Wien (AT)

How can the site contribute to the productive city?

Liesing is unique: not only as a district with 3 Europan implementations (E7, E8 and E10), but also because of its durable and successful efforts: Liesing systematically promotes a new industrial-city, introducing landscape, public space and innovative synergy of uses in midst Vienna's largest industrial district. The project site itself is exceptional: just a 3-minute-walk from the subway stop. Exceptional is also the ambition: The city and the site developer want to initiate together a pilot project of mixed businesses, which shall exploit potential synergies in a new setting of inventive typologies. Exceptional is finally the background of innovation: a programmatic masterplan and an experimental case-study have prepared a perfect ground for Europan, taking the next step towards architectural implementation.

City strategy

Facing its high growth of inhabitants Wien has been developing an ambitious plan to preserve, support and promote productive working places in the city. The Industrial Area Liesing is the city's largest productive area with more than 7,000 working places. Since 2011 a neighbourhood management scheme has been supporting the area's development, aiming at unique options for synergies between businesses, supportive infrastructure, ambitious newcomers, and, above all, the development of an "industrial city": the integration of sustainable mobility, public spaces and new types of buildings shall create new synergies between low-rise production and stacked forms of productive businesses with a higher density of workplaces. Europan shall be the pilot for this ambition.

Site definition 

Being located directly at Perfektastraße, just 3 minutes from the subway stop, the site profits from a triple advantage: first, excellent accessibility, as well for heavy traffic (trucks) as for soft mobility (pedestrians, bikes, subway stop); second, extraordinary ambition, as well from part of the city as from the site-developer, making the site a pilot to promote the idea of the industrial city; third, a unique history, integrating the site in the largest industrial area, hosting a large amount of innovative companies. Existing buildings and uses on site partly could be integrated in the new development, transforming the low-rise setting of shed-buildings into a new configuration of types, stacking and clustering uses. The unattractive use of outdoor space as pure storage and manipulation-area shall be reconsidered.

How is Production Considered in the Urban Diversity Program?

Instead of mixing industry with housing, it is about a "magical mix" of businesses: to mix different forms of production, education and services that could especially profit from exchanging knowledge, synergy of skills and facilities for work and recreation. A step-by-step strategy shall consider how to replace, or partly integrate the existing buildings.
The main challenge is to create an "incentive environment": the performance and character of the spatial setting shall support the city's and developer's promotion-strategy, attracting new businesses by new options for various kind of synergies. The links between different scales of production, technology and knowledge has been strongly developing. The site's conditions are perfect for welcoming a synergetic cluster of different types of working-models, which promote interaction and sharing. The model of a business-park could be intensified in form of a micro-business-cluster, in which urban framework, typological intelligence, supportive monitoring and exceptional promotion can finally come together. Following the strategic-master-concept Standpunkt Liesing and the case-study Lab-Liesing, Europan is the third cornerstone of a gradually concretizing implementation plan. As such, Europan shall deliver an urban-architectural strategy, which creates a spatial framework -a receptive figure- for Wien's extraordinary ambitions, giving birth to Productive City Liesing.