Since 2020, the global mass of human-made materials has surpassed that of all living biomass—around 90 percent of it consists of construction materials. In the project Reverse Imagining Vienna, two sculptors and nine writers used a Viennese Gründerzeit building and a highway bridge over the Danube as anchors for material investigation and speculation. Their goal: to explore sustainable relationships with inanimate matter and thus expand the scope for future action.

The first volume features eight short prose texts about the two objects, set in four imagined futures. The second volume places these chosen moments in the broader context of the Anthropocene and examines the significance of these emblematic Viennese structures through the lens of urban planning. Key anthropogenic materials are introduced from both historical and environmental perspectives. Sculptures developed through the artistic–scientific process are described in detail and presented through numerous views of the exhibition at AIL in Otto Wagner’s Postsparkasse.