Fragments of a Breathing City

Since the beginning of their projects, the idea of ‘Breathing Cities’ has been at the center of their work. From the Breathe.Austria forest pavilion to the latest project, the Windcatcher (a fountain sculpture in St. Pölten), the Breathe Earth Collective has developed a variety of projects and approaches that make our living spaces healthier, more sustainable and cooler. The Breathing City is therefore a vision for climate-active, biodiverse and inspiring living spaces in which human and non-human actors live in balance.

As the climate crisis and its effects progress, the pressure and need to find new strategies to overcome this challenge is also increasing. The Breathe Earth Collective sees this crisis as a task for society as a whole, which we must face courageously and creatively with a new ‘climate culture’. Climate culture encompasses all areas of our everyday lives and cultural habits, such as our eating and drinking culture, as well as our consumer and mobility behavior. The necessary social transformation towards a climate culture is a complex task that must be developed individually for each location and will have different effects.

For the Breathe Earth Collective, air, climate and social interaction are the most important elements of a living climate culture. With their prototypes and experimental design approaches, the collective manifests its ideas for necessary new architectures that transform our cities into healthier and more resilient living environments. The climate and air installations are inspired by vernacular architecture and the performative interplay of plants, ecology, water, air, wind, shadow and architecture.

The exhibition ‘Fragments of a Breathing City’ brings together a variety of original components, existing materials, models, prototypes, artifacts and elements in a laboratory-like exhibition setting, which can be experienced together in a new context to create an expansive installation. The numerous narratives, elements and ideas are juxtaposed in an innovative way so that they form a kind of toolbox for social and urban transformation. Inspiration for new action and an expanded climate-culture discourse for the breathing cities of tomorrow are to emerge from this 'cabinet of curiosities'.

Opening: 20.9.2024, 7 pm