Vienna: The Latest Architecture and News

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Metropolis Magazine has released their 2016 rankings of the world's most "livable" cities. Acknowledging that what makes a city "livable" can often be subjective, the team at Metropolis emphasizes that in creating the list they "focused on the concerns at Metropolis’ core—housing, transportation, sustainability, and culture." The result of this research was last year's top prize-winner Toronto dropping to the number 9 spot and Copenhagen, which last year took the number 4 spot, jumping to the top. Rounding out the top three are Berlin and Helsinki.

feld72 has won the competition for the design of the Neu Leopoldau, a Youth Living residential complex in Leopoldau, a post-industrial area on the outskirts of Vienna. Based on the idea of creating community, the project utilizes overlaying, staggered, and connected spaces and communication areas to facilitate the feeling of a village.

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Spanish, New York-based architect Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation) has been awarded the 10th Kiesler Architecture and Art Prize by the Mayor of Vienna, citing Jaque’s "capacity to go beyond assumptions about traditional practice and urban life." In 2015 Jaque was declared the MoMA PS1 YAP (Young Architects Programme) winner for COSMO – a complex, and beautiful, water purifying prototype that has been installed in Brooklyn. He and his office are also collaborating with Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina on the design for the upcoming Istanbul Design Biennial, Are We Human?

Viennese firm Zechner & Zechner have been awarded first prize in a competition to design a new office building in the courtyard of the historic Rossau Barracks building in downtown Vienna. The firm’s entry, called “Floating Double-X,” takes inspiration from the symmetry of its context to place a minimally invasive office block into the existing courtyard space.

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Videos

The 2016 Quality of Life Conference will bring together key voices from the worlds of architecture, business, design, urbanism and culture to discuss how to improve our nations, cities and workplaces. Welcoming 200 delegates and 20 speakers from around the world, the event will be hosted at the historic Palais Ferstel by Monocle’s Editor-in-Chief Tyler Brûlé, alongside the magazine’s editors and correspondents. The summit will also be broadcast live on Monocle 24 Radio and will featured in a series of films on the Monocle website.

In the latest edition of The Urbanist, Monocle 24's weekly "guide to making better cities," the team revisit the theme of heritage, asking why we should "learn to cherish the history of our cities." They visit one of the world's oldest medinas in Tunis, Tunisia, and explore some of the Austrian capital's less than charming Listed buildings, before asking whether or not the quintessential British terraced (row) house is still a cultural icon.

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In the latest episode of The Urbanist, Monocle 24's weekly "guide to making better cities," the team tackle the 'establishment'. From small businesses to citizen collectives, the show discovers how "championing transformative change from the ground up can be the best way to alter the status quo in our cities." Investigating how the Ministry of Space is reclaiming public spaces in Belgrade, how ordinary citizens in Vienna are welcoming refugees, and how a collective in Rio de Janeiro wants to reshape the politics of the city, the episode also explores how small businesses in London’s West End are fighting against increasing rent.

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