Max Groos

Soft Disturbances

On play, presence and intervening in public space

Soft Disturbances is a practice-led inquiry into how an architect works, exploring the architect’s role as a steward of a public space. On Vienna’s Margaretenplatz I spent my time in a loop of knowing and not knowing, learning and unlearning. I read the square, intervened with small, often absurd and playful spatial gestures, and returned with a shifted understanding of who the space is for, how it is regulated, and what it invites or excludes.

By relocating and re-coding ordinary objects, the interventions temporarily re-script the square, shifting distances, attention, permissions, and the roles people take up around them. The project treats public space as a field of routines and strategic rules and uses minor disturbances to make these conditions perceptible. Rather than a final proposal, it articulates a new practice of iterative testing, listening and reading the city differently. Its archive combines logbook fragments, fieldnotes and recordings mapped onto a textile surface, culminating in a booklet including a manifesto of the method.

Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien