'Lakeside' high-rise apartment building, Seestadt Aspern, Vienna

摘要

Built close to the water The architects would have liked to call the building "Sea Urchin", on account of the projecting balconies. But to the client this name did not seem friendly enough and instead it was called "Lakeside". And indeed, one cannot live much closer to the artificial lake that lends its name to this new part of the city on the former Aspern airfield (Seestadt means literally "Lake City"). And there is hardly any plot more prominent than this one with the abbreviated title J5A: located on Janis-Joplin-Promenade along the southern bank of the lake, with only the acclaimed timber-built high-rise known as Hoho by Ruediger Lainer + Partner (s. p. 162) between it and the metro station, just a stone's throw away. Taking account of the neighbouring high-rise was one of the urban planning requirements in the competition set up in December 2015 by the Kerbler Group, also the client for Hoho, The treatment of the plinth zone, the quality of the visual relationships and the open spaces, and the floor plans of the apartments and their relationship to outside space were other important criteria.