Under the title Living in the City, the 6th Architecture Biennial in Sao Paulo centers on issues of current and future urban forms of housing. The question, „How will we live in our cities?“ is inextricably linked with new relationships between urban and rural or center and periphery just as well as the progressive invasion of medial into built space. Austria is represented at the Biennial by the Graz-based architectural office SPLITTERWERK. Since the late 1980s, SPLITTERWERK has been investigating performative user interfaces for blending medial and built spaces. Analogous as well as digital „switchable structures“ transform modernist ideas of flowing spatial continuums for the 21st century. In the so called „Multi-incident Shell“ of the Graz Apartment, the walls have become a sort of custom-made wallpaper, a world of images which allows functions to be added „on demand“. The Biennial contribution Whoop to the Duck! covers the spectrum from urbanistic designs for our „post-urban society“ to the return of the ornament and the exemplary implementation of new housing designs. It is a revival of a different nature for the „duck“ (R. Venturi / D. Scott Brown) which calls for a further paradigm shift in architecture.

The Austrian contribution was commissioned by the Austrian State Secretary for Art and Media. A publication published by Springer Wien New York is forthcoming (English/German).