Der Rohbau der Zukunft™ (The Frame of the FutureTM) is a transdisciplinary art project on utopian ideas by the example of aspern Die Seestadt Wiens (Aspern, Vienna’s Lake City):
At the former airfield in the 22nd district of Vienna, one of the biggest urban development projects in Europe is under way. By 2028, on a 240–hectare area, a new part of the city will arise. The project is intended to meet the highest planning and economic standards. Der Rohbau der ZukunftTM took up the building site as utopian place of development: Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond accompanied the first building phase photographically, Anna Kim commented on the literary aspects. The result was graphically processed and shown in monthly changing posters in various Vienna subway stations as well as on four alternating posters in Vienna’s Schottentor subway station.
The site of the project, Aspern, plays an important role in Austria’s history. In 1809, Napoleon suffered his first military defeat there. More than a century later, on June 23, 1912, the Aspern airfield was inaugurated as the then biggest and most modern airport in Europe. During the Austrian civil war in the 1930s, it was here that the only air raid of this bloody conflict started. It was targeted against the Goethehof municipal housing block in the 22nd district of Vienna. After Austria’s annexation to Nazi-Germany in 1938, Heinrich Himmler landed at Aspern and there, too, the Jewish banker Louis Nathaniel Rothschild was arrested. After the war, at first the Soviet troops occupied the airport, later car races were organized there. This ground was now intended to see the development of an urban planning utopia that does not shy away from critical analysis.