Market District 24/7 Vienna: Re-imagining markets as places of circular thinking, care and transaction

Abstract

The city of Vienna is growing rapidly, soon reaching 2 million inhabitants. The need to re-think the challenges and opportunities of markets in urban environments on neighbourhood scale has become exposed during the pandemic linked to climate crisis. The Studio suggest a redefinition in purpose, time and program, to deliver prototypes of innovative market environments as spaces of transaction, learning, health, care, and social-environmental infrastructure. The emergence of alternative economies, the integration of diverse cultures, communication forms, and opportunities for migrants and citizens suggest the activation of sustainable circular economies, temporary and permanent responses, as well as new forms of exchange and cooperation. In collaboration with the District Mayor, Sascha Obrecht and MAK (Museum fur Angewandte Kunst), this year's Biennale for Change on Climate Care, we will re-design the Viktor Adler Markt in Favoriten, the largest arrival district in Vienna.Existing and new sub-systems, socio-ecological networks, and relationships, as well as cultural territories, are linked, intensified, and further developed anticipating growth and change over time. The district 24/7 is an Urban Action Prototyping Studio that is rooted in the multi-scalar socio-cultural territories and realities of neighborhood markets Vienna. Using the Victor Adler Markt in Favoriten (one of the most densely populated and culturally diverse districts) as a project site, the studio seeks to redefine a multi-scalar social and environmental agenda for existing markets into prototypical urban infrastructures of care and transaction, that incorporate circular economies, digital and analog lifestyles.