What we think of today as “Red Vienna” was, in many respects, a highly fragile, contingent, and audacious effort; it is little short of a minor miracle that so much decommodified housing was built at a time when reactionary Catholicism and fascist politics were ascendant on the national scale in Austria. — PLATFORM
Penned by Joseph Heathcott for Platform, the article takes a closer look into one of the boldest architectural experiments of the twentieth century that can still be seen in Vienna today. Between 1923 and 1934, the socialist-controlled municipal government constructed over four hundred Hofs (housing courts) providing some 60,000 units of decent, affordable homes to one in eight residents of the city.
Manfredo Tafuri argues that "Red Vienna" emerged out of the historical moment when the Austrian working class asserted its place in a nation fractured by the dissolution of the ancient regime. In his view, however, the municipal experiment in mass housing did not so much envision a new world as it did reconfigure bits of the extant city to include working-class residents. For Tafuri, this approach resulted in supposedly isolated and detached working-class neighborhoods, amounting to a failure of international revolutionary principle. But for Eve Blau, Tafuri misses the distinctly urban dimension of working-class activism in Vienna. In her crucial contribution The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919-1934, she argues that it is the typology rather than the form of social housing that is radical, reflecting the city's diverse left labor culture, and catalyzing urban form toward working-class prerogatives. In any case, what we think of today as "Red Vienna" was, in many respects, a highly fragile, contingent, and audacious effort; indeed, it is little short of a minor miracle that so much decommodified housing was built at a time when reactionary Catholicism and fascist politics were ascendant on the national scale in Austria.
5 Comments
Thanks for posting, Orhan.
I'd forgotten the similarities to the Marin County Civic Center.
fascinating. interesting to consider the formal relation of the karl marx housing to the early works of venturi scott brown which resemble it so strongly.
Socialism is evil and must be eradicated!
Red, white, or blue, this is one of the coolest buildings in the world. Looks kind of post-modern in color.
Video featuring holz.
Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All - YouTube
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