Topic

There is a new landscape to be explored. 
The level of the Rooftops of Vienna have a enormous potential for the development of the city and for the improvement of housing complexes. 
This Design Research Course will investigate which opportunities the highest layer of the city can provide to the expansion of the town and its buildings. 
The course will start with a speculative analysis of the actual High Levels of Vienna, from the typological and morphological spatial features to the relationship with the surrounding and local context. 
Based on the initial analysis, a number of detailed design architectural projects will be developed. 
On the town´s rooftop layer a wide range of activities can be displaced: from leisure/sport activities to social activities, from gardening to urban farming and more. The space can be used as well for energy production and goods distribution and logistics. The new activities can be seen as an extension and upgrading of existing buildings as well as new autonomous areas detached from objects below. 

The course is intended as an open research laboratory: the planning and design projects will be considered as an opportunity to investigate deeply the conceptual aspects of the city and its buildings in an empirical way: at the same time the design works should face and address to pragmatic solutions which can be applied in the actual city context. Projects will be developed on large scale (city´s scale) and on micro areas or single buildings. 
A particular attention will be placed on the depiction of spaces and projects. The type of representation of space define our knowledge and shape our possibility of prefiguration. Techniques, modes, methods and tools of depiction assume a symbolic meaning and become a form vehicle of a particular Weltanschauung produced by a certain epoch. Architectural projects and their nonfigurative representation are occasions to turn consolidated visions upside down to open up to new perspectives. 

Capacity to manage large 3D files and computer-graphic skills are required. 
The course will be held in English.