Suburbia. Living the American Dream

In Austria, people’s dream home is still a freshly built, free-standing house for the family. This idea persists even though there are already around 1.5 million detached houses in the country. A considerable number of these houses are unoccupied or underutilised — and this built treasure harbours enormous potential for putting a halt to the progressive sealing over of the soil. At TU Wien, the Vienna university of technology, a course was held on rethinking the detached family house where an intense examination was undertaken under the supervision of Barbara Steinbrunner, Isabel Stumfol and Lena Schartmüller, of the naratives underlying this form of housing and various (spatial planning) aspects concerned. The findings and insights from this examination are introduced and discussed by and with our guests.