Description

Urban context

In western Vienna, on the site of a former coffin factory, a housing model
similar to the housing cooperative was built that integrated seventy-two
apartment units and a number of municipal / public and community / neighborhood
facilities into one project. Together with the follow-up project, Miss Sargfabrik, located on the
next block, this site is the largest self-initiated and self-managed housing
project in Austria. Starting from two front houses arranged at an angle to each
other that have been implanted into the perimeter block, the construction
extends deep into the courtyards and forms an exciting sequence of passages and
plaza-like courtyard spaces.

Ground-floor zone

Open two-story passages provide access from the street to the broadly branching
landscape of courtyards. The many bends and folds of the building volume result
in ever new orientations and situations with small spaces. Despite the high
density, the publicly accessible site has attractive open spaces on the
ground-floor level. In addition to private and communal terraces, there is a
children’s playground, a playing field, a spacious biotope, and green courtyard
spaces with trees. In just a short time a lively environment for living has
developed in the site, which the residents have appropriated individually.

Building structure

The paths along the wing of the building on the ground floor and the staggered
access galleries on the upper floors connect all of the apartments as well as
the additional facilities distributed on different levels such as the seminar
building and swimming pool building, an events room with a capacity of around
three hundred people, the restaurant, the day-care center, and the large
communal roof garden on the southern building. At intersections, the systems of
paths on various levels are networked vertically by means of open stairs. The
basic module of the apartments is a two-story maisonette four and a half meters
tall with forty-five square meters. Defined spatially only by the utility shaft
and stairs, the modules can be flexibly finished and even be coupled to create
larger apartments.

Facade

Wide paths and access galleries, bridges, and balconies form diverse threshold
and transition spaces on the facade. These outdoor areas in particular result in
contact areas between the private units and the community-oriented housing
model; these can then be used in a variety of ways and appropriated differently,
generating a richly modeled, lively image for the facades. Large glass windows
oriented to the south make the living spaces, some of which extend across two
stories, bright and transparent. Extending the units across two floors makes it
possible nevertheless to retreat to private areas within the apartments. As the
various spatial situations are experienced sequentially, an interplay between
proximity and distance evolves with areas that are sometimes shielded off and
sometimes open. The many small spaces of this “sociotope” turn it into a village
within the city.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.