ReCrete Park

Re:crete Park The project is named Re:crete Park, an upcycled sustainable structure for a new public exhibition space. The project is situated in Augarten, Vienna. The baroque garden, lying in the middle of the second district, is mainly associated with the cities second world war heritage: The flak towers. Our approach tries to find ways to reintegrate those foreign bodies into the park and the urban fabric. The project mainly deals with the flak tower in the Augarten, which stands there as an abandoned leftover from second world war, having no benefits for the society or the park itself. Neither it is integrated in the park. Our investigation aims to integrate the tower into the park and tries to dissolve the boundary between the park and the tower as a solid structure. The problematics of the climate crisis make the Augarten even more valuable, since green spaces are getting more important than ever. The proposal aims to investigate new strategies of reusing and reconfiguring building material and reorganizing structure to connect park and one of the flak towers. By breaking up the tower, we want to make shaded spaces accessible again, support green areas in its expansion and create natural ventilation processes, to counteract the more and more emerging heat islands within the dense urban areas. By Cutting into the flak tower walls, we do not only want to make its interior spaces accessible again, but our focus also lies on using resulting materials as a source for newly designed structures that are surrounding the tower to form a tectonic landscape that intends to blend the tower with the park. The project is generally raising the question of how to deal with abandoned, unused buildings. On a programmatic level as well as on the material side. In our opinion, the way we deal with abandoned buildings is very important when talking about the aspects of sustainable and environmentally friendly buildings. In particular, the reuse of existing structures as well as existing materials. Our spatial program therefore intends to create a new focal point in the green that brings people together and stimulates discussion and debate. The construction methodology and use of materiality, harvested directly from the existing object on site, rebuilt and reused, intends to show a responsible approach of how to deal with existing buildings and how these strategies will play an important role in the future. In our case, the project, or rather the concept of the project, contributes to better urban growth because it addresses very important topics like cement production and its CO2 emissions or making obsolete structures and spaces usable again. Also, we were looking at how an existing building can retain its qualities and historical values, but still be transformed into something new. Furthermore, the process of reusing materials will play a big role in the future. How can they be recycled and how far can they be applied and used meaningfully? Overall, the approach of sustainable urban mining is one that will concern us more and more in the future. The general aim should be to produce capable and sustainable materials as CO2 neutral as possible or to optimize our conventionally available materials in terms of emissions on all levels. University of Applied Arts Vienna Studio Hani Rashid SS22 Louis Braunger David Kipp Gaowei Zhou