Some locations are so highly renowned that their surroundings consequently lose their relevance, even though they carry an important history of their own. Being overshadowed by the main attraction, these neighbouring areas are mainly used as transitional spaces. As people move between these places, the spaces begin blurring in the background and get less and less noticed until they become non-places.
“To walk is to lack a place” Michel de Certeau

In our proposal, we focus on the center of Vienna and its landmark, the Stephansdom, which is visited by numerous tourists each day. Due to the endless stream of visitors, people would not expect the area around the dome to be considered a non-place according to Marc Auge’s theory. However our assumption argued that icons generate a meaningless void around them, so we wanted to create a project that would react against the weakening of the site.

The modest intervention of angled mirrors restricts the view of the monument and renews the spectators point of interest. By redirecting the visitors’ perception towards the forgotten places around the monument, people are led to rethink their acknowledgement of the spaces “behind” the scene.

TAB created a concept for a space that is not used, has no function but is architecture. When does architecture get a function?