Urban industrial landscapes often have close links to supra-regional or global territories, but little or no connection to their immediate surroundings. They follow the logic of supply chains, economic demands and technological requirements, but hardly embed other (urban) needs in their built environment. These circumstances often result in spatial and social disruptions with their nearby context or even encapsulation of these landscapes within our cities. It is at their edges that industrial areas and other urban uses and users meet, sometimes leading to idiosyncratic encounters, contrasts, tensions and even to conflicts. Urban industrial areas are practically ‘invisible’ to a large part of the population (human and non-human), because they are not easily accessible, and they often become barriers in the urban fabric, separating both physically and socially. This paper examines the spatial phenomena and social dynamics of urban industrial landscapes in relation to their neighbouring surroundings, as little is known about their urban integration and reciprocal effects. Using the city of Vienna as an example, the fringes of exemplary industrial areas are explored through an artistic-cartographic mapping of their urban morphology and through visual collaborative field research on site. This multi-layered mapping is an intermedial, processual and performative practice that transcends the conventions of traditional cartography. It not only encounters these fringes, but also explores them, making them tangible and interpreting the found realities and collective memories and result in a visual socio-spatial register of the urban juxtapositions explored. Since the beginning of industrialisation, the histories of industry and cities have been closely intertwined and in constant flux. It is necessary to better understand both industry and cities, their past and present, and their interdependence, in order to find out how urban industrial landscapes shape our cities, what potentials lie within them, and what possible futures might look like.