Tina Görlich
The historical use of the Museums Quartier since 1718 as imperial court stables, the trade fair center formerly known as “Messepalast” , and today as one of the largest districts for contemporary art and culture in the world has largely been characterized by the unfinished and the temporary. Expert in cultural studies and exhibition curator Vitus Weh emphasizes this during the long planning period of the MuseumsQuartier in his project “KunstamBau”, in which he explicates the continuous expansion of the site as a dominant factor of the space’s identity. With the official opening of the MuseumsQuartier in 2001, however, the Fischer von Erlach Wing with its inflexible, rigid installations took on the function of a reclusive passageway, making user appropriation more difficult while also neglecting the transformative character of the building.
The aim of my master’s thesis is to emphasize and accentuate both the public’s awareness of the space as well as their ability to access and interact with the Fischer von Erlach Wing through a spatial manifestation of social appropriation. The insights gained from an intensive analysis of the existing building serve as the basis for my design to transform the former court stables into a place of temporary cultural use that overlaps the traces of the building’s history in a kind of architectural sedimentation and emphasizes them as space-forming characteristics. The building itself is seen as inherently unfinished in its
function in order to create a framework that can react to changing needs and promote participatory transformation through user-led adaptation, change, decoration and individualization. Themes of user appropriation, transformation and participatory building a reel aborated onto examine questions concerning the shift in power of a representative, baroque building as a means of organization of authority into a transgressive space that promotes opportunities of public accessibility.