District Council Meiselmarkt

Students: Abishek Blesson, Lorenz Andexer, Valerie Mauerhofer

Meiselmarkt, once a water reservoir for Vienna’s public network, has transformed into a market and was transformed again in the 90ties into a hybrid of a shopping mall and an extended indoor market. Located in the 15th district—home to a diverse working class population of around 80,000—the site has undergone dramatic change through urban densification. While it remains a lively public space, recent years have seen a decline in visitors, leaving the upper floor of the tacky mall largely vacant and unused.

The project proposes to reclaim this underutilized 2,000 m² space to house a new district council chamber—an open and accessible forum for political discourse for the 15th district. Unlike conventional, closed-off decision-making spaces, this intervention situates governance within the everyday life of the city, to foster engagement between citizens and representatives.

The design integrates physical and digital interactions, creating a multimedia meeting chamber that merges spatial presence with technological infrastructure. The first phase of the project involved prototyping a meeting table embedded with digital interfaces to facilitate dialogue. In the second phase, this concept was scaled up and brought to Meiselmarkt’s spatial context and the adapted for the district council. We believe that cities today are not merely defined by architecture of buildings itself but by the interiors that constantly reshape their functions from within, as few buildings retain their original use, buildings require continuous adaptation through interior transformation, furnishing, and design. At the heart of the intervention, flexible meeting furniture and an overhead infrastructure grid activate the space, curtains divided the space like soft walls supporting dynamic forms of assembly. The project shapes civic participation, embracing interior transformation of the city as a tool for urban renewal.