Mühlgrundgasse

"Pioneering" on Mühlgrundgasse

The term “pioneering” as a thematicsuperstructure for an exposed building site.

The quality required by a growing city = challengeto a strongly defined infrastructure:

Housingdirectly beside the metro line.

Respectful coexistence and the linking ofhouseholds of different kinds – in an admittedly “hard” urbanenvironment with different references.

Quiet and privacy, as well as casual encountersand communication are to be offered here.

The building site: the cutting for the metro line

A site characterised by its striking location onthe U2 metro line

Decoupled position … and therefore fundamentally restricted in terms of direction

Building structure: two in dialogue

Individual buildings in their relationship andplacing to each other as a dialogue-based structure

Courtyard as the central point and the socialcentre

Circulation and open space: opening the ensemblein a directional way

The courtyard opens to the street space in acarefully controlled way, as does the part of the site thatunderneath the elevated metro line.

Circulation area from Mühlgrundgasse

The courtyard’s second connecting point faces towards the young people’s play area.

The housing typology is diverse, a strong conceptfor “smart apartments” was worked out. The inclined courtyardfacades create an incremental stepping of the apartment sizes andlayouts, so that, despite the compactness of the geometry, a certaingame with the areas and layout is encouraged. The possibilities areworked out at a larger scale.

Thanks to their variety the apartments offer awide range for different user groups. Even within the respectivetypes variations for different functions are indicated. In the areaof inter-generational living, for example, residential communitiesfor singles or elderly people are offered, which are characterised byindividual single rooms with living/sleeping and sanitary areas,connected to a communal part with entrance zone/kitchen/eating area.

At pronounced points in the circulation network: social cristallisation points as places of encounter. A significant aspect of this communal coexistence lies in the way the communal spaces, rather than just the individual apartments, exploit the building's southerly orientation.
This special feature, which is specific to the location, makes a virtue of necessity, as it were and generates an unexpected social factor out of the apparent deficiencies of the site.