As I write this, it’s election season in the Netherlands. Everywhere there are programmes, podcasts, and debates in preparation for the national elections. Housing is a central topic, and it must be said that none of the parties are proposing anything that will accelerate housing production in the short term. It’s remarkable to see nostalgia taking the upper hand once again, whether it’s about the long history of the ability of making land and new cities in the Netherlands, or the glorious role of housing corporations in public housing in the past. In the latter case, attention is not only focused on our own country but also on the Viennese model. The model of the city still referred to as Rotes Wien—but what exactly is the Viennese model?
To say anything meaningful about the Viennese model, one must look back at the city’s history. We’ll move through history at a macro level, pausing longer at the beginning of the 20th century. For those who want to learn more detail, we recommend visiting the newly renovated Vienna Museum. Its location - in the middle of Europe, on the Danube, and along major trade routes - was reason enough for the Romans to establish a city here. The city maintained an important position throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eventually growing into the residence city of successive emperors. Attacks on the city mostly came from the east, from Turkey. Each time, Vienna emerged stronger and more important from the conflict. The city became the heart of the great empire under the Austrian Habsburgs, and by around 1700 had about 80,000 inhabitants. The cultural flourishing under Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790), also emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, gave a strong impetus to the construction of theatres and concert halls. He also built numerous palaces and his own churches in an Austrian Baroque style.
The Baroque period ended with the French Revolution in 1789, at which time the city had 207,000 inhabitants. In 1804, the Austrian Empire was established when Emperor Francis II declared himself hereditary emperor over the territories belonging to the Habsburg monarchy. Formally, he had ruled these territories only in a personal union. In 1805, Napoleon’s armies stood at the gates of Vienna. On August 6, 1806, he abdicated the (by then largely symbolic) imperial title of the Holy Roman Empire, partly out of fear that Napoleon Bonaparte might claim the title for himself. To secure the future of his empire, in 1810, Emperor Francis I married off his daughter Maria Louise Leopoldina Francisca Theresia Josepha Lucia of Habsburg-Lorraine (1791–1847) to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821). She became his second wife. Since its founding, the empire had been the third-largest state in Europe, with 21.2 million inhabitants (in 1804), after Russia and France. At that time, it was a multinational state inhabited by various peoples: Austrians, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Romanians, Poles, Slovaks, Croats, Ruthenians, Italians, Roma, and Jews.
The fighting against France continued. Napoleon was ultimately defeated at the Battle of Leipzig (1813), known in German as the Völkerschlacht. With the Congress of Vienna in 1814/1815, Vienna once again became the centre of European history. The congress consisted not of a single meeting but of numerous formal and informal gatherings of over 200 representatives from across Europe, aiming to create and establish an effective plan for European peace. Austria regained all the territories it had lost, except for the Austrian Netherlands and Further Austria. The country continued to be embroiled in conflicts with France and Prussia over control of each other’s spheres of influence.
From 1835 onward, Austria was ruled by Ferdinand I of Austria (1793–1875). Because of his poor health, he was nicknamed the ‘puppet king.’ Between 1836 and 1848, the country was effectively ruled not by Ferdinand himself, but by the Secret State Conference, consisting of Klemens von Metternich, Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky, Ferdinand’s brother Archduke Franz Karl, and his uncle Archduke Louis. In 1848, a civil revolution broke out. Emperor Ferdinand fled and abdicated the throne in favour of his brother Franz Karl. However, under strong pressure from Franz Karl’s wife, his nephew, the 18-year-old Franz Joseph I (1830–1916), was appointed emperor. He became ruler of a vast empire: the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary (which became more autonomous as a kingdom from 1867 onward), Yugoslavia, and parts of northern Italy and Ukraine. The expression k und k, which you encounter in various places in the city, stands for kaiserlich und königlich (‘imperial and royal’)—the Dual Monarchy. With the arrival of this emperor, the city of Vienna was changed forever.
Emperor Franz Joseph I had a very conservative reputation; he was not particularly intellectual, but meticulous and diligent. He had little interest in new developments such as machines and automobiles. Nevertheless, it was under his reign in 1857 that the decision was made to demolish Vienna’s 13th-century city walls. In this way, the inner city could be connected with the suburbs (now districts II through IX), which had grown significantly due to industrialisation. This created space for the development of the Ringstraße (1857–1865), built on the site of the old city walls. It became a new monumental boulevard lined with all the major public buildings—ministries, the town hall, parliament building, university, and museums. Along the Ringstraße, 150 public buildings and 650 apartment houses were constructed. Because all the buildings were built around the same time and in the same architectural style, this came to be known as the Ringstraße style. The development of this ring road was unique for its time and served as a model for other cities.
The new developments did not pass the city by. At the beginning of the 18th century, industrialisation had taken hold, and by 1830, the construction of railways had begun after steam navigation had developed on the Danube. This brought migration toward the city and created a great demand for housing. These people found accommodation in one of the rental barracks (in German Mietkasernen) near the industrial areas on the outskirts of the city. The rental barracks were built by private individuals, often factory owners. There were downsides to this growth spurt. As the population increased, the living conditions became appalling. Diseases were widespread, which eventually led to the construction of water supply systems and hospitals. In 1870, the Danube was channelled to protect the city from flooding. The newly reclaimed areas were annexed to the city and developed wherever possible. In 1873, a plan was devised for a rapid steam tram connection between the city centre and the site of the World’s Fair. A stock market crash prevented its realisation, but it laid the foundation for the later U-Bahn (subway). Much attention was also given to the creation of green spaces and parks as compensation for the densely populated working-class neighbourhoods. By the end of the 19th century, the city had two million inhabitants, making it the 6th largest city in the world.
World War I began with the assassination of Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo (then part of the Austrian Empire) in 1914. Two years later, Franz Joseph I died, and the throne passed to Charles I (1877-1922) He could not prevent the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The end of the war in November 1918 also marked the end of this great European empire. The impact was enormous. From an empire of around 56 million people, Austria was reduced to a country with only 6.5 million inhabitants, a quarter of whom lived in Vienna. The city had become a bloated capital. By separating the city from the federal state of Lower Austria (Bundesland Niederösterreich), a Social Democratic majority was able to govern the city in 1919. The mass unemployment and housing shortage resulting from the war had to be addressed quickly. By introducing new municipal taxes, a new housing programme was financed. These taxes were levied primarily on Viennese residents who owned domestic staff, riding horses, or automobiles.
The goal of the housing programme was to improve the living standards of the city’s residents. The existing dwellings—often built during the Gründerzeit (the economic boom period in the second half of the 19th century)—lacked a water connection or toilet. The housing density was enormous, which meant that very little daylight entered the homes. The city required that all new housing be equipped with natural ‘light and air’. The old structure of enclosed building blocks was revived; the inner courtyards provided light and air, as well as space for communal facilities. The apartments offered a much higher living quality than people had been used to: connections to the electricity grid, private sanitary facilities, and a gas connection for cooking.
The housing programme allowed for two different approaches: the realisation of so-called superblocks and neighbourhoods following the Garden City movement. The superblocks gained prominence under the new mayor Karl Seitz in 1923, who succeeded the previous mayor Jakob Reumann, a supporter of the Garden City movement. Superblocks were large-scale housing projects built by the Wiener Stadtbauamt (the municipal building department). The superblock model also offered economic and infrastructural advantages for housing development and supported the creation of a new social community. This approach rejected the petty bourgeois ideal of the pre-war period. Another major advantage of the superblocks was the ample space for shared facilities. Community spaces, childcare centres, playgrounds, public green areas, and waste collection were all part of the superblock concept. In addition, many social and community projects were realised in the surrounding neighbourhoods—such as children’s homes, schools, swimming pools, and clinics. After ten years of work on Rotes Wien, it all came to an end with Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, which led to the fall of the Social Democratic government in Austria in 1934. During that period, approximately 65,000 homes were built, 89% of which were multi-story apartment buildings. Housing construction came to a complete halt after the Anschluss—the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938.
The most famous of the superblocks is the complex on Heiligenstädter Straße, built between 1927 and 1930, the third largest of the superblocks in Vienna. The project was built on a former arm of the Danube that was drained after the river was straightened. The complex contains 1,382 apartments and could accommodate around 5,000 residents. The apartments range in size from 21 to 57 square metres, still small by today’s standards, but spacious compared to what people were used to at the time. Moreover, the small apartments made it possible to build a larger number of units within one block. The complex includes a daycare centre, child welfare clinic, communal laundry rooms, library, post office, and medical clinic. The building, named after Karl Marx, received the nickname Ringstraße des Proletariats (Ring Road of the Proletariat).
The project was designed by Karl Ehn (1884–1959), who studied under the famous Viennese architect Otto Wagner (1841–1918). From two years after his graduation until 1950, he worked for the Wiener Stadtbauamt (Municipal Building Department), serving in management positions from 1921 onward. Karl-Marx-Hof is essentially a city within a city. Its main façade is more than one kilometre in length, making it the longest residential building in the world at the time. The taller towers with flagpoles and the lower, almost village-like utility buildings in the inner courtyards provide striking contrasts. The structure alternates between three and five stories above a basement and includes attics. The apartments are accessed via nearly one hundred stairways (Stiegen). They are arranged around three inner courtyards and one outer courtyard. Three lanes (Gassen) cut through the building via imposing arch-shaped gates, decorated with ceramic sculptures of female figures designed by artist Josef Franz Riedl, symbolising Education, Freedom, Protection, and Physical Culture (the natural state of the body).
It is truly a city within a city but made as a single piece of architecture. Not long after its completion, the building was damaged during the February Uprising of 1934, the first open armed resistance of workers against fascism. The damage was repaired in the 1950s. The complex was renovated between 1989 and 1992, and again a few years ago. As of 2025, it remains in excellent condition. Many of the inner courtyards are accessible during the day, communal facilities still exist, and—despite its massive size—you can still experience a human scale within the complex.
The other way in which living standards were improved through housing construction took shape in garden villages, often referred to as Gartenstadtsiedlung (literally ‘garden settlement’). The big question, of course, was whether this approach could produce the large number of homes that were needed—and it turned out that it could not. The garden city was based on Ebenezer Howard’s 1898 model, which aimed to liberate the working class from the misery of industrial cities. A garden city was self-sufficient and autonomous; a garden village was not. We wrote about this earlier in the article in JE reis, ‘The Struggle of Two Brothers…’. Examples in Vienna include Siedlung Lockerwiese (1928–1932) in the 13th district, Gartenstadt Am Wienerberg (1932–1935), and Siedlung Am Tivoli (1927–1930). The latter garden village already leaned more toward modern architecture, reflecting the new style known as Modernism.
In Vienna, this architectural style did not primarily concern itself with aesthetic criteria or theoretical design principles but focused on the individual needs of the residents. The house was to be a purpose in itself, and domestic life—the principal activity of modern people—to be supported through a diversity of styles, ages, colours, and forms. As it was expressed at the time: “The modern house is that which can absorb all that is alive in our time and still remain an organically integrated artistic creation.” The Austrian Werkbund, an association of architects and designers, was founded in 1912. It was modelled after the Deutscher Werkbund, with the goal of fostering cooperation between art, craftsmanship, and industry. The newly founded association sought not only to create expensive objects for a social elite but also to ensure that “the underprivileged, the lower middle class, and the working class, albeit within very limited means […] are offered only products that bring joy through their fitness for use and that promote the culture of domestic life.” Members of this association of artists, industrialists, and craftsmen included Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956), Josef Frank (1885–1967), and Oskar Strnad (1879–1935). The Werkbund demonstrated what was possible in small-scale projects known as model exhibitions, neighbourhoods where various architects, landscape designers, interior designers, and furniture makers collaborated. One of the most famous of these exhibitions was the Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart.
Josef Frank participated in that exhibition and became the central figure behind the Werkbundsiedlung in Vienna, which opened on June 4, 1932. Josef Frank was assigned a site for the model housing estate at the foot of the Roter Berg in Vienna’s 13th district (Hietzing). The location was not in the dense city centre but in a sparsely built-up suburban area. It was a logical choice for construction with light, air, and space — allowing for a ‘new beginning’ without having to account for existing buildings or a rigid street layout. Josef Frank designed gently curving paths leading from the existing streets - Veitingergasse and Jagdschlossgasse - toward the centre of the neighbourhood, a small open space. The architects had already begun designing for another site in Vienna’s 10th district, which meant that Frank had to reposition the houses in the new plan.
The houses were arranged to give the impression of belonging to a model neighbourhood with different types and designs, while still retaining the character of an organic settlement. The floor plans followed a strict pattern: although almost all houses were oriented toward and opened onto the garden, the buildings stood strictly parallel to the streets. The houses along Veitingergasse formed a long row, interrupted at several points, while the others were placed more loosely. The site was given architectural emphasis by placing Oswald Haerdtl’s tall house at the western end, appearing to guard the settlement like a watchtower. At the western edge of the area, where visitors entered the exhibition in the summer of 1932, stood the strikingly articulated duplex by Oskar Strnad. Unfortunately, it can no longer be seen, as it was destroyed during World War II. Around the central space, the houses designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Adolf Loos served as important anchor points.
In total, 32 architects and several interior designers participated in the Vienna . Together, they designed 70 model dwellings, consisting of single-family houses, duplexes, and a few small apartments. Among them were Austrian architects such as Josef Frank, Oskar Strnad, Adolf Loos, and Oswald Haerdtl, as well as international architects such as Gerrit Rietveld from the Netherlands and Richard Neutra from the United States. At the site, you’ll find an information board with a map and limited details. There is also an excellent website featuring an interactive map, where you can see who designed each house, both the exterior and the interior. This is especially helpful when visiting, since nearly a century of vegetation now obscures the view of many of the homes.
The design of the gardens was deliberately not completed to give future owners freedom of expression. The outline was uniform to make it one plan. Instead of fences between the gardens, privet hedges were planted. Paths of sandstone slabs led from the front garden to the entrance of the houses and from the back of the house to the end of the plot. Pergolas made of wood or iron were placed to create sheltered seating areas. Over the years, the houses were meant to merge with their surrounding gardens and form a single unity with nature — an idea explained by Oskar Strnad using the example of the duplex he designed for the settlement: “Just as the building stretches toward the light, opens itself to nature, and shields against wind and weather, so the garden flows into the built floor, and the walls of the rooms extend outward. It is the harmony of nature with geometric forms that have gained meaning yet remain rooted in the earth.” Today, one can observe that greenery remains the connecting element of this neighbourhood.
One of Oskar Strnad’s most remarkable students was Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000), often referred to by her initials MSL. She was the only female architect who designed and built houses in the Werkbundsiedlung. She is missing from the group photograph of the architects of this model neighbourhood — likely a telling sign of the role of women in architecture at that time. She was born in Vienna in 1897, during the period of the Dual Monarchy, and grew up in the Margareten district in a bourgeois, liberal environment. In 1915, she passed the entrance exam for the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts), one of Europe’s leading art schools. As a woman, she was not permitted to enrol at the Technical University.
In 1916/17, the school organised a competition on the theme “a residential kitchen in the suburbs” and Schütte-Lihotzky won the Max Mauthner Prize with her design: a two-story workers’ housing complex built around a square courtyard. It was one of her first architectural works, and she was the only female participant in the competition. The apartments — consisting of an entrance hall with a sink, a toilet, two bedrooms, a living kitchen, and a laundry room — were designed with meticulous attention to detail. She completed her studies in 1918 and worked for a year as an intern with Oskar Strnad. She is regarded as Austria’s first female architect.
Margarethe Schütte-Lihotzky personally witnessed the challenges Vienna faced after the First World War, seeing firsthand the massive unemployment and housing shortage in the city. There was a tremendous task ahead for architects. Oskar Strnad gave her an important message: “If you want to build for those people, you must first learn how they live now.” In one of the documentaries about her life, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky described how she had no idea what she would encounter—and that experience shaped her for the rest of her life. In 1927, she married the architect Wilhelm Schütte (1900–1968). Together with him and a group of architects, she left for Moscow in 1930 to design new residential cities. In 1937, they moved—via Paris and London, to Istanbul. In 1940, during the war, she returned to Vienna to join the resistance. Because of her communist connections, she was imprisoned during the war and was only freed after it ended. From 1947 to 1969, she worked as an independent architect in Vienna.
You can still see everything this architect stood for in the apartment where she lived for more than 30 years, until her death. It is located at , on the 6th floor. In her Will, she left the apartment to the historian Ulrike Jenni, who found it exactly as Grete - as she was known - had left it in 1969. Jenni made a few small changes in the kitchen and living room. She passed away unexpectedly in 2020. In April 2021, the apartment was declared a monument, which provided funding for its restoration, with the goal of preserving it as a heritage site. It is now owned by the MSL Club. By 2024, most of the apartment had been restored, and it can now be visited twice a week.
Why is this apartment so special? Everything Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky had learned from social housing and her communist ideals she applied to the apartment she designed for herself as a widow and single woman. In the apartment, you can watch several documentaries about her life, showing just how ahead of her time she was. Her principles are still relevant today, even though she was born in the 19th century. For example, she conducted meticulous studies of household tasks, using a stopwatch to measure how long each took. Her goal was to minimise time spent on domestic chores and free up time for personal growth and education. It is no coincidence that she became the creator of the fitted kitchen, known at the time as the Frankfurt Kitchen, which she realised in 1926 as part of the Neues Frankfurt housing project.
On an area of 55 square metres, she created a home with space for living, cooking, eating, working, sleeping, and washing. The spaces flow seamlessly into one another. Across the entire width of the apartment lies a terrace or roof garden — a green recreation area, as she herself called it. It is equipped with an awning running its full length, and there are flowerpots everywhere, just as she once had them. The home is full of clever functional features: a small fold-out table in the hallway to set down shopping bags; a fold-up ironing board in the kitchen; a serving hatch between the kitchen and living room so that food could be placed directly onto the dining table. Her bed - which we might call an alcove or sofa bed - stands surrounded by her books. The original fabric wall covering behind and above the bed/sofa has been restored, giving the area a different atmosphere from the living room, even though the space is not truly separated. When you look at the homes currently being built in the Netherlands - often referred to as studios - they bear a surprising resemblance to this apartment.
Today, Vienna has about two million inhabitants, and more than 60% of the Viennese population lives in social housing. Unlike in the Netherlands, these are heterogeneous complexes, where people with different incomes live together. The city itself owns around 220,000 homes. These buildings can be recognised by their red lettering and the year of construction displayed on the façades.
In addition, there are housing associations and housing cooperatives. A housing association is a landlord of residential buildings, mostly social housing — a system that emerged in the Netherlands after the Housing Act of 1901. The first housing complexes were founded by private individuals; later, municipalities also took on this role.
A housing cooperative (Wohnbaugenossenschaft) is a partnership between private individuals, a form of collective housing in which residents jointly decide how they wish to live. The aim of a cooperative is to provide permanently affordable and high-quality housing. The residents contribute capital and become co-owners of the cooperative association. They rent the homes and facilities from the association at cost price. When leaving, homes are resold to the cooperative. Together, the members govern and oversee the association. There is no profit motive — the homes are not treated as commodities, and the members have control over their living environment. They invest collectively in the purchase of land, the development of housing, and the management of the buildings and grounds. Examples of such cooperatives (Genossenschaften) can especially be found in Munich, Zurich, and Vienna.
In the Netherlands, however, housing cooperatives have been slow to develop. Traditional mortgage systems do not fit this kind of structure, and banks in our country remain hesitant to finance cooperatives. Municipalities have often treated them like commercial developers, applying market-based land prices and regulations, rather than viewing them as social housing providers, since the projects often include some more expensive homes. But frankly, the housing cooperative is one of the potential answers to today’s housing challenges — because people gain influence over their living environments, and homes remain affordable for much longer. In my view, references to the Viennese model should not focus on the “old” role of municipalities and housing associations, but rather on the potential role of housing cooperatives in solving the current housing shortage in the Netherlands.
2026
