Graz (AT)

Inhabited milieu's challenges

Wiener Straße is the main artery when entering Graz from the north. Coming from the motorway, cars speed along a four-lane road towards the city centre. Gösting is the first district they encounter. Junctions and traffic lights slow the speed, and the 3-4 storey houses along the road become increasingly dense. However, the large supermarkets or car dealerships in between break the continuity.
Gösting has a castle on the hill that no one on Wr. Straße would ever notice.Turn left or right at one of the intersections and you’ll find a heterogeneous, patchy urban fabric with lots of greenery and even small streams.
Another obstacle that cuts through Gösting is the railway line. In the near future, a mobility hub will be created with a regional train station and a tram loop with frequent services. This is a great opportunity to rethink the objective of the four-lane road, reduce private car traffic by shifting commuters to public transport, and to make the area more liveable and human-scaled again.

Questions to the competitors

The task on this site is to look at the urban fabric, both its existing and its new potential as a result of infrastructure development. Accessibility to public infrastructure must be combined with a relaxed living environment and good community relations.To show how the future of this four-lane road and the transformation of this place between infrastructure and physical barriers can become a valuable place to live and a place of identity is the task of this site.
How to negotiate an infrastructural transition and how to face the challenges? How to strengthen the urban fabric around a new mobility hub? A mobility hub is by definition a place of movement and passage; how to create a quality of place that invites people to stay? How to integrate the barriers of the train and devise a mobility transition of the road? How to adapt the area to the new velocity? The surrounding fabric will benefit from better accessibility, liveability and less motorised individual traffic; how can this currently heterogeneous area regain its identity? What kind of urbanity can be established within the peri-urban? Can its core values be linked to nature, as there are several green areas and two streams? Water could be a fascinating medium to work with.The whole area is prone to flooding; how can the peculiarities of nature be incorporated into a scenario that respects or even encourages the various expansions and developments of nature?