look inside

Urban Fiction (signed)

by Sonja Bachmayer

Photographs: Sonja Bachmayer

Text: Sonja Bachmayer

Publisher: self published

Year: 2015

Price: 35 €

Comments: softcover, 30 x 21 cm, edition of 10 signed copies

The „Seestadt Aspern“ (Lake City Aspern) of the 22nd district of Vienna, Austria, is one the largest urban development projects in Europe. The settlement area Aspern has a long and changeful history: In 1912 one of the most modern aerodromes of Europe has been erected there, which has been closed only 1977. Then the company General Motors started their Austrian business at that location.

For the project “Seestadt Aspern” the German-Dansk architect Oliver Schulze, Gehl Architects, in cooperation with the department for architecture of the City of Vienna developed the planning handbook, the so called “Partitur des öffentlichen Raums” (public space’s score). The operating company “wien3420” even engaged three authors as so called “Stadtschreiber” for the publication of the book “aspern. Reise in eine mögliche Stadt” (aspern. Travel into a possible city).

My photographic journey in this possible town started in 2009. Until today several visits followed, and each time I was curios about the growth, the achieved “reality”, about the creation of this new world. The deep impression of my first visit hasn’t been altered despite the obvious changes, developments, growing buildings, which have taken place within the time span of five years. The area displays itself as somehow fictional, unreal, invented, almost as something not really existing. A surrealistic stage impression, a stage without actors, like a place “Waiting for Godot”, who never will come, and when, by chance anyway, surely not to Aspern.

But many other came: the trailers with their folks, the urban gardening enthusiasts, the children groups, the interested ones of new urban planning and building as well as the future inhabitants, wo were welcomed by special guides, after they arrived with buses on weekends and holidays.

Our photographic serial about this Viennese Lake City Aspern presents images of the changing, temporal architecture during the time of development. The images, it seems, could have been taken anywhere, they show a common sameness. But they were taken in Vienna, in and around the growing Lake City, a distinct modern urban project in an old town and city…

more books tagged »architecture« | >> see all