Station 2 · Myopia
The First Bet
📍 Lassallestraße, 1020 Wien
Background
In 1979, the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) released a 200-metre-wide strip along Lassallestraße for development — the first piece of the Nordbahnhof brownfield to change hands. But actual construction only began in the 1990s, driven by Vienna's bid for the 1995 World Expo — a joint project with Budapest that was ultimately rejected by Viennese citizens in a 1991 referendum (65% voted against). The Expo never happened, but the development momentum it generated continued.
The result: a row of large-scale office blocks. No residential buildings behind them. No shops at street level. A critics' initiative later described it as a development that "forgot about the future behind it."
The first master plan for the full area was approved in 1994 — by which time the office strip was already taking shape. It's a textbook case of what happens when a single-use zone is built without considering the neighbourhood it will one day be part of.
Look around you. What do you see? What's missing?
Photograph the Lassallestraße office strip. Try to capture what's missing.
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Quiz