Architectural Design V-IX: Festspiele - Reimagining Performative City Spaces (H.Klumpner)

Abstract

What is a festival today?Why urbanization, ecologization, and digitalization in architecture?Where should urban transformation be activated?

Objective

While cities contribute to the highest CO2 footprints, they also hold the potential to most effectively bend the carbon curve and take Climate Action in achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Moving towards decarbonized ways of living and `Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe and resilient (SDG 11) will require behavioral and systems change in all sectors of life. Access to quality education (SDG 4), co-creating evolving frameworks for life-long learning, building capacity for transformative processes, strengthening and building new circular economies, making use of digital and analog tools, as well as how easy it is to access services in the city, are the foundation for designing and maintaining sustainable urban futures. In alignment with these principles, the central thesis of this Design Studio focuses on the conceptualization and design of innovative architectural and urban prototypes. These designs aim to address and respond to the complex challenges posed by overtourism, rising housing costs in the historic center, displacement of local residents to peripheral areas, climate-related vulnerabilities, mobility inefficiencies, and the need to preserve and adapt the Baroque and heritage urban fabric. Through this approach, the Design Studio seeks to create solutions that meet immediate needs while contributing to the long-term resilience and vitality of the urban environment. Students are introduced to tools and immersed in our Chair’s “method-design” to develop their prototypical design projects by: 1.) Base-Line: We design in a continuum of architectural, urban, and planning scales to collaboratively develop a basis for how the city is now. 2.) Mapping: By identifying existing and future challenges and opportunities, we take the role of stakeholders and visualize our demands and resources into three different scenarios. 3.) Concept Design: We develop an urbanistic synthesis and translate a concept into an evidence-based prototypical architectural project- intervention. 4.) Prototype Design: We present the synthesis of our process in time and space on different scales. We frame the design projects as a narrative, consequentially developed and communicated in analog and digital graphic representations. 5.) Upscaling: We test our project concepts and upscale prototypes through design-policy recommendations to make them transferable in Medellín and other cities. The design studio focuses on the transformative redevelopment of the city on three scales: A_Region Scale: 1:200.000 B_City Scale: 1:10.000 C_Site Scale: 1:5.000

Content

Salzburg stands at the intersection of cultural heritage and contemporary urban transformation. Internationally recognized for its Baroque architecture, alpine landscape, and the world-renowned Salzburg Festival, the city offers a unique context where history and performance converge. This rich cultural identity provides fertile ground for reimagining how festivals—as temporal, spatial, social, and ecological phenomena—can inform and inspire architectural and urban design. As a UNESCO World Heritage City and the birthplace of Mozart, Salzburg has long drawn global attention. Yet its success as a cultural destination brings with it critical urban challenges. Overtourism, rising housing costs, and the displacement of local communities are reshaping the city’s core. Public spaces are under increasing pressure, and mobility remains a persistent concern in a dense, historically preserved urban fabric. At the same time, climate-related vulnerabilities—including river flooding and heat stress—demand new ecological and infrastructural responses. This Design Studio positions the festival not only as a celebration but as a framework for temporary and permanent urban interventions—a lens through which to explore questions of identity, access, sustainability, and community. How might ephemeral events leave lasting spatial legacies? How can the design of festival infrastructure enhance the quality of public space, support local communities, and respond to environmental constraints? Students will investigate and propose architectural and urban prototypes that engage with Salzburg’s layered context. Projects may focus on reactivating underutilized spaces, designing mobile or modular interventions, integrating ecological systems, or rethinking circulation and staging across the city. Emphasis will be placed on strategies that are context-sensitive, inclusive, and adaptive—designs that acknowledge both the temporality of festivals and the permanence of their spatial impact. Through this approach, the studio explores how cultural programming can drive spatial innovation and how architecture can foster new modes of gathering, expression, and urban resilience. Salzburg becomes both site and subject: a city in which tradition and experimentation coexist, and where the festival becomes a vehicle for reimagining the future of urban life.

Resources