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IBA_VIENNA – NEW SOCIAL HOUSING

A high-quality, affordable future

All over the world, Vienna enjoys an excellent reputation for its outstanding quality of life. One key reason for this lies in the fact that Vienna consistently places the focus of all fundamental programmes and decisions on the social aspect and, hence, on the people of this city. In the field of housing and construction in particular, a wealth of measures interlink smoothly, thereby providing a stable basis for satisfactory living in the Austrian capital.

High housing and construction standards, clearcut requirements for the access to subsidies and well-rounded utilisation concepts developed at the planning level facilitate the emergence of a good social mix. To ensure that this will result in a cohesive society, it is essential to address specific social and housing-related needs in a targeted manner and sometimes also to offer ongoing active support.

IBA_Vienna focused on new affordable housing and social cohesion as key questions to resolve. As a leading public housing provider, the City of Vienna decided to initiate “IBA_Vienna 2022 – New Social Housing” with the goal of developing new approaches that will continue to provide affordable, high-quality housing for many years to come.

The tradition of International Building Exhibitions goes back for over a century. They present experiments in the fields of planning and construction that sometimes exert influence far beyond the human lifespan. IBA_Vienna 2022 started from contemporary issues and the present-day situation while also deliberately focusing on the challenges of the future – challenges that must be faced not only by Vienna but by many other European cities as well.

“New Social Housing” was the leitmotif of IBA_Vienna 2022 and, hence, was at the focus of the International Building Exhibition. But IBA_Vienna also communicated other important core themes, including

  • neighbourhood development
  • affordability
  • climate adaptation and ecological sustainability
  • research and development
  • new forms of housing
  • the I in IBA – internationality

These core themes set the scene for activities in the next few years and beyond. In the run-up to the 2020 interim presentation, a variety of projects and ideas were collected, evaluated and discussed by the IBA_Vienna Advisory Board. Outstanding ideas and concepts were singled out as “IBA Candidates” and further developed together with IBA_Vienna with the objective of showcasing them internationally in 2022 as examples of a new orientation in social housing and as the outcome of experimental processes.

Nine neighbourhoods and 15 individual IBA Candidate projects were presented as exemplary by IBA_Vienna to convey new developments in the city’s housing sector. These projects are characterised by many innovative approaches, e.g. urban greening for densely built-up neighbourhoods, innovative closed-loop solutions to increase energy efficiency or community-oriented buildings that prioritise work/life balance.

For further information
https://www.iba-wien.at/en/