Site Specific: Frau* schafft Raum

FREDIANA.studio, Vienna, 2023

Following an initiative led by local district leaders to highlight the growing crisis of violence against women, a former tobacconists, on a busy thoroughfare in the Alsergrund district of Vienna, has become the site of a new hybrid space; part place of remembrance, part contemporary art gallery.

In 2021, a 35-year-old tobacconist was set on fire by her ex-partner in the shop and died from her severe burns. The following year district leader Saya Ahmad and her deputy Christian Sapetschnig, as part of their "16 Days against Violence against Women*" initiative, announced that that the premises would be transformed into the city’s first feminist art space; ‘FRAU* schafft Raum’ (‘Women* create Space’). Since December 2023, the small space has been hosting an ongoing series of exhibitions on the topics of femicide and violence against women, which can be viewed from 8am to 8pm each day.

The architectural adaptation, led by Laura Frediani and her studio, has sought to negotiate both the practicalities of the disparate programme and also the extremities of atmosphere that the project would be constituted of. A step away from the quotidian realities of the busy shopping street, the project is essentially a set of thresholds; housing both relics of the original fabric and new, forward-looking elements that adapt the space.

An almost chapel-like space, opening to the street rather than the nave of a church, this project is an embodiment of the often overlooked presence of violence against women within society.

FS The small tobacco shop in Nussdorfer Straße 4 in Vienna has always had a special standing in the 'Grätzl' neighborhood as an informal meeting place among the inhabitants before the femicide. After the conversion, the space continues to characterize the urban context as a popular meeting spot and modern monument against violence against women.

The architecture establishes a narrative on different levels:
on the social level, it offers a flexible space open to dialogue on the position of women;
on the historical level, it establishes a formal continuity with the pre-existing building, whose façade has been restored;
on the symbolic level, it leaves an eloquent sign in the plasterwork that recalls the cruelty of the act committed;
on the technical and design level, it proposes a contrast between the heaviness of the 19th-century walls and the lightness of the modern interventions in steel, glass, and white canvas.

The clarity of the surfaces sublimates the violence of femicide in an abstract space, which also symbolically represents a blank canvas available to the artists.

In the project, the original aluminium handle of the old shop was recovered, which bears the marks of the many touches and the many hands of the people who frequented that space.

The metal surface facing the street accompanies us from the hustle and bustle of the outside to the quietness of the interior. Its sheen reflects the image of the people, the city, and the works of art, creating a whole new perspective. "FRAU* schafft Raum" serves as a platform for a multifaceted discourse and transforms the site of violence into a place of memory, solidarity, and prevention.

NOTES

Many thanks to Laura Frediani of FREDIANA.studio for sharing this project with us.

Photography © Christoph Kleinsasser. For more of Christoph’s photography see here.

Black and white photography from the opening exhibtion by Suna Films.

Posted 22nd January 2024.