Sozialzone - Caritas

The Caritas Vienna employs around 4,400 people, a further 2,100 work as volunteers. An “internal communication” program, which was run in 2014, showed among other results, that a great number of employees in the main office building in the 16^th district, wished for improvements in their common spaces to make them friendlier, more inviting and accommodate different types of social interaction.

We were invited to rethink and redesign these spaces based on a participation program, in which the employees could be addressed and involved to bring their wishes and ideas into the design process. Our first impression of the existing spaces was that everything seemed to be working perfectly. So how do you bring more value through design, taking into consideration that the Caritas needed, in adherence to its identity, to maintain an image of practicality and modesty?

To implement the participation process the students were asked to prepare and set a workshop at the Caritas building, experiment with different methods as well as combine them with their own observations to understand the task and explore existing spatial potentials. The group returned several times to discuss their design ideas with a regular team from the Caritas and other interested employees. Working very closely within the context allowed the students to assess and revise their designs and to constantly reflect on classical architectural representations such as plans, sections and models as tools of communication.

The project started as a cooperative competition between 6 teams with 2 students each. Currently a group of 7 students are working together on finalising the design to be realized in Summer 2016.