Affordable building plots for student residences are difficult to find and expensive. Therefore, alternative solutions were sought for the Lakeside district of Aspern, Vienna, such as the use of temporarily available building sites by means of relocatable structures.

The adaptation of a proven robust precast unit - a serially produced precast concrete garage - as an 'objet trouvé' should make it possible to gain advantages from adversity with a changed approach. The 'rough shell' defines the basic module, which is equipped with a prefabricated bathroom, lined on the room side and furnished. Everything else is optimally reduced in favour of the living unit. The less structure or development additionally employed, the more the budget can be used to improve the living modules. The lower the structural limitation, the conversion effort or the loss of material during implementation, the greater the variety of possible implementations on different properties.

 

The pragmatic approach allows unusual freedom for the residents of the residential complex, as the entire public space as a 'commons', invites discussion, design and thus creative appropriation of the jointly managed space. In this way, scope is created for the self-responsibility of a flat-sharing community without WG problems, a community which, in view of a short and simple building realisation and the high design freedom of the urban planning arrangement, can already decide for the character of the residential complex before the construction without resulting in planning delays or additional costs. In this way, instead of the externally defined safekeeping of alimony residents, the promotion of identity, creative self-responsibility and social community of future service providers of an open-minded society, is created.

 

In this sense, the robust basic module of the housing unit, the shell of which consists of a precast concrete element, stands for a permanent basic security of the elementary individual needs of the respective inhabitant, combined with the freedom of a community that can reorganise itself open to the future in terms of time and space. In addition, the concept is sustainable in financial, ecological and social terms.