Viennese Cafés

Abstract

This Masters’ design studio will focus on a unique Viennese phenomenon: the coffeehouse. Far from being merely a place for the consumption of coffee, the Viennese café is a socio-spatial phenomenon that serves the city’s dwellers as an extended living room. As such, it is also a space of domestic activity and intellectual exchange. This semester, we will study the architecture of these institutions in order to understand how they function as interior urbanism, expanding the streets of the city into the dimly-lit booths of the café, with their partially-curtained windows. At the same time, the possibility of spending unlimited time at the café makes it into a public salon, where one can play cards, billiards, and meet friends in a semi-intimate setting. While UNESCO declared the Viennese coffeehouses as part of the world’s intangible heritage, this studio will focus on its tangible features, tracing the architectural evolution of the café, ranging from its interior fittings to its role in the urban expansion of the city of Vienna.

This semester will be dedicated to observing and analysing these aspects of the cafés, as well as to making a typological study of their layout and morphology. Students will begin the semester by analysing specific case studies in Vienna in order to read the cultural and socio-historical role of the coffeehouse in conjunction with the developments in art, architecture and urban planning in Vienna in the 18th and 19th centuries and up to the present day.