The building industry and architecture have been particularly severely hit by the Corona crisis. Even just on account of the use of buildings, which generates physical closeness. This is clear, as enabling collective life and efficiently forming community are the core tasks of building. These represent the positive side of the urbanisation process, which has exerted its impact since the invention of the city in the days of classical antiquity and has helped the advancement of humankind. Together with globalisation that is a phenomenon of our times it has, however, gained even greater intensity. Hyper-density, world-wide networks and with them the potentially rapid spread of epidemics are the results. Does this mean we should now start a radical de-urbanisation process and put an abrupt stop to globalisation? Hardly, but both processes must be looked at far more critically than before. And they must be conducted with far greater care and a sense of proportion. We will have to develop a "selective" networking, in which goods and peoples will no longer be senselessly sent around the globe - as was the case until February 2020. Instead, in the area of freight traffic only those goods and items that a region cannot produce itself need to be sent there. Given the globally networked supply chains this change represents a gigantic, Herculean task. Therefore, what we are currently experiencing is an extremely cathartic time. Catharsis, the Greek word for cleansing. Our focal theme, the rural area - planned almost a year ago - offers ideal illustrative material about how this cleansing process could take place. Austria is in the fortunate position of having a substantial amount of well-developed and accessed rural space, which could, however, be developed further. Austria also has sufficient urban outdoor space - as can be seen in the competition for the Altes AKH university campus in Vienna. With a certain sense of melancholy, we also document two lovely projects that, at present, are hardly in a position serve their planned function as student residences and tourist facilities. But we remain optimistic that they will soon be needed again.
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