Join A10 as it travels to Austria, where all is not as quiet they want us to believe. Not only are young Austrian architects active in Africa, they are also prepared to tackle delicate subjects at home, such as detention centres. Architekturzentrum Wien lends insight into the nation’s status quo of established architecture, from baumschlager eberle’s low-energy office building, to gaupenraub +/-‘s refurbishment of an 18th-century building into a social hub for students and homeless people. Also in this issue, we travel to Norway’s far northern reaches and review the promising competition for Plovdiv’s central square, an unorthodox auto inspection and service centre, a review of Hello Wood 2014 in Hungary, an interview with Julien De Smedt about his oscillation between architecture and design, and much more.

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Photo:Nikolaj Moeller

Interchange: Julien De Smedt

Within two weeks after Lehmann Brothers smashed all financial certainties the world thought would endure forever, Julien De Smedt had decided upon two things. Firstly, he would record the year to come on a daily basis in Agenda: Can We Sustain our Ability to Crisis?Secondly, he would accept an invitation from a rich industrial magnate to design a city with 99 other architects in Ordos, Mongolia. Last year, he launched Makers with Agendas, a design label with a mission. What links these three things is the will to solve problems on any scale.

Julien De Smedt shows off Mike by Makers with Agendas

Photo:Sebastian Schubert

Eurovision: Austria

If it is true that nothing is happening in Austria, they are doing a great job of hiding it. Its universities are active abroad, its architects question refugee policies and raise the standards of sustainable building, and bottom-up organizations invite world-famous architects to design local bus stops, which communities then build themselves. Step into the Austrian reality of today’s architecture, presented by Architekturzentrum Wien.

VinziRast-mittendrin by gaupenraub +/-, Vienna 

Photo:Cécile Septet

Mise en scène in wood

In 2007, Paris-based office KOZ won a competition in an area under rehabilitation, where the city now wishes to maintain the human-friendly scale of a typical Parisian faubourg. The brief – written for a client hoping to promote architectural quality in social housing – called for the renovation of a former squat and the construction of fifteen additional flats on a narrow plot behind it. We take a closer look at the construction, wherein wood is used for both the structural frame and the exterior cladding.

Tete in L’air social housing by KOZ architectes, Paris 

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