We call our project “Abriss ist deppert – Soup against Demolition”. It explores the political, social, and spatial dimensions of demolition in Vienna and Budapest. With the support of the future.lab studio, we opened a two-day exhibition at TU Wien. At its centre stood a large, hand-knitted city map, surrounded by construction waste, marking sites of past and ongoing demolitions. This tactile and visual installation connected the overall issue of demolition with the local practice in Vienna and sparked conversations among its visitors. To reach students directly, we served free soup on the campus - both as a gesture of hospitality and to engage passers-by in discussions.
The project also extended to Budapest, where we were invited by our Hungarian HouseEurope! partners to the Budapest Architecture Film Festival to show the film “Power to Renovation”. We were also implicated in informal discussions about demolition, renovation and the broader political context. Our experience in Budapest was interesting: we were reminded of the realities within an increasingly authoritarian system in which political activism is perceived and treated differently than in Switzerland.
The interviews we conducted with professors, politicians, architects, and activists in Vienna and Budapest enriched us with insights ranging from heritage and architecture in Orban’s Hungary to the legal framework of the Viennese “Mietsrechtsgesetz”. We developed a series of short videos in various formats - video-essays, interview snippets and animated drawings - which we published on social media.
