“forum stadtwildnis” is a project by two architecture students conducted at the institute for art and architecture (academy of fine arts vienna). It is about creating visions for another future in the city and started by analysing the Lainzer Tiergarten in Vienna and then moved to the site of Stadtwildnis Margaretengürtel.
When it comes to the climate crisis, many despair after reading and hearing about it – especially when we get new signs that we are right in the middle of this crisis, year after year.
This is pretty understandable, because we – the so-called generation Y or millennials – have been raised in a rather stable European situation, founded on the European Union and the understanding that the world is being developed into a better, healthier and safer one. When realising that above all, what is in fact progressing is climate change, the younger generations of this planet have united and are demanding change:
A sustainable future for everyone.
Based on these ideas and emotions, we felt that we needed to go beyond planning to bring nature “back” into the city and tried to gather the many information that we collected in one semester and bring it all together. The climate crisis, trees and their influence on climate and the city, art projects dealing with nature, alternative political systems, transportation in cities, participatory practices – coming all together in the sense of equity and fairness as the linking entities.
We started with the assumption that the governing people have realised we actually need a system change – and getting away from the idea that everything has to be done for some profit. The city of Vienna would be functioning without individual car-transport, the affordable housing program that has already been established would be pursued and developed, all open space is planned to be accessible by every person and the understanding for real participation by the citizens that also allows conflict, has been accomplished.
Therefore we decided to develop “a collective space for democracy & urban forestation” that performs both online and offline. The offline space, starting from the Stadtwildnis Margareten/Gaudenzdorfer Gürtel, is a common space governed by the people who live there. The online space, a website and forum, can be accessed from everywhere and acts as place for discussion and knowledge exchange.
Annika Böcher & Mona Steinmetzer
Read the studio brief below:
Stadtverwaldung – Learning from Beuys?
“Ich bin ja kein Gärtner, der Bäume pflanzt, weil Bäume schön sind. Nein, ich sage, die Bäume sind heute ja viel intelligenter als Menschen.” Joseph Beuys, 1984The condition of HITZE stands for scarcity and concentration of resources, environmental modifications due to climatic, technological and economic parameters, subsequent conflicts and displacements of populations, increasing imbalance in power, and political unrest. The question is how architecture, art and urban planning (and policymaking) can react to the threatening forecast of extreme heat in the contested urban realm. How can access to the most basic and essential goods like water, trees, landscapes and liveable temperatures – in other words, a healthy environment – be publicly guaranteed? In a recent report on “The global tree restoration potential” , scientists recommended the massive planting of trees to mitigate the currently recorded trend of increasing temperatures that research suggests may be due to climate change – so could planting an urban forest actually stop the heat in the city?
Unlike policymakers, architects and artists can exercise the freedom of going further than providing mere technical solutions or regulations in order to generate and test new possibilities, public forms and inquiries. We believe in the transformative power of art for bringing together a provisional community of urban species to cope with the challenges of HITZE and to build strategies of resilience, “… for art is the only form in which environmental problems can be solved”. As a starting point, we will take Joseph Beuys’ project 7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung (documenta 7), which involved planting 7000 trees of different species all over the city of Kassel and placing a basalt column beside each tree. The precedent of Beuys’ work and his connection to the controversial romantic idea of a totality of nature will be confronted with the current debate on the multiplicity and diversity of natures – also seen through the eyes of contemporary art production, “… since we don’t want the planting action to end ever again.”
Not only the given conditions of ground, water and temperature are crucial for the analysis of trees. Especially when trees amount to forests, the condition of HITZE can also be applied to time and money; for instance, Austrian forests have recently become popular as secure investments. The investigation will focus on multi-scaled mappings of historical forest sites at the periphery of Vienna and their transformation during periods of extreme growth of the city. Historical surveys like the Franziszeischer Kataster, Alexander von Humboldt’s Pflanzengeographie and Eduard Suess’ publication Der Boden der Stadt Wien provide the historical dimension for an experimental reforestation proposal that considers the forest as an artistic laboratory for the radical transformation of urban space.Antje Lehn, Alessandra Cianchetta