the petrol station site will not impact on their daylight illumination.
Drawings
Site plan, scale 1:20000
Ground floor plan, scale 1:1000
Second floor plan, scale 1:1000
Third floor plan, scale 1:1000
Fifth floor plan, scale 1:1000
Sixth floor plan, scale 1:1000
Eighth floor plan, scale 1:1000
Ninth floor plan, scale 1:1000
Axonometric view of the program distribution
Photos
The façade facing the motorway is to be completely greened in future.
An advantage of the complex development on the east side is the connection of many apartments to a private outdoor space, which exceeds the possibilities of conventional terraces.