The Dissident Goddesses‘ Network Temple Architecture Prize
Event: 29.11.2019, from 14:00 formal award ceremony
Location: Office room E0109 at the Institute for Cultural Management and Gender Studies
at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna
The event is part of the research project The Dissident Goddesses‘ Network at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies.
We are very pleased to announce the first winners in the category „Offices“ of our architecture award. The prize goes to Barbara Kremser (Barbara Ungepflegt) and Ela Posch with their project BÜRO ZIMMER FREI, the office room E0109 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw).
The jury’s comments are as follows: With this project, the two prizewinners have succeeded in a quite extraordinary way in counteracting the social tendency of the disappearance of public space with the means of an aesthetic diversity in an experimental way and the precise formulation of cultural-historical, artistic and feminist correlations. The two prizewinners provide society with a discursive space, a space that enables aesthetic, political and solidarity-based participation. It is a space in between, a space of utopia, a real and at the same time imaginary place of refuge.
The project: The installation BÜRO ZIMMER FREI, was already ceremonially opened on October 10, 2016. BÜRO ZIMMER FREI is designed as a workplace for all those who want to leave the traditional work structures behind. What is special about it is not only the sustainability aspect, which many office buildings now have, but also the office-life concept, which Posch and Ungepflegt are trying to implement as one of the pioneers in this field.
The primary goal of BÜRO ZIMMER FREI is to make work structures more efficient. These include the promotion of mobile working, the merging of work and life, the introduction of sustainable office equipment and the free choice of workplace. (Job) seekers outside the mdw are also very welcome. Posch and Ungepflegt provide a day bar, an altar and a menstrual corner so that going home is no longer necessary. In addition to office design, the feel-good factor at the workplace therefore plays an important role.
What is already practiced today in room E0109 in the Institute for Cultural Management and Gender Studies / mdw could in the near future determine the daily routine in many universities and other companies. On the one hand, office space is expensive, and on the other hand cycles have become faster due to the increasing susceptibility of the economy to crisis. „Companies must prepare for this. The choice of location and efficient use of space are playing an increasingly important role,“ explained Claus Zincke of Union Investment Real Estate at the CIMMT, the annual kick-off congress of the real estate industry, in Frankfurt in 2013.