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Grune Welle (Green Wave)

Vienna, Austria
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terraced houses

Our cities are growing, and their limits are increasingly expanding. The project "Grune Welle" ("Green Wave") of architects SUPERBLOCK and housing developer WBV GOD is now completed, featuring an exemplary residential complex on the periphery of Vienna - between the city and the countryside - in which it could gain the first prize in the developer competition 2010. The urban "village-green" arrangement and functional density of this subsidised housing development strengthens neighbourly ties, whereas its typological diversity promotes cross-generational and social mixing between residents.

Inspired by Victor Hufnagel's idea of a densified garden-city, "Grune Welle" boasts a linear "village green" arrangement. This helps avoid scattered urbanisation and leaves aside non-useable buffer zones. The "village green", framed by two rippled lines of terraced houses, explicitly divides the outdoor areas into shared and private space: It serves as an open access communication zone and shared space and is meant to bring different groups of residents together, quiet back yards are located behind the terraces. The terraces are accompanied by a unit of multi-storey apartment blocks, running along the development, providing a spatial connection between the complex and the planned densely built-up residential area.The ground floor fulfils various functions related to daily needs: bicycle and stroller storage, laundry room, an ATM, a multifunctional common room, and the Service Centre, the first point of contact for residents with problems or questions.

To generate functional density and a sustainable mix of future resident groups there are several types of apartment typologies: The terraced house settlement consists of three types of houses with 140m2, 95m2 and 65m2 (affordable home ownership in a green area) the units in the multi-storey residential buildings also offer a wide variety of apartment options, from maisonettes to big penthouses.

A living group dwells at an entire stairwell (including common room) and represents a model of a close neighbourhood community, accompanied by social moderation. 10% of the units were built to be accessible to residents with impairments. These residents were deliberately targeted with informative material and info-events right from the tendering process onwards. Happily, two of the terraced houses are home to supervised youth groups from "SOS-Kinderdorf" (orphan charity organisation). During the settling-in phase the residents' group and the various initiatives were overseen by "Wohnbund_Consult" and the outdoor areas by "Land in Sicht".

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superblock, February 19th, 2015
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