Bikes and Rails
Neighborhood: Quartiershäuser Sonnwendviertel
The housing project Bikes and Rails is part of the habiTAT Mietshäuser Syndikat, a network of self-organised and solidarity-based housing projects with the aim of buying houses off the market and securing them as self-managed free spaces for all time. The project is dedicated to promoting climate-friendly mobility and lively neighbourhoods. In the partly commercial ground floor areas, a neighbourhood-café, the Lenkerbande bicycle workshop and the community room are much-frequented neighbourhood meeting places and offer space for social, cultural and political initiatives from the neighbourhood and beyond.
The housing project also includes 18 residential units of different sizes on five floors as well as a common roof terrace. In the basement there are further communal spaces such as a workshop, a large bicycle room, storage rooms and a rehearsal room. Bikes and Rails is built as a timber frame passive house with solar power on the roof.
Bikes and Rails is organised as an association, all residents are members. The house association concludes the user contracts for the individual flats. The current residents are therefore landlords and tenants at the same time. All decisions about the development and management of the house and about living together are discussed and decided at regular meetings.
Bikes and Rails stands for solidarity-based neighbourliness, environmentally conscious mobility by bike and train, ecological construction and affordable rents without a minimum financial deposit. The equity shares were raised collectively by internal and external supporters through a € 1.5 million crowd-lending.
In 2019, Bikes and Rails was awarded the Na-Wo Award of the Klimabündnis Österreich for sustainable projects!
Features
- Part of the habiTAT Miethäuser Syndikat
- Publicly usable community room
- Neighbourhood-Café in cooperation with the Flöge association
- Bike workshop with the Lenkerbande association
Facts and Figures
- Subsidised home with 18 residential units
- Commercial and communal areas
Completion
2020
Allocation of apartments
Photos
Related Events
Round Table Sonnwendviertel Ost - Housing: Tour & Discussion
As a discussion platform on the six topics of stakeholders, mixed use, public space, housing, mobility and architecture, this series of events invites you to wander through the new neighborhood at Helmut-Zilk-Park.