Inside Red Vienna : Domesticity, Maintenance and Care

Abstract

This design studio studied the ideological premise of Red Vienna in order to portray the architecture that it created. We understand the housing blocks of Red Vienna as socialist islands that are floating within a capitalist city. In that sense, they are not dissimilar from the ideology that shaped them, an ideology that saw a gradual infiltration into politics as the answer to capitalism - rather than its complete and immediate abolition through revolution. This strategic changing of the capitalist system from within then runs parallel to the apartment typology of Red Vienna, where various domestic functions were allocated to the shared spaces of the block. Indeed, the Hof created a new interior urbanism between the apartment, the courtyard, the streets and the city, forming degrees of civic, commercial and domestic spaces that challenged the speculative bourgeois city.

Our studio examined this ideology by analyzing a range of spatial conditions, from the typology of apartments to the landscaping of the Hof and the maintenance of shared spaces. Students compared changes to the apartment configuration that took place over the years in order to understand the evolving needs of residential space, including the question of the nuclear family model vs. new forms of communal, intergenerational, or singular dwelling.