The title and the entire project are rooted in a main Austrian cultural reference: the work of the Austrian Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965) who in 1923 wrote the book “Ich und Du” (later translated into English as “I and Thou”). Buber`s theory is based on the philosophy of dialogue, a religious existentialism focused on the distinction of two different relationships: the ‘I-Thou’ is a concrete encounter, a relationship that stresses the existence of two beings; neither `I` nor `Thou` can live separately but together in the sphere for the ‘I’ and ‘Thou’; this subjective reality has its roots in dialogue. In Buber`s thoughts Man can live without dialogue, but those who have never met a ‘Thou’ are not fully a human being.
Buber`s sphere of the in-between, as a primary category of human reality will influence both the historical-theoretical thinking of critics (such as Giedion`s Architecture You and Me, 1958) and the design proposals of architects (such as CIAM and Team X members, like Van Eyck, Bakema, Smithsons, who relied on the Austrian philosopher’s ideas in order to structure a new concept of social-spatial threshold in the 1950s). The aim of the project is to translate and re-interpret this pivotal reference, which is a specific cultural legacy of Austria where the site of the competition is located, into an urban proposal which could “reestablish an equipoise between the individual and the collective” (Giedion, 1958). The project strives to re-inhabit the threshold, the sphere of the in-between, improving and ameliorating the social-spatial interaction. Indeed all the interventions are primarily aimed at considering social relationships as their first purpose: all projects are structured on the definition of new effectual public space, and more interaction between private and semipublic ones.