More than Living

Housing is a basic need, the creation of living space one of the noblest and most beautiful tasks of architecture. At the same time, housing construction is under pressure, with many seemingly insoluble challenges acting on the actors. Sharply rising prices for land, construction and rent and the growing need for and call for affordable housing are the cause and consequence of advancing economization. The design quality of the buildings as well as the intermediate and open spaces, but also changing housing needs hardly play a role in this country.

The debate about this, on the other hand, is omnipresent. It deals with the change in household types, observes the penetration of the work sphere into private living, and addresses individualization and loneliness in society. New forms of neighborhood, high-quality interspaces and invigorating mixes of uses, as well as new or rediscovered flexible floor plan typologies are already being tried out successfully elsewhere.
In Vorarlberg, on the other hand, it is hardly possible to establish more compact forms of living in the area of tension between privacy and community. The market is dominated by the desire for a single-family house, conventional floor plan layouts in multi-story housing, and a repetitive, architecturally impoverished type of small apartment complex.

"More than usual" addresses these issues and calls for "more" in housing: more design quality, more spaces for social participation and interaction, more flexibility of use and openness to new housing needs. The exhibition takes a look at the history of housing and the development of typologies in Vorarlberg, negotiates the all too often neglected field of intermediate spaces and transitions, and highlights successful models of new forms and typologies of housing.