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What happens when a forgotten place regains meaning?

The former railway station at Landungsplatz in Ebensee is one of many buildings across Europe—rich in history, yet left behind by time. Once a place of arrival and departure, it now stands still—quiet, unused, but full of potential.

As part of the EU project DECORATOR, it became the starting point for a co-creative journey. Students, citizens, designers, and local authorities came together to rethink the space—sustainably, collaboratively, and with a deep sense of atmosphere and place.

This page documents that process in a compact and self-explanatory way. It also presents five design ideas showing how the station could once again become a meaningful place in the daily life of the town and its people.

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Rethinking How We Build – DECORATOR & the New European Bauhaus

DECORATOR is an EU-funded cooperation project in the Danube Region with an ambitious goal: to make the construction sector more circular.
This does not only apply to materials—but also to planning processes, digital innovation, and regulatory frameworks.

At the heart of DECORATOR is the belief that circular transformation must connect the technical, social and cultural dimensions of building.
The project therefore brings together partners from design, policy, technology, and education across multiple countries.

The work is guided by the New European Bauhaus values:

Sustainability – reuse of resources, lifecycle thinking, and energy efficiency
Participation – co-creation with local actors and diverse stakeholders
Beauty – human-centered design that creates identity, quality, and atmosphere

These principles are not only reflected in the project’s activities, but also form the foundation of the DECORATOR Model—a guiding framework that translates the New European Bauhaus values into practical approaches for circular construction.

It offers a structured and holistic approach to implementing circularity on the ground—through local demonstrators, pilot projects, and forward-thinking policy recommendations.

Learn more: The DECORATOR Model: A Guiding Framework for Circular Construction

A Town in Transition – Ebensee’s Search for Identity

Ebensee is a town in Upper Austria’s Salzkammergut region—known for its lake, industrial heritage, and strong community.

It has long been shaped by industry—salt production, chemical plants, and heavy labour formed the backbone of its economy for over a century. As an industrial town nestled between lake and mountain, Ebensee was closely linked to extraction, production, and working-class culture.

In the last two decades, the town has undergone deep structural changes. With the decline of traditional industries, population loss, a shrinking public life, and a search for new identity became central challenges. Young people moved away, many buildings fell out of use, and spaces once filled with labour became silent.

But change is underway. In 2024, Ebensee participated in the European Capital of Culture “Bad Ischl – Salzkammergut”, hosting art interventions, performances, and collective experiments. These opened up new narratives around care, community, and spatial imagination.

Against this backdrop, DECORATOR explores how circular building and participatory design can become tools for local regeneration—not only physically, but culturally and socially.

ev. Downloads, alte Fotos, Zitate

The Railway Station at Landungsplatz – A Space Between Transit and Potential

Just 50 meters from the town center, nestled between the Traunsee and the foot of the Feuerkogel, stands the railway station “Ebensee Landungsplatz”.

While the station continues to serve daily trains, the station building itself has stood empty for years. Built in 1971, it replaced an older structure from the opposite side of the tracks. For decades, it played a central role in local life—connecting people, industry, and tourism. Today, it still features bus stops, parking, and a public WC, but the building itself is unused.

In 2024, during the Salzkammergut 2024, the station was temporarily revived. Art installations, performances and workshops transformed the rooms into an interdisciplinary cultural space—with projects by international and local artists.

These moments revealed the building’s potential—not just as transit infrastructure, but as a space for public life. The municipality now supports its interim use as a social and civic space—creating room for participation, experimentation and dialogue.

Galerie: ÖBB Pläne, alte Fotos, Landungsplatz im Fasching

The Process: From Serendipity to Structured Co-Creation

Sometimes it takes the right constellation of people to unlock the potential of a place. In Ebensee, it was a combination of local openness, regional momentum, and shared curiosity that made the pilot possible. The Creative Region Linz & Upper Austria brought the location into the EU project DECORATOR as Pilot 4, and began shaping a process that would connect circular building, local knowledge and civic imagination.

In collaboration with the Kunstuniversität Linz and its platform basehabitat, the project was integrated into the architecture curriculum as a semester project (Fall/Winter 2025/26).

From the start, the municipality of Ebensee, the ÖBB, and local cultural actors from “Aufbruch Salzkammergut” were involved. Together, they helped define the scope and framework for temporary reuse.

Throughout the semester, five student teams developed prototypical reuse scenarios for the station—envisioned for a period of five years. The participatory process was accompanied by the architecture office nonconform, who facilitated citizen and stakeholder involvement.

Before the design process began, the team conducted a stakeholder analysis and reviewed existing material and history, including an architectural walk of Ebensee.

Workshops, interviews and co-creative sessions brought together citizens, stakeholders, and local experts to share needs, ideas and experiences.

The students also conducted an in-depth building survey, created floor plans, and documented the site through photography and video. They visited the municipal office, the town museum, and went on a guided walk through Ebensee with a local expert from Aufbruch Salzkammergut.

Additional site visits to nearby companies in the fields of construction and industry helped contextualize their ideas within the regional economy.

Parallel to their fieldwork, the students began developing first design concepts, which were presented in December 2025 to a group of advisors from Creative Region, nonconform, Aufbruch Salzkammergut, architects and professors.

Based on this feedback, the five prototypes were further refined and finalized during the winter months, and internally presented at the end of January.

In March 2026, the results were shared with the public in the form of an exhibition in Ebensee.