The Market Academy Naschmarkt is a research project by Lucia Babina and Henriette Waal that addresses the Naschmarkt, the “monumental” market of Vienna, as it was designed by the architect Otto Wagner in the first decade of the Twentieth century.

Lucia Babina is a cultural producer, whose practice is concerned on how culture, art and social engagement can stimulate a debate around present day living conditions. In her practice she collaborates with artists, experts from different disciplinary stands and local inhabitants, in order to give people a voice, to stimulate a sense of belonging, and to envisage opportunities of reclaiming the right to decide the way we want to live. Her practice entails use of the story-telling and “relational objects”, the production of art projects, multidisciplinary research workshops, urban actions. She is founder of iStrike.ultd, member of the cooperative Cohabitation Strategies and of the collective group Wilde Westen which initiated the project The Cook, the Farmer, his Wife and their Neighbor toghether with Marjetica Potrč.

Henriette Waal is a public space researcher and designer interested in local culture and cultural signs in relation to the public domain. In her projects Waal combines on-site fieldwork with a strongly conceptual approach.The result can manifest itself as a new spacial use. Besides physical interventions she produces image, film and text. Currenty she is researching the relation between food and the city in different projects. In a recent project in Tilburg (NL) she developed an outside brewery as a tool for a drinkable landscape together with the homebrewers of that area.

Photo © Edith Spira