SUMO – 1150 Vienna

In 2002, the city of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Railway Corporation organized an international urban planning competition for the reuse of the Westbahnhof railway station and the partially disused railway yards behind it. The competition brief encompassed 300,000m2 of built space upon an urban footprint of 180,000m2, and included a new transportation center, shopping, office buildings as well as new residential blocks which would flank the reduced rail yard zone.

SUMO means urban densification that seeks the strategic middle way between perimeter block development and the individual architectural object. Large building forms anchor the Neubaugürtel; the built fabric flanking the rail yards is deliberately chamfered and cut in order to produce a system of parks and squares, as well as a network of streets which is carefully interlaced into the existing urban structure.

2002: competition

bbl – baubüro leopoldstadt (Aulinger/Kogler)