Residential Housing Vienna 1030

The design achieves optimum light from the south – despite the dense development of the area – and the structures are surrounded by attractive, continuous green areas. Compact, two-room apartments were developed, as well as larger residential units on the attic level.

Urban Development Aspects – The main starting points for the arrangement of the buildings on the two construction sites were to:

1. Comply with sufficient distances between buildings

2. Allow for optimal light penetration from the south, despite dense development

3. Mask the dominant firewall on the eastern property line

4. Create attractive, continuous green areas for the existing buildings at Paulusgasse 1 and 3

To complement the structure along the street, a smaller structure was added with a faceted shape to fit the courtyard and cover the eastern fire wall. The result is an airy, continuous courtyard, and the facades of the buildings have sufficient distance from one another. The diamond shape of the courtyard building ensures good sun exposure for all courtyard-facing apartments with no shadows cast on the other buildings. The optimal position of the structure was determined after simulating variations of the possible sunlight exposure on the courtyard.

Building Typology – According to the requirement of the 'Vorsorge' project, the building allows for the largest possible number of compact two-room apartments, each with approximately 50m2 of floor space. Larger apartments, for instance on the attic level, have been designed with more rooms to ensure optimum rental potential.

An important consideration in planning the two-room apartments was the separate utility of each room. For this reason, the sanitary facilities in every apartment are accessible from the bedroom, without having to go through the living room. The structural form protects privacy and ensures that apartments do not look in on one another. All apartments have private spaces in the form of gardens, balconies, loggias or terraces. The ground floor apartments towards the inner courtyard offer attractive private gardens. Garbage collection and bicycle storage rooms are located on the street side of the ground floor.