Austrian Architecture

Architects are charged with protecting the public’s health, safety, and well-being. When buildings fail, whether through increased loads, poor design, or natural disasters, that charge also falls to those capable and willing to aid people in need. Firefighters regularly experience architecture’s collapse, often risking life and limb to save occupants and individuals they do not know. Yet firefighters and emergency personnel also have their own buildings they call home, rare typologies where recreational, domestic, and professional activities collide.

For the 17th international architecture exhibition – la biennale di Venezia 2021, Austria is creating a platform of debate around how we envision the architecture of the future. In fact, the Austrian contribution, entitled “Platform Austria”, curated by Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, seeks to articulate the profound changes established by the development of digital platforms in our built environment.

Carl Pruscha, an Austrian architect who mainly dedicated his professional career to investigate and work closely in the field of regional architecture in the eastern world, a territory that was being overlooked at a time when the modern movement in architecture and in the rest of the world was booming. Through an overview of his life, we will highlight some of his most relevant works in Nepal and Sri Lanka and understand how Pruscha managed to stamp his unique visions of architecture and cities into his built projects.

AllesWirdGut has won the competition to redesign the historic Gösserhallen in Vienna's 10th district. The new approach aims to handle the existing structure with care, a concept that revives the industrial property with contemporary elements. Preserving the outer walls while introducing interiors for different uses, the team designed an "in-between" space that creates a new environment within the project.

Scale dramatically shapes how we experience architecture and the built environment. Whether looking at buildings by volume, square area or height, the larger a project gets, the greater our perception changes. Monumental projects tell incredible stories of spatial experience, programming and design. Towering above us and around us, these large-scale works become landmarks in rural and urban contexts.

Europe in the 1960s was an incubator for emerging provocative architecture radicals who defied traditional architecture dogma in favor of counterculture that transcended time and space. Coop Himmelb(l)au, a Vienna-based faction of this movement, questioned the clean lines, rigidity, and literal nature of modernist architects of the time. While the firm is known for their rebellious spirit and aggressive forms that are generated through state-of-the-art 3D software and technologies, it’s important to acknowledge the work that the firm did shortly after their inception in 1968, and how their early oeuvre still relentlessly breaks the status quo of modern-day practice and academic discourse.

The Fundació Mies van der Rohe and Creative Europe have announced the 12 finalist projects competing to win the Young Talent Architecture Award 2020 (YTAA 2020) and the 9 finalist projects competing to win the Asian Edition of YTAA 2020. Established in 2016, the YTAA “supports the talent of recently graduated Architects, Urban Planners and Landscape Architects who will be responsible for transforming our environment in the future."

Architecture is defined by stories. Told through diverse mediums, these narratives shape how we understand our built environment. At the same time, drawings and visualizations can be architecture in their own right, a way of discovering what we see or what could be. For Vienna-based urbanist, architect and illustrator Alexander Daxböck, drawings are a way to imagine new futures together.

With more competition entries coming our way, our curated selection of best-unbuilt architecture features this week, exceptional projects presented in an international context. ArchDaily has rounded up another collection of proposals, gathering interventions from across the world, and highlighting never-seen-before programs, designs, and innovations from our readers’ submissions.

Presented part of international competitions, this week’s best-unbuilt architecture gathers award-winning projects submitted by our readers. Highlighting as usual diverse approaches from across the globe, ArchDaily is rounding up in this article, a curated selection of cultural, civic, and urban proposals.