Bettina Götz and Richard Manahl, ARTEC Architekten

IUAV Symposium Venice:

Challenging (Social) Housing in Europe, Cities Talks Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, Wien

 

 

In Vienna towards the end of the 20th century, a not insignificant number of innovative and sophisticated residential buildings were erected; the book accompanying the exhibition ‘New Viennese Housing’ from 1986 documents the main results. Some of these projects have had a significant influence on our work.

 

1. Typologies: the exterior corridor

 

For example, the Weigelgasse - a project by Wilhelm Holzbauer, completed in 1980 - was created in the state competition format ‘Wohnen morgen’, which was highly relevant for the Austrian architectural community at the time and was decidedly about new, experimental forms of housing - a programme that we would very much like to see returned for today's housing construction.

 

In this project, Holzbauer for the first time decidedly uses a type of access that was no longer common in 20th century Vienna, the arcade, from which a large number of flats can be reached.  The arcade is a typology that was common in Vienna during the Biedermeier period - although it was used in the inner courtyard areas at the time.

 

Theophil Hansen's ‘Rudolfshof’ in the Ringstrasse district, built in 1871, created an almost modern-looking, ennobled version of such a pergola house with central access - also an early example of social housing (flats for civil servants in the Empire).

 

2. Architecture and politics

 

However, only scenarios where an already highly ‘charged’ architectural scene, as was the case in Vienna in the 1980s (and also in Styria), meets a sensitised counterpart among political decision-makers can provide a truly significant boost to architectural production. As was the case at the beginning with Erhard Busek / Jörg Mauthe and a little later with Helmut Zilk / Hannes Swoboda, also as a reaction to the internationally acclaimed approach and the sometimes spectacular results of the previously organised IBA Berlin (1987, following a decision by the Senate in 1978) - a building exhibition that demonstrated both new construction with international participation, in some cases at the highest level, and the topic of urban renewal in existing buildings on a large scale for the first time.

 

3. Typologies: two-dimensional building patterns

 

This resulted, for example, in the direct commissioning of architects for the development of Traviatagasse in the south-west of Vienna on the edge of an industrial area, where, due to the disparate surroundings and an archetypal approach to the complex, an erratic square with unusual building typologies was created in 1991 by architects Carl Pruscha and Raimund Abraham, among others.

 

Shortly afterwards, in 1992, the Pilotenweg was realised on the north-eastern edge of the city. The Viennese architect Adolf Krischanitz had invited the German architect Otto Steidle and Jaques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron from Switzerland.  The result is a complex that conveys a sense of centrality without an actual centre (the cross-section of an onion was used as a reference), conceived without dedicated private garden partitions, with the exception of Herzog & De Meuron's row, where the layout of the houses ensures privacy.

 

The unanimous opinion on building density in the city's decentralised districts in the 1980s and early 1990s was that a maximum of 1.5 was considered acceptable. The density of development at that time has increased many times over since then, even in the peripheral areas, as will be seen later.

 

From our point of view, the residential building by Franz-Eberhard Kneissl on the south-eastern city boundary in Simmering, completed in 1991, should also be mentioned, a new type of development typology that overcomes the schematic arrangement of buildings based on modernism in favour of better utilisation and thus a picturesque effect of the street space.

 

The forerunner of these low-rise developments and at the same time outside the development in Vienna is Roland Rainer, among others with the iconic Mauerberg estate from the beginning of the 1960s.

 

4. Typologies: exterior corridor, the second

 

The street-side development on Brunnerstrasse by Helmut Richter was also built in 1991. A building that counteracts the prevailing Viennese attitude to architecture at the time, which has brought the arcade back into the current residential building scene as a spacious, sculptural access structure that deliberately uses industrial materials and at the same time acts as a noise barrier to the noisy street.

 

5. Zoning

 

With the exception of Holzbauer's inner-city development near the outer Mariahilferstrasse, these complexes are monofunctional due to the low building densities (also in the surrounding area), also with regard to the design of the structures. It is well known that monofunctional utilisation is not conducive to long-term prosperity in agriculture, and it is no different when it comes to buildings.

 

In the course of the urban renewal of ‘Red Vienna’, as a reaction to the adversities and conditions in the dense Gründerzeit buildings, however, a form of dedication of this Gründerzeit period was lost - despite all the innovations and advantages for a primarily proletarian population - which had largely opened up the use of buildings and thus made a mixed city possible: until around 1920, the designation of the premises was simply ‘rooms’, where more or less anything could be done due to the dimensions of the street-side rooms.

 

6. The property development competition

 

Vienna has been building several thousand flats a year since the 1930s. As a result, the expertise in how housing is built and what subsidised housing must be capable of is extremely well developed.

 

A significant step forward was taken in 1996, when Werner Faymann, then City Councillor for Housing, introduced a new and extremely efficient instrument (despite all its shortcomings) for the allocation of housing subsidies and the City of Vienna's land (in contrast to many other metropolises, the City of Vienna has large land reserves). In these innovative and unprecedented procedures, architects and property developers or co-operatives work in teams to develop projects ready for construction, which are then judged by an interdisciplinary jury, with the participation - at least in the early days - of highly qualified and respected architects. The decision criteria are architecture, ecology and economy, later supplemented by social sustainability. These four criteria are not weighted; a winning project should preferably be superior in all categories. As the city owns the lion's share of the plots of land eligible for housing construction, participating in and winning such a competition is a significant condition for the realisation of a project in subsidised housing construction. This promotes the quality of the projects.

 

This quality control in residential construction is practically unique in Europe and Vienna is a role model in this respect, also internationally, and the results are very popular. A significant number of our residential buildings in Vienna, which we have been able to realise to date, have resulted (directly or indirectly) from property developer competitions.

 

7. Developments

 

Residential construction is always very closely linked to the mentality of the respective population - in Vienna, for example, access zones have always been an issue (in contrast to Berlin or Paris, for example; in 19th century London, dense development with multi-storey flats is practically unheard of in comparison to mainland Europe) - the ‘Bassena’ as a meeting point and place of communication, the stairwells always naturally lit and often with outstanding architectural design. The flats themselves are also orientated towards the corridor and have openable windows. This is standard in the old Viennese buildings of the Gründerzeit and is treated as a ‘consensus’ under building law (especially with regard to fire protection).

Abbreviated text version (without own examples)

Bettina Götz and Richard Manahl, December 2024