Horizontal Typologies

Planning Date: 2007/2008
Exhibition: Architektur Zentrum Wien, 2009

Architektur: Mina Yaney
Tragwerksplanung: Georg Ebner

Implanting Architecture
In medicine, a bypass generally means an alternate or additional route for blood flow, which is created in bypass surgery, e.g. coronary artery bypass surgery by moving blood vessels or implanting synthetic tubing. Vessels frequently used for the bypass are large veins taken from the patient’s leg. When and where possible, however, an artery is cut from one place and reconnected to another artery, which supplies a region that needs the blood supply more than the original site.

The elementary philosophy of the project is conceptualizing the bridge as a  multiple structure which gradually grows out of the city and is implanted as a topographical body in the urban substance, simultaneously leading a dialogue with the city. The design merges the landscape and the architecture into one cohesive building in which ground fades into figure and figure fades into ground.

The structure creates within itself a new space and in dialogue with the city, in the points where the structure touches the city, it creates new functional spaces and zones. These touching points with the city are not only the points where spaces, circulation and zones occur, but these are synchronistically the points where the bases are defined and the emerging forces flow in while establishing the statical stability of the bridge.

Consequently form, function  and construction are understood as one structural unity. The result of this process led to the creation of 8 different, handicapped accessible, zones which are not separated from each other but rather fading into each other. The resulting zones should lead to an intensive multifaceted, pulsating and alive identity of the place while transforming the ‘Handelskai’ to an active living area.