LFU:online

The students can independently formulate and implement architectural concepts. They can convincingly communicate their designs, present them in detail and position them within their respective theoretical or creative context.

PERMEABLE DEVICES
- postfunctional architecture and adaptive reuse

Site: Lamarr Department Store Building Block, Mariahilferstraße, Wien

The “Lamarr” project on Mariahilferstraße in Vienna was originally conceived as an eight-storey luxury department store with more than 20,000 m² of retail space, upscale gastronomy, and hotel use, complemented by a publicly accessible greened rooftop terrace. Positioned as a prestige development on one of Vienna’s most important shopping streets, the project came to a halt during construction due to the insolvency of the Signa Group, leaving the building half-finished and in shell state.

Project Brief, Concept, and Design Aim:
The revision of the project design towards a new typological framework, together with the onset of the current phase of demolition and reconstruction of an unfinished building – the existing shell is to be dismantled down to the first floor – provides an ideal academic opportunity to address both project-specific and, by deduction, more fundamental questions of contemporary architecture. Central to this inquiry are a contemporary re-reading of urban space, innovative approaches to the interweaving of public and private realms, ongoing socio-economic transformations, shifting brand identities and the radical reorientation of building typologies, new spatial configurations, questions of material sustainability, and aspects of reuse, recycling, and circular economy.

The aim of this design project is to develop, starting from the current shell state of the Lamarr structure, an experimental, data-driven, and atmospherically and spatially innovative architectural counter-proposal. Using volumetric design workflows and contemporary digital tools and AI, the project seeks to generate holistic concepts that respond to the shifting political, economic, and socio-cultural frameworks.

The focus is not on completing the original programme but on restructuring and partially transforming it through new urban, spatial, architectural, and socio-economic narratives. The central research question asks how fragmented large-scale structures with outdated typological configurations – such as Lamarr – can be transformed into contemporary, open, and flexible urban resource systems.

Guiding Questions:
Existing Structure Analysis
- How can such a building resource be utilised and continued?
- What ideas of transformation or transfiguration exist?
- Which complementary material systems are available?
- How adaptive is the existing structure in terms of material and construction?
- What changes does it permit?

Speculation / Transformation
- In what ways can the specific spatial structure of the unfinished building be understood as a resource and re-imagined transformatively?
- Which parts of the building can be preserved, which must be dismantled?
- What reuse and recycling strategies are feasible?

Use / Programme / Typology – Projective Analysis
- Which uses and programmes are conceivable, realistic, and meaningful in this context?
- What contemporary responses can be formulated within the given urban, cultural, social, political, and economic framework?
- How have the spatial, atmospheric, and architectural requirements of programmes (e.g., retail) changed in recent years?
- How will they and their surrounding spaces evolve in the future?
- What future programmes or typologies might emerge that are not yet known today?
- Which urban functions can replace “shopping,” which is increasingly shifting into virtual space?

Urban Space / Context / Atmosphere
- Which uses are contextually, politically, socio-culturally, economically, and atmospherically possible at this site?
- How is the site defined at the intersection of historic inner city, major shopping street, cultural district (MQ), and tourist centre?
- What visual, spatial, architectural, and cultural references exist, and how can a new urban building block be atmospherically integrated into this network of relations?

Methodology and Approach:
Survey and Analysis:
Assessment of the construction state prior to continuation, based on site visits, drawings, visualisations, and existing data. These form the foundation for a precise volumetric understanding of the structure and its spatial potential.

Urban Context:
Analysis of the Lamarr’s immediate surroundings – particularly its position between the inner city, Mariahilferstraße, and Museumsquartier – in relation to functional, social, contextual, and infrastructural connections.

Reference Analysis:
International case studies and global best practice projects will be analysed, summarised, presented, and made available as an open archive.

Spatial Counterproposal:
Formulation of alternative perspectives on use based on the extrapolation of existing structures, focusing on spatial openness, programmatic flexibility, and the conception and development of innovative programme and typology.

Experimental Scenarios and Spatial Prototypes:
Development of spatial scenarios across multiple design phases, oscillating between innovative reactivation and speculative reformulation. Reversible interventions, adaptive reuse strategies, and participatory spatial concepts will be explored, worked out through volumetric chunks, and scenographically visualised.

https://www.oma.com/projects/lamarr
https://www.meinbezirk.at/neubau/c-wirtschaft/rohbau-fuer-lamarr-kaufhaus-wird-teilweise-abgerissen_a7407686
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000275570/nutzungskonzept-fuer-ex-lamarr-steht-teilabriss-ermoeglicht-200-wohnungen

Course examination according to § 6, statute section on "study-law regulations"

Will be discussed in the first meeting

The registration takes place via a preference system.

Information on registering for the Entwerfen courses can be found at: https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/fakultaeten-servicestelle/standorte/technikerstrasse/studium/

The Entwerfen subject presentations (PDF's, links, videos, etc.) will be posted on the faculty website https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/architektur/studium/entwerfen-2025w/ and in OLAT.