19.04.2018

PhD thesis defense

On April 19,2018 at 11.15 am in the Seminarraum AT01098, Rechbauerstraße 12, Graz. The ongoing urbanization trend is a global phenomenon which results in a lack of affordable and satisfying housing in major cities of industrialized nations worldwide. During the second half of the 20th century, Austria saw innovative housing concepts which were meant to develop solutions to this shortage. They were realized by experimental approaches within the so-called program Modell Steiermark. One of the tasks of this research is to provide a historical view of this program. Beyond that, selected housing projects are evaluated by an empirical study that examined the current residents’ residential satisfaction. This was accomplished by comparing neighboring housing projects that were planned with or without future residents’ participation in the planning process. The results show that projects with resident participation generate a slightly higher residential satisfaction compared to those where residents were not involved. Thereby the residents’ social integration into their housing environment proved to be a major advantage. Housing projects with resident participation reached values for this criterion that were twice as much compared to conventionally developed housing. The results of this research contribute to the awareness of past urban housing projects and the design and conditions of future urban developments.