Florian Ocenasek

Prototyping Vienna

Loam plasters and acoustic panels, made from the clay a city digs up and throws away.

Year

2025

Studio

Act of Building, Act I · TU Wien

With

BC architects & studies & materials

Team

Eva Buder, Elisa Geiser, Florian Ocenasek, Marlies Weidinger

Result

1:1 prototype, exhibited

Supervision

Thomas Amann

Vienna's metro expansion brings thousands of tonnes of clay-rich Wiener Tegel to the surface every day, and almost all of it is treated as waste. We used it as a raw material instead, making loam plasters and sound-absorbing panels, developed through more than twenty recipes with additives sourced inside the city, from Japanese knotweed to crushed brick. The result was built at full scale and exhibited.

Loam plasters and acoustic panels, made from the clay a city digs up and throws away.
The prototype as exhibited, plaster and sound panel
The prototype with its tiled roof, standing on pallets
The prototype, roofed
Detail of the loam wall meeting the timber frame
Loam against timber

All photographs by Paul Sebesta.