Rainer Pirker 'Urban Seed' Programme

Background 1
Cities are changing all the time. Economic, political and social forces are the main reasons for these changes. A first radical change happened with the industrialization. The existing boundaries of cities have been demolished. The relation between the city and the countryside became blur.
Cities expanded and have been densified. These new conditions have been the background for most of the urban utopias.

Background 2
Paris is a city of radical urban changes and ideas.
Haussmann´s plan has its origin in political demands.
Corbusier´s idea is based on social conditions from the industrialization.
Friedman was envisioning a second layer, creating space for the individual.
Centre Pompidou is a small scale urban intervention with radical impact on the existing city.

Background 3
Cities are controlled by developers. Political and social forces are replaced by economical dictation. The periphery of cities all over the world is the result of this development. Areas without any identity, “urban islands” with social disruption are major problems of our cities today.


“urban seed” is a strategy in this situation. Urban seeds are strong urban interventions, giving impulses for social urban densification, for social links and urban identity. Public transportations are important not only for functional means of traffic, but also for urban seeding. Their stations are magnets and shall be focus points for urban seeds.

A subway or light rail train station is the focus for our program.
The station should not be just a hole in the earth, but enriched with program, bringing an urban impulse to the area. It should not be just shopping but some identity seed.
This program is switching between scales. It is subway station as an urban intervention. The intervention can be in one specific point or could be linear. It should be a vision, opening the mind. It is a contemporary approach for radical changes in the city of today. It could also be seen as a seed for a new understanding of public urban interventions with the background of the financial crises and a discussion for new divisions of power forces in the city.

All students are asked to find a location for an urban intervention in the periphery of Paris. They have to explain, why they choose this specific location concerning the goal to have an important impact on the urban life in the periphery and the link to other parts of Paris.

Students can work in groups up to three people. They should start a mental city scanning and prepare an analysis before the first meeting. Every group should have chosen the location already and prepare a short power point presentation for this meeting April 1st.

The schedule for the program is:
Lecture of Rainer Pirker: April 2nd 2009

Teaching session: April 1st 2009, April 3rd 2009
Teaching session: April 11th 2009, April 12th 2009, April 13th 2009
Teaching session: April 24th 2009
Teaching session: April 29th 2009
Final Presentation: May 1st 2009
In case any schedule change is necessary, it will be announced in time ahead.