Campaigners wanted to help the public understand how much money the government had used to bail out a bank – so they created the model for a vast city that could be built for the same amount of cash

Riots and demonstrations have gripped the continent’s capitals for the past five years of the eurozone crisis – but in Vienna, a group of innovative students are trying a different form of urban protest.



Corrupt politicians, jailed banking bosses and alleged connections to shady mafia groups in the Balkans – the story of failed Bavarian bank Hypo Alpe Adria has been an ongoing catastrophe for Austria. But the largely passive public reaction to the €19bn bailout of this “bad bank” inspired a group of architecture, civil engineering and urban planning students to pose the question: what could you build with €19bn?

Over four months, these students from the Technical University of Vienna designed and created a model city for the same price as the bailout in one of Vienna’s main squares, Karlsplatz, as a protest project that has captured the attention of the country.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The model city was designed with green spaces and transport links, and could theoretically hold 102,574 inhabitants. Photograph: Armin Walcher

Named “Hypotopia”, combining the name of the failed bank with the utopia the students wanted to create, the model city could theoretically hold 102,574 inhabitants – making it the sixth largest city in Austria, a country with a population roughly equal to London. After an unexpected nomination, Hypotopia is now in the running to be “Austrian word of the year”, and a social media campaign is rapidly gathering signatures.

The fledgling team built the city without any funding or support. They wanted to help the public visualise the enormous scale of the bailout. Project founder and civil engineering student Lukas Zeilbauer said: “Hypotopia is more than just an architecture project, it’s a protest in concrete.

“The online petition calling for an official inquiry didn’t get much more than 150,000 signatures. If the public actually knew just how much money had been taken from us, then there’d be many, many more. Education is an important part of that.”

Hypotopia was built from concrete and wooden blocks donated by businesses, and stood on display outside Vienna’s famous Karlskirche church for three weeks in October. The project attracted tens of thousands of visitors. Several prominent figures visited, including the president Heinz Fischer and politicians from all important political parties. Accompanying lectures were held in the neighbouring technical university on a range of topics concerning the city, including economics, education and green cities.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The exhibition culminated in a march around the city under the slogan “Wir tragen die Last der Zukunft” (We bear the burden of the future). Photograph: Armin Walcher

The exhibition culminated in a protest on 30 October, in which more than 1,000 Austrians marched around the Ringstraβe road around the city centre to parliament. Demonstrators used trolleys and wheelbarrows to carry more than 25 tonnes of Hypotopia’s concrete blocks with them, carrying a banner with the words: “Wir tragen die Last der Zukunft” (We bear the burden of the future).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters on the march carried the concrete and wooden blocks from the model city. Photograph: Armin Walcher

Matthias Strolz, founder and chairman of the liberal New Austria party, was one of the MPs who joined the march. “At parliament we’ve dumped the sixth largest city in Austria – between Klagenfurt and Innsbruck in terms of size – which you could build with the money of the Hypo disaster,” Strolz said. “This is a memorial against political incompetence, a signal to politicians that this will go on further.”

The sentiment was echoed by many protesters, who felt the creation of Hypotopia had a strong impact on public perception of the scandal. “People were absolutely shocked by how much €19bn is,” said one organiser. “The Austrian people just can’t think in such dimensions.”

Hypo Alpe Adria was nationalised in 2009 to prevent its collapse after a series of corruption scandals. €5.5bn of tax-payers’ money was immediately poured in to cover outstanding loans, with a further €10-14bn projected to cover the rest. Public disapproval for the government’s handling of the scandal stands at 65% and most Austrians would have preferred to let the bank go under than fund its bailout. Despite this, Hypotopia’s creators felt the public were too willing to accept the loss of their money.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Diana Contiu, architecture student at the Technical University of Vienna and co-creator of Hypotopia.

With an enormous theoretical budget of €19bn, Zeilbauer’s team of students had the freedom to think big. They meticulously designed the city to industrial standards, factoring in the costs of everything from soil excavations to education. Hypotopia contains more than 1,200 components, including rubbish incinerators, power plants and €2.15bn of planned transport infrastructure.

“We used real costs for everything. Every wooden and concrete block you see in the model is a building,” explained Zeilbauer. “We know how many people live on each floor, the purpose of each building, and how much it would cost per square metre. We’ve included everything a city needs – though you’ll find there are no banks here in Hypotopia.”

Although the city was disassembled for the protest march, the brains behind Hypotopia want its success to continue. Most of the concrete blocks are being recycled but a few are being retained for next year’s Vienna Biennale art festival to ensure the project lives on.

“Our online platforms are also still running,” said urban planner Manuel Oberaufner. “The fact that our exhibition and the physical model of Hypotopia is gone does not mean that our idea has died.”