4th Viennese Seminar on Architecture

opening day: September 21, 1993, 7 p.m.

In continuation of the themes of the 3rd Viennese Seminar on Architecture 1992, the fourth seminar, which was commissioned by the municipality of Vienna for the first time, was dedicated to the topic “The city – a place to live”.

This was the continuation of a debate, whose aim was not only to allow young architects and students to develop project proposals but to actually carry them out as well. The 4th Viennese Seminar on Architecture extended the limits of the city as a place to live into two directions, focusing on living itself, its typology and everyday aspects – the “culture of living” – on the one hand, and the urban environment, the infrastructure, the role and function of “cultural institutions”, on the other hand.

Project groups with:
– Wiel Arets, Heerlen
– João Luis Carrillho da Graça, Lisbon
– Christoph Langhof, Berlin
– Yves Lion, Paris
– Enric Miralles, Barcelona
– Christos Papoulias, Athens
– Janez Kozeli, Ales Vodopivec, Ljubljana

With this forum the City of Vienna was continuing an international discussion based on concrete plans to put into practice project proposals which have been drawn up in conjunction with young architects and students of architecture.

Town planning problems were still pressing, and so the topic of housing, which was the subject of the 3rd Viennese Seminar on Architecture, was addressed again, with culture as an additional aspect; this included both the “culture of living” (accomodation typology and use, considering possible cultural, social and technological changes, e.g. home computers) and “cultural facilities” in the immediate vicinity (infrastructure, areas for meeting, education, contemplation etc.)

Thus the 4th Viennese Seminar on architecture set itself the task of identifying inner city problems as well as those specific to the periphery in combination with the needs of a technological and consumerist society and its “culture concept”, and working out architectural and typological equivalents.