competition: joint winners
location: Linz, Austria
year: 2008
Pit stop: connected is a multi-functional urban design scheme drawing on resources of both, the local and the regional. Located in the Neue Welt (‘new world’) area, a seemingly non-distinct and transitional zone south of the city centre of Linz, it acts as an anchor point for public life, amenities, transport and services. ‘Pit stop: connected’ aims to link the city’s mobility requirements with the need to provide a high quality urban environment for local users and residents.
Our notion of the existing site condition as ‘archipelago’ rather than as an island helped us to address key issues of the project: topography, mobility and local user. A place where residents, students and commuters meet and intermingle, do their shopping, have a break and feel at home.
The proposal combines components of urban building typologies and car optimised spaces. It adapts to the existing topography, local constraints and programmatic issues to form an architecture of layered complexity. The programming and site integration seeks to establish a careful ‘grounding’ of the scheme in order to closely link the generated dynamics to the local community. This will ensure the project is sustainable in the long term.
The three winning teams in this Europan competition were each awarded a second prize (runner-up). There was no first prize. https://www.europan-europe.eu/media/default/0001/06/e9_results_pdf.pdf