Research

One of the biggest challenges currently facing the building economy is the supply of affordable and climate-friendly housing: This concerns climate protection aspects in the overall area of housing, including the factors for fair housing conditions. The experience of increasing housing costs and land prices in German cities is part of a global housing crisis in the context of urbanisation and financialisation processes. In addition to the lack of affordable housing, global warming and the climate crisis underline the need for decarbonisation processes in housing construction as well. There is a broad base of research in both areas, from financial structure and energy poverty to the greening and decarbonisation of housing. However, a research desideratum is the combination of social and ecological components with regard to options for action for politics, planning and individual initiative. The collaborative project development perspective pursued here is therefore highly innovative, especially in view of the current goal of the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building to build 400,000 homes per year. The aim is to take stock of existing best practice examples and planning instruments for affordable housing in a comparison of Germany, Austria and Switzerland and to analyse the potential of design options and financing models in the non-profit housing sector, including the corresponding public infrastructure: through fiscal instruments, funding structures, urban development contracts, dedication fees, public-private partnerships (or PPPs), etc.

The aim of this research project is to establish a network between university research institutes and non-profit organisations with a research focus on “Non-Market Rental Housing”. This housing sector is particularly relevant for vulnerable groups worldwide, although the structural starting conditions are very different. Prof. Gabu Heindl's expertise in the areas of housing subsidies, vacancies, land price regulation and her extensive knowledge of the Viennese housing model, which has attracted worldwide attention and discussion, has been presented at conferences in Hawaii, Vancouver, Hong Kong and Berlin. Through international exchange, successful policy aspects are to be placed in relation to each other and to the concrete local basic structures. In this context, the concept of non-profit and the cooperative principle in the history of Germany and municipal housing since Red Vienna in the 1920s are to be examined alongside current international best practice application models.

In the broader context of DeGrowth research, the aim is to define a building economy concept in the sense of “ rebuilding instead of new building”. The prerequisite for this is the thesis of an end to the accumulation imperative in construction. This leads to the necessary strengthening of further construction and the use of existing resources. The effectiveness of existing spatial planning instruments and land policy instruments is relevant here, especially in connection with an update of true costs in relation to vacancy, new building, sealing, disposal costs and non-ecological production methods. The transformation process of the building economy towards conversion and further construction leads to architectural innovation in typology, construction method and settlement form. With regard to building typology, in the context of post-growth, rebuilding requires thinking in terms of new hybrid forms and spatial relationships in combination with an understanding of the costs of vacancy, sealing and future disposal costs. The specific view of critical building economy research in the field of architecture focuses on the role of standards institutes, progressive life cycle calculations, the cost calculation of ecological material innovation and construction methods together with spatial and building typological quality criteria, thus combining progressive economic efficiency parameters with sustainable design criteria.

There is an increasing demand for participative planning processes in urban spaces. This has also been clearly reflected in the New Leipzig Charter of 2020 as well as in the evaluation after 50 years of urban development funding. The combination of practice and theory is particularly advantageous for research into integrated and cooperative urban development processes, which can be combined very well with the design focus in the Master's specialization course. Below are three approaches for interdisciplinary research questions directly from practice with project development processes, which still have to be worked out within the framework of the specific radical democratic orientation of project development and in coordination with the employees to be qualified:

Firstly, this concerns digitalization processes in participatory processes, particularly with regard to the targeted promotion of co-design and participation through personal initiative and self-construction.

The second strand concerns plural and feminist forms of the building economy, including commons, self-organisation, cooperative building, participatory budgeting, Mietshausersyndikat, direct loans - incorporating an intersectional understanding of the building economy, i.e. in relation to power relations of gender, race and class, disability, sexual orientation.

Last but not least, there is a need for the critical evaluation and further development of participative planning and development processes as well as planning theories to open up planning for participation.