Park Macht Platz

TEAM WIEN is a multi-disciplinary design collaborative investigating the future of communal life in cities. Our experiments and interventions interrogate the way we work, play, and coexist in an urban environment. Our pilot project, Park Macht Platz(opens in a new window), is a spatial prototype that proposes a new approach towards ‘work’ as a mode of collaborative production and social exchange. Park was constructed as a temporary installation, occupying a central section of a parking lot at the end of Vienna’s Naschmarkt. Five timber modules arranged in a linear grid act as containers for social transactions. The otherwise underused parking lot – an asphalt clearing surrounded by 19th century Gründerzeit facades – is temporarily reactivated as a public space programmed for non-commercial, social exchange. During a span of four weeks, Park Macht Platz hosted seminars on urbanism, furniture-building, silk screen printing, and animation workshops, public dinners, concerts, poetry readings, and table tennis tournaments. Between events, the timber modules provided a landscape for informal gatherings and activities. The design, financing, permit process, construction, and programming for the installation were part of a coordinated effort between TEAM WIEN and their collaborators. The installation was the result of a larger design process that focused on rethinking a long axis that joins the city center to the Schönbrunn Palace along the Vienna River. Park Macht Platz formed part of the 2017 Vienna Architecture Biennale.