Housing experiments revisited.
Vienna International Summer School on New Social Housing 2024
16–20 September 2024
The 7th Vienna International Summer School on New Social Housing cordially invites scholars, practitioners, and activists to explore the history of housing experiments against the current need for new solutions to social housing. In an era marked by housing shortages, new and changing demands and perplexing housing policies, we aim to delve into the revision of radical experiments, utopias and ideologies of housing that once strived for offering alternative perspectives and solutions.
We seek to understand how these experiments fulfilled their promises and how they evolved over time. Drawing from a diverse housing history, examples may range from modernist mass housing and socialist commune building to the ‘post-utopian’ experiments of the early 1970s as well as the flexible or incremental open building concepts in the peripheries of capitalism. The theme for the current year is closely related to broader societal visions and ideologies, that touch ground in urbanism and housing. Through a historical lens, we aspire to reflect not only on the architectural, social, political, economic and/or ecological concepts underlying these experiments, but also their genesis, subsequent adaptations or decline over time. Furthermore, we aim to explore the emergent forms of living together that have risen from and within these experiments.
Call for applications open until 25 of April
