Miss Sargfabrik Wenen/Vienna

BKK-3

Authors

  • Pierijn van der Putt TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment
  • Olv Klijn TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

The Viennese housing project Miss Sargfabrik (2000) is the sequel to a project located nearby (1996), named Sargfabrik. They have a lot in common: bright-orange façades with an unusual programme that includes room, alongside housing, for collective, and in the case of Sargfabrik, public functions. In addition they have the same client: a collective named ‘Verein für integrative Lebensgestaltung’ (association for integrated living). The collective calls itself a ‘Baukünstlerkollektiv’ (architecture collective), and the two architects in it who produced the design have christened their firm after this phenomenon: BKK-3.

Both Sargfabrik and Miss Sargfabrik are grounded in the desire to realize a different kind of housing than was available in Vienna at the time. The uniformity of the modernist doctrine of housing construction was repellent to the clients and the designers. In their view the modernist quest for light, air and space, the segregation of housing, work, transport and leisure, and the search for new forms of housing and society had morphed into a primarily industrial housing production in which the idea was no longer to accommodate individual needs, but to produce large numbers of minimal housing cells.

Miss Sargfabrik is situated at the corner of the Missindorfstrasse and the Fenzlgasse. The bright orange colour and the long strip windows distinguish the building from its surroundings. The short side – the building forms a hook with a long side and a short side – displays the complexity of Miss Sargfabrik: here two strips of fenestration merge into one and all sorts of height variations and split-level cross sections are visible. Miss Sargfabrik does not offer public functions, but it does feature a number of communal facilities for its residents’ collective, such as a library, a laundry, two kitchens and a bar. The various components of the building take complex forms: they are linked by ramps or low-rise stairs and are delineated by walls that angle upwards.

Author Biographies

Pierijn van der Putt, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Pierijn van der Putt (Eindhoven, 1973) studied Architecture at Delft University of Technology, the University of Illinois in Chicago and Drexel University in Philadelphia. He worked as an editor for Dutch architectural magazine de Architect for seven years before returning to Delft. There, in addition to being an editor for DASH (Delft Architectural Studies on Housing), he teaches academic research and architectural design for the group of Architecture and Dwelling. His particular interest lies in creative writing and in improving academic writing skills.

Olv Klijn, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Olv Klijn is Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology and founder and partner of FABRICations. Klijn studied architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology and graduated Cum Laude. Klijn has written articles for various architecture magazines, including de Architect, and worked as a junior architect for OMA in Rotterdam. Klijn is (co) author of various books such as VMX Agenda, 10 x Den Bosch, Station Centraal, Architect by accident and The making of ... After founding FABRICations in 2007 with Eric Frijters, he has been involved in the design and research of architecture, urban design and regional strategies. In 2010, FABRICations won the first prize in the Prix de Rome Architecture.  In 2011, Klijn was recognized as one of the 40 emerging European architects under the age of 40. A year later he was nominated for the Iakov Chernikhov International Architecture Prize.

Downloads

Published

2018-06-01

Issue

No. 08 (2013): Building Together: The Architecture of Collective Private Commissions

Section

Case Studies