Im Werd or the stage is yours …?
The workshop “Living streets LAB” was focused on allowing the students to experience the principals of tactical urbanism and temporary solutions.The goal was to choose a place in our city, which we thought was problematic. Potentially after applying the principals of tactical urbanism and getting tools for inspiration from Municipality projects would improve life of inhabitants of this micro area.
Our workshop was going on for 2 weeks where we had different stages: first urban and ethnographical analysis of a chosen area, development of a concept following with peer to peer session where were decided into groups to discuss how to improve our projects and which would help us to create a SWOT analysis.
I chose a very narrow street Im Werd it is approximately 240m long and will take an average person to pass around 4–5 min, it is next to one of the oldest markets called Karmelitermarkt in Vienna, Austria. In the first stage of the workshop we had to analyze the area. It is important before getting creative to understand the functions in the area. My approach in getting the analysis out of circumstances such as COVID-19, I went through my pictures to create a realistic collage of an atmosphere of an area, to see the color palette of an area.
Afterwards, important step was to analyze and understand how the area functions what transport goes through, what kind of shops there are, how many of them, are there any cafes, drinking places and etc… My chosen location happened to have a lot of restaurant, cafes and shops. Hence, flow of people is constant but imbalanced in a way that on the weekends there is a bigger crowd in comparison to working days.
Flow of cars is frequent since the road is connecting to on of the high-flow roads in Vienna. Interesting aspect to point is day and night functions of the area since there are restaurants and cafes there are people and cars passing by during the night, streetlight of the street is really good and frequent and passing by people can feel safe, as for the day time is constantly getting sunlight till around 17, the greens help to keep the shadows around and keep the temperature cooler under them. The building heights in the area are not high allowing big amount of sunshines to pass. The sources such google maps, and google earth helped to collect the data and keep it realistic. However, there is a downside to all of it since it is all approximate and can not be observed it was a challenge that took time the counting results.
From questionnaires and research the ratings of the area are quite high 4,3 stars out of 5 on google review. Mostly people who answered my questionnaire go to this are to the market once or twice a month, the age of visitors is very broad, very international and from gender aspect there are more women than men but the difference is very small. The questionnaires were created on google google forms to keep the access easy and questions were mostly based on yes/no to get the statistic easily visible and to keep the interviewers not confused.
The goal of my concept is to increase the social factor by introducing different activities for different ages and different interests, to bring balanced flow of people, to create a warm atmosphere where people will be able to enjoy their experience at the market and to make a new hot spot to be.
Im Werd or the stage is yours … the concept where I decided to create stages and place them in a playful order to slow down the flow passing by people and make them stop and take so called stage and participate in activities that are suggested. Equally bringing the activities on the level higher than passing by people creates some kind of separation between and creates the observer, viewer and the performer, actor. Through variety of an activities will increase in educational experience, engage different age people to come together and share their experience.
The stages have function during the day and during the night by hosting some events as in examples from above. Since the street-lighting is good , it can serve as projector for theater performances or dancing lessons.
The purpose of the stages after the temporary introduction can continue its purpose but in some other variations as introducing the urban gardening which will give the access of inhabitants to come together by taking care of greens and even enjoy the outcomes. Another example is to create a sitting area where people can enjoy their lunch time outside or meeting point with friends.
As for furniture or some extra features that comes with on some stages are so called storages for the equipment that can be shared and used by everyone for example the chess board or books in order for them not to get wet if the weather is not good.
As for matter of material I chose plywood as it is light and easy to cut, it can be easily painted moreover it is environmentally friendly. The extra features that come along with some stages can be combined from plywood material and to use the plastic baskets from market they are often just left laying around.
In one of the last stages in our workshop we were divided into groups where we could help to see our projects from another perspective. This would help us to create a so called SWOT analysis. From this kind of analysis it allows you to see some problems arising that urban and ethnographical analysis didn’t highlight, as for instance the competition of restaurants and their sitting areas, the other urban projects around Vienna or reaction of inhabitants.
In conclusion this was an experience that we learned one of many ways on how to approach urban life in city and suggest improvement possibility in a temporary way. This was challenging experience since it was done in telematic mode, however it was great since we all jumped into “cold water” of unpredictable events which touched the whole world and suggested a possible approaches.
With support of lectures and obviously constant support from Professor Davide Fassi and Francesco Vergani we were able to create something new and look at our cities in a new way.
Yana Latinovich :)
