Copa Cagrana

Location: Vienna, Austria

Client:  WGM – Vienna Water Management

Date:  2015 Restricted Competition

Area: 93,380m2

Budget: Undisclosed

Team credits:

AZPML:  Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal, Manuel Eijo, Ivaylo Nachev, Maria Spada

SHARE architects: Thomas Lettner, Silvia Forlati, Hannes Bürger, Beatrice Broso, Stefania Catania, Giacomo Zanin, Bruno Melis

YEWO Landscapes: Dominik Scheuch, Georg Auersperg

Traffix: Andreas Käfer, Katharina Horvath

Arcadis: David W. van Raalten, Johan Kabout Msc

Visuallizations: SBDA and AZPML-SHARE-YEWO

The Copa Cagrana Quai on the Danube Island presents a fantastic opportunity for the creation of an important piece of Vienna’s urban space. The adjacency to the UN City and the new DC towers and the area of dense urban structure surrounding it, plus the new desirability of residential quarters along the river, and the excellent accessibility provided by public transport, suggests that this could become one of the most significant riverfront locations in Vienna. Unfortunately, the opportunity seems to have been endangered by the haphazard nature of the ongoing developments which do not seem to have been properly coordinated to take advantage of this opportunity. The purpose of our proposal is to create some order and consistency in the development of the site.

Our approach to the planning of Copa Cagrana Quai on the Danube Island has been to treat the space as an urban infrastructure where different scenarios can develop in the future. We see our proposal as an attempt to provide an infrastructure for a dense urban location along the Danube Island Waterfront: an enclave where Vienna can access the water.

The public space would be organized in three levels with distinct qualities, which connect topographically, programmatically and environmentally between the UN City/DC tower zone, to the water level. The three platforms that structure the public space are then connected through a number of ramps, stairs and mechanical devices which will facilitate the movement from the urban level at +10,00 to the quay level at +2,00.