Report: Will Vienna Remain Vienna? - Urban Rehabilitation for the 21st Century
For a long time, while Paris, London and Frankfurt were being turned into models of city development with modern urban skylines, Vienna did not seem to rise above the nostalgic charm of the former imperial and royal capital. Austria has been a member of the EU for seven years, however, and it is now doing everything conceivable to shake off this image. The numerous restructuring measures that are being implemented bear witness to this. It is a Viennese tradition, though, to adapt existing building fabric rather than resort to new construction; and, of course, in planning the museum district (ill. 3), it would have been inconceivable to demolish the former court stables of Emperor Charles VI. The treatment of the buildings erected in 1723 by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and the later additions in the form of the so-called Trade Fair Palace was a subject of endless debate. This year, after decades of planning, the first buildings were opened. In the autumn, the museums and numerous other innovative facilities will follow. This largest cultural project in the history of the Austrian Republic, covering an area of 60,000 m2, links various institutions that were hitherto scattered about the city in a number of buildings. The Kunsthalle is located in an elongated structure with a brick facade. The collections from the gallery for 20th-century art and the Palais Liechtenstein are now housed in the black-clad Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation (MUMOK), a fuller description of which will be contained in Detail 7/2001. The white cube of the Leopold Museum accommodates the largest Egon Schiele collection in the world as well as masterpieces of the Viennese Secession, Austrian Expressionism and other modern art. These monolithic cubic structures adopt the urban grid established by the federal museums and the housing developments of the neighbouring Spittelberg and thus accentuate the raking line of the Baroque buildings. Agreement was reached on creating a mixture of uses in the area. These include architecture, dance and theatre, the editorial offices of an art journal, dwellings for "artists in residence" and many other facilities that are conducive to an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas.
