AUSTRIA

The Austrian Pavilion’s proposal is based on the concept that nothing is more urgent today than the issue of housing: the provision of accommodation is left almost entirely in the hands of the private sector, rents are rising uncontrollably, and cities are becoming increasingly unlivable. The fundamental right to housing thus takes on a new political dimension. The project explores the housing emergency by comparing Vienna’s top-down model of social housing – characterized by a century of municipal and state planning – with Rome’s bottom-up methods of self-organization, through which civil society takes the lead in territorial regeneration projects in peripheral areas.