WIENWOCHE Talk: What plans the planning?

Is there beautiful architecture within exploitative working conditions? What does critical planning within racist migration regimes look like? And what does Lampedusa have to do with Austrian architectural practices? A discussion event on perspectives and utopias of critical architecture and city planning.

An increasing level of protest makes itself heard – in the places where specific building projects are accompanied by the commercialization of public space, by displacement (of those without buying power) during the course of competition between cities, or by the "spatialization" of repressive policies. Across various disciplines, both interest and criticism are growing concerning architecture and city planning, especially with regard to political conditions. Planners often appear as accomplices when the unequal distribution of wealth manifests itself in built structures – even if they originally intended to work against injustices.

The triple mandate in architecture already provides for conflicts and contradictions: the mandates of those awarding contracts, of the users and of the discipline's autonomy. Depending on the context, central architectural tasks – for example, the confrontation with formal criteria, an aesthetic production of images and naturally the quality of the space itself – can "embellish" the preconditions of building tasks or confirm them: whether it be a corrupt construction industry, neoliberal financing models (such as private public partnerships for public schools for example) or racist exclusions (see the example of the deportation center in Vordernberg).

What does it mean to say "no" in architecture – especially in relation to the precarious working conditions of smaller architecture offices? Often, within one’s own profession, constraints in politics, but also industrial relations and competition are taken for granted without question – where is there any room here for intervention? What are the possible alternatives within the scope of planning in order to provide a response to unjust production of space, and if you go a step further: How could architecture become an agent for a more fair-minded production of space?