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The roof of the parking garage at the main train station
WO IST DIE DISCO IN ST. PÖLTEN?
The first artistic director of “Tangente - Festival for Contemporary Culture” asked us to develop a festival center as a central point of contact and starting point for his programme, which not only functions as a meeting point during the festival, but also becomes a programme point itself by framing content, taking it up, contextualizing it spatially and carrying it on into urban space and society - so that something independent can grow over the entire period of the festival, even beyond the event periods condensed into three two-week periods.
However, we ended this collaboration after the artistic director himself left the festival due to irreconcilable differences with the 90s marketing company that finances the festival and we were subsequently put under massive pressure by the same company - not only because our artistic freedom, which we had previously been assured, was extremely restricted, but also because “something else was wanted politically”. You have to know that in Lower Austria - the province whose capital is St. Pölten - the very first thing that was done, without any shame, was to form a coalition with the fascists from the FPÖ. And precisely at the time of this progressive discord.
It goes without saying that we are not available for this. Nevertheless, the concept was and remains good, which is why we are publishing it here again.
“IF YOU EVER GET CLOSE TO A HUMAN AND HUMAN BEHAVIORBE READY, BE READY TO GET CONFUSED AND MEET ME HERE AFTER.”
“WELL-REHEARSED THEORIES, LIKE THOSE RELATED TO CAPITAL OR NEOLIBERALISM CONTINUE TO SEND US TO THE SAME PLACES TO SEARCH FOR DANGERS WHILE OTHER CONCENTRATIONS OF AUTHORITARIAN POWER ESCAPE SCRUTINITY.”[…]”INFRASTRUCTURE SPACE IS A FORM, BUT NOT LIKE A BUILDING IS A FORM; IT IS AN UPDATING PLATFORM UNFOLDING IN TIME TO HANDLE NEW CIRCUMSTANCES, ENCODING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BUILDINGS, OR DICTATING LOGISTICS. […] MCLUHAN’S MEME, TRANSPOSED TO INFRASTRUCTU
Starting point
The concept, design and content considerations for the architectural concept are based on the results of the joint workshop with the Tangente team in May 2022.
Idea & derivation
The pivotal point for this concept is a parking garage, which is stylistically somewhat out of place in St. Pölten, completely inconspicuous from the outside, about a ten-minute walk from the main train station. When you enter the two upper floors, especially the top floor of this parking deck, you suddenly find yourself in an architecture that seems to be in opposition to itself, due to the extreme inclination and gradient of the long, sweeping driveway. The materiality of the parking deck is much more reminiscent of America - Florida to be precise - than of a small town in Lower Austria. The color and material are somehow atmospherically reminiscent of the visual world of Stefanie Schneider.
Or the film “The Florida Project” by Sean Baker. For us, this is the atmospheric point of departure and reference. An America with chipped paint that is no longer really suitable as a place of longing, or a place whose perception is slowly distorting and shifting and which is slowly fading as an idea and concept.
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Film still from “The Florida Project,” by Sean Baker, 2017
YOU KNOW WHY THIS IS MY FAVORITE TREE? BECAUSE IT IS TIPPED OVER, BUT STILL GROWING.
The tipping point is what interests us, not only because it is the point at which the tangent touches a circle, but also because it seems to us to be a suitable metaphor and content-related bracket to summarize the three focal points of the festival. We want to create a place on the parking deck that reinforces the obliqueness that already exists there on many levels. A parking garage as a disused place of longing where all the things come together that we now know for sure have turned from a promise of the future into its opposite: an architecture that is actually built for cars with combustion engines - a symbol of the fossil exploitation of our planet, a status symbol that indicates a devastating status quo. A parking garage that is remotely reminiscent of America - the U.S.A. - brave new world, a story that no longer works either. Neoliberalism, the consumer world, the asphalt, the wall color, our present…everything is somehow cracked, out of kilter. Many are talking about a turning point. A tipping point. Perhaps.
I DO THINK THAT OUR PERCEPTION OF REALITY IS FRAGMENTARY, AND IN 20TH-CENTURY LITERATURE, IT’S TOTALLY NORMAL TO NOT DESCRIBE REALITY AS SOMETHING WHOLE AND COMPLETELY TRANSPORTABLE AND EXPLICABLE. THAT’S BEEN ACCEPTED IN NOVELS. BUT GENRE FILMS ALWAYS PRETEND THAT REALITY IS TRANSPORTABLE, WHICH MEANS THAT IT IS EXPLICABLE.
We want to create a mood on the parking deck that is attractive, that evokes vague memories, imprecise and a little blurry. At the same time, visitors should always feel a little out of place - in the parking lot and from there perhaps in the overall context, because you are always a little confronted with what kind of world we have created for ourselves and at what price. The man-made as a scary fact, but attractive, a bit off, easy to consume and acceptably perverse - like a movie by Lars von Trier. Entertainment, after all…
IRONY IS ABOUT CONTRADICTIONS THAT DO NOT RESOLVE INTO LARGER WHOLES, EVEN DIALECTICALLY, ABOUT THE TENSION OF HOLDING INCOMPATIBLE THINGS TOGETHER BECAUSE BOTH OR ALL ARE NECESSARY AND TRUE. IRONY IS ABOUT HUMOR AN SERIOUS PLAY. […]
We do this by always running several things against each other in terms of design and only assembling functions on the parking deck that don’t belong there. In this way, we undermine the original infrastructure of this semi-public place, in addition to the staging and spatial factors that are the focus of our work.
[Apart from the top two floors, the parking garage can otherwise be used as such the entire time]
We are focusing on two key design elements: Firstly, we will work with a massive greening of the parking deck. On the one hand, we are focusing on tropical, (still) rather atypical plant species such as palm trees, banana trees, kiwi and various types of bamboo that grow very tall very quickly in order to reinforce the displacement and the Florida reference through the greenery. In contrast, we use forms and plants of bourgeois garden culture, such as box trees, symmetrical hedges and sharp lawn edges.
The second space-creating core design element should be greenhouses, ideally purchased as readymade, because they would be a direct reference to the world of commodities. In their form as abstract replicas of pitched-roof houses, they are already strange. On a symbolic level, they are also well suited as a reference for critically questioning the concept of culture in the Anthropocene. According to our idea, the greenhouses at the festival should be used exclusively by or for people and their cultivation and needs, such as food and sleep. In fact, the use of greenhouses could create a very cost-effective option for overnight accommodation…
Due to their simple construction, the greenhouses lend themselves to a modular design, so that it would be easy, in addition to the readymades, to create special constructions for special needs, such as a mobile community & situation trolley, a mobile bar or small stage or information stands or ticket box or…With polycarbonate sheets and aluminum system profiles, very stable constructions with high precision and aesthetic quality can be produced very cheaply, quickly and even by laymen. A collaboration in the form of seminars and a design build studio with the industrial design course at New Design University is being considered.
If the greenhouses are not reused after the festival, they can be separated and recycled according to type.
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SINGLE VISION PRODUCESWORSE ILLUSIONS THANDOUBLE VISION OR MANY-HEADED MONSTERS.
In our understanding, around one third to one half of all the basic functions of the festival center should be mobile and move flexibly through the urban space. Here, too, we would use different forms of greenhouses, which as objects would be a clear reference to the festival and create a recognition value within a very short time. In addition to individual festival functions that could be outsourced to the city, such as info points - e.g. directly at the train station or a floating stage on one of the lakes in summer - there should also be greenhouse interventions at existing venues and institutions with which the festival cooperates. For example, a greenhouse could be docked onto the entrance area. Here, too, there is already a practicable form as a readymade - the so-called lean-to greenhouse:
All mobile units will move through the city to their various locations every day and swarm back to the festival in the evening. In this way, the festival “breathes” through the city and an additional visibility is created that attracts and guides the audience.
In one area of the parking deck, a spacious technical and material storage area will be built, which will also serve as a garage and docking station for the mobile units. The entire festival infrastructure has its place here, like drawers in a chest of drawers. The superstructures/greenhouses etc. from the parking decks can also be stored here between the peaks.
In addition to the multi-storey parking lot, which remains temporary and ephemeral in its basic nature despite the long-term or longer-term greening - a festival center… - we would like to make a second place accessible and usable in the longer term and in advance as a counterweight, especially for Ali and Magda’s community work: the dilapidated clubhouse on the wasteland between or next to the mosque, the cultural center and the FH in Nordstadt.
The first step here would be to remove the fencing. Then we would put a simple superstructure - also based on the greenhouse principle, of course - over the building to create a weather-protected outdoor space and examine how we could make the sanitary facilities and, if available, the kitchen usable and accessible with simple means. Maybe a bit like Gordon Matter Clarke…
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Functions
Give me a point where I can step and I will move the earth.