This project by Shahira Hammad envisions a new train station for Vienna, one that would either modify or replace the existing Westbahnhof train station.
The project keeps the existing building, but contaminated with structures that would express a complexity of programs now missing. The project was inspired both from Nature and Culture, and beyond its polemical characteristics it does intend to bring back what in science is called: Spontaneous Order.
It is, evidently, a reaction against excessive rationalism and rationalizations. Yes, it is excessive, but essentially it tries nothing else but to bring the complexities present in Nature into the urban fabric.
In a way the “project” is not really a “project,” since Shahira let what was envisioned come into being “naturally,” almost by itself, expressing not only outer realities, but also inner ones.
We could say that maybe this is an Epimethean work, as opposed to being Promethean, that is, a work in which thought comes afterwards… so the relationship between cause and effect is circular, not linear…
All in all this is an architectural meditation on Time as well, since the structures I envisioned do reflect metamorphosis, the passage of Time, change, ephemerality and even decay… themes, again, neglected by conventional architectures.
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