The Vienna Model: Housing for the Twenty-First-Century City

May 17, 2017 - July 16, 2017

With its innovative ideas, especially in the field of social housing, the city of Vienna has long been a pioneer in the global pursuit of new strategies for the design and implementation of forward-thinking urban developments and ways of living.

Building on urbanistic and social aspects, Vienna has not only constructed new projects with distinctive qualities throughout the city but also founded and revitalized entire quarters. With their historical roots in “Red Vienna,” these concepts signal dynamic opportunities to enhance the quality of life in a contemporary metropolis by creating model living environments.

Residential Building Wilhemskaserne, Vienna by Architect Walter Stelzhammer, Vienna, Austria.

Vienna Model / Wohnpark Alt-Erlaa, 1985

Wohnpark Alt-Erlaa, 1985: This impressive housing estate along the southern city development axis was built by the architect Harry Glück, who aimed at combining the advantages of suburban individual housing with those of a high-rise building with its own yard area balancing out the high spatial density. Housing about 7,000 inhabitants, the blocks—which are up to ninetyfour meters high—offer generous private terraces and public infrastructure like the stunning rooftop pools, saunas, preschools, indoor sports facilities, a medical center, and its own subway station.

Wohnbau Koppstraße – Das Wohnregal, 1999 / The Vienna Model

Making Space Your Own. Living in a space means making it your own: Helmut Wimmer’s “Wohnregal” (Housing Stack) is a thoroughly radical implementation of this credo. Here, the architecture provides a basic framework, a structure in which each level’s apartments are lined up like house lots along an internal “street.” The “service areas” (kitchens and bathrooms) are housed in compact boxes at the back, giving residents total freedom to subdivide the living space proper—loft living for all. The outermost layer is a two-meter-deep “garden zone.” Iterating this system vertically creates the “stack” that gives the building its name. Residents are explicitly encouraged to furnish the spaces and claim them as their own. By being lived in, the architectural skeleton has been gradually enlivened and adapted, turning the “Stack” into a colorful city within the city.

The Vienna Model / Terrassenhaus Inzersdorfer Straße, 1974

Green Gardens amid Urban Density. Here Harry Glück perfected the art of mixing an urban block with the qualities of a single-family home: spacious split-level apartments with saunas and other communal facilities for the residents, and swimming pools on the roof. As replacements for suburban gardens, the generously proportioned stepped terraces, now lushly planted, have been a great success since the building’s completion—proof that subsidized housing can be almost luxurious at no extra cost.

The Vienna Model: Housing for the Twenty-First-Century City shines the spotlight on sixty prototypical projects from the last hundred years, with a special focus on the public art that has complemented the city’s housing since the First Republic. Today about 60% of the Viennese population live in municipally built, owned or managed housing and the city clearly controls its housing market. This is a different condition than exists in the United States where, in most cases, the private market is the provider of housing and is relied upon even to rehabilitate existing neighborhoods and create new communities. To expand this architectural and urban discussion, the curators invited Vancouver and Vienna based artists and cultural researchers Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber to look at these communal spaces and concepts and speculate on how they resonate within artistic and cultural practices. Their selection of art projects and public works will accompany, reflect upon, and contextualize the selected examples and also shape the format of the exhibition and publication.

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