Vienna, the Supergrätzel – Journal of Architecture arrives
After Barcelona, the Austrian capital also focuses on urban supeblocks to reduce pollution and the heating of neighborhoods with green spaces and areas for socializing
VIENNA. A vast sector in the 10th Preferred district measuring approximately 300 × 250 meters: this is the place chosen by the Municipality for an urban redevelopment experiment started in October of strategic value for the sustainable future of the city (WieNeu +). For this intervention it was specially coined a neologism, Supergrätzel, which can perhaps be translated into “superb“. The Viennese Supergrätzel is in fact made up of a set of urban blocks that function according to unitary principles in terms of circulation, ecology, safety, sociability and collective services.
Superblocks between past and present
The term “superblock” is anything but new in the history of the Austrian capital. The word takes us back to the last phase of the social achievements of the Red Vienna, when ever larger and more articulated housing complexes arise, to the point of needing entire parts of the city alone, structured around open courtyards, squares and gardens connected to each other. This leap of scale in social housing will then be resumed and even magnified in some huge post-war residential complexes. We would be wrong, however, to bring the traditional Viennese superblocks closer to the new Supergrätzel. What they have in common is the large size, and little else. In fact, the Supergrätzel was born as the union of existing blocks, which are rearranged in a sustainable and efficient urban model.
The Supergrätzel concept is nothing new in the European scenario. In recent years, similar initiatives have intensified a Barcelona (Superilles), the first city to this type of interventions, Berlin (Kietzblocks). But beyond the different denominations, what they have in common all of these experiments is the attempt to raise the urban quality of existing fabrics, transforming the uses and characteristics of public spaces also as a counter action against the effects of climate change in progress.
The Supergrätzel in Favoriten
It offers us an excellent example of the possibilities of this urban planning made up of small steps and concrete things: in the homogeneous sector identified by the Municipality, the ordinary street will be completely transformed, with the aim of blocking cars on the edge of the area (with the exception of residents and public transport). In the road sectors thus reconquered, they will be created green spaces, rest areas, play areas and socializing areas, especially in front of school buildings.
So, the city hopes to reduce pollution and overheating of the entire neighborhood (about 30%), at the same time encouraging the use of public transport and bicycles (electric and non-electric), as well as two and four-wheel sharing systems. The transformations in Favoriten are accompanied by an extensive information campaign. A first experimentation for the Volkerviertel Supergrätzel, in the second district, last year produced comforting results from the point of view of the active participation of the inhabitants, culminating in a workshop carried out directly on the street that used the asphalt almost like a blackboard on which to draw new possible uses of the land.
A strategy with many possibilities
The possibilities of transformation underlying this urban strategy are numerous and interesting. They apply particularly effectively in the case of the Viennese suburban districts which, strongly resemble a checkerboard urban layout, in which it is relatively easy to identify ambitions for intervention. But the same system is also adaptable to a more complex reality and irregularities, as the case of Berlin, in which the approximately 50 Kietzblocks identify larger dimensions and more complex aspects.
A recent competition of ideas (Superblocks of Barcelona), which ended in March 2021 in the Catalan city, ha produced a wide range of proposals in which ordinary road systems are transformed into real ecological and social infrastructures. Because, as is evident from all these proposals, it is not only the redevelopment of large portions of the consolidated city that is at stake, but the physiognoma and the very role of the “road” in the urban strategies of the next few years.
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austria, barcelona, urban regeneration, vienna
Last modified: 22 September 2021