The former railway hall on the Nordwestbahnhof site in Vienna is temporarily used as a showcase and workshop area for material innovation. The area was once part of the Danube floodplains before the Nordwestbahnhof developed into a major railway and industrial zone in the 19th century. Today, many of the old buildings are being demolished to be replaced by a new mixed-use urban district with housing, schools, and shops.
Until the end of 2026, the 1,400 m² former railway hall enters a final chapter as an open space for workshops, events, and exhibitions of the Biofabrique Vienna, funded by the Vienna Business Agency. Through subtle interventions and flexible furnishings, the open structure is framed in a way that allows it to be perceived as a unified space.
Blue Clip works with visual and colored accents to create this spatial “Clip”: sometimes obvious, such as the blue-painted columns, and sometimes subtle, such as the blue wheels of reused exhibition shelving. The color scheme is inspired by industrial blue as well as the brand identity of the Vienna Business Agency. A distributed overhead system of wire cables and blue tension straps complements the concept. The straps are anchored to concrete cylinders that were previously cut directly from the gravel-and-concrete ground in front of the hall for another project, making local material fragments visible as a cross-section of the site’s history. Information boards and projection surfaces can be flexibly attached to this tension strap system.
The design is based on sustainability and the reuse of existing elements. The temporary use demonstrates how spaces can be designed for short-term periods in a resource-efficient, flexible, and identity-forming way.
Bika Rebek, Sophie Schaffer
CLIENT:
Wirtschaftsagentur Wien, Biofabrique Vienna
SQUARE FOOTAGE:
1400m²
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Lisa Edi
LOCATION
Nordwestbahnstraße 16, 1200 Vienna, Austria
Completed in April 2026