Centres For Intellectual Urban Expansion: Brutalism in Burgenland Event

Zentren geistiger Stadterweiterung
Social Design

1 June, 7pm
Johann Gallis
Lecture: Brutalism in Burgenland
VHS-Café

When people talk about Red Vienna, they usually refer to the city’s social housing programmes in the early 20th century. The creation of spaces for popular education began much earlier. With the exception of the Second World War, the infrastructure for adult education was continuously expanded. In the course of the urban expansions of the 1950s to 1970s, locations of the institution today known as Volkshochschule were embedded in the new neighbourhoods such as Favoriten, Kagran or Liesing.
The doors of the public places of learning, which are inconspicuous in their external appearance, are open all day long. In synergy with a variety of uses - from music school to library and coffee house - the carpet of offers is rolled out wide to reach as many people as possible. The workshop approaches the “centres of intellectual urban expansion” from the post-war period with both, a historic and contemporary view. We generate new knowledge by investigating these hybrid architectures, by nosing around (R. E. Park) in these public interiors and their neighbourhoods as well as by consulting people’s memories and their personal archives. Which role do these adult education centres play within the built urban fabric? Which ideas, visions and unused capacities do the buildings carry within them? How could an intellectual urban expansion program for the 21st century look like?

Lukas Vejnik in collaboration with Johann Gallis and Carina Sacher

May 30—June 2, 2022
every day 10 am — 8 pm

Bezirkszentrum Donaustadt
Bernoullistraße 1
1220 Vienna, Austria

design: Joy Hsu @kuulkyle

@dieangewandte