The standard two-room apartment usually has about 54 square meters and is shared between 1-2 persons. The concept of the “elastic apartment”, which was exhibited in the AEDES Architekturforum in Berlin, is very special: smaller rooms are arranged around a large, shared room. The small rooms are flexible and offer space for several people, depending on the living situation and needs of the residents. The “elastic apartment” thus offers space for a family with two children as well as for a shared flat or a single father whose children only live with him on weekends.

This exhibition is a plea for progress in architecture, housing and urban design. Our way of living has nothing to do with our genes, it is rather acquired behaviour that has been passed on over generations, and any further development is prevented by the durability of the houses in which we live.

“Even if decision-makers often reduce the question of urban housing to conventional standards, it is nonetheless becoming increasingly more complex and demanding. Internationally active, Vienna-based PPAG architectural practice is one of the few protagonists to accept that challenge with all its consequences. Although their approach may not necessarily be apparent to the onlooker at first, PPAG show us unconventional, yet ever coherent and trendsetting possibilities of thinking living, housing an city.

In its wealth, the exhibition gives us an insight into the architect’s complex oeuvre: realised and unrealised, their proposals range from the smallest scale to urban design concepts. Undogmatic, owing to the quantity alone. An open offer to pluralistic society. Alongside the methodical relationship between those outwardly very different projects, there is one thing, above all, they have in common: ethics, a perceptible attitude, philanthropy.

According to PPAG, this exhibition is a kind of wake-up call to leave the trodden path and discover new terrain. Inspring for architects, property developers and other responsible parties as well as everyone else involved.

Dive into PPAG’s universe – it is well worth it!”

Kristin Feireiss

Aedes Architecture Forum

Exhibition catalogue (Design by Stefanie Schwarzwimmer)

The exhibition catalogue presents the key project of that plea, the Berlin Wiesenschlag project with it’s “elastic apartment”, whose life-size model is also exhibited. In truth, the catalogue is an interim publication with which we hope to bridge the gap between our book “Speaking Architecture” (ISBN 978-3-99043-637-0) and its successor.

Hence, it also contains several projects, realised in the last years, which are not included in the exhibition. The Slim City project in Seestadt Aspern, Vienna, a quarter that operates with a kind of hedonistic, communicative density, the educational campus Sonnwendviertel in Vienna, prototype for a series of Viennese educational buildings that meet state-of-the-art educational requirements, the Steirereck restaurant in Vienna’s Stadtpark, where top-notch kitchen and service standards meet superior athmospheric commitment to architecture … and the mixed use Pah-Cej-Kah building at the railway station in Deutsch-Wagram, where eateries, offices and other commercially used spaces form a kind of stepped pyramid, with a park on the top for everyone.

Links to Press Reviews

Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 15.12.2017

Bauwelt, 26/17

Baunetz, 06.12.2017

FAZ, 09.11.2017

Photos © Wolfgang Thaler 2017

More schools than ever before are being built across Europe. In cities like Berlin or Vienna, huge school construction offensives are underway. These new school buildings will shape the city, society and education as a whole for decades. Development of those spaces is a chance for the future and should be the subject of public discussion on a broadest possible scale.

This exhibition and catalog discuss core topics of contemporary educational architecture in 19 stations based on built and unbuilt projects designed by PPAG in recent years. They demonstrate that it is possible to unite innovative pedagogy, architecture, esthetics and cost-effectiveness on a high level. To that end, the exhibition space itself will become an education on education on a 1:1 scale. The catalog documents this learning excursion.

The exhibition catalog is not only intended to accompany the exhibition, it is also an independent publication that should not only be understood in the context of the exhibition.

Exhibition views, photos: Jan Bitter

Photos of the opening on November 1st 2018: Jasmin Schuller

Exhibition catalogue, design: Stefanie Schwarzwimmer

All photographs taken by Paul Bauer

SECTION TROUGH THE EXHIBITION SPACES: 1 -Innovative/Diverse, 2 – Dense, 3 – Timely, 4 – Stimulating, 5 – Model of Aspern, 6 – Connected, 7 – Active, 8 – High, 9 – Controlled

EXHIBITION SPACES ON THE FIRST FLOOR: 1 -Hydroponics, 2 – Dense, 3 – Timely, 4 – Stimulating