Breathe Earth Collective: 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’.

The Breathe Earth Collective sees itself as a transdisciplinary do- and think-tank on the subject of air and climate, which works on the development and implementation of holistic solutions, such as the creation of urban ecosystems. The transdisciplinary team works at the interface of architecture, art and urbanism in non-hierarchical networks to develop new solutions for complex challenges. Air and climate as a resource, as well as experimenting and designing ecosystems that integrally unites plants and architecture, as well as projects that have an impact on society as a whole, are at the heart of the Breathe Earth Collective’s work. In addition to their work in the Collective, all team members also work individually on projects in different areas and scales. The different approaches and talents of each individual are the basis for the group’s innovative work.

The numerous international project realizations include: Windcatcher St. Pölten (2024), Climate Culture Pavilion (as part of the Graz 2020 Cultural Year), Climate Biennale Pavilion Vienna (2024), Airship Series in Italy, France, Austria (2016–18), and BREATHE AUSTRIA—Austrian Pavilion EXPO 2015 Milano (as co-authors). Among other awards, the team received the “Outstanding Artist Award—experimental tendencies in architecture” (2018).

MAGAZIN is an exhibition space for contemporary architecture in Vienna run by Jerome Becker and Matthias Moroder. MAGAZIN presents the work of local and international architects in solo exhibitions that are especially conceived for the spaces in the Rembrandtstrasse location—framed by corresponding lectures, panel discussions and publications.