Indelible traces

Abstract

Based on a Zaha Hadid project in Vienna, built on a former railroad extension designed by Otto Wagner, this article discusses the value of urban traces, structures almost absent, in the construction of urban territories. The article presents the possibilities of constitution of the architectural object from possible cases of mediation and amalgamation with the city. It assumes the importance of micro-urban policies that are formed and are disposed from the traces, the "almost" absent capable of producing differences by mixing or by contagion. Here, the trace is a fragile condition necessary for the emergence of alterity. The "beyond of being," that which arises from what seems to always be there no more, is almost absent as a presence, hence "invisible."