Reclaim Prague Preliminary Study (Part 2)

RECLAIM PRAGUE

A COLLECTIVE

FACTOR

Previous chapters outlined the importance of collective housing for city development. This section explores the notion of collective housing, which emerges from many directions and in many forms, yet the essence lies in need to form communities, in need of belonging. The sense of belonging becomes crucial if we see the housing crisis as a crisis of the collective. If the housing crisis originates in neoliberalism (Farha, 2017, p. 6), a system causing alienation by prioritizing individuals’ profit to the collective well-being, we have to look for an opposite force (Monbiot, 2018).

Alienation may emerge, when we lose trust in politics, when we are not satisfied with our jobs, or when we lose connection with society. [...] If alienation is the point on which our crises converge, belonging is the means by which we can address them. (Monbiot, 2018, p. 54, p. 71)

What is belonging, and how can it be implemented in architectural design? The Danish collective SPACE10 researched shared living and began with a question if happiness can help to design a better way of living. Meik Wiking (Wiking in SPACE10, 2018) from The Happiness Research Institute summarizes six factors that improve our happiness.

six factors of happiness (Wiking in SPACE10, 2018)

Wealth means not worrying about the roof over our heads and the food on the table. Trust means both in the system and with other people, for example, not to be afraid that someone will steal something from us. Freedom is about political rights, but also about work-life balance and the ability to manage our time. Number one on the list is the one that goes through cultures and is universal for all human beings. (Wiking in SPACE10, 2018)

The best predictor of whether we are happy or not, [...] is how good our relationships with other people are, that is how connected we feel to other people, and the extent to which we have the sense of togetherness and belonging. (SPACE10, 2018)

Seeking for the origins of increasing loneliness among the population, we have to question our social structures. Evolutionary biologist Bjørn Grinde describes a “mismatch” between the modern way of life and how we have evolved to live as a

species. While contemporary society is mainly organized in so-called nuclear families (as of a married couple and kids), our natural living structure is a tribal community (Grinde in SPACE10, 2018) Yet, standardized housing production mainly focuses on typologies fitting the Fordist family, even though, in reality, its fractions or different structures use them (Boudet, 2017). Individualized living is not only lacking the creation of social connections necessary for our well being, but also puts an economic burden on the individual, potentially causing constant stress, and consumes more resources. The concept of co-living aims to approach these issues.

‘Co-living’, an umbrella term for different types of ‘co-housing’ setups, can loosely be defined as a home where two or more people live together who are not related. While ‘co-housing’ is an intentional community created and run by residents, ‘co-living’ may also encompass shared accommodation initiated by an external agent, such as a developer or entrepreneur. (Wood, 2017)

SUBSCRIBED FOR SHARING

In the core of collective living, we arrive at the notion of sharing. Sharing might be a necessity, concerning the growing global population migrating to cities, and requiring resources and space, that are limited. Seven out of ten people will live in cities by 2050 (UN, 2019), and in order to accommodate them, we have to build a New Yorksize city every month, if we follow up on the current way.

Single-person households are projected to see faster growth than any other property type in the coming decade [among] low-, middle- and highincome countries alike. [...] Fewer people remain at home with their parents until they find someone to marry. Couples tend to be older than previous generations when they do get hitched. Divorce is more common today. There is much less stigma about living as a singleton. (SPACE10 & Urgent. Agency, 2018, p. 19)

Yet, while the single household percentage grows, the level of loneliness grows. For instance, nine million Brits “often or always” feel lonely. At the same time, the UK’s Office for National Statistics showed that people aged 16–44, renters, and those less strongly attached to their neighborhood were more susceptible to feeling lonely. (SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018, p. 20) As mentioned earlier, it might even be the lack of alternatives that hold us back from better life quality around other people, and sharing might be the means to address loneliness.

To share is not an alien concept. In cities, most of our space is shared - streets, restaurants, parks, garbage systems, or energy. Many of the contemporary services that we take for granted are blending the barrier of ownership. Carpooling and car sharing, bikes and scooters, music and movie streaming, Airbnb and similar platforms, all these are shifting traditional models from ownership to subscription. (SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018) Some of these models also represent the danger of overcommercializing sharing. So why do we not share more in housing?

BARRIERS OF SHARING

SPACE10 and Urgent.Agency present three observations that make building for sharing difficult from the economic perspective. The complexity of the building process makes developers and community initiatives understandably rather careful than open to risks. There is also the world of building regulations that generally focuses on ensuring certain life quality; on the other hand, it does not support emerging forms of organization.

PRE-CONSTRUCTION: [...] As investors and developers are working to minimise risk and maximise profit, there is a strong tendency to keep building (and selling) what they already know [and] do not support community-generated or community-owned development projects. To bring forward new modes of living and sharing, we need to address the investment structures, business models and planning processes that define the types of buildings that are constructed.

CONSTRUCTION: [...] The design and construction of residential buildings focuses almost exclusively on “traditional” family set-ups, [and] it is considered hard to offer affordable “experimental” housing [without demanding] more of the design process and require a more long-term understanding of “value” than just an immediate maximum return on investment.

OPERATION: [...] Facility management is the art of operating and maintaining a building over time. [...] The current investor-driven model does not support community-based facility management. New models need to be developed that address questions such as: how do you ensure a feeling of responsibility for members of a shared-living project? What types of organisational set-ups promote community and sharing, while still being effective and operational?

(SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018, p. 62)

We named the obstacles from the development perspective. On the other side, we must ask if there is a demand for new forms of housing. For that reason, the Danish collective conducted a non-scientific survey called ONE SHARED HOUSE 2030. Their findings can give us a hint of how people would imagine their shared living.

small communities: The majority [...] would prefer to live in tight-knit communities of four to 10 people. The exception was couples with children, who would prefer to be part of a slightly bigger community of 10-25 people – presumably to share the workload of looking after the kids. None of the respondents reported that they would prefer to live in bigger groups, which seems to contrast with most of the corporate co-living concepts rolled out today, which are often designed for hundreds of people.

diversity: up to a point: The majority [...] would prefer to live with others of different backgrounds and ages [and] would be most willing to live with childless couples and single women. The least popular house members would be small children and teenagers.

privacy: [...] The majority said co-living would be a good way to socialise with others and that they would be willing to share their home. But they still worry about the potential intrusion on their privacy – and insist on their private space being off-limits to others.

(13 000 people from 175 countries participated in the survey; (SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018, p. 68))

COLLECTIVE UTOPIAS

The nuclear family is a surprisingly young concept. Throughout human history, people formed various tribes and communities of different sizes and social settings. The 20th century marked the revival and experiments done by small groups up to states. Some of the tendencies died out, some evolved.

Some co-housing utopias can be spotted already in the nineteenth century, such as the French Phalanstére project from around 1820, embracing collective property, social interaction, and sexual freedom. In the USA, we could find a built project from the turn of the millennium, exploring housing for single women, or hotel-type of co-housing with a central kitchen. The 1930s brought the municipal larger scale topdown approach of a garden city in Berlin or an urban block as a city within a city in Vienna. The sixties and the seventies brought political protest waves, such as the Kommune 1 in Berlin, or the hippie culture, contra positioning themselves to the mainstream and aiming for a deconstruction of hierarchic social structures. (Kries et al., 2017)

These somewhat alternative and idealistic movements have since then a rich history. One example is Zürich. Opernhauskrawalle was a protest demanding municipal support of low culture in 1980 that escalated into a large squatting movement lasting for another decade. This movement produced concrete ideas about communal living that found their use in contemporary housing cooperative projects in Zürich. A wellknown figure is Hans Widmer, known under the pseudonym p.m., an author of a manifest bolo’bolo, that later evolved into Neustart Schweiz. (Boudet, 2017)

Collective living has a long history full of more or less functional models. Its benefits can be both social and economic. However, people have different ideas about how to share their privacy, and the danger of this model is to design closed communities for a narrow profile of the population. If we want to bring the concept of collective housing to Bohemia, we must first look at how it was perceived in history and how popular it is today.

11 Albína Honzáková (ed.), Kniha živata. Práce a osobnost FF Plamínkové. Sborník k 60. narozeninám, Praha 1935, s. 81. � Srov. také: Eva Uhrová, První česká inženýrka architektka Milada Petříková-Pavlíková a její stavby sociálního charakteru z let 1924-1932, in: Věstník grantu KSČ a radikální sociaČeskoslovensku

několika stavbách iniciovaných ženským hnutím. Její vlajkovou realizací, a snad vůbec nejdůležitější architektonickou budovou vzniklou z popudu českých feministek za první republiky, bylo sídlo ženského klubu českého na pražském Novém Městě z let 1929- 1933. Spolkové místnosti - klubovna, knihovna a jídelna s vegetariánskou kuchyní - se zde staly ekvivalentem kolektivní části domu. Jeho obytnou část tvořily pokoje pro stálé i přechodné ubytování vyba­

Fig. 22 The Seat of the Czech Women’s Club (in Guzik, 2014, p. 29)

Fig. 23 Coll-house Zlín (in Ševčík, Beneš, 2009, p. 91-92)

06 COLLECTIVE HOUSING IN BOHEMIA

FOUR WAYS TO COLLECTIVE HOUSING

This sub-chapter is a summary of the book Čtyři cesty ke koldomu (Four Ways to the Coll-house; author’s translation) (Guzik, 2014)

Jan Blažek (Blažek, 2020) summarizes four streams in the history of co-housing. The 19th-century development of cooperatives and architectural avant-garde; the earlier described alternative culture of the 60s; the nineties with the eco-villages and communal economies of the 90s; and the contemporary wave, searching for affordable and quality living in cities. In his book “Four Ways to the Coll-House” (orig. “koldům,” as an assembly of “kolektivní = collective” and “dům = house”), Hubert Guzik (Guzik, 2014) describes the Czech experience with collective housing. Front leaders were not always architects, but rather politicians, sociologists, or feminist movements.

The prehistory of Czech collective housing began in the 19th century and was written by Czech feminists in popular journals and public debates. At that time, feminism recognized two directions. On one side, the role of a housewife was respected, and the aim was to rationalize her activity. On the other side, there was a need to eliminate this position and allow women’s emancipation in the labor market. The tendency was then to professionalize the household care, and move it to the public sphere - cooking, childcare, or laundry, were meant to be given to firms and institutions. This discourse brought in the central kitchen that was meant to allow women to decide whether to start a family or not. The most important flagship realization emerging from the Czech feminist movement was the seat of the Czech women’s club in Prague New Town from 1929-1933. Its living area consisted of rooms for permanent and temporary accommodation equipped with small kitchens and shared bathroom facilities in the hallways. In addition there were communal rooms, such as the clubhouse, the library, and the dining room.

The Czech architectural avant-garde of the interwar and postwar period adopted the image of Le Corbusier’s ocean liner as a model of cooperative living, embracing movement and nomadism. This model was erasing private kitchens, freeing women from the house care, and presenting minimal living units (ocean liner cabins), which were oriented around standard meeting rooms and central operations. United with Marxist ideology, the avant-garde members studied the minimal apartment, or a hotel-type living. Despite their belief, the avant-garde questioned collectivization and voluntary reduction as a tool to accumulate capital in the hands of the state.

Collective living became noticeable after 1945 when up to ten percent of housing was expected to be collective. There are two realizations from that era, both quite outstanding due to their connection to industrial companies.

One realized under the development of Baťa, the shoe producing company, that mostly focused on building garden-city-like family houses to its workers, believing that the company builds collective spirit at work and lets the workers be individualized in their private life. That did not apply to the singles, who were provided with living and

Fig. 24 Coll-house Litvínov plan, apartments (in Ševčík, Beneš, 2009, p. 91-92)

Fig. 25 Minimal units for coll-house Olomouc, 1959 (in Guzik, 2014, p. 109)

services under one roof. The collective house for about 400 inhabitants contained 102 flats, mostly three-room, with a separated minimal kitchen. In addition to the apartments, it included lecture rooms and club rooms, workshops for craft circles, laundries, a gym or sunbathe on the roof, a kindergarten, a nursery, and a communal dining room with a large kitchen.

The program of the Litvínov project is based on the knowledge of the Czech pioneers of business sociology, rather than Prague architects and theorists. It contained common spaces, such as child daycare, laundry rooms, communal fridge, dining, or meeting rooms, these located in the center, with around 350 apartments, from studio size to three-rooms size (Ševčík, Beneš, 2009). A critique coming from the former avant-garde player Kroha says that the socialist “coll-house” reduced peoples’ needs in favor of companies’ efficiency rather than emphasizing emotional, moral, and psychological relationships.

Finally, in the 1950s, housing politics were getting more into the state’s hands. The eastern block began to orientate more on an individual consumer. Emerging typology then became the so-called hotel-type, aiming to resuscitate the singles lifestyle. These allowed to lower the construction costs, and the aim was to have about 10% of housing in these hotel-types. Kitchens turned into small private kitchenettes, and bathtubs turned into showers. The reduction of private space allowed to use space for public uses. Cleaning and other services were meant to be included in the rent. Hotel-type is the so-called “floating part of the state’s housing stock,” meant for young couples after marriage, but before having kids.

After 1989, as mentioned earlier, the majority of the housing stock began to be privatized, which also led to the complete crash of the hotel-types and the ideals of collectivism and social solidarity, which over and over prove themselves to be efficient preferably within one’s own social network. There is a noticeable gap between the previously described tendencies and contemporary co-housing in the Czech Republic. However, the post-revolutionary interest into new forms of sharing does not seem to express a complete discard of collective living.

Fig. 26 The Labyrinth project by students from Strahov Dormitory (Slamják, 2015)

Fig. 27 Squat Klinika, situation plan (ASC Klinika, Nakládal, 2016)

EMERGING COLLECTIVES

Guzik’s study shows that the interest in collective housing comes from various directions and not rarely bottom-up. At the moment, there is no strong top-down call in Prague or the Czech republic. It is necessary to explore whether there is a call coming from the bottom.

The contemporary field of Czech collective housing consists of somewhat sporadic and subtle examples; however, they give us a hint of where these activities come from. One example emerged in the 90s from the community at the Strahov Dormitory, a large complex of minimal students units. This group of students realized two houses with 63 apartments (studios and one-bedroom) on municipal land, which they got in exchange for thirteen starting apartments for teachers, firefighters, and other public professions. During the complicated process, the students founded a housing cooperative. With a subsidy from the Ministry for Regional Development, the building costs were reduced to 370 EUR per square meter, while the standard price for a project was 990 EUR. (Slamják, 2015)

A different approach chose the collective Shared Houses, aiming to establish a Czech alternative to the earlier mentioned Mietshäuser Syndikat. At the moment, their activity mainly covers the preparation of the legal framework. However, the first flagship project, establishing non-profit housing excluded from the real estate market, is planned for the next year. With Tomáš Růžička, the chairman of the Shared Houses committee, we discussed the context of Czech housing collectives.

Shared Houses are a social cooperative. The problem of housing cooperatives in the Czech legal system is allowed inheritance and sale of shares and further sub-renting or privatizing the apartment. The decision making is based on one vote per apartment unit. Shared Houses require one vote per person. Still, even the social cooperative requires particular structuring, that Shared Houses keep pro forma because there is no legal structure prepared for horizontal decision making, such as via plenum.

The first project will be a house for twenty to thirty people, with some communal meeting rooms. It will use multi-source funding and will establish the umbrella network/collective. Every house in the network of Shared Houses will be autonomous, with an influence of the umbrella collective with 25% of decision-making rights, assuring that the property stays out of the real estate market. Some of the rents will go to the network’s budget, used for supporting the network’s growth.

Růžička makes a few essential points about the community functioning. In case the collective runs other programs in the building such as a cafe, both the social collective and the cafe would keep independent budgets, in order not to hurt each other economically. Possible cooperation with the city has two subjective problems. Besides the city favoring the traditional housing cooperatives, the city could ask for providing some apartments as social housing. That is not inherently negative, but would potentially divide the community into two halves, in case not everyone would share the interest in a flat hierarchy.

(personal communication, Tomáš Růžička, May 21, 2020)

AUTONOMOUS CULTURAL CENTERS

The first meeting of Shared Houses took place at the squat Klinika (Clinic). These mostly illegal autonomous social centers are no less important for the city dynamics, offering space for self-expression, freed from commercialization. These centers often build on a flat hierarchy and nourish the notion of a democratical discussion. Their physical space is usually a universal, abandoned building, able to host various programs from a concert to a theatre play, a discussion, a workshop, and sometimes housing. On the one hand, the program might be produced by the collective running the center; on the other hand, the collective might leave the stage open and only work as a moderator. Much work is done on a voluntary basis. Experimental and popular culture intersect here and support the sense of community. (Lényi, 2014)

Prague has its last publically noticeable social center closed by the police in 2019. Klinika is a collective that occupied an abandoned clinic in the district Žižkov, embodying everything described above. Despite the popularity of Klinika’s program (cafe, communal garden, workshop, free shop, child daycare, educative lectures, meeting room for initiatives, creative and sports workshops, social housing/cohousing), the social center was (naturally) under a constant pressure to justify itself in front of the building’s owner (state) and in front of the criticism of the privateownership-praising majority. (KLINIKA

– Autonomní Sociální Centrum, n.d.)

Autonomous cultural centers raise a few critical questions. Is it possible to create sustainable, inclusive communities on the neoliberal basis? How to nourish participatory democracy? What is the role of institutions (state, city) in allowing social and collective activities to happen? To answer these questions, we will now focus on cities that have experienced the development of independent communities and on the proposals that seek to systematically support these projects.

multi-source funding

self-initiated housing project

Self-Made City

demands

system adaptation

city possess with land

city builds infrastructure

cooperatives are invited to fill in

when the loan period expires, the land is returned to the city

Members enter through renting or buying micro bonds

the open network operates with housing, land, and other resources

up-voting platform for collective decission making

apartment swap is possible

Voluntary contract: close cash flow excludes profit and retains low rents

investment into building, maintaining, and renovating rents

state-backed block-chain savings

Fig. 28 Self-Made City (authors drawing)

Fig. 29 Cooperative City (authors drawing)

Fig. 30 Andel 2.0 (authors drawing)

Previous two chapters explored the notion of collective living in its different aspects. To be able to imagine a systematic integration of collective housing into the standard housing culture, we must seek for the balance of the state-help, the self-help, and autonomy.

Developing business models that allow for new ways of co-owning and operating property is essential to foster and scale more shared-living projects. Ambitious yet functional models can help develop projects that are more socially, environmentally and economically viable. [...] With developers and investors too concerned with short-term return on investment, we need more examples of successful shared living to prove the business case. Investors need to be shown that long-term income is possible by adding services and facilities (SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018, p. 97-98)

The Self-Made City, as described in the book of the same name, is based on bottom-up projects creating a demand for a supportive legal environment. In Berlin, Baugruppen (self-initiated housing projects, financed, designed, and constructed together by a collective) drew the attention of the local banks, developers, and legislation. For instance, the KfW-Bank supports most of them by the low-interest loans, due to their environmental qualities. Still, a certain amount of initial capital is required, and the majority is then multi-source financed. 70% of these projects are based on ownership. In some cases, projects were developed by a private developer and sold to a baugruppe. Some also built on the city provided land. (Ring, 2013)

The Cooperative City is the case study of the city of Zürich. The city’s longterm strategy is to care for only those who really need it and support the ones that can help themselves. Due to the decisions made in the 1930s, the city possesses the land that can be used within the close non-profitable system generating “housing of common interest.” On this land, the city typically builds the infrastructure and invites cooperatives to fill up. It involves a voluntary contract, bringing specific duties and privileges to the cooperatives, such as architectural competition, or calculating the rents from the construction costs and non-profitability. If the cooperative fails, the land goes back to the city or another cooperative. This system lowers the prices in the long-term (in Zürich noticeable after around 25 years), and this strategy involves an investment from the city/state. (Boudet, 2017) (Hofer, 2016)

Andel 2.0 is a revival of a century-old Danish co-housing model, which is updated by In-Between Economies into a form of a civic institution for housing that aims to make design, construction, and commissions easier for people. Andel 2.0 shifts housing from a noun into a verb by designing a decentralized network where collective housing development is financed collectively without banks, decision-making is happening via a digital platform, and its value system aims to exchange skills, care, and information. (SPACE10 & Urgent.Agency, 2018, p. 100-105)

periodical payment family change user unsubscribes dissasemble material ready for reuse

private developer / city developer / community developer

user subscribes

Fig. 31 Urban Village (authors drawing)

The Urban Village developed by EFFEKT studio embraces the circulation of material and people within a system in which a resident enters via subscription. The subscription allows add-ons in the form of community activities, such as collective dining. Their IKEA-like structure allows constant disassembly, reuse, and adaptation to family changes. The Urban Village aims to create individual communities, where housing is more of a service, with embraced changeability, and optional community activity. (EFFEKT Architects, 2018)

The presented models are fundamentally different in detail, however, they have some features in common. They all strive to create a closed system with and a longterm relationship with the house. Moving away from short-term profit and focusing on long-term development allows greater security for the resident, greater flexibility for the owner and administrator of the building, and cooperation on a larger scale, whether with the city or its inhabitants. The following chapters will explore designing for such models.

Bez ohledu na změny v použité metodice při obou posledních sčítáních můžeme konstatovat, že stejně jako v roce 2001, tak i podle SLDB z roku 2011 vykázala nejnižší průměrnou obytnou plochu svých bytů městská část Praha 9 (49,4 m2 v roce 2011). V průměru největší byty se podle očekávání vyskytovaly v periferních částech Prahy, pro které je typická zástavba rodinných domů. Na prvním místě se umístila městská část Praha-Křeslice (122,1 m2) a průměrná obytná plocha nad 100 m2 byla dále evidována také v městských částech Koloděje, Benice a Šeberov. Obrázek č. 10 dále ilustruje zajímavou skutečnost, že v pravobřežních městských částech vnitřního města (např. Praha 3, Praha 4, Praha 8, Praha 10 a další) jsou byty v průměru menší než v charakterově podobných částech města na levém břehu Vltavy (Praha 5, Praha 6, popř. Praha 13).

1.2.6

Ukazatel průměrné obytné plochy bytu v přepočtu osobu má oproti výše uvedenému indikátoru průměrné obytné plochy v přepočtu na byt pravděpodobně ještě větší schopnost postihnout kvalitu bydlení z hlediska jeho prostorových podmínek. Rovněž i v případě průměrné obytné plochy v přepočtu na osobu došlo k velmi významnému zvýšení hodnoty tohoto ukazatele mezi SLDB 2001 a 2011, které ale bylo opět do značné míry nadhodnoceno s ohledem na provedenou metodickou změnu (vizvýšepodkapitola1.2.5)

V roce 2001 připadalo v Praze na jednu osobu v rámci trvale obydlených bytů v průměru pouze 18,3 m2 obytné plochy (v ČR 18,6 m2), což představovalo velice nízkou hodnotu, zvláště ve srovnání se západoevropskými metropolemi. O deset let později se v Praze tato hodnota zvýšila na 31,6 m2 (v ČR na 32,5 m2) obytné plochy bytu v přepočtu na 1 osobu, přičemž v rodinných domech připadalo v Praze na osobu 38,4 m2 obytné plochy, v bytových domech 30,6 m2 a v ostatních budovách 33,0 m2. Výraznější nárůst hodnoty obytné plochy připadající na obyvatele, který byl v období 2001 až 2001 zaznamenán v Praze oproti celé ČR, lze přičíst především navýšení počtu bytů, resp. velmi intenzivní bytové výstavbě v hlavním městě, jejímž nepřímým důsledkem byla i snižující se obsazenost stávajícího bytového fondu.

Obrázek č. 11 Průměrná obytná plocha bytu v m2 v přepočtu na osobu (SLDB 2011)

Zdrojdat:ČSÚ

Fig. 33 Average Living space per person in Prague

[m2] (Neměc, 2017, p. 19)

The average living space per person in Prague is 31.6 m2 (32.5 m2 in the Czech Republic). In family houses 38.4 m2, in apartment houses 30.6 m2 and in other buildings 33.0 m2.

Fig. 32 Soft City (Sim, 2019, p.5)

Průměrná obytná plocha bytu v přepočtu na osobu

08 WHAT A BUILDING GIVES TO THE CITY

PROXIMITY SCALE

In previous chapters, we focused on the housing crisis in cities from the perspective of invisible socio-economic forces. What does a quality urban environment look like in everyday life? In his book Soft City (Sim, 2019), David Sim follows up on the Danish Dense-Low urbanity. Sim describes how density and diversity can address the three big challenges of today - global warming, congestion and segregation, and rapid urbanization. To incorporate the private with the public, Sim embraces a neighborhood as the scale upon which people can live locally, move by walking instead of driving, and get comfortable with the forces of nature. If a neighborhood is dense and diverse, it brings proximity, which can make everyday life happier and nourish sustainable and resilient communities.

The contemporary collective housing projects follow up on density and diversity by thematizing three scales. On the apartment level, we see the emergence of a cluster apartment, containing individual units oriented around large common spaces. At the level of an apartment building, an important role play shared facilities, such as laundry rooms and meeting rooms. At the urban space level, the buildings interact with their neighborhoods by providing public programs to their neighbors. (Kries et al., 2017)

A similar approach was taken by Hans Widmer, first in the book bolo'bolo, describing an autonomous utopian ecological tribal community that emerged from the Zurich squatting wave in the 1970s. (Boudet, 2017) Later, Widmer updated his approach under the idea of Neustart Schweiz.

In the book Nach Hause kommen (Neustart Schweiz [NS], 2016), the authors question personal living space first. Swiss average is 50 square meters per person. By excluding guests or hobby rooms, kitchens, or living rooms into a shared room, this number might lower to about 35 square meters (Prague average is 31,6 m2). These apartments create a neighborhood, an ecological and social module of 300 to 800 people, in 200 apartments on average (Zürich would have around 700 of these neighborhoods, Prague 1500). The neighborhood contains shops, kindergartens, and other services that normally depend on the private sector, which either develops or not. NS proposes including the residents and their collective organizations, other associations, or the city to run these services non-profitably. These neighborhoods are bundled into a district of around 20- 40 neighborhoods (10 000- 20 000 residents). Every district contains public functions and a clearly defined public square with socalled micro-centers in a proximate distance. Micro-centers should stimulate public life and provide opportunities for professional and voluntary work (such as food storing, food processing, restaurant/bar, media center, or second-hand depots). Small commercial businesses of all kinds can take part as a useful addition. When converting existing settlements into new neighborhoods, empty shops, already unattractive ground floor apartments, or restaurants can be connected to microcenters. At most, additional new buildings can be built, or vacant lots can be closed and shared facilities provided. (NS, 2016)

In diesen bis zu 8-geschossigen Gebäuden einer verdichteten Nachbarschaft (100 mal 100 m Grundfläche) können ca. 500 Personen wohnen und zum Teil auch arbeiten.

Dieses Mikrozentrum in einer städtischen Blockrandnachbarschaft benötigt rund 1000 m2 Fläche.

46 Gasche, Seite 88: «Eine repräsentative Umfrage des Tages-Anzeigers hatte schon im Rezessionsjahr 1993 gezeigt, dass zwei Drittel der Vollbeschäftigten auf durchschnittlich zehn Prozent ihres Lohnes verzichten würden, wenn sie dafür weniger arbeiten müssten.»

Dieses Phänomen wird als «down-shifting» bezeichnet.

47 Gutes Beispiel: Genossenschaft Dreieck, Zürich, www.dasdreieck.ch

den. Diese Mitarbeit ist zugleich der Motor der sozialen Synergie und der kulturellen Belebung der Nachbarschaft. Kommunikation entsteht am besten bei der Zusammenarbeit. Viele Menschen wären zu einer Reduktion der Erwerbsarbeit bereit und hätten dann mehr Zeit für ein Engagement in einer gemeinsamen Haushaltinfrastruktur.46

Der Aufbau der Mikrozentren bedingt keine Änderung von Eigentumsverhältnissen: Mieter, Eigentümer, Genossenschaften oder die Stadt arbeiten in einem Verein oder in einer Genossen-

schaft zu diesem Zweck zusammen und profitieren davon. Bei Neubauten können Mikrozentren von Anfang an optimal eingeplant werden.

Bei der Umwandlung bestehender Siedlungen in Neustart-Nachbarschaften können leer stehende Ladenlokale, ohnehin unattraktive Erdgeschosswohnungen, Gastrolokale usw. zu Mikrozentren verbunden werden. Allenfalls können ergänzende Neubauten errichtet, oder Baulücken geschlossen und mit Gemeinschaftseinrichtungen versehen werden.47

In diesem verdichteten Quartier, bzw. Agroquartier oder Landstädtchen, wohnen und arbeiten ca. 10‘000 Menschen.

Fig. 34 District - Neighborhood - Micro-center by Neustart Schweiz (Neustart Schweiz, 2016, p. 8, 15, 31)

BUILDING WITH OPEN PROGRAM

With micro centers, we come across diverse uses within one building. Dietmar Eberle (Eberle, 2015) sees combining functions and expecting changes as a necessary (and natural) approach to sustainable houses. High land prices, decreasing urban mobility by putting functions in walkable distances, and prolonging the building’s life span are the three arguments for mixing uses.

The twentieth century expected a building to last for thirty to fifty years. With prolonging the lifespan, the investment would become more feasible, but if the building stays for a hundred years, but the program changes after twenty, or after one generation, the building must be prepared for a change. Dietmar Eberle (Eberle, 2015) formulated a concept of a building with an open use, also called Solids. An example is the project Solids IJburg in Amsterdam, which does not have a defined program, and the structure is ready to accommodate a variety from housing to offices. Practically it affects parameters such as the floor height (3,2 m), the load-bearing capacity of the floors, vertical communication (an issue might be the requirement of separate stairs for each function), or public space. The cores allow maximum housing units, and finally, the facade should not predict the function. A significant limitation is the law that is mainly bonded to a function. An important aspect is public acceptance. Program is the question of the previous century. Now, the question is what a building gives to the city.

We outlined the importance of diversity and compactness of the urban environment, and the need to mix different uses on a small scale. What discourse prevails in Prague, and what local specifics could relate when designing a compact Prague?

from top and left to right: concentricity, historical city, modernistic city, urban parks, river, urban to open landscape distinction, height regulation, new connections, main boulevards 1+xx, transformation of structure

buildable area: traditional city (42%), recreation (7%), production (9%)

non-buildable area: recreation (11%), nature (13%), production (18%)

Fig. 35 right Metropolitan priorities (Koucký, 2018)

Fig. 36 Prague according to types of uses (Koucký, 2018)

09 GOING ABOUT PRAGUE

LIVIGN WITH CONCENTRICITY

Prague expresses its vision of density and diversity with launching the new Metropolitan Plan [MP] (Koucký, 2018), which states concentricity, the need to condense the city center, as a top priority. The historical center of Prague is on the UNESCO list, which in recent years has meant almost zero development of this area. Restoring construction in the historic core and its protection zone is now the goal. The authors of MP divided the territory of Prague into districts, representing a continuous type of urban structure associated with a specific territorial character. These districts range in size from around 30 ha for the small ones, 100 ha for the medium, and 200 ha for the large ones. These are the basic units assigning particular behavior in a given place, such as the use. 72% of the buildable is so-called “residential use” that allows a mixture of housing with any other function. By these tools, Prague envisions to approach a dense and diverse city.

with defined type of use, name, buildability, structure, or stability

Fig. 37 District (Koucký, 2018)

partoftheurbanstructure

Fig. 38 average Prague city palace (author’s drawing based on the research of Yvette Vašourková (Vašourková. 2017))

10 floors 2 underground (15 000 m2) 4,3 m 8,1 m

plot 2 200 m2 99% coverage

3 main staircases lobby 550 m2

2-3 entrances

Fig. 39 average Prague city palce use (author’s drawing based on the research of Yvette Vašourková (Vašourková. 2017))

Fig. 40 Prague city palace during the day (author’s translation of the diagram of Yvette Vašourková (Vašourková. 2017))

BUILDING CITY PALACES

Searching for mix-use tendencies in the Czech Republic, we must arrive at the city palace typology, present densely in the New Town Prague and beyond. Due to the local building culture, the city palace developed its specifics among architectural styles. In her thesis, Yvette Vašourková forms principles of building sustainably in the city , based on comparing twelve city palaces from 1900 to 1940 with three contemporary realizations. (authors selection)

(1) investment plan: to create a commercially prosperous tenement house, owned by the investor

(2) plot: integrated into the city landscape; efficient plot coverage

(3) use: program for 24 hours, offering a mix of private and public use

(4) accessibility: building opens towards the street through the central lobby

(5) building structure: variability for different uses

Typical is the lobby, connecting all the uses, accessible from the street through the passage. City palace is a building running twenty-four hours a day in different operations, and this activity creates a certain feeling of safety to the street. The passage extends the chance to have more shops on the street level, creates little shortcuts within the city fabric, and brings the public life inside. The lobby saves space taken by vertical communication and brings light and air into the deep plan. Their concrete skeleton structure allows structural changes, high ceilings allow apartments to become offices and vice versa, and the layout allows natural ventilation.

SUSTAINABILITY of the city palace

This chapter draws on a dissertaion of Yvette Vašourková at the Faculty of Architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague (Vašourková, 2017)

Fig. 41 Sustainability of the city palace model (author’s translation of the diagram of Yvette Vašourková (Vašourková. 2017))

Prague city palaces had different types of investors, from a private developer, through companies, to associations and collectives. What is common for all of them is the long-term investment plan. Vašourková argues that contemporary development focuses on five-year cycles of return. Instead, the city palace stays attached to the investor (family/community/cooperative/city), whose investment is secured by focusing on different uses.

DEVELOPING LONG - TERM VISSIONS

Jan Fidler (Fidler, 2015) from Sebre company, owning and refurbishing one of the Prague palaces, describes the conditions of contemporary long-term investment. Today’s standard is to focus on a five-year return, and the main goal is to sell the house in parts. Keeping a building owned today requires both high capital and courage. At the beginning of the 20th century, a building with an underground cinema in the main square of Prague was a rental investment. Today, the event-spaces are difficult to rent out, and their operation would have to be subsidized, it is more likely to place them in public buildings. Fidler’s company collaborates with a brewery on a twenty years contract. Offices have a ten-year contract. Both are not the typical standard. The absence of housing in the Šporkovský Palace is related to a location in which rental apartments would not pay off, and selling two floors of a house would significantly affect the investment plan to own the entire house. In this case, the developer and the constructor are one. No matter if the profit comes from the construction or the development, it stays within the company.

Long-term investment might be one way to address the fragmentation of today’s architectural production and to bring quality and efficient operation with buildings structurally. However, it is difficult to be achieved within the contemporary private development, due to the investment risks, restrictions, and potentially lack of knowledge. Even though some developers are open to discovering the long-term investment, they are a minority, and the city representatives could be the institutional laboratory supporting the search for new models.

Fig. 42 Soft City Principles (Sin. 2019, p.7)

The following chapter breaks down case studies that embody the vision of a diverse and compact city. Microcenters are points in a community where vectors of movement, public amenities, and spaces of civic life colleseque. This collection of microcenters explores designing for mixed-use in different scales - the urban, the neighborhood, and the building scale. Here, we seek to understand various mixed-use configurations (Fig. 43 - 58), to be identify real target groups (Fig. 59), show new design paradigms (Fig. 60 - 64), catalogue activities combinable with housing (Fig. 65), and show how to organise various uses (Fig. 66 - 71).

The following library identifies a range of programs to inform a design task. It expands on the typical common uses found in buildings within a city and translates this the humanist design approach of the case studies into technical parameters.

Neibghborhood Switzerland

Fig. 43 Neighborhoods comparison (author's drawing)

Fig. 45 Zwicky Süd (Schneider Studer Primas, n.d.)

Fig. 44 Mehr als Wohnen (Duplex Architekten, n.d.)

Agora Wohnen Berlin, Germany, in construction

Kalkbreite Zürich, Switzerland, 2014

Palace of Arts and Crafts Prague, Czechia, 1936

In

Solids IJburg Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2010

Star Apartments LA, USA, 2014

Micro Center estimation by Neustart Schweiz

Fig. 46-57 Comparison of mix use projects (various sources)

Klinika squat Prague, Czechia, 2018

Lucerna Palace Prague, Czechia, 1920

Restaurant Tokyo Tokyo, Japan, 2014

SH2 Copenhagen, Denmark, 2015

Vinzirast-Mittrendrin Vienna, Austria, 2013

Zollhaus Zürich, Switzerland, in construction

Současná podoba paláce Lucerna. Foto: Martin Kratochvíl.

Fig. 58 Comparison of mix use projects (author’s drawing)

Micro Center estimation by Neustart Schweiz

Austria, 2013

Zollhaus Zürich, Switzerland, in construction

Tokyo Tokyo, Japan, 2014 Vinzirast-Mittrendrin Vienna,

Lucerna Palace Prague, Czechia, 1920

Klinika squat Prague, Czechia, 2018

SH2 Copenhagen, Denmark, 2015

Fig. 59

Realizing Target Groups (EFFEKT, 2018)

Planned reconstruction of the former clinic involved a cluster apartment with five bedrooms, connected with shared living room, guestroom, and bathroom through a private corridor

Individual studios with a bedroom, kitchenette, and bathroom. are connected with shared spaces through a semi-private corridor

Bedrooms are clustered around smaller bathrooms, kitchenets. and livign rooms, and clusters are connected with a large communal kitchen

Individual units with a bedroom, kitchenette, smal living room, and bathroom. are clustered around a shared living room and kitchen.

Original plans included a large hall - a shell which would be filled up in cooperation with the tenants by light constructions.

During realization the original plan had to be adapted due to the domplications during organizing large groups of people two years before moving in, and the large halls were split into smaller ones.

Fig. 61 Cluster Apartment Kalkbreite (Mueller Sigrist, n.d.)

Fig. 63 Cluster Apartment Hunziker (Duplex Architekten, n.d.)

Fig. 60 Cluster Apartment Squat Klinika (ASC Klinika, Nakládal, 2016)

Fig. 62 Cluster Apartment Zwicky (Schneider Studer Primas, n.d.)

Fig. 64 Hall Apartment (Enzmann Fischer and partners, n.d.)

Illustration 1 : New London Mix example activities

Fig. 65 Uses Combinable with Housing (00 et al.)

Fig. 66-71 Comparison of Separating Uses in Mix-Use Projects (author's drawing, various sources) (right)

Private and public paths intersect

Agora Wohnen

Private and public paths are mainly separate

Zollhaus

Private and public paths intersect

Europaallee

Private and public paths strictly separate

Myslbek Palace

Passage connects private and public paths intersect

Passage serves only for pass through, private and public paths strictly separate

Squat Klinika (Nakládal, n.d.)

Lucerna Palace