Artistic redesign of the ticket office

At the town hall square in St. Pölten the major theatres are united in one ticket office. The redesign of the premises plays with the elements and materiality of the theatre. The large inviting glass front evokes the drama of a stage situation through the curtain that defines the interior. In the perception of spectators from outside, the visitors thus become random actors on the stage of everyday life. Theatre swivel chairs on the forecourt support this ambiguous function as multi-functional seating furniture. The new canopy roof writes the names of Lower Austrian cultural institutions on the square with delicate shadows. The entire new spatial setting creates a stage situation in the public space in which the roles of “audience” and “actors” merge and converge.

Exhibition satellites and photo competition about public space

Accompanying the exhibition “Baukultur — Think your city differently”, feld72 developed nonconform and inspirin exhibition satellites at five locations in Vienna, where questions about urban living space were publicly addressed. The starting point for discussion and reflection were the following questions: How does the city bring us together? Do you also live in your city? Do you move through your city? What does your city teach you? What does your workplace look like? Within the framework of a photo competition under the motto “Have a seat in your city”, examples were collected of how the residents would like to use their city differently. The interventions were an impulse for a critical examination of our built environment and for the active appropriation of public urban space.

Cooperation Partner: inspirin, nonconform

Space installation for a dance performance

Based on the piano compositions of Erik Satie a spatial installation was conceived that enables a special experience: Satie demanded his work be played 840 times consecutively and at a slow tempo in order to experience its meditative character. This leads to a total duration of 21 hours. The audience is immersed in an extraordinary play with space, time and repetition. Being part of the installation itself, all visitors, as recipients and actors, are invited to play with instructions for action parallel to the live piano music and to sound out personal levels of perception.

“The work of feld72 explores the intersection between architecture, applied urbanism and art. From the very beginning the collective has examined the issues surrounding the use and perception of public space with a series of self-initiated projects called “Urban Strategies”. These 1:1 projects that form the basis for a “theory through practice” have been implemented across Europe and deal with very different types and situations of public space. The examination of space as a social form is also a focal theme in their built architecture projects that have already received several awards as well as in their successful competition entries for major projects, which are now in the construction phase.” – Lilli Hollein

The Installation is a reflection on that experimental search for an architecture that could response to a broader world-view (“Weltanschauung”), and is itself a view on that world (“Weltbild”). World in progress…

Perception tool for public space

“urbanism — for sale” was the contribution to the Austrian exhibition by feld72 at the 7th Architecture Biennale in São Paulo, Brazil. The project takes the 2007 ban on advertising for the entire urban space of São Paulo as an opportunity to address consumer mechanisms and the question of public and private space. Does public space even still exist? Where do the boundaries between public and private blur? 20,000 magenta-coloured stickers with 15 different questions and statements were distributed during the exhibition. Visitors were invited to place the stickers all over the city, thereby appropriating the public space. The snapshots as evidence of public territorial markings could be published on an online photo platform.