Brauerei goes public

As part of this (design) studio, the Summer Semester 2018 focuses on the future of the Ottakringer Brauerei. Around 30 students from architecture and spatial planning explore new and additional uses for a post-industrial inner-city production site, speculate on possible ideas, and initiate transformation through on-site artistic interventions—guiding the historic brewery toward becoming a new, publicly accessible, socially and culturally vibrant place.

The occasion for this engagement is the planned operational and spatial restructuring of the Ottakringer Brewery, which also envisions the partial opening of the brewery grounds in order to connect with the surrounding neighborhood and urban fabric. In a first step, the course centers on developing visions and future scenarios, demonstrating which functions and uses the site could accommodate and how newly available spatial resources might be utilized. In a second step, spatial and programmatic forerunners of these future visions are conceived, designed, and physically implemented in the urban space by the students.

Within the framework of the course, the transformation of the Ottakringer Brewery spans a field of planning intervention ranging from large-scale urban considerations to exemplary, small-scale implementations. The site’s size, enclosure, urban location, and traffic/logistical conditions clearly position the transformation as an urban design issue. At the same time, such a process of opening—particularly in light of complex stakeholder interests and divergent visions for future use—demands unconventional methods that allow for a fresh perspective on possible futures.

The interventions implemented by the students are conceived as test balloons. Realized within the urban space, they serve to initiate the planned opening process at an early stage.

The course is designed as an experimental format in which students expand their planning repertoire through the use of open methodologies and through exchange with local practitioners.