The project takes up the discussion about production, conservation, transformation and decay in urban landscapes. The substance for the city of the future is found in those places where human interventions overlap with the momentum of non-human metabolic processes. The project questions the use of urban wastelands in the post-industrial city and appeals for these spaces – these vast, continuous areas that were previously exploited by the consumer economy – to be safeguarded for the city and, for the time being, left to their own devices.

The ‘urban wasteland’ is designated as the urban element of the future. For these wild, in-between spaces contain not only huge reserves of energy for ecological reproduction, but also social potential as the final free spaces in an ever denser and ever more rapidly regulated city.

It is precisely this absence of a clearly defined function that makes this urban wasteland so productive, open to appropriation and free for unforeseeable and unplannable uses. Hence, a strategy of non-planning, non-programming and non-organising should prevail in such places. Because it is this that makes space for the suppressed and often forgotten participants in the urban ecosystem: animals, bacteria and plants. If these abandoned areas are simply left to their own momentum, a new, active urban landscape will emerge. This could complete Vienna’s green belt and then widen it further by adding new, dynamic and diverse green spaces.

Eva Herunter (*1991) studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and EPFL Lausanne. She has professional experience in Graz, Vienna, Berlin and Hong Kong and currently lives and works in Vienna.

The project “Die anderen Räume” (The Other Spaces) by Eva Herunter grabs the attention with its simplicity and poetry, which approaches the subject of Superscape 2020, Mixed-Used City, in a provocatively “unproductive” manner. By taking up the aspect of the “third landscape” – in Vienna’s case, the areas of wasteland known as “Gstettn” – and locating these with the help of examples (in Siebenhirten/Inzersdorf, Erdberg/Lobau, Floridsdorf, etc.) the project successfully addresses an important issue for the city of tomorrow. It envisages the emergence, between now and 2050, of a large, continuous green space, a wild expanse of urban nature in areas formerly dominated by industry, infrastructure and commerce. The poetic dimension of the concept and the idea of taking an alternative look at “productive spaces” were positively evaluated by the jury.

As well as being vital to society, the safeguarding of the “urban wasteland” of the post-industrial city makes a key contribution to the coexistence of people, animals and plants in the city of the future. The description of spaces that have been forgotten by our performance- and service-oriented society is valuable and, in the context of the subject “Living. Working and urban production”, opens up possibilities for reinventing consumption and production. The concept was understood as an appeal for these “other spaces” to remain available for future, sustainable development. With her poetic plea for a new relationship between the city and nature, production and reproduction, and growth and sustainability, the prizewinner conveys a “positive potential for contagion”. The winning project of Superscape 2020 is characterised by vision and rigour at both the formal and systemic levels.