Change as a Principle

architects Hermann Czech, Adolf Krischanitz, Werner Neuwirth
project Generations - Housing on the Mühlgrund, Vienna, Austria
written by Vera Grimmer

 

Despite the remarkable achievements of contemporary architecture, the issue of collective housing has not lost its relevance since the Modern Movement up until nowadays. Considerations about the optimization of the ideally imagined functions and the minimization of necessary space, as established during the Frankfurt Congress of ciam in 1928 in a form known as the minimum dwelling, can no longer be considered relevant because not only technology, the conditions and forms of work, but the family structure as well have in parts changed radically, even when compared to the situation of twenty years ago. To the daily problems of today’s users, the rigid, unchangeable schemes of mono-functional apartments can hardly be considered an answer. In the projective thinking, the greater role has increasingly been given to the realization that an apartment is the place where the life changes occur in the flux of time – growing up, getting old, and the destabilization of the original relations in between the inhabitants.