discovery of slowness by daniel reist from austria

daniel reist
university for applied arts vienna
Institute of architecture

What is the definition of a building? Somthing that is built for human habitation. It can also be described as a structure that has floors and walls. But why should a building always stay at one place. Ships are one of the largest entities that human mankind has ever constructed. If we take the the aircraft carrier as an example. It is not just a ship, it is also a hybrid of programs, a connection between air and water. Hans Hollein was referring to the spatial performance of this vessel in his project "der Flugzuegtraeger in der Landschaft". Besides the Aircraft carrier as ship typlogy I want to mention one special vessel. The SS Normandie for me is really interesting. The designers decided to create a huge open space in the center of the ship to provide space for events, concerts and performances. So they decided to make the planning and the construction of this ship more complicated to achieve more spatial quality. One of the basic ideas of my project was, in times where everything has to be fast and optimized, to create an entity the creates its own time, inspired by the book of Stan Nadolny (the discovery of slowness). Another main Idea of this project is to create a new sustainable way of travelling. The vessel is fueled with hydrogen, that is produced by the ship itself with solar cells on its surface. When the ship is interacting with an urban environment, the ship is charging itself and produces hydrogen. To cover port costs the main event hall in the center of the vessel can be rented out. All these parameters were influencing the design process and were leading to the resulting ship typology. This object should be able to bring events to different locations and also provide space for political happenings like the G8 summit. All in all this project is not a simple cruise ship, it is a multifunctional envelope that is independent of any location in the world. It can work totally isolated or interact with city environment to extend the urban space.