Students: Valerie Mauerhofer, Merve Özcan, Lara Schnabl
Located within one of Vienna’s large-scale social housing complexes, the Hansson Center defies the typical decline of suburban shopping centers. Instead, it has evolved into a lively meeting place for over 14,000 residents. Designed in the 1970s on a striking hexagonal grid, its open, glass-covered corridors blur the lines between public space and private ownership—raising urgent questions about access, control, and the gradual transformation of commercial zones into pseudo-public arenas.
This project proposes a rooftop intervention: a retractable shading system, an outdoor projection surface, and modular kiosks to host seasonal events. Drawing inspiration from both global mall typologies and local icons like Alterlaa’s rooftop pool, the design reimagines the mall as a collective urban platform. At ground level, a new vertical connection has been introduced inside a clothing store. Nestled between racks of garments, a passageway leads upward-formed by movable shelving units we designed specifically for this purpose. Working through 1:50 scale dollhouse models, the project layers analog and digital techniques—exploring circulation, spatial nostalgia, and the evolving resilience of commercial architecture.
