The Biotope City concept – the dense city as nature – was developed from the realization of fundamental changes in the framework conditions of architecture and urban development due to climate change, global population expansion and rapid urbanization, loss of biodiversity and scarcity of resources.
The Biotope City concept goes an important step further than ‘Greening the City’: it is not simply about greenery on buildings and in outdoor spaces, nor is it just about ‘sustainability’. It is about the dense city as a biotope. Why a biotope? In view of the problems we are now facing worldwide (‘planetary’ as Gilles Clement would say): Climate change, biodiversity loss and resource scarcity. it is imperative that we enter into a new relationship with nature.
The Biotope City concept says: if we do not want to pull the rug out from under our own feet, i.e. if we want to stop the destruction of our living conditions through our constant further expansion in space in the way we have done so far, then we must
change our relationship with nature. We must replace the subordination of nature with respect and cooperation. Cooperation at the most advanced level of our own human-developed technologies with the mechanisms of regeneration and ‘repair’ that nature has at its disposal. Only in this way can we solve or at least mitigate the problems of climate change, biodiversity loss and resource scarcity.
This creates a win-win situation both for us humans and for nature. The Biotope City is a well thought-out, coherent response to the massive problems facing cities in terms of the aforementioned issues – and at the same time it is a sensory experience, an enrichment of the urban quality of life. It is the city that will continue to offer livable conditions for people and a habitat for flora and fauna in the future: The city as a biotope sounds, smells and tastes more pleasant than the metropolitan areas of the 20th century. It is rich in species and its shapes and colors change with the seasons. Its trees and plants provide air to breathe and have a calming effect on the souls of its inhabitants. Their green leaves bind fine dust, alleviate summer heat and floods after heavy downpours.
Biotope City is more than the sum of energy-saving buildings, recyclable building materials, clean electricity from wind and solar energy and green roofs and façades. Biotope City is the vision of a city that embeds its inhabitants and its buildings back into the cycle of nature. The living organic world becomes an important element of design – just like stone, steel, wood and concrete today. Biotope City interweaves and intertwines “green” and “gray” – in the building, in the neighborhood and in the city as a whole. Biotope City thus creates a new beauty that gives sensual expression to the technical-ecological turnaround. Biotope City is the spatially designed expression of a deeper insight: the city is not in opposition to nature, but is one of its manifestations: Our urban stone deserts are no different in essence than termite mounds or anthills, than forests or meadows. Biotope City is designed from this new attitude of humility towards nature. Its inhabitants, its “gardeners”, respect plants and animals as fellow species and humans as sentient beings.
This concept was for the first time realised through the construction af the ‘Biotope City Wienerberg’ at Vienna, a quarter with approx.1.000 apartments, residential facilities, commercial premises and a hotel. The quarter was completed in 2021 and formed one of the pilot project of the Building Exhibition Vienna 2022. A follow-up is being planned.