The as­pi­ra­tion to live and work in urban areas causes a den­si­fi­ca­tion of our inner cities. The pres­sure on the pub­lic open spaces is thereby in­creased: ex­ist­ing open spaces are filled up with res­i­den­tial build­ings and so elim­i­nated from the urban fab­ric. At the same time, as the num­ber of in­hab­i­tants in­creases the pres­sure on the re­main­ing open spaces raises.

In con­trast, new open spaces are being dis­cov­ered in the city, which for var­i­ous rea­sons have not been avail­able for pub­lic use and which can now be reval­u­ated - partly by so­cial pres­sure and partly by chang­ing the frame­work con­di­tions. This ap­plies in par­tic­u­lar to areas on and under in­fra­struc­ture fa­cil­i­ties.

In the dense urban fab­ric of Stuttgart, the Öster­re­ichis­cher Platz forms a strong traf­fic-dom­i­nated, un­at­trac­tive and neg­a­tively con­noted break. At the same time, with its bridge struc­tures and its ex­ten­sive use as a park­ing area, it of­fers po­ten­tial for a new urban open space. Ac­cord­ingly, since 2016 dif­fer­ent sub­cul­tural ac­tiv­i­ties take place, or­gan­ised and hosted by ‚Verein Stadtlücken’. Mean­while the pub­lic per­cep­tion of this site is chang­ing.

In this set­ting, the task was to ex­per­i­men­tally de­sign a pub­lic open space that could reval­u­ate the par­tic­u­lar spa­tial re­quire­ments of the site and con­nect the ex­ist­ing dif­fer­ent city lev­els.

The Öster­re­ichis­cher Platz was so far a place that was not well known as a pub­lic open space. Be­sides its use as a park­ing lot, it re­ceived nearly no at­ten­tion. The 'Par­a­site' - a new coloured open space el­e­ment - is in­tended to re­vi­tal­ize the space by con­trast­ing the rough con­cret bridge. It should fill in gaps and cre­ate space. The par­a­site ap­pears where de­sign of urban space is ab­sent, where there are gaps in per­cep­tion and use. The par­a­site de­pends on its 'hosts’: the build­ings and the bridge of the Öster­re­ichis­cher Platz offer a frame­work in which it can spread. At the same time, the par­a­site adapts to this frame­work - be­comes mas­sive or nar­row, high or low. It acts as a link be­tween the quar­ters and as an in­vi­ta­tion to use the space under the bridge.