Housing Cooperatives - Opportunities for Slovenia
Ljubljana, Faculty of Architecture, 27. October
Housing politics is very passive in Slovenia, mainly due to a large, 92% share of privately owned apartments, small share of non-profit rental ones and almost non-existing rental market. Housing affordability is low, especially for young, elderly and people with low and even middle range income.
Some years ago two NGOs (iPoP - Institute for Politics of Space and Institute Tovarna) started a bottom-up 'battle' for cooperative housing, which is understood as a good alternative to existing situation. This year Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, newly established cooperative Zadrugator and NGO Trajekt - Institute for Spatial Culture joined the 'battle' and managed to get political support.
In late October we are organizing a one-day conference with a goal to achieve changes of housing politics: legislation, finance and finally develop a suitable cooperative housing model for Slovenia. We intend to focus on three themes: architecture, housing cooperative/co-housing models, networks. Models from other countries and experience of different groups will serve as starting points for development of our own model and further actions.
Program
Plečnik Lecture Hall, 9.30 - 16.30
INTRODUCTION
TADEJ SLAPNIK State Secretary, responsible for establishing dialogue with the civil society, coordinating civil initiatives and social entrepreneurship
PETER GABRIJELČIČ Dean, Faculty of Architecture
KLEMEN PLOŠTAJNER Zadruga Zadrugator
ANJA PLANIŠČEK Faculty of Architecture
SWISS EXPERIENCE
ANDREAS HOFER Archipel, Zürich
"Collaborative Ways of Thinking Housing and a Sustainable Future"
DAVID LEUTHOLD pool Architekten, Zürich
"Innovation Cooperative"
GERMAN EXPERIENCE
ROBERT BURGHARDT, ENRICO SCHÖNBERG Mietshäusersyndikat, Berlin
"Mietshäusersyndikat: a Support Network and a Structure for the Development and Safeguarding of Commonly Owned Rental Real Estate in Germany"
MICHAEL LAFOND id22: Institute for Creative Sustainability, Berlin
"A Housing Metamorphosis: Inclusive CoHousing Projects and Current Neighborhood Developments from Berlin and Other European Cities"
FLORIAN KÖHL fatkoehl architekten, Berlin
"Architecture of Choice"
AUSTRIAN EXPERIENCE
KATHARINA BAYER einszueins architektur, Wien
Wohnprojekt Wien - Cohousing in Vienna: Potentials of Building and Living Together
Speakers
Andreas Hofer received his diploma in architecture at ETH Zürich in 1989. Since then he works as an architect and planner. In 1995 he founded with partners the office Archipel in Zürich.
In 1993 he initiated the cooperative project KraftWerk 1. He was member of the management board till 2003. Today he works as a project developer for the cooperative. From 2003 – 2010 he was a member of the management board of the Zürich branch of the Swiss Housing Association, the alliance of all housing cooperatives in the Zürich region. Since 2008 he works as a project manager for the experimental cooperative housing project Mehr als Wohnen.
Andreas Hofer taught at the Institute Natural and Social Science Interface at the department for Environmental Sciences of the ETH (1994 – 2004) and at the Department for Landscape Architecture of the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil (2000 – 2009). He regularly publishes articles on housing and planning issues in various journals and lectures at conferences and universities.
More: www.archipel.ch
David Leuthold studied architecture at FHNW in Muttenz. He is a founding member and partner of pool Architects. In 2000 – 2002 he worked as assistant at ETH Zürich (with Andreas Deplazes) and later lectured as guest lecturer at Berner Fachhochschule, Burgdorf (2006 – 2007) and at ETH Zürich (2010 – 2012). From 2011 – 2012 he was a member of Innovation Pool, Department for Urban Planning, City of Zürich.
pool Architekten, originally a platform for discussion on architecture and urban planning, was established as an architecture cooperative in 1998 by eight partners: Dieter Bachmann, Raphael Frei, Matthias Heinz, Philip Hirtler, David Leuthold, Andreas Sonderegger, Mischa Spoerri and Matthias Stocker. In 2006 it was admitted into the Federation of Swiss Architects (FSA/BSA). In 2014 the office received the renowned Grand Prix Kunst/Prix Meret Oppenheim Award by the Swiss Confederation.
The office works on different types of projects, but one focus is housing. The important realizations include housing estates in Zurich region such as Leimbachstrasse (2005), Aspholz (2007), Badenerstrasse (2008 – 2010), Siedlung Frieden (2009 – 2013), cooperative housing BDZ (2016) and three buildings in Hunziker Areal cooperative project Mehr als Wohnen (2012 – 2015).
More: www.poolarch.ch
Mietshäuser Syndikat (apartment-house syndicate) is a solid network of housing projects and initiatives that was originally formulated in 1989 at Freiburg’s Grether Project and exists “to support the genesis and achieve political acceptance of self-organized house projects – humane living space and a roof over the head, for everybody.” It provides advice to self-organized house projects interested in the Syndikat’s model, invests in projects so that they can be taken off the real estate market, helps with its know-how in the area of project financing and initiates new projects.
Syndikat consists of 112 housing projects and 20 project initiatives. Each of the house projects is autonomous, i.e., a separate enterprise that owns the real estate. Each project has the legal status of a limited liability company (LLC; German: GmbH). Each LLC is however, through a specific construction of share-holdings, locked into the network of LLC’s, thus securing also the common interest of decommodification and solidarity-transfer within each project.And the number is increasing. As a matter of principle, the ‘Mietshäuser Syndikat’ welcomes new, self-organized house projects as well as project initiatives like the above-mentioned 20 that are still to acquire ‘their house’. As a result, the network is cheerfully expanding.
More: www.syndikat.org
Michael LaFond is initially an architect with doctorate in Urban Design and Planning. He studied in Seattle and Berlin. He lives and works in Berlin as community developer, project manager and urbanist.
He is the founder and director of “id22: Institute for Creative Sustainability”. He studies and publicizes relationships among self-organized housing, urban development processes and sustainability. A focus is on urban, international CoHousing cultures: self-organized, community-oriented, inclusive and sustainable forms of housing. His projects include the network “experimentcity”, the book “CoHousing Cultures”, the annual housing fair “Experimentdays”, the online platform “CoHousing-Berlin” etc.
Since 2011 he is involved in the development of the Spreefeld Housing Cooperative, where he lives. He is engaged with the development of edible landscapes, community gardens and food forests in the context of the emerging Spree River public path.
Since 2000 he teaches at universities including FU and TU Berlin, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee (Space Strategies), CIEE Future Cities, BTK and UW CHID Berlin
More: www.id22.net
Florian Köhl graduated in architecture at Bartlett School of Architecture in London. In 2002
he founded fatkoehl architekten in Berlin. A major trait of the studio's work is its constant search for ways of relating people through architecture with their urban surroundings. In this context, the office spearheaded efforts to elaborate alternative architectural production models on an all but stale Berlin housing market in the early 2000s. They were instrumental in the development of a new building approach – “co-housing”, which foresaw major involvement of their clients in the building process and led to a new type of architecture, fusing a client's creativity with the strong design vision of the architect.
fatkoehl architekten won the Berlin Architecture Award in 2009 and was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Prize 2015.
Florian Köhl researched and taught for several years at Technical University of Berlin and Bartlett School of Architecture, London. He is a co-founder of Network of Co-housing Architects Berlin, Team Eleven and Instant City.
More: www.fatkoehl.com
Katharina Bayer studied at the TU Wien and TU Delft. Between 2008 and 2012 she was an assistant lecturer at the TU Wien/Institut für Hochbau I. Since 2008 she is a board member of the IG Architektur. Katharina recieved Staatspreis für Architektur und Nachhaltigkeit in 2013 and Hans Sauer Preis in 2016.
In 2006 she cofounded Einszueins Architektur together with Markus Zilker. Since then the emphasis lies in housing and social housing projects of different scale. Housing, as formgiving element for social and urban developments, is basis for our architectural work on the interface between the Human and the City. Since 2009 we specialized on co-housing projects, participation and cooperative urban planning, defining a cooperative process as central tool for a lively, sustainable environment.
More: www.einszueins.at
Information
ORGANISATION
Trajekt - Institute for Spatial Culture
Cooperative Zadrugator
Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana
Mreža za prostor
CONTACTS
info@zadrugator.org
ap@trajekt.org
CO-FINANCIERS
Ministrstvo for Environment and Spatial Planing
Trajekt – Institute for Spatial Culture
Cooperative Zadrugator
Open Society Fundation
