THE VIENNA MODEL | EXHIBITION OPENING
5PM – 6PM | PANEL DISCUSSION >> Reservations required!
with curators Wolfgang Förster and William Menking, artists Michael Rieper and Michael Zinganel, New York-based architect Mimi Hoang, and Abby Hamlin, the Director of Curriculum and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Real Estate Development at Columbia University.
6PM – 8PM | OPENING RECEPTION (No reservations required.)
Official opening by Michael Ludwig, Vienna City Councellor for Housing, Housing Construction, and Urban Renewal, and director Andreas Stadler.
This exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York presents a survey of public housing design in the Austrian capital of Vienna curated by Wolfgang Förster and William Menking. The exhibition will feature 36 case studies in Viennese public housing, accompanied by a responsive series of images of artworks curated by the Austrian collaborative duo Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber.
The City of Vienna has achieved extraordinary milestones with regard to public housing: today, about 60% of the Viennese population lives in municipally built, owned, or managed housing, and the city is clearly in control of the housing market. Vienna’s housing model contributes to a tangible positive impact; for the past four consecutive years, Vienna topped the Mercer “Quality of Living” survey as the city boasting the world’s highest quality of life in the world, was ranked second in The Economist’s 2012 “World’s Most Livable City”, and number eight in Monocle’s 2012 “World’s Most Livable Cities”.
The projects featured in The Vienna Model are characteristic for contemporary Viennese public housing trends, some little-known outside the city: The Kabelwerk Estate, which involved turning the grounds of an old electrical cable & wiring factory into an entirely new urban area (completed in 2007, Hermann & Valentiny & Partners, Mascha & Seethaler, Schwalm-Theiss-Gressenbauer, Martin Wurnig, pool Architektur, Werkstatt Wien Spiegelfeld, Holnsteiner & Co.). Other examples include an Inter-ethnic housing complex (Peter Scheinfinger and Partners, 1998-2000), Bike City (königlarch architects, 2005 – 2008), and the Sargfabrik (BKK-2, Johnny Winter, 1996 – 2001), a former coffin manufacturing plant turned into a housing complex: this project was planned by a residents’ group in Vienna’s densely built-up fourteenth district, and has since received international acclaim for its outstanding architecture as well as its social concept of introducing a new communal infrastructure into a low-profile urban area.
The exhibition will highlight these and many other projects for an American audience as it debuts in New York and tours Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., before returning to Vienna from 2013 to 2014.
ARCHITECTURAL CURATORS: Wolfgang Förster & William Menking
ART PROJECTS CURATORS & EXHIBITION DESIGN CONCEPT: Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Thumb
VENUE
ACFNY