Wong Fellowship 2024
Dan Accoridno, B.Arch ’24
For as long as I’ve been interested in architecture, the topic of housing and neighborhood design has been my primary interest. I’ve spent hours on ArchDaily and Dezeen scrolling through photos and plans of the most progressive housing projects in Europe. However, this fellowship represented my first opportunity to see these projects in the flesh and fully immerse myself in the world of housing innovation. Stepping off the plane in Austria, I could not have been more excited.
My first stop was the Austrian capital of Vienna, famous for its longstanding social housing programs and history of radical design ideas. I took the opportunity to visit social housing projects from all styles and eras – for example, the linear snaking housing blocks Karl-Marx-Hof and George-Washington-Hof from the height of the “Red Vienna” socialist era as well as the breathtaking concrete monoliths Alt-Erlaa from the peak of Corbusian Modernism. Whereas most historic subsidized housing projects throughout Europe have fallen into disrepair from years of neglect, Vienna’s early projects remain well-kept and well-loved, and it offered a fascinating glimpse into the Modernist vision for the city.
I also spent much time exploring the current state of Vienna’s social housing system, which still stands as a beacon of innovation and radical design. I visited the all-new peripheral city of Aspern Seestadt, one of the largest development projects in Europe, and met with one of its leaders Marvin Mitterwallner, who explained the history and guiding principles behind the tremendously ambitious project soon home to 25,000 residents. I also received the opportunity to speak with a fellow Californian: Bea Stambuk-Torres, a Los Angeles native now working for the Global Policy Leadership Academy in Vienna. Bea showed me around her home in Vienna, the Sonnwendviertel neighborhood just outside of the historic core – a similarly ambitious new neighborhood built on industrial land with a large presence of social housing – and we discussed the unique policy structures that allow such a successful housing system to exist in Vienna.
After a week exploring Austria’s housing design and economic system, I ventured onward to Zurich, the pioneering city behind the unique housing co-op model, where citizens pay rent and also own equity in their apartment building. I quickly learned that the architectural form of co-ops can be quite varied. My first stop was the Mehr Als Wohnen co-op village just outside the city center, meant to be a hub of housing innovation, where I met with communication leader Michael Loss and received a thorough tour of the neighborhood. This co-op, while quite different from a business model, took on a similar architectural form as Aspern Seestadt and Sonnwendviertel, embodying many of the small-scale “New Urbanism” mixed-use qualities that are popular among urban planners today.
While in Zurich, I also had the opportunity to stay overnight at two of the co-ops in their guesthouses, providing a rare chance to experience the projects at all times of day. At the second co-op I visited – Kalkbreite, a collection of live-work spaces above a tram depot – the architectural form was quite unique, as rather than standing by itself on the periphery, the co-op was embedded into the historic urban fabric and felt much more young, bohemian, and edgy. Throughout the rest of my time in Zurich, I continued to visit and document my observations at other co-ops, from the relatively new and urban Zollhaus and Kraftwerk projects nestled within the existing city to the more suburban and family-focused 1920s rowhouses and Im Gut developments along the outskirts.
My final stop on my journey took me north to Amsterdam, another city famous for housing innovation with perhaps the most similar economic system to the United States. Once arriving, I hopped on a bike and spent the first few days exploring the city’s most iconic housing projects from the modern era – Sluishuis by BIG, The Valley and Borneo Sporenburg by MVRDV, and the floating houses and entirely new neighborhoods of IJBurg.
I also was able to receive a guided tour by a local architectural historian, Jelte van Koperen, of two of the most progressive new developments in the city – Funenpark and Oostenburg. Both former industrial sites, these two projects were overseen by different parties – Funenpark by the city, Oostenburg by a private developer – yet both were inspiring in their clever responses to difficult site conditions. Jelte was kind enough to show me a few more projects the next day -the new centers of NDSM and Amsterdam Noord across the river – and I walked away from Amsterdam with a thorough understanding of the city’s complex yet clever housing system.
In America, we tend to think of urban housing rather simplistically as a binary between either expensive private-market development or government-subsidized low-income housing. Examples throughout Europe all prove that there is plenty of grey area in between, where the government and the private sector can work together to create better economic models and also more engaging architectural forms of housing and urbanism. I walked away from this trip feeling thoroughly inspired and excited for the future, and I look forward to implementing some of insights gained in my own career.