More Than Housing

5 Preface

Dr. Ernst Hauri, Director Swiss Federal Office of Housing 8 Introduction

Margrit Hugentobler

1 14 The Founding of More than Housing

Thomas Borowski 17 Zürich: More than Housing Dominique Boudet

2 28 Building onto the City Angelus Eisinger 34 Collective Forms of Living Daniel Kurz 40 Discussion: architecture “It‘s really terrific what became possible here!”

Axel Simon 47 Discussion: Teaching Building

“The Architects DID Not Play the Key Role Here” Axel Simon 53 More than Open Space Sabine Wolf 62 Plans 66 Duplex Architekten Buildings A and M 72 Miroslav Šik Buildings B, C, K 81 Müller Sigrist Architekten Buildings D, E, H 90 Futurafrosch Buildings F and I 96 pool Architekten Buildings G, J, L 105 Discussion: Participation Participation generates identification

Margrit Hugentobler

3 116 Trying Out Something New in Zürich: Community Living on the Hunziker Areal

Marie Antoinette Glaser and Nicola Hilti 119 Seven Days in Leutschenbach Susann Sitzler 124 “My Home” Children’s Workshop OKIDOKI: Nicoletta West, Patricia Collenberg 127 Apartment Types, Occupants and Applicants in the Hunziker Areal

Corinna Heye and Sarah Fuchs

4 138 Is More than Housing Also a Model Energy Concept?

Werner Waldhauser Interview with

Christian Huggenberg 141 Are You Still Residing or Already Living? Robert Kaltenbrunner 146 An economy for the society, not a society for the economy Ursula Baus 151 On a Low-tech Path to the 2,000-Watt Society Andreas Hofer and Manuel Pestalozzi 155 Socially Integrative: The Communal Garden in the Hunziker Quarter Doris Tausendpfund

5 164 More than housing — an ABC Andreas Hofer 172 Agenda

6 178 181 182 183

Biographies Further reading Picture credits Thanks

1-6

6 7

Introduction

Margrit Hugentobler

Innovations are based on a vision. “Sometimes it drives me crazy that reality is so impenetrable,” says P.M., who has been publishing his visions of future forms of living under this pseudonym in Zürich since the 1980s and campaigning for their realization. It is a sentence that reflects the impatience of the visionary. This is understandable — visionaries do not want to wait to see their ideas implemented in some remote future. And that is as it should be, for visions need manifold energies to be implemented — and usually a lot of time.

A quotation of frustration? Not at all — instead, a realistic assessment in view of the ­time needed for innovations in the residential sphere to gain a hold. P.M.’s observation is positive; it points in a different direction from the remark by a member of the Swiss Federal Government at the conference “Future Edifice Switzerland” to the effect that people with visions should seek a psychiatrist.

A more interesting modification of the original statement by former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt would be: Anyone who has a vision should find allies! Nonprofit housing construction in Zürich has done just that.

How do we want to live in the future? This is the question that inspired the project More than Housing. A new quarter, built on the so-called Hunziker Areal in the northeast of the City of Zürich and comprising thirteen residential buildings for some 1,400 occupants, was conceived with the aim of testing and realizing forward-thinking, high-quality accommodation by means of a broad range of innovations.

So why undertake such a project — and how? The initial spark was ignited in 2007 — the year in which nonprofit housing construction in Zürich celebrated its centenary using the slogan: “100 years of more than housing.” This is a success story that has decisively shaped the character of the city. A quarter of the some 210,000 apartments in the City of Zürich are nonprofit, exempt from meeting return targets or land speculation and therefore reasonably priced. They belong to the city, to foundations under public law, and to housing collectives, which own almost 20 percent of them. It is difficult to imagine how contemporary Zürich, with its many years of an extremely tight housing market (in summer 2014 the vacancy rate was 0.22 percent), would look without nonprofit housing construction. Who would still be able to live here? It would probably be only members of the upper middle class who could afford to occupy the attractive apartments in the city’s districts that date from the late nineteenth century, the high-priced, renovated buildings in the old town, or the often luxurious new buildings belonging to institutional and private owners. Students, immigrants, the elderly, and other people on modest or average incomes, on t­ he other hand, would live in mostly privately owned, unrenovated, or less well-renovated old buildings or in housing developments dating from the 1960s and 1970s, in many cases located on the city’s outskirts. It is an unattractive scenario: Zürich would be far less mixed, less lively, young, urbane, and attractive.

The origins of nonprofit residential construction date back to 1907 and Daniel Kurz’s essay in this book places its development in a historical context. In 2007 Zürich’s housing collectives celebrated not only their centenary but also twenty years marked by energetic innovation. The somewhat fusty image of collaborative housing now belongs to the past. A shortage of housing, squatting, and the youth unrest in the 1980s led to the emergence of a movement and visions that were implemented in the late 1990s in the form of innovative new housing developments. The anniversary thus also provided an occasion to draw on these impulses in order to look confidently into the future and venture into new terrain.

Peter Schmid, president of the More than Housing cooperative and for many years president of ABZ, Switzerland’s largest building cooperative, as well as the Zürich Association of Housing Cooperatives, is one of the important strategists involved in these developments. He comments, “The new era began following the housing crisis in the 1990s. The responses of the housing cooperatives to this situation can be divided into four categories. One group was always active and kept building throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Then there were the innovators of the 1980s, the young organizations that tried out new things. A third group consisted of inactive cooperatives that at some stage began to wake up. The fourth category is still in hibernation. An important factor was also the target set by the city of building 10,000 large apartments within a period of ten years. Moreover, the fact that the city administration made land available for building and called for architecture competitions led to the emergence of good examples.

There was also more networking at the level of cooperative associations. When I began working at the association in 1994, most cooperatives owning adjacent developments were not even acquainted with one another. Subsequent networking strengthened self-confidence. Kraftwerk1 was a cooperative that showed it aspired not to a form of accommodation for poor people but to self-determined housing. Democracy, co-determination, participation and self-organization were important themes.

More than Housing has brought a broader perspective on the neighborhood into play. This new self-confidence and the diversity of new projects have generated an enormous potential for innovators. More than Housing has taken into account a range of social aspects: participative neighborhood development, commerce, living and working, and much more. The concept of a platform for innovation and learning has been of prime importance. More than Housing is the attempt to take up and combine elements offered by the innovators and the old cooperatives. The old make it possible for the young to provide new impulses, which in turn help the old to move forward.

It is our job to come up with new ideas and develop them. This means we have to be at the forefront of innovation. We have conditions that private-sector developers don’t. For example, we don’t have the pressure of producing returns on investment. We have the possibility to think long-term and to invest in social sustainability because we don’t have to ensure short-term returns. And we can make mistakes — that’s a privilege,” says Peter Schmid.

The innovative Zürich housing projects of recent years have also attracted great interest in other German-speaking countries and elsewhere in Europe. There ­are plenty of visitors eager to discover the Swiss secret. Promoting the construc­ tion of good-quality, reasonably priced housing will remain a challenge throughout Europe and the world in the coming decades. In this context, it is often necessary to correct conceptual misunderstandings. In other countries, but also in Switzerland, laypeople often equate nonprofit housing with social housing.

And in many places social housing implies subsidization of apartments and rental costs by the state. It is the accepted view both here and abroad that social housing is necessary for poorer, often multiply disadvantaged population groups, including migrants, elderly people, students and people who for whatever reason fall through the net of a “successful life.”

8 9

1 The Founding of More THAN HOUSING Thomas Borowski

14–16 Zürich: More than Housing Dominique Boudet

17–22

12 13

The Founding of More than Housing

Thomas Borowski

How Will We Live Tomorrow?

How will we live tomorrow? This question, which is essential to every housing project yet rarely addressed in practice, was posed in 2007 at the beginning of a developmental process of several years that led to one of Europe’s most groundbreaking residential projects — More than Housing, a cooperatively organized district section comprising thirteen buildings, some 380 living units and space for 1,400 people located in the Hunziker Areal in Leutschenbach, a district on the edge of Zürich. By November 14, 2014, the new residential estate was ready for its occupants. The history of More than Housing began in 2007, when the City of Zürich and its housing cooperatives celebrated the centenary of government support for cooperative housing construction using the slogan “100 years of more than housing.” Within the framework of the festivities an international competition was organized calling for ideas regarding the future of nonprofit residential construction. The competition organizers posed the following questions for prospective entrants: How should current housing stock be developed and what market strategies should be pursued in the future? What contribution could nonprofit housing developers make to the sustainable development of urban districts? This ideas competition was designed to initiate a creative and forward-looking process of thinking and action, remembers Peter Schmid, who, as president of Wohnbaugenossenschaften Zürich (formerly SVW Zürich), Zürich’s association of housing cooperatives, was, together with project leader Andreas Hofer, largely responsible for the competition and its central theme of “How will we live tomorrow?”

A Competition for Ideas as a Developmental Catalyst The unusually open nature of the competition — which called not for architectural projects but rather analytical statements about the significance and potential of nonprofit residential construction at the district level, statements about urban life, changing forms of habitation, social diversity, and the role of neighborhood infrastructure — led to a broad range of interdisciplinary submissions. These were judged first by a jury and then in a so-called echo chamber by different building cooperatives, investors, and experts from the fields of architecture and urban development. This evaluation process — which was conducted based on open dialog, a central pillar of the subsequent development of More than Housing— ­ resulted in the selection of eleven pioneering theses that addressed areas ranging from the importance of city housing and its further development to the sustainable use of resources to living on the poverty line.

The ideas competition functioned in the participating bodies as a kind of catalyst. The intensive discussions about the future of cooperative building and collective habitation led in December 2007 to the founding of the building cooperative More than Housing, the financing of which involved the participation of 55 Zürich housing cooperatives and the City of Zürich itself. From the outset, the cooperative’s goal was to develop four hectares of disused industrial land in Leutschenbach made available for building by the city administration.

Looking back, Peter Schmid sees it as a real stroke of luck that the dynamism engendered within the Zürich building cooperatives by the ideas competition could be used as an opportunity to develop the groundbreaking innovation and learning platform that More than Housing has become and to do so in the Hunziker Areal, which in retrospect seems to have been almost predestined for such a project.

Developing the Project through Dialog As early as the middle of 2008, the Public Works Department of the City of Zürich launched an architectural competition together with More than Hous­ing.

From a total of nearly 100 submissions, twenty teams of architects were se­lect­ ed, which, together with six winning teams from the ideas competition, were invited to submit an urban development concept for the Hunziker Areal as well as designs for an individual building. The demands were considerable because More than Housing was looking for “pioneering architectural solutions for a trendsetting residential estate.” The requirements of submissions included: charting a course to the 2,000-watt society, new apartment types, space for people from all generations, and reasonably priced apartments achieved by optimizing the planning and building process.

The competition program envisaged the integration of different promising architectural approaches in an overarching urban development concept.

The consortium Futurafrosch/Duplex Architekten won the urban development prize and a prize for its individual building. Other prizes for individual buildings were awarded to Müller Sigrist Architekten AG, Architekturbüro Miroslav Šik and Pool Architekten. The teams were then given the task of reworking the project under the leadership of the urban development winner in a cooperative process with the jury and a number of other specialists. According to Peter Schmid, the principles of dialog and openness guiding this process were derived from cooperative living itself; what was innovative here was the extension of these principles across the entire process of developing a large construction project.

The dialogic process continued up until the beginning of construction in 2012, producing a result that unified the visions and goals of More than Housing in relation to environmental sustainability and cost-effectiveness in one project.

Not only did a residential estate emerge but also a neighborhood section offering multiple uses and urban references: thirteen large, compact building volumes form streets, lanes and squares with a clear center and differentiated exterior spaces that invite use by occupants and other neighborhood residents.

Constructed in accordance with the Minergie-P-Eco standard, the buildings can be described as a beacon on the road to the 2,000-watt society and also as one of the best advertisements for cooperative housing, comments Peter Schmid. The variety of technical systems and building materials used promises valuable knowledge, and the cooperative is working on an evaluation and monitoring concept in order to make its experiences and insights accessible to others. Apart from a range of technical innovations, More than Housing used a wide variety of housing typologies (from studio and family apartments to shared and “satellite” apartments) to explore the entire spectrum of possible habitation forms. In combination with spaces for retail outlets and commercial premises, this diversity has led to a highly mixed group of residents in an exciting, lively neighborhood.

Peter Schmid is convinced that all in all, as an innovation and learning platform for nonprofit residential construction, the anniversary cooperative More than Housing is on the right track. Other cooperatives can benefit from More than Housing through knowledge transfer, and a platform has been created that is providing important impulses for the district of Leutschenbach. In order to

14 15

Kraftwerk1 Heizenholz 2012

Remodeling and extension of a c ­ hildren‘s home from the early 1970s, Adrian ­Streich Architekten, Zürich, occupation 2012

Kalkbreite 2014

Residential and commercial building above a tram depot at an inner city location, Müller Sigrist Architekten, Zürich, occupation 2014

Kraftwerk1 Hardturmstrasse 2001

Kalkbreite 2014

The first large new building project undertaken by the young cooperative movement in the industrial quarter, St端cheli Architekten with B端nzli Courvoisier Architekten, Z端rich, occupation 2001

18 19

2 Building onto the City Angelus Eisinger

28–33 Collective Forms of Living Daniel Kurz

34–39 Discussion: Architecture “It’s really terrific what became possible here!” Futurafrosch, Duplex, Pool, ­­­­Miroslav Šik, Müller Sigrist Moderation: Axel Simon

40–46 Discussion: Teaching Building “The Architects did Not Play the Key Role Here” Dietmar Eberle (ETHZ) Andreas Hofer (maw) Claudia Schwalfenberg (SIA) Moderation: Axel Simon

47–52 More than Open Space Sabine Wolf

53–58 Plans

62–104 Discussion: Participation Participation generates i­ dentification Jürg Altwegg, Claudia Thiesen, Corinna Heye, Monika Sprecher Moderation: Margrit Hugentobler

105–110 26 27

Collective Forms of Living

Daniel Kurz

The Yearning for More For the theorists of classical economics, the autonomous individual seeking optimal satisfaction of his or her own interests is the fundamental unit of society.

However, this is, at most, only part of the truth. The human being cannot do without community; it is only in exchange with others that we are truly ourselves.

Engaging in debate, being perceived, playing a role, finding sympathy — these are all basic needs and having them withdrawn is akin to being imprisoned. Every­ one can cook and do their laundry by themselves, but that which goes beyond everyday life and lends it its luster: sharing happiness and sadness, celebrating, dancing, eating fondue, learning, debating — all these and much more can only take place in community with other people. Community is added value; our lives would be poor without it.

Individual, Small Family, Market Economy Things that we find self-evident today such as living alone, living as a couple or within a small family are in fact relatively modern phenomena. It was the development of the market economy, the philosophy of the Enlightenment and, finally, industrialization that first created the preconditions for the modern individual and the small family. The monetization of goods and services in the market economy emancipated the individual subject in terms of his spending power from dependence on the give and take of community life. The anonymous monetary transactions that replaced relationships based on personal exchange meant that subjects become less shackled to one another but also less protected. The collapse of relative protection provided by the social network of the community resulted in the “pauperism” that was regarded as a threat during the early phase of industrialization.

Luxury Mansion or Garden City?

1 Rudolf Stumberger, Das Projekt Utopia.

Geschichte und Gegenwart des Genossenschafts- und Wohnmodells Familistère Godin (Hamburg: VSAVerlag, 2004); and Thierry Paquot, Marc Berdadida, eds., Habiter l’­­utopie.

Le Familistère Godin à Guise (Paris: Editions de La Villette, 2004).

The impoverishment of workers as well as the threat to the artisanal middle class demanded alternative models. What remains one of the most impressive examples of communal residential construction was already built during the first high point of industrialization in France. In 1859 the industrialist Jean-Baptiste André Godin commissioned the construction of the Familistère, a palatial complex for himself and his workers featuring glass-covered courtyards and 400 apartments accessed via covered walkways. The complex’s residents were provided with shops, schools, a restaurant and even a swimming pool, and the large courtyards were used for parties and festivities.1 Godin, an adherent of the social-reformist ideas of Charles Fourier, believed in the “association” of company owners and workers. He wanted not only to create affordable living space but also to facilitate a form of coexistence that could contribute to the emancipation and education of his staff and their families. In 1880 Godin transferred ownership of the complex to a cooperative, which existed until 1968. Today the Familistère is a listed French cultural monument. Following extensive renovations, the building’s residential function has now been supplemented by a museum.

Despite its long existence the Familistère did not find a direct successor. For some time, the approach to social housing remained dominated by cheap apartment blocks and small single-family houses, which were envisaged as

From top to bottom: Unité d‘Habitation, Marseille Familistère, Guise Spangen residential estate, Rotterdam Unité d‘Habitation, Marseille

From top to bottom: Het nieuwe Huis, Amsterdam Familistère, Guise Alt-Erlaa residential community, Vienna Binz squat, Zürich

34 35

Discussion: Architecture “It’s really terrific what became possible here!”

Text and moderation

Axel Simon AS Participants

Kornelia Gysel KG Anne Kaestle AK Pascal Müller PM Miroslav Šik MS Mischa Spoerri MSP

Absent Townscapes, Dancing Houses, and Rules with Freedom: The Architects of the Hunziker Areal in Conversation

AS Seated at the table is an illustrious group: the team that won the urban planning project competition (Futurafrosch and Duplex), so to speak as a reward for their ranking, is joined by the additional three practices that were responsible for the individual buildings (Müller Sigrist, Pool, Miroslav Šik). Would the master planners have preferred a team with a more homogeneous orientation?

AK This brings us to the heart of the project: the balance between diversity and unity. A project benefits when it develops a unified identity, but also leaves room for idiosyncrasy. In fact, our urbanistic rules of the game allowed considerable space for many different styles, and despite this, we were able to generate commonalities with the group. We were also fortunate in that all of us got on well together.

KG Conceptually, our master plan was designed in this way from the beginning. During the competition, we didn’t know whether one, two, or five teams would be chosen, but because it was a question of allowing a new piece of city to emerge, the fact that we were not able to choose our coplanners freely was also an opportunity. Suddenly, we found ourselves in a circle that allowed us to pursue our discussion with enthusiasm.

Dialog AS After the competition, you were all gathered around a table, and had to speak with one another.

AK

The so-called dialog phase had to be invented, because our urbanistic typology had nothing to do with those of the others. They weren’t able to simply resort to their standard repertoire of residential types. The bulky blocks were our generators of diversity.

KG The dialog phase lasted somewhat longer than six months. In five workshops, we honed themes, always through an interplay between architectonic considerations and urban planning.

As an urban planning team, we attempted to be a half-step ahead; as architects, we were on the move together with our colleagues. Then, we summarized the results of the workshops in six

Miroslav Šik (left) Mischa Spörri, Pool Architekten (right)

Axel Simon (left) Anne Kaestle, Duplex Architekten (right)

Kornelia Gysel, Futurafrosch (above) Pascal Müller, Müller Sigrist Architekten (below)

40 41

plans

Duplex Architekten

BUILDING A and M Miroslav Šik

BUILDING B, C, K Müller Sigrist Architekten

BUILDING D, E, H Futurafrosch

BUILDING F and I pool Architekten

BUILDING G, J, L

62 63

g l-We i-Abe Heid

se

stras

holz

en Hag

bus stop

More

visitor’s car park

er guest

ce/Hunzik

erative offi

ing coop than Hous

house

hairdressing salon

activity area

bakery

seedling nursery

underground car park . access mobility station violin maker's studio

gweg

cultural salon

Hunziker-Platz

commons

Riedgrabenweg

reception

Dialo

Riedgraben

restaurant

work rooms

nail studio

commons

s

mastering studio music room

common

dance occupational therapy workshop

dio

ga stu

and yo

commons

kindergarten

boules field

kindergarten gallery

Pocket Platz

office

office

psychology practice

kindergarten

music room

playground

Andreaspark

Andrea

Andreasstrasse

N

0

50

100m

site plan, ground floor

u elia-G Cord ggen s on mm co

-Weg heim bus

p

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geh

hed

and

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offic

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olog

ych

r, ps

te cen

ice act

painter’s shop

kindergarten

d

remedial teaching school

graphic art studio

commons

janitor

Genossenschaftsstrasse

art therapy practice

remedial teaching school visitor’s car park

editorial office children’s clothing exchange

kindergarten

office

latz

KLM-P

playgroun

make-upacademy

kindergarten

playground

meditation studio

school complex Leutschenbach seedling nursery

aspark

64 65

Saatlenfussweg

take-away

B

Six small lightwells structure the long access space and create 足private transitional zones in front of the apartment doors. A window in the corridor allows for views into the private sphere.

C

Miroslav Šik Building C

Architect Utilization Construction Building technology Special features Floor area Usable living area Usable commercial / communal area Volume

Dialogweg 7 Architekturbüro Miroslav Šik, Zürich 1 apartment with 9.5 rooms; 22 apartments with 3.5 rooms; 12 apartments with 2.5 rooms; dance and yoga studio; nail studio; day care center; 2 common rooms Solid construction, compact facade Exhaust air system with pressure limiters in the facade Small apartments with internal laundries, storage rooms, and common room 5,447 m2 2,847 m2 355 m2 17,473 m3

N

N

0

74 75

5

0

5

standard story floor plan 1:300

10m

Hunziker Areal, Baugenossenschaft mehr als wohnen Grundriss Regelgeschoss, Dialogweg 7 Architekturbüro Miroslav Sik

10m

compact facade cross-section and front view building C 1:100

C

The building exclusively made up of small apartments lies on the western side of Hunziker Platz. The ground floor has been equipped to house an assisted living group.

Currently a kindergarten is using the rooms, which abut a green area.

76 77

“My Home” Children’s Workshop

CONCEPT AND SUPERVISION

OKIDOKI-Spielplatz für Kunst Nicoletta West Patricia Collenberg PARTICIPATING CHILDREN

Jahy, Johanna, Manuel, Alika, Jamila, Elif, Memet, Rodrigo, Lian, Noah, Joana, Cato, Meret, ­­F­­­­rederik, Emil, Maria

In the “My Home” workshop children engaged with the Hunziker Areal in its raw state in a tactile, investigative way. They were provided with clay and modeling material, with which they embarked on a kind of archaeological detective work.

Using this material they were able to make impressions of interesting surfaces, structures, and objects. Subsequently the most interesting pieces were chosen and reinterpreted in the workshop’s “meeting point”. The children were also provided with small wooden boxes in which they could present, document, and label their finds in different ways. The result was a series of spatial objects exhibiting an archival or museological character, which the children used to assemble an organic tower block.

At the end of the project the children gave their parents a tour of their invented residential landscape.

The safety warden supports the young builders during their investigation of the Hunziker Areal.

124 125

in the Hunziker Areal. Here we find a discrepancy between supply and demand.

The demand for smaller apartments exceeded the supply, whereas in the case of larger ones supply and demand more or less corresponded.

A Preference for Small Apartments in Quiet Locations The measure of preference for a particular type of apartment used here is the number of applications that listed this type as their first choice. The early leasing date favored households with long-term plans for their living situation, such as those that included children of preschool age. Seen in absolute terms, around a third of the applicants preferred 4.5-room apartments. However, when we look at the number of applications per available apartment, the preference for 4.5- and 5.5-room apartments falls with only 2.3 applications per apartment. The more than five applications per apartment for the 2- to 2.5-room living units suggests that here demand significantly exceeded supply. Apartments with 6.5 and more rooms were by comparison significantly less popular. With an average of one application per apartment, the demand for the 26 apartments with 7.5 or more rooms was low. However, since most of these applications involved shared households, it needs to be borne in mind that for such living arrangements the leasing process is differently structured and presupposes a longer period of group formation.

An analysis of the number of applications per apartment shows that, irrespective of the number of rooms, particular apartment types were chosen significantly more often than others. The apartments differ in terms of occupation date, surface area, layout, location, surroundings, orientation, the building floor in which they are located, rent, and possibly subsidization. However, hardly any of these categories was a clear preference among applicants. It was only in the

1 room 2 – 2.5 rooms 3 – 3.5 rooms 4.5 rooms

Number of Applications per Apartment by Apartment Size and Household Type

5.5 rooms

Source: More than Housing co­operative, March 17, 2015; diagram: raumdaten GmbH

6.5 rooms ≥ 7.5 rooms total 0.0 %

1.0 %

2.0 %

3.0 %

4.0 %

5.0 %

single-person household

parent with child(ren)

association

two-person household

shared household with child(ren)

other

couple with children

shared household

6.0 %

case of subsidized apartments that there was a larger demand overall. Half of the ten most preferred apartments are subsidized. There were fewer applications for the 3.5- to 4.5-room apartments on the busy Hagenholzstrasse. Here it is also evident that there was a particularly low demand for 4.5-room apartments with a typical noise-reduction approach (north–south orientation).

At the time of analysis, almost 90 percent of the apartments in the Hunziker Areal had been allocated. Of the apartments that had been let there, there were clear differences in the rental rate with regard to size. Only 3 percent of the smaller apartments containing 1 to 3.5 rooms were still empty, whereas 20 percent of 4.5-room and 10 percent of the 5.5-room apartments had not yet been leased. However, this can be explained by a “rental stop” on families with small children, which the cooperative decided to implement based on the rental monitoring process, accepting short-term vacancies to avoid major imbalances in the mix of the resident population and overloading the school infrastructure.

At almost a quarter of available leases, the relatively high proportion of vacant apartments with 7.5 or more rooms shows that more time and effort are needed to rent out spaces for new forms of residential living. The cooperative saw one of its tasks as offering the broadest possible range of typologies of communal living as a way of providing statistical data over the coming years pertaining to these forms of residential living. The economic risk involved was deemed to be small, since the proximity of universities and other educational facilities meant that in cases of low demand more apartments could be offered to students via the WoKo Student Housing Cooperative.

Future Residents of the Hunziker Areal An analysis of the future makeup of the residential population based on the current rental situation shows that in particular the number of children will be well above average in comparison to reference figures for the city and canton of Zürich. At present, the age group made up of residents under fifteen com­prises 24 percent of all those living in the Hunziker Areal. In addition, the proportion of young adults aged between twenty and thirty-nine is set to rise to 48 percent, thereby clearly exceeding the reference figures for the canton (29 percent) and the city (35 percent).

The proportion of young families among the initial applicants was already very high. Despite the targeted allocation of apartments, it has not been possible to implement an age structure comparable with the cantonal population. As a result, the population of the Hunziker Areal will in future include a significantly lower proportion of older people than the canton as a whole.

This can in part be attributed to the mix of apartment types. Older people live predominantly in one- and two-person households, the proportion of which in the Hunziker Areal is relatively small. Moreover, among apartment seekers, older people are underrepresented and currently still less open to alternative forms of residential living, with the result that less older people have applied for larger and satellite apartments.

Since it is mainly family apartments with 4.5 rooms and large apartments for shared households that have as yet not been leased, it can be assumed that in future the proportion of children and young people living on the estate will rise further. The analysis of the initial leasing process undertaken by More than Housing shows that reaching different target groups and thereby achieving the desired residential population structure depend above all on the mix of apartment types on offer. This is also due to the fact that the distribution of house130 131

agenda

2007

2015

2007 12/05

Founding of the building cooperative More than Housing

2008 01/31

Workshops with all members and formation of working groups on the themes of utilization, economy, ecology, technology, and ownership

05/17

First “echo chamber”: current situation

07/22

Architectural competition launched

July

Workshop: “Cost Reduction in Nonprofit Housing Construction”

October

26 architectural firms take part in the architectural competition

11/07

First information meeting for the members of the cooperative

January

25 architectural firms have submitted their proposals

02/02

First thematic conference

03/14

Second echo chamber: architectural competition

03/30

The jury for the architectural competition selects the winner in the urban-development category and awards three further prizes for building concepts

04/09

Public announcement of winners of the architectural competition

05/05

First workshop on project revision: dialog phase

July

First discussions with Zürich city authorities about the integration of a kindergarten and day care center

09/19

Third echo chamber: winning teams of the architectural competition receive feedback and input

09/24

Presentation of results of feedback/input process (dialog phase)

11/12

Workshop: “Market of Groundbreaking Ideas” — presentation of technologies and concepts by the building industry and planning offices

2009

2010

172 173

03/30

Fourth echo chamber: sustainable construction based on building technology and energy use/innovative ideas regarding building envelopes and building technology

April

Preplanning with the architects (five architectural firms and one landscape architecture firm) and the technical planners

05/14

Futurafrosch and Duplex publish the brochure “Häuser im Dialog. Ein Quartier entsteht“ (Buildings in Dialog: A Quarter Emerges) as a summary of the dialog phase and a guideline for further project planning

06/15

Fifth echo chamber: state of the project, reports from the theme-based groups