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Summer in Seestadt ☀️

A pleasant cohabitation

By Felix De Montis

December 26^th, 2019

The Viennese Seestadt (eng. Lakecity) is a rather new construction project on the outskirts of Vienna which started around 2010. When finished around 20.000 people should live and work there. As there is much land available everything can be built in new and unconventional ways which allows the district to innovate.

Transportation 🚋

Although the Seestadt can be reached by car, a big focus lies on public transportation. The Seestadt can be reached via Regional Trains, which go towards the east of Austria and even Bratislava, or Subway U2.

Within the new district one can take the normal bus 84A. Besides that it is possible to rent cargo- and normal bikes to get around. The first 30 minutes of each ride are free, so more than enough to get from one end of the quarter to the other.

A new but currently paused way to travel the Seestadt is an autonomous bus, the so called auto.Bus. They slowly drive on a predefined route and can only transport up to 10 people. The project is still in its test phase, but the way that Seestadt is constructed allows such experiments.

S80 going from Vienna Aspern Nord to Vienna Hütteldorf

Besides the cargo bikes, there are also stations for normal bikes

Architecture 🏗

The wide and open arranged district makes it possible to construct buildings in unconventional ways. New ideas such as facade greening and the usage of other materials like wood result in peculiar houses. In between or inside residential blocks are many green spaces.

A fact that makes the Seestadt distinctive to other districts of Vienna is the nearly exclusive usage of women as eponym for all the streets. One exception is Nelson-Mandela-Platz.

New building in construction on Janis-Joplin-Promenade

Stairs to an inner courtyard at Hermine-Dasovsky-Platz

Houses at the corner of Gisela-Legath-Gasse and Ilse-Arlt-Straße

Art 👩‍🎨

In July a long wall was redesigned by Sagmeister & Walsh and painted by Viennese design group burggasse98. As the visit was only shortly before the wall was finished, it is still very bright and colourful. A make of can be seen on Seestadts official Vimeo Profile: https://vimeo.com/357304312

The text is still missing inside the white strip

Flowers 🌻

Many of the buildings and many open spaces are filled with flowers. Even more flowers are at the south-west of Seestadt where the community garden Madame d’Ora is located.

Insects 🐝

The high amount of flowers results in a variety of insects flying around the gardens and simply minding their own businesses. To get even more insects to stay bound, there are two insect hotels open for everyone located inside the community garden.

Insect hotel in between of raspberries and poppies

Smaller insect hotel in front of an apple tree

Vegetables 🥕

One thing which also profits from the insects is a vast amount of vegetables. Besides flowers many people plant all kinds of vegetables and fruits at the community garden Madame d’Ora.

Relax 😴

Spread out around the district are many ways to rest or have fun or work out. Everything is open and available for everyone, even people who don't live there. Although the Seestadt spans only 62ha, it has five big parks with sports equipment and playgrounds. As with the streets, most parks are also named after women.