Project: Living in a High-Rise (Summer Semester 2013)

There is currently widespread concern about the shortage of affordable housing. At the same time, questions are being raised about the future of housing, with concepts oscillating between convention, historicism, and bold innovation. Residential architecture is both a daily reality and, time and again, a new and complex challenge: how can a genuine, fulfilling home be created? The interplay of numerous factors is delicate: the urban framework and the fine-scale structure, the public and the private, interior and exterior spaces, the organization of floor plans and access, rigidity or flexibility, spaciousness or cost-effectiveness, appearance, and tolerance for use. With the shift away from single-family homes and back toward the urban environment, the question arises of how to bring the village into the city—that is, how to translate the important qualities of a house with a garden into a high-density context and link them to what the city has to offer.

The project is divided into three parts: the first section is dominated by the “ZUKUNFT WOHNEN” project seminar, in which a knowledge base is systematically developed and individual themes are tested in small, impromptu designs. In the second phase, an urban planning concept is developed in the form of an ideas competition. Finally, the largest portion of the project is devoted to the design of a single building module within the overall concept.

This project is also suitable for bachelor’s theses.

Participation in the “ZUKUNFT WOHNEN” project seminar is a mandatory prerequisite; an additional option is the “Basic II: FOCUS ON HOUSING” lecture series. As an “entry ticket” to the project, participants are expected to present an intelligent, critical, written, and visual analysis of an outstanding example of urban design or architecture at the project kickoff meeting.

Maya Reiner (Prof., Dipl.-Ing., M.Arch.)
Marc Matzken (M.A.)
Christopher Unger (Dipl.-Ing.)