Symposium cooperative conditions, learning from Vienna, Zürich & Münich

How do we want to live together in our cities and villages? Who do we trust to produce our housing and provide affordable housing for everyone? How will we develop new architectural typologies that fit a changing society?

This symposium will present building culture and housing production in Vienna, Zurich and Munich. Innovative architecture, innovative forms of living together, effective regulations and policy instruments. It shows the successes of cooperative self-organisation of citizens. Celebrating its architecture and realisations, but explicitly from the perspective of the national and municipal conditions that are necessary for this: cooperative conditions.

After the booklaunch of ‘Operatie Wooncoöperatie’ in het Keilepand, we invite you to this international symposium, with experts from Vienna, Zürich and Munich. These cities all have a profound history of citizens’ owned cooperatives. All three also witness a recent increase of a thriving cooperative sector in the urban housingmarket. Not the individual question "how do I want to live?", but jointly shaping the question "how do we want to live together?" is leading. Housing is a fundamental right, not a commodity. Citizens can shape it together.

We invite all who is engaged in drafting the agenda for the next four years- be it as politicians, as policy makers, as developers, architects and activists. The housing crisis is an urgent task for new city adminstrations everywhere. Cooperatives as one answer are identified more and more. So this is the moment to forge the right conditions and lay the foundations for a shift in the orientation of national and urban housing policies in the Netherlands.

Programme outline

Introduction

3 cities, 3 perspectives

introductions by cooperatives and city-representatives

• München: radically inclusive
• Vienna: radically social
• Zürich: radically autonomous

Lunch

3 worktables / parallel sessions

conversations with cooperatives, architects and policy-makers from each city

• Vienna: corporations and cooperatives
• Zürich: a culture of competitions
• München: affordable housing through land policies

Concluding debate with dutch representatives

The programme is connected to the book ‘Operatie Wooncoöperatie, uit de wooncrisis door gemeenschappelijk bezit’, Arie Lengkeek & Peter Kuenzli, published by Trancity x Valiz

Registration: obligatory, you’re kindly asked to buy a ticket for your lunch when registering

Entrance: The symposium is free of charge but we charge participants € 16.92 ( € 15,00 + 1,92 service costs and VAT) for lunch at Het Keilepand

Colophon

Programme curated by Arie Lengkeek and Peter Kuenzli in a joint organization with: AIR Rotterdam, KeileCollectief, Trancity x Valiz publishers

The symposium is made possible by the generous support of The municipality of Rotterdam and BPD ontwikkeling