FUX - Collective Housing in Vienna
A house for collective living, built at the intersection of old and new Vienna. The eight units for supervised housing for adolescents and young men are integrated in to a structure that bridges between the street and the courtyard of a new-built housing estate.The scale, massing and materiality of the building harmonizes with its village-like neighbors, but hold their own against the new housing estates that are sprouting up on all sides.
This project for group housing may be small in size, but its ambitions are generous and substantial. Here, young men with special needs can find a place to call home: a supervised and supportive living environment with opportunities for shared activities as well as places for private retreat.
The layout of the building supports its unusual program, and connects it to its heterogeneous surroundings. The house’s eight bedrooms are on the upper floor; in the middle is the living room, the kitchen and a large, private terrace for the residents. The ground floor is given over to a community room that is shared with the adjacent public housing estate, as well as a broad passage, which connects that estate to the public street.
The FUX-Community Housing uses precise scale and tactile, inviting materials to integrate itself harmoniously into the existing, somewhat ramshackle build-ings of the Fuchsenröhrenstraße. The structure is clad in iridescently-stained, larch-wood siding; the cladding's rough edges and shimmering surfaces stand tête-à-tête in dialog with the surrounding milieu. The undersides of the passage and the cutouts of the building’s masses are rendered in stucco, which produces simple, warm surfaces.
The house articulates between the differing scales and building styles of its heteromorphic context in Vienna's rapidly developing XI District. To the street, the building expresses itself as a powerfully articulated and sculptural form. Seen from the housing estate, its face appears more planar. The outbuildings of the housing estate interlock with the passage to create a single, consonant composition.
