The Search for the “Missing Link”

 

Architecture students had the freedom to develop their ideas for a compound belonging to the motorway maintenance authorities in Liefering.

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“Bergkäse”, or “Mountain Cheese”: Horst Lechner wants to build a mountain (including holes for lighting exposure) on the former Asfinag compound. Until now, there is no mountain on this side of the city ​

 

Liefering. An area consisting of 50,000 square meters, difficult to find on the busy arterial highways to Freilassing; located along the highway and framed by roundabouts on one side and residential buildings on the other, this place is a particular urban challenge.This plot became available because of the upcoming relocation of the Asfinag motorway maintenance authority. The best use of this land would be as a new garage location for the Salzburg AG’s O Bus. What can be done with this key location? So is the question of the landowner - Salzburg AG and a consortium of three private property developers and the city government. They passed this question on to the architecture students at the University of Art and Design Linz. They should contemplate what else would be possible for this space, apart from the planned bus garage. They should search for the “missing link”, the missing connector that would give a new quality to the area consisting of transport infrastructures, urban wasteland, urban escapes and demographic change. What is this place missing? What could make this place special and worth living in?

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Matthias Böttger, who has been a professor at the Kunstuniversität Linz since 2012, is overseeing the project together with Franz Koppelstätter. “The students were not given a task with instructions on what they should do. Rather, they had to put themselves in a position where there is an available lot, a mayor says something should be done with it, but he does not know what. This is how they should develop ideas and scenarios that will work and make sense even in 50 years," explains the professor. The designs demonstrate a colorful compilation of ideas. Stefanie Bauer, for example, wants to stack the O buses in a “Bus Shelf” along the highway. On the noise-protected back, a housing estate grows up to the existing single-family house development. Corinna Hot relies on "The Void", designing the bus garage as an oval, which allows for an effective system for storing the O buses and creates a free field on the roof with unlimited design opportunities.Horst Lechner calls his blueprint “Bergkäse” (Mountain Cheese), he wants to build a mountain from the Asfinag plot. In order to bring light in even to the deepest parts of the “mountain”, he wants to permeate the structure with “cheese holes”. In turn, Martin Zieren relies on island happiness: creating a colony on the roof of the O Bus garage. For outsiders, a stronghold, for the inhabitants the island, bliss.

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The Salzburg Architect, Wolfgang Maul (hobby a.) and his colleague Johannes Schallhammer were hired by the Salzburg AG to carry out a study on the further use of the Asfinag site. They look after the project professionally. "The designs all show a mixed use, garage + housing, but university buildings and stadiums were also among them. In any case, it is absolutely necessary that the lot not be turned into a 30,000 square meter one-story hall that remains empty during the day, as the Salzburg AG prefers. That would be urbanistic nonsense, in a place where less and less space is available,” emphasizes the architect.The designs will be presented in an exhibition through 12. Feb. 2016. At the opening of the exhibition on the 27th of January at 6:00 pm, Matthias Böttger, Johann Padutsch, and Andreas Schmidbaur, Head of Urban Planning and Construction, architect, and project coordinator, will discuss the topic