The project resulting from that urban planning was the commissioning of a project of 65 houses organized in 3 blocks of different sizes, which was based on the decisions made for the parallel application of the master plan (qualities of free space, landscaping, parking collective and the management of non-residential uses of the neighbourhood).
65 Housing units in Siemensäcker by Arenas-Basabe-Palacios Arq + Soyka-Silber-Soyka Arch. Photograph by Kurt Hoerbst.
Project description by Arenas-Basabe-Palacios Arquitectos
The SELMA AM PARK project has its origins in the URBAN SOFTWARE proposal, awarded at the EUROPAN 12 competition in Vienna, betting on an urban strategy where the process prevailed over the final result, based on the generation of flexible support capable of reacting to the very diverse scales and conditions of its context.
This award allowed us to take part in the design of the Siemensäcker urban planning for a new 8-hectare residential neighbourhood in the north of Vienna. This urban project was developed through a collaborative process with a dozen or so offices of experts in urbanism, architecture, landscape, mobility, energy, etc.
Once the Masterplan was passed in December 2016, the owner of the land (Austrian Real Estate) commissioned us the design 65 housing units, distributed in three blocks of different dimensions (sizes S, M, L). The project takes advantage of the different building scales and free spaces foreseen in the planning to connect itself to the diverse urban fabrics that surround it and to adapt to the topography and landscape. The scale of the buildings is attenuated thanks to the volumes that project outwards from the façade, which also establish specific relationships with the surrounding elements, spaces and axes.
In parallel to the design of the architecture, we are still involved in the ‘Qualitätenkatalog’ —the group of experts that collectively define the qualities of the free space, the landscape, the common parking space and the management of the non-residential uses of the neighbourhood—. In this manner, individual decisions are made based on collective work, and vice versa: it is thus a design process that unifies the disciplines of architecture and urbanism, establishing guidelines at building and neighbourhood scales simultaneously.
Likewise, the architectural project is also defined through 5 qualities:
1. Bike-in city: The urban project is articulated around several collective parking, that reduce to zero the presence of cars on the surface. Thanks to this, the bike gains a lot of protagonism, whose common parking space takes advantage of the steep topography, organizing the relationship between the three residential blocks, while simultaneously opening to the green space.
2. Commons: The collective character of the collaborative planning design itself is also reflected in architectural design. Common spaces —such as the great bike parking, a big collective kitchen open to the whole neighbourhood, or a solarium terrace with an associated playground area— are included in the three blocks as relationship spaces for the community.
3. In the park: The project incorporates a characteristic feature of the contemporary Viennese house: each of the 65 housing units has an associated ‘exterior room’, consisting of either a 10sqm balcony, gallery, terrace or garden, thus improving the quality of the home, which opens to a natural, green, pedestrian-friendly environment. The flats are strongly bonded to the tree-lined promenade, whose vegetation invades the spaces between blocks.
4. Serving furniture: Each housing unit is organised around a nucleus of furniture, which integrates within every storage, installation and serving unit. Thanks to this, all living spaces are connected to the exterior, reserving for the ‘day area’ (kitchen-sitting room-dining room) the area which will enjoy, due to its two orientations, the most daylight hours.
5. Local materiality: The materiality of the buildings, characterized by larch-wood shutters on the outside and wood panelling on the inside, reflects the use of local materials and construction systems (bearing concrete walls, thermal insulation on the outer side, selection of local wood, etc.). As does the choice of indigenous plants and trees, a necessary condition to preserve the sustainable and ecologic qualities of the construction process of the new Siemensäcker neighbourhood.
