Felberstrasse, the street running just over the tracks of the Westbahnoff railway station in Vienna, has been in the recent years object of a discussion among municipality and local dwellers about the future development of the area. The dismissal of few rail tracks has triggered the debate allowing a potential expansion of the city fabric toward the rail infrastructure.
In the spring 2016 an international intensive workshop between Politecnico di Torino and University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences of Wien has given the opportunity to the students to redesign the open spaces in a future scenario which a new housing complex would have been built in that vacant area.
Landscape Architects: Stefano Di Carlantonio, Marco Gazzoli, Marco Nelli
Place: Felberstrasse, Vienna, Austria
Status: concept, masterplan
The project team has been called to find the best solution for the disposition of the supposed new housing blocks. The solution had to answer as well to the requests of the people already living in there, and had to manage the current traffic issues focusing particularly in connecting Rudolfsheim and Fȕnfhaus neighborhoods, now separated by the important bundle of railway infrastructures. Than the design of an open spaces system capable of serving the private needs of new dwellers was requested.
The solution proposed is built on the combined use of different concepts. First of all connectivity. This is pursued physically through allowing flows of different kind of traffic, and also socially through the creation of focal points that aim to collect users of both neighborhoods.
The project has been conceived also to adapt to municipality economic possibilities. A development through time phases could foresee, the construction of the public spaces as a priority. In fact, these spaces could serve the existing housing blocks right away and also attract private investments for the construction of new housing complexes nearby in the near future.
In this stripe of land, since the topography is quite complex, different digging works will be made. As a consequence, the existing soil quality will be compromised. This factor has been taken into account in the botanical species selection, prioritizing the most resilient ones, without refraing the aesthetic values. The same logic apply to the matter of local climate conditions: strong winds blow toward the city center.
Variety of spatial quality is another characteristic on which the design effort has been focused on. From private to public, a gradient of open spaces is designed, able to offer environments with different degree of openness and inclusiveness.
Synergy and environmental friendliness is also a top priority. This concept produced an accurate study of flows and activities, either existing or new, with the objective of spatially locate or relocate them in an order in which they benefit from their vicinity and no conflict, noise, or disturb may act among them. The three stripes are so conceived, named after the overall degree of movement that each of them host in terms of activity and functions.
FOCUS AREA
AXONOMETRY
The landscape architects Marco Nelli, Marco Gazzoli and Stefano Di Carlantonio met each other during their master degree course, and they continue to collaborate since their graduation in 2017, pursuing their interest in the topic of landscape architecture.
Stefano Di Carloantonio worked as university assistant at Politecnico di Torino for a Landscape Design Studio for two years, and now he is occupying in gardening from design to creation and management. Bachelor degree in Forestry Science and Master degree in Landscape Architecture.
Marco Gazzoli is currently a PhD student in Politectino di Torino, Turin, Italy. He has a master degree in Landscape Architecture, and he previously got a Bachelor degree in Environmental Architecture from Politecnico Di Milano.
Marco Nelli is a collaborator of SAP Studio (Bonate Sopra, Bergamo, Italy), where he is occupying in landscape design at different scales, and he is the professionist delegate for a participatory process for the Municipality of Lumezzane. For the past two years he works as university assistant at Politecnico di Torino for a Landscape Design Studio. Master degree in Landscape Architecture and bachelor degree in Agriculture Science.