Urbanize! 2020 »Common Spaces, Hybrid Places«

Social Design Studio

In cooperation with the urbanize! festival numerous city explorations and artistic interventions in Floridsdorf and also other places in the city were realized, to search – increasingly in public space for common property potentials for and in Vienna. 2020 the festival explored space as a common good and resource for art and culture, creative work, social innovation and democratic change.

MindMAp Flodo Futures Führung — bücherei floridsdorf_schlingerhof

The 11th urbanize! Int. Festival for Urban Exploration took place under exceptional circumstances: Covid-19 had almost brought the democratic public sphere to a standstill. The virus highlights how precious (public) space is as a resource for our social coexistence and democracy – and also how unequally it is distributed.

An urban society needs adaptable and accessible, hybrid spaces that are large enough to permit a wide variety of functions. Spaces like the former Nordbahnhalle, which are missing to an alarming extent in the cultural metropolis of Vienna. But also public (green) spaces that offer quality of life and protection against climate change.

The urbanize! festival 2020 took this need as a starting point to explore space as a resource for art, communities and social issues. In cooperation with the festival we searched for structures, concepts and qualities of spaces that allow unexpected encounters, experiments, social and political commitment, and meaningful activity beyond wage labour. Spaces that challenge and enrich us through the encounter of diversity, that provoke and inspire us through artistic and creative impulses. The festival explored local and international good practices and discussed existing experiences. In the framework of the festival we were able to open our Reallabor in Schleifgasse, a street connecting the centre of Floridsdorf and the main green market there. Since October 2020 and thanks to the support of Wiener Wohnen the former tattoo studio is now used for activities with neighbours and interested visitors. It serves as and provides a common ground and is opening up all academic activities in order to share them with other projects, to experiment with new methods, to allow for necessary feedbacks. Floridsdorf remains a location of the Social Design Studio, also to “instrumentalize” academic work as a contribution to a hybrid use of spaces, to declare that the Social Design programme is always committed to common interests, to empower people and spaces and not least students and alumnae/i with their projects.

Time: 14 - 18 October 2020
Location: Floridsdorf; Vienna
Team: Nina Pohler; Eliza Chojnacka; David Scheßl; Anne Zühlke; Projektgruppe PlaceCity; Christina Schraml; Christian H. Stifter; Wolfgang Gruber; Lukas Veijnik; Brigitte Felderer; Play:Vienna; gruener.li; Katarina Šoškić; students of the Social Design Studio; Bernardo Robles Hidalgo; Julia Tollmann; Daniel A. Maierhofer - Funkfeuer; Rosario Castellana and Mariacristina Di Carlentini; Construction Choir Collective; insitu ani•motion (Ivan Pantelić & Bernd Rohrauer); Maria Kanzler; Barbara Krajcar; Lena Michalik; Ana Mumladze; Bana Saadeh; Claire Kadas and Celina Klinkenberg
Links: https://urbanize.at/