Vienna: The End of Housing (as a Typology)

The question is not whether architecture shapes society, but how. Architecture’s determinative power works in part through its symbolic forms, including its volumes, colors, spatial divisions and configurations, the materials selected, as well as its visible functions. But ghettoes, camps, and slaughterhouses are not symbols in need of interpretation. In my view, any approach that solely focuses on the aesthetics of the built environment is inadequate, as is any approach that reduces architecture as a symbolic system to intended meanings.

Atelierhaus C.21 (Studio House C.21) is one of the few privately funded projects featured in this issue. A cooperation between the architect Werner Neuwirth and the developer Robert Hahn in Vienna’s Sonnwendviertel neighborhood, it is an exceptional building that attempts to defy the conventional work-life dichotomy, its standards, and economic logic.

This matrix shows all publichousing erected in Viennaas of 2019, arranged accordingto their construction date and distance from the city center.

In the Context of Geopolitical, Demographic, and Territorial Developments

Law, Finances, and Land

Innovations and Visions in Viennese Housing

In Vienna, achieving social diversity is a central urban policy goal. During the interwar years of Red Vienna, a bold vision led to public housing being distributed across nearly the entire urban landscape. To this day, Vienna presents itself internationally as a city without extreme contrasts between different neighborhoods and as a place where the location of your apartment does not determine your social destiny. This attitude is also reflected in the offer on the rental market: Public housing isn’t just reserved for Vienna’s poorest residents but actually offers attractive living space for the city’s upper middle classes; at the same time, the private market does not exclusively cater to those who can afford high rents. Yet when we take a closer look at the social composition of tenants, does this narrative of social diversity across different segments of the housing market actually hold up?

How can innovation in subsidized housing construction in Vienna be assessed? What recent projects display an innovative potential that could prove to be generally applicable? These are questions we intend to pursue here, although it must be stated that our position as authors is neither neutral nor unbiased. We are both part of the housing construction system in Vienna and are involved, in various ways, with creating housing in the city and reflecting on it.

Peter Bauer is a partner at the structural engineering firm werkraum ingenieure and the vice president of the Austrian Chamber of Civil Engineers, Architects, and Engineers. Bettina Götz and Richard Manahl are the founders of ARTEC Architekten. Michaela Mischek-Lainer is the managing director of the property development company MMB. Senka Nikolic is head of project development at the cooperative developer Schwarzatal. Rudolf Scheuvens is the co-founder of the planning firm Raumposition and has been chair of the Vienna Land Advisory Board (Grundstücksbeirat) since 2021. What unites these individuals is their longstanding commitment to Vienna’s housing sector and their desire to see it change in various ways for the better. This conversation among peers was moderated by Bernadette Krejs, Christina Lenart, and Michael Obrist.

Until 2016, Nordbahn-Halle was an inconspicuous warehouse owned by a food and beverage wholesale and imports company in the run-down Nordbahnhof freight station complex. When the latter was vacated and plans were made for a new city district there, the owner, the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), allowed TU Vienna to use the hall temporarily for the research project Mischung: Nordbahnhof (Mixing: Nordbahnhof). This was a follow-up project to Mischung: Possible! (Mixing: Possible!), initiated in 2015 by the cultural anthropologist, civil engineer, and spatial planner Christian Peer with the architect Silvia Forlati at TU Vienna’s Faculty of Architecture and Planning. Together with partners from practice and research, they had identified shortcomings in the implementation of mixed-use urban districts and developed alternative design processes. Mischung: Nordbahnhof was also funded by the federal government, and applied those new approaches in the Nordbahnhof urban development area over a two-year period. The warehouse became an experimental space for various uses, for which students in the TU design.build studio, under the direction of Peter Fattinger, developed a fitting architectural concept.

Building Materials, Technical Developments, and Their Impact on Viennese Housing Construction over the Last 200 Years

Building superintendents are a dying breed in Vienna. In the first half of 2000, the governing coalition between the conservative ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party) and the far-right FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria) abolished the Building Superintendent Act from 1922 in a clearly ideological move. In doing so, the management of municipal apartment buildings was transferred to the private-law Wiener Wohnen Hausbetreuung GmbH, a subsidiary of Wiener Wohnen. Whether and how much money was saved as a result is a matter of interpretation. What is undisputed is the increased anonymization that comes with the use of private service providers such as housekeeping companies.

Christoph Reinprecht in conversation with Bernadette Krejs, Christina Lenart, and Michael Obrist

The sociologist Christoph Reinprecht, professor at the University of Vienna, has been researching issues involving the welfare state, social inequality and insecurity, the city, and migration for years. His studies focus mainly on Vienna, taking a detailed look at its municipal social housing to gauge the degree of its actual social sustainability. What follows is a conversation about the change in the meaning of social housing.

Over half a million people in Austria are members of a housing cooperative. Seen proportionally to the country’s population, this is more than twice the figure for Switzerland and one-third more than in Germany. However, despite its broad reach, the cooperative idea in Austria has become somewhat of a projection of its original idea. What does this evolution from the 1920s heyday of the cooperative settler movement tell about the complex legal framework for housing in Austria? What might be an outlook on the possible future of the cooperative idea?

Collaborative and self-organized building projects are in high demand these days, as they provide timely answers to some of the housing questions posed by the 21st century. Many offer long-term affordable rents, communal forms of living, and high ecological standards. As such, they have the potential to offset social inequality in the housing sector, overturn the negative consequences of individualization, redefine spatial connections between housing, recreation, and work, and enable people to take charge of their own housing conditions.