Thematic concept High-Rise Buildings

As a quintessential Central European city, Vienna enjoys all advantages of a geographically, topographically, scenically, spatially, typologically and atmospherically outstanding, very clearly structured, visually highly readable and extremely liveable city. Not least due to its rich urbanity and urban coherence, Vienna has traditionally taken a very cautious position regarding high-rise construction projects – not because high-rises in the modern sense would constitute something new and potentially suspect, but rather because highrises, with their prominent physical presence in the urban environment, should serve not just a few but, if possible, all denizens of the city.

High-rises embody an emblematic typology of modern urban design and contrast clearly with the traditional city, where edifices of outstanding height equalled extraordinary functions and significance. As prototypes of economically charged, sometimes condensed, sometimes individual, isolated architectural design, contemporary high-rise structures often act as projection surfaces for metropolitan development and refurbishment scenarios that reflect international peer ventures. Yet interpreting or instrumenting the high-rise question in this simplistic manner would run counter to any responsible planning approach to deal with Vienna’s urbanistic qualities, which have evolved over centuries. Evidently, though, Vienna should not close itself to future transformations – also including high-rises – but rather appropriate these by means of strategically formulated concepts. This principally calls for the provision of added value for the city at large as well as for broad-based consensus sustained by a majority of citizens.

Viewed against this background, the present High- rise Concept for Vienna focuses first and foremost on the question of what should constitute the appropriate type of intervention for highrise developments and describes this type of intervention both by assessing, on a large-scale basis, the urbanistic significance of the various areas of Vienna and by defining what would

constitute the situational added value of a high-rise project, without defining categories in normative fashion. Rather, the document stipulates that each and every high-rise project must be justified, in accordance with the framework conditions formulated in the High- rise Concept, regarding its quantitative and qualitative disposition. The concept defines added value as an enrichment with necessities and qualities of equal relevance for the local situation, the neighbourhood and the city as a whole.

This postulate for planners duly requires that the most important planning steps towards viable solutions be sketched and dealt with in the context of binding process design. Principally, this includes the involvement of all stakeholders, in particular of the general public, at all levels of the planning process so as to broadly optimise and, ultimately, bindingly enshrine urban development projects including high-rises. The legal embodiment of these optimisations might take the form of e.g. urban development contracts and could be safeguarded in the medium term through temporary land use designations. Quite apart from these novel contractual instruments, it is still very important – and may even become more so in the future – to develop projects on the basis of common perspectives, co-operation and consensus. Co-operative planning and participation procedures act as catalysts for the transformation of the urban environment towards a smart city; this applies to a particular degree for high-rise developments.

Beside the behaviour of high-rises in the urban context as well as added value and process design, the rapid growth of Vienna additionally brings the issue of residential high-rises into sharp focus. Social housing traditionally occupies a very special position in Vienna’s urban development, a fact that has manifested itself time and again in exemplary solutions, sometimes even taking the form of buildings exceeding 35 metres of height. Naturally, the framework conditions of subsidised housing construction have changed many times over the years, and new challenges, such as energy-related and ecological objectives, new housing demands or family patterns and the safeguarding of social sustainability and affordability under difficult economic framework conditions, have emerged and were duly tackled. However, providing affordable housing options in high-rise buildings calls for novel approaches to co-operative project development and financing models; the present High-rise Concept can only propose key demands to be met by current and future residential high-rise projects. This includes above all the demand for mixed-use and flexible-use options, for socio-spatial added value, for the provision of adequate, carefully planned open spaces – and, obviously, for high- quality architectural solutions at all levels.

The High-rise Concept aims to render urbanistic and procedural interrelationships transparent and relies on an appropriate planning culture to address these complex issues and processes. An approach steeped in process-based problem solution methods and taking account of the co-operative community sense confronts all stakeholders of high-rise projects planned for Vienna with ambitious demands. However, it is precisely this challenge that constitutes the core of the High-rise Concept for Vienna and should be definitely understood as a promise that experiments in the field of future urban development will find room and can be embedded within this concept.

It seems useful at this point to mention some planning-related and practical desiderata that have emerged while drafting the High-rise Concept: With its data stock, the City of Vienna has a hoard of knowledge at its disposal that is probably unique worldwide regarding its completeness and presentation options; in the future, data transparency and accessibility will be translated into a new planning mentality, which is very much to be welcomed, as this e.g. permits all impacts and consequences of high-rise projects to be clearly visualised. Beyond the scope of concrete case-bycase analyses, however, data transparency should also support the ways and means of obtaining an accurate picture of the development of Vienna’s urban structure, which is effectively supported by continuously updated 3D models and, above all, a physical model. These two methods of visualising Vienna have made it possible to not only depict future high-rise developments, but all larger-scale plans for Vienna and allowed for comprehensive discussion and decision-making regarding these plans.

The present High-rise Concept builds on the values embodied in the urbanistic guidelines for high-rise buildings of 2002, but deliberately adopts a view-point that embraces the city as a whole and focuses on flexible, structured decision-making processes involving all stakeholders so as to ensure maximum quality assurance. In this respect, involvement also means responsibility – for this reason, the Highrise Concept provides for legal guarantees as a fundamental principle for all stakeholders.

The present High-rise Concept is not a binding legal document, but should be regarded as a guideline and mission statement. It sensitively shifts the urbanistic assessments and premises of the previous high-rise guidelines towards a less normative and more process-oriented, urbananalytical and comprehensive perspective.

High-rise buildings in Vienna always generate discussions about all sorts of interests and ideologies. These discussions are important and need to be conducted on an ongoing basis. The High-rise Concept thus defines itself as a summary of concrete conceptual decision aids, which will be further adapted and specified in the future.