EM1 Master Design Studio – PERMEABLE DEVICES: Postfunctional architecture and adaptive reuse

Site
Lamarr Department Store Building Block, Mariahilferstraße, Wien

Current Planning Status and Construction History
The “Lamarr” project on Mariahilferstraße in Vienna was originally conceived as an eight-storey luxury department store with more than 20,000 m² of retail space, upscale gastronomy, and hotel use, complemented by a publicly accessible greened rooftop terrace. Positioned as a prestige development on one of Vienna’s most important shopping streets, the project came to a halt during construction due to the insolvency of the Signa Group, leaving the building half-finished and in shell state.
The complex was initially designed by Rem Koolhaas (OMA), who had won an international competition. OMA described the project as follows:
“[…] Lamarr is not an icon but rather an architectural device that establishes new urban connections and public spaces through its own internal organisation. […] The building will be permeable and open: an ideal destination for the contemporary flaneur, it will offer both public and intimate spaces, completing urban loops in the neighbourhood while establishing an osmotic relationship with the city and its inhabitants.”
(vergleiche: https://www.oma.com/projects/lamarr)
After an interruption of approximately 18 months, the project was acquired in 2024 by Stumpf Development GmbH for around 120 million euros. In June 2025, the first plans for adaptive reuse were presented: instead of a fully commercial programme, the building is now to be restructured into a mixed-use development. The revised concept includes approximately 200 apartments, reduced retail space, a hotel in the rear section, and a publicly accessible rooftop terrace of about 1,000 m². The existing shell is to be partially dismantled down to the first floor and subsequently restructured and extended in several construction phases. Completion is currently scheduled for 2028.
According to the new architect Georg Soyka (Soyka/Silber/Soyka), the revised project represents “die Antwort auf viele Fragen des urbanen Bauens”. (“the answer to many questions of urban construction.”) The transformation into “zu einem lebendigen Ort des Lebens, Arbeitens und Ankommens” (“a lively place of living, working, and arrival”) is not only architecturally engaging but also socially relevant:
Architektonische Transformation mit Verantwortung.” (“architectural transformation with responsibility.”)
(vergleiche: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000275570/nutzungskonzept-fuer-ex-lamarr-steht-teilabriss-ermoeglicht-200-wohnungen)

Project Brief, Concept, and Design Aim
The revision of the project design towards a new typological framework, together with the onset of the current phase of demolition and reconstruction of an unfinished building – the existing shell is to be dismantled down to the first floor – provides an ideal academic opportunity to address both project-specific and, by deduction, more fundamental questions of contemporary architecture. Central to this inquiry are a contemporary re-reading of urban space, innovative approaches to the interweaving of public and private realms, ongoing socio-economic transformations, shifting brand identities and the radical reorientation of building typologies, new spatial configurations, questions of material sustainability, and aspects of reuse, recycling, and circular economy.
The aim of this design project is to develop, starting from the current shell state of the Lamarr structure, an experimental, data-driven, and atmospherically and spatially innovative architectural counter-proposal. Using volumetric design workflows and contemporary digital tools and AI, the project seeks to generate holistic concepts that respond to the shifting political, economic, and socio-cultural frameworks.
The focus is not on completing the original programme but on restructuring and partially transforming it through new urban, spatial, architectural, and socio-economic narratives. The central research question asks how fragmented large-scale structures with outdated typological configurations – such as Lamarr – can be transformed into contemporary, open, and flexible urban resource systems.

Guiding Questions
Existing Structure Analysis
– How can such a building resource be utilised and continued?
– What ideas of transformation or transfiguration exist?
– Which complementary material systems are available?
– How adaptive is the existing structure in terms of material and construction?
– What changes does it permit?
Speculation / Transformation
– In what ways can the specific spatial structure of the unfinished building be understood as a resource and re-imagined transformatively?
– Which parts of the building can be preserved, which must be dismantled?
– What reuse and recycling strategies are feasible?
Use / Programme / Typology – Projective Analysis
– Which uses and programmes are conceivable, realistic, and meaningful in this context?
– What contemporary responses can be formulated within the given urban, cultural, social, political, and economic framework?
– How have the spatial, atmospheric, and architectural requirements of programmes (e.g., retail) changed in recent years?
– How will they and their surrounding spaces evolve in the future?
– What future programmes or typologies might emerge that are not yet known today?
– Which urban functions can replace “shopping,” which is increasingly shifting into virtual space?
Urban Space / Context / Atmosphere
– Which uses are contextually, politically, socio-culturally, economically, and atmospherically possible at this site?
– How is the site defined at the intersection of historic inner city, major shopping street, cultural district (MQ), and tourist centre?
– What visual, spatial, architectural, and cultural references exist, and how can a new urban building block be atmospherically integrated into this network of relations?

Methodology and Approach:
Survey and Analysis:
Assessment of the construction state prior to continuation, based on site visits, drawings, visualisations, and existing data. These form the foundation for a precise volumetric understanding of the structure and its spatial potential.
Urban Context:
Analysis of the Lamarr’s immediate surroundings – particularly its position between the inner city, Mariahilferstraße, and Museumsquartier – in relation to functional, social, contextual, and infrastructural connections.
Reference Analysis:
International case studies and global best practice projects will be analysed, summarised, presented, and made available as an open archive.
Spatial Counterproposal:
Formulation of alternative perspectives on use based on the extrapolation of existing structures, focusing on spatial openness, programmatic flexibility, and the conception and development of innovative programme and typology.
Experimental Scenarios and Spatial Prototypes:
Development of spatial scenarios across multiple design phases, oscillating between innovative reactivation and speculative reformulation. Reversible interventions, adaptive reuse strategies, and participatory spatial concepts will be explored, worked out through volumetric chunks, and will be explored, worked out through volumetric chunks, and scenographically visualised.