The resilient river

Cities have always been built near water: about 90 of the world’s 100 biggest cities are built on coast or rivers. River cities displayed an intimate and complex relationship with water, which was never considered as a limit but rather as an extension of the urban fabric. However during the industrialization the waterway network lost its monopoly in infrastructure. Ever since the lost of the river in the ‘battle of infrastructure’, river cities have seen a weakening of their functional relationship with water. The riverfront in today’s global cities is a legacy of industrialization and maritime commerce and typically a city’s most contested zone. The original functions of a river and its riverfront become obsolete resulting in the weakening of relationships between the city and its river. Instead of a communication axe the river transformed in a physical boarder dividing the city and its public realm into pieces. The river needs to be redefined in today’s river cities; it requires a radical restructuring of its meaning, use and its occupants. This graduation project explores the potentials of today’s neglected European urban riverfronts as an actively and productively used public space and provides a new design for Vienna’s riverfront.Explorelab XIIIArchitectur