Berresgasse

Focus on the first floor
A novelty in Vienna was the focus on the first floor zone already at the stage of the developer competition. IBA_Vienna played a key role in coordinating the developers and the planned ground floor uses. Numerous workshops and coordination meetings ensured that all participants had a picture of the district as a whole in mind at an early stage and were able to help shape it. The aim was to clarify interfaces, avoid duplication and pave the way for non-residential uses and community facilities.

Planners and developers developed commercial and non-profit uses, as well as experimental and new forms of living on the first floor. All of the IBA candidates in the Berresgasse neighborhood reinterpreted housing on the first floor in a variety of ways. All agreed to dispense with fenced private gardens, which had often proved problematic in dense residential areas in the past. In addition to these residential uses, individual and small businesses, art and cultural professionals, and many others are explicitly to be located here.

The housing concepts also think neighborhood and identity formation in the long term. Changeable apartment floor plans make it possible to live in the district for a long time, even if life circumstances change. For example, there is the option of temporary housing on the first floor for biographical transitional situations.

Supporting the development of neighborhoods
Living is not limited to one's own four walls, nor does it stop at the apartment door. Just as building alone does not create a neighborhood and many residential buildings do not make a neighborhood. It is the residents who create neighborhoods. In the Berresgasse neighborhood, a settlement management ensures that these actors are provided with spaces and structures for self-organization. The GB* district management informs and initiates projects already in the planning phase in order to connect old and new.

Different forms of organization can be tried out and discussed: An association to strengthen neighborly togetherness or a neighborhood cooperative that can make living costs lower. The communal spaces established in Vienna's housing were also conceived here on a cross-building site basis in order to better tailor them to local needs. Laundry facilities, a home support center, rooftop community gardens, rentable work and hobby rooms, initiatives for barrier-free participation, cooperation with schools and several contact points for residents. In addition, the existing Berresgasse educational campus, with the concentrated integration power of the school, ensures the connection of old residents and new residents.