Ortsentwürfe. Urbanität im 21. Jahrhundert
Bastian Lange/Gottfried Prasenc/Harald Saiko (eds.)
Berlin: Jovis, 2013
German, 224 pages, softcover
ISBN 978-3-86859-229-0
EUR 25.00

From an urban historical perspective, Graz has always had a “good” shore and a “bad” one. A middle-class area came to form around the Schlossberg, while on the opposite side of the Mur River a lower-class “slum district” developed along important trade routes. The Lend quarter, the nature of which had long seemed dubious, saw the dawning of creative potential, which still today openly plays out along the streets.
Experts and narrators from a range of disciplines report on this ambivalent realm of shady imagery and neighborly vitality in the book Ortsentwürfe: Urbanität im 21. Jahrhundert (Municipal Designs: Urbanity in the 21st Century), which originated from a series of symposia organized by Gottfried Prasenc and Harald Saiko, along with fellow collaborating urban researchers and architects.
Ortsentwürfe surveys Graz for traces of urban changes that show indications of a new urban stance in the twentieth century. Such reformatting of city space, now also visible in architecture, is read not as an isolated phenomenon, but rather in the context of European development. The texts make concrete reference to the local festival LENDWIRBEL. Neighborhood structures, appropriation of local space, and alternative ways of life are made tangible and experienceable each year in Lend during this festival.
With contributions by Christoph Twickel, Christoph Laimer, Peter Mörtenböck, Robert Kaltenbrunner, Rainer Rosegger, Philipp Schmidt, Claudia Gerhäusser, Elke Krasny, among others.

Co-editor Gottfried Prasenc served from 2005 to 2013 as an academic assistant in the Institute of Spatial Design at Graz University of Technology.