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1 . P ro p e rt y d e v e lo p e rs ’ c o m p e ti ti o n V ie n n a 2 . E u ro p a n 3 . S m a rt p ri c e h o u s in g IB A H a m b u rg 4 . M a s te rp la n B o rn e o a n d S p o re n b u rg A m s te rd a m 5 . C it e M a n if e s te M u lh o u s e T y p e o f p ro c e s s D e s ig n a n d b u ild b id A rc h it e c ts a n d d e v e lo p e rs s u b m it to g e th e r O p e n a n o n y m o u s c o m p e ti ti o n fo r y o u n g E u ro p e a n a rc h it e c ts C o m b in a ti o n o f o p e n id e a c o m p e ti ti o n w it h a s e c o n d s ta g e .D e v e lo p e rs fa ir to m a tc h p ro je c ts a n d im p le m e n ta ti o n ’s a c to rs . M a s te rp la n fo r n e w lo w -ri s e h ig h d e n s it y ty p o lo g ie s (y o u r o w n fr o n t d o o r) . D ir e c t s e le c ti o n o f th e a rc h it e c ts , w h o a re th e n a s k e d to c o lla b o ra te to g e th e re (e a c h o f th e m d e s ig n s a p a rt ). W h y / fo r w h o m A im s Q u a lit y a s s u ra n c e fo r p u b lic s u b s id ie s C re a te c h a n c e s fo r y o u n g E u ro p e a n a rc h it e c ts a n d u rb a n d e s ig n e r/ H e lp s c it ie s to fi n d in n o v a ti v e s o lu ti o n s T re n d s e tt in g , C a s e S tu d y h o u s e s fo r th e 2 1 s t C e n tu ry F o r s p e c if ic u s e rs (f a m ily w it h c h ild re n ) a n d fo r th e c it y in g e n e ra l (l o n g la s ti n g u rb a n / re s id e n ti a l q u a lit ie s ). T re n d s e tt in g . D e m o n s tr a te s th a t is p o s s ib le to ra is e th e s ta n d a rd s o f a ff o rd a b le h o u s in g . W it h w h ic h re s o u rc e s / A d d it io n a l re s o u rc e s P u b lic re s o u rc e s , in c lu d in g b u ild in g s it e s , s u b s id ie s , c o m p e ti ti o n b u d g e t in c o m b in a ti o n w it h p ri v a te fu n d in g D e p e n d in g o n th e p ro je c t P u b lic re s o u rc e s c a te ri n g fo r th e c o m p e ti ti o n a n d fo r s p e c ia li n n o v a ti v e a s p e c ts . P ri v a te in v e s tm e n t fo r th e re s t. P o s s ib ili ty o f re s ta rt in g th e p ro c e s s T h e p ro je c t is d e v e lo p e d w it h in s ta n d a rd s e tt in g , b u t w it h a n e x p e ri m e n ta l s e tt in g H o w w a s th e in n o v a ti o n p o s s ib le C o m p e ti ti o n a m o n g d e v e lo p e rs o n th e b a s is o f th e q u a lit y o f th e d e s ig n O p e n b ri e f b a s e d o n th e m e s m o re th a n s tr ic t re q u ir e m e n ts . In te rn a ti o n a le x p e rt is e . F le x ib le re q u ir e m e n ts O p e n b ri e f D e e p in v o lv e m e n t o n th e c lie n t s id e P o lit ic a l re le v a n c e a n d w ill to re a c h a n e w , b e tt e r p e rf o rm in g s o lu ti o n s O p e n b ri e f. E x tr e m e c o m m it m e n t fr o m th e c lie n t a n d th e a rc h it e c ts F le x ib le re q u ir e m e n ts R a n g e o f in n o v a ti o n a c h ie va b le In c re m e n ta l In c re m e n ta lt o ra d ic a l In c re m e n ta lt o ra d ic a l R a d ic a l In c re m e n ta lt o R a d ic a l S tr e n g th / P o te n ti a l (c o m p e ti ti o n s e tt in g ) T h e im p le m e te n ti o n is c h e c k e d in a d v a n c e th a n k s to th e c o lla b o ra ti o n in th e c o n c e p ti o n p h a s e b e tw e e n a rc h it e c t a n d d e v e lo p e r P ro v id e fr e s h id e a s a n d p ro v id e to th e c lie n t a c c e s s to a n in te rn a ti o n a le x p e rt is e . In c lu d e d ‘d e v e lo p e r fi n d in g ’p h a s e ’s e p a ra te d fr o m th e ‘in n o v a ti o n fi n d in g ’ o n e . T h is w a s b o th a p o te n ti a l a n d a w e a k n e s s . -W e a k n e s s / R is k s (c o m p e ti ti o n s e tt in g ) O p e ra te s o n th e b a s is o f th e e s ta b lis h e d m o d e l. R is k ta k in g is lim it e d . Im p le m e n ta ti o n is a n o p ti o n a l a n d n o t b in d in g . T h e a rc h it e c ts te n d s to b e e x c lu d e d . F a ilu re to im p le m e n t F in d in g th e ri g h t d e v e lo p e r m ig h t n o t h a v e w o rk e d .-Case study 1
Property developers’ competitions (Vienna)
Property developers’ competitions for subsidized residential projects are run by some European cities (such as Amsterdam, Vienna, Milan). These are a form of design and build competitions where a public invitation to tender is set up to select the developer for a given site on the basis of a design proposal In Vienna the system is known under the name of Bauträgerwettbewerb and was started in1995. Since then it has been steering the production of subsidized public housing of this city that is relevant both in terms of number of dwellings produced and quality achieved. They are defined as quality assurance tools, aimed at the provision of ‘affordable housing of a high standard and innovative project content’(www.tina.at).
In this kind of competitions the teams competing against each other are formed by architects and developers working together. The projects developed are then assessed on the basis of the proposed architecture, ecological approach, costs – benefits ( the building costs cannot not be higher than a prefixed level and the conditions of the tenancy and/or purchase agreement are part of the submission) and more recently social sustainability criteria (see table 2). The developer leading the winning team will be able to purchase or in some cases lease the site from the Fund for Housing Construction and Urban Renewal of the City of Vienna (wohn_fonds) and is awarded both one-time subsidies and subsidies in form of a loan to be repaid within 25 years. The subsidies are calculated by square metre of usable residential floor space produced.
As the site is given at price below current market’s level and there is a scarcity of sites available for residential development in Vienna, these kinds of competitions have been highly successful. They have as well contributed to significantly raise the quality of Viennese subsidized housing, as developers have been forced to reach good architectural proposals in order to ‘win’ the possibility of building.
Even if ‘innovation potential’ is one of the criteria considered, what is looked for is ‘especially a balance between the four main criteria’. In other words the innovative approach is only one of more equally important factors within the process that is thought to happen within the standard pre-defined setting. While this setting is good to provide incremental innovation, radical design-driven innovations remains out of reach (for an idea of the quality level achievable see Schluder 2005). Innovative projects include Bike City - a building where the parking requirements could be reduced and the money saved invested in more generous collective spaces - or more recently the ‘smart housing’ concept - a new concept for affordable housing where the city asked developers to conceive more compact floorplans and agreed to lease the sites, in order to lower the costs and raise the affordability of the dwellings. In both these cases the innovation lied in the a priori change of the set-up and not on in the design itself.
Table 2
Property developers’ competitions. Overview selection criteria
architecture urban structure, residential structure, appearance, innovation potential
economy site cost, construction cost, costs and contractual terms for occupiers, cost
relevance of building equipment
ecology building engineering, building ecology/low-impact building, residential
ecology/construction biology, free space/green space/urban ecology social
sustainability
suitability for day-to-day living, cost reduction through planning, living in communities, housing for changing needs
Source: www.tina.at
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Case study 2
Europan (multiple locations, Europe)
Europan is a well established housing competition in Europe, taking place organized every two years in form of an anonymous architectural design competitions. It concerns a variety of sites and is open to European architects under 40 and to students in their final year. Each edition focuses on specific themes related to contemporary urban conditions (such as mobility or adaptability) and how housing can react to them, enhancing existing urban qualities and creating new ones. The innovation potential of Europan is that of providing fresh and possibly radical interpretations, as it involves young architects from all over Europe as well as a network of experts who sets up the thematic frame and take part in the jury.
Especially for small towns, Europan represents a charismatic event and the possibility of reach out to a very different planning expertise than the one usually available as well as to new interpreters and their interpretations.
‘… to get the best ideas, you need architectural competitions. For a town that has problem and still has, it is an opportunity to progress, to break out of this depression by means of new but refined ideas of innovation. And when I say ‘give me a recipe’ and this recipe actually it possible to reverse the atrophy of a town, I give it a try ‘Helmut Resch
Architect, Head of planning, (Europan 2012)
One of the problematic aspects in Europan lies in the weak link between the architects and the innovation ‘care-takers’. The involved administrations and private actors are not bound to realize the winning proposals, making the transition from proposal to implementation a very open ended process. ‘In order to succeed, you need the involvement of key individuals who are committed to
implementing the concept of urban development. But of course you need to rely on all the different players in the private and public sector.’
In order for implementation to happens, a whole series of conditions not defined in the competition phase have to be clarified ex post, on the basis of the selected proposal. It is therefore not surprising that many winning submissions have not found a way into realization, as the setting might cater for innovation in terms of design, but not at the organizational level.
Case study 3
IBA (Internationale Bauausstellung), Hamburg / Competition Smart price housing
The German IBA is a recurring event that does not rely on a fixed setting, but refers to a tradition. To respond to the challenge of combining innovative housing concepts with the requirements linked to a realistic implementation process IBA Hamburg (2013) devised a specific process, based on several stages. The aim was to find and develop highly innovative housing concepts (Case Study Houses for the 21st century) that, in the tradition of the Bau Ausstellungen, could function as trendsetter and impulse for the necessary cultural, urban and landscape transformations of the city
The first phase of the process was focussed on the content of the innovative proposal, and included an open international competition for innovative housing concepts run in 2009 along the four pre-selected themes (water, hybrid and smart-price and smart material houses). In the second phase a restricted number of teams is asked to elaborate their proposals further, and the winning bids are then selected. Both for the water and hybrid housing, submitting interdisciplinary teams have to include the developer or investor from the beginning on. For the smart price and smart- material houses, the presence of a developer from the beginning on is not a must In the following phase IBA Hamburg publishes a brochure and organizes a fair, in order to attract possible investors and developers.
For the category Smart Price Houses, all teams interested in the competition were invited to participate in the international workshop, set up in collaboration with the German architecture magazine ARCH+, to discuss the possibilities and future perspectives of affordable housing. The invited contributors included experts from the field of architecture, planning, research, building industry. The results of the workshop constituted then the basis for the competition in terms of thematic approach.
The aims are consequently ‘high’. The results should be far away from standard production. Yet the financial risks will be not on the IBA side. Private developers are expected to join in the process, to finance the construction and to market the resulting dwelling. They have to buy the site, and in order to ensure that the innovative approach does not get lost, IBA is going to subsidize the extra costs that are related to the innovative aspects of the project. Besides they will be able to profit from the ‘packaging’ of the event, as the projects will receive a high level of media attention.
The strength and weakness of this process can possibly be understood by looking at how this influenced one of the submitted proposal based on a particularly radical concept.
In the selection at the end of the first phase in this category there is a particularly radical concept that proposes to provide the users with a basic multilevel structure (Grundbau), instead of a finished housing building. The users - called settlers - will build the actual dwelling on their own, making use of a set of pre-selected elements, to be provided by a do-it-yourself store. A manual compiled by the architects explains how to ‘plan’ and build the house (a first version of it was part of the submission).
The proposal represents a radical rethinking of the standard process through which collective housing is delivered. The essence of the project lies in what Jörg Leeser defines the ‘economic model’2 behind it, not in the architecture. The project is about shifting roles, and responsibilities from the producers (planner and developers) to the users, by proposing a new definition of ownership in multilevel housing. It invalidates relevant usual set ups, and routines on the
2
Possibly a more appropriate term- also with reference to innovation theory- could be ‘business model’
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developer side (as well as on the architects and users side). The effects of this changed economical model are wide reaching. New specific approaches in terms of design strategies, roles in the process and legal issues were developed beyond the initial IBA’s set up in order to make the project work.
This concept does not come with a developer attached, neither does it find one at the fair. According to the architects: ‘IBA organized a developer fair, where they introduced all the
projects to Hamburg’s developers. This was in our case not successful, as this project is the worst project he can imagine.’
In the end the head of IBA stepped in personally, and established a contact between the architects and a developer who had previously worked as an architect and that usually developed office spaces. After deciding to join the project, this developer organized the contacts with an interested do-it- yourself store that provided the required building elements to the settlers. Yet the matching between the developer and the concept took time, as the developer did not jump on the boat immediately.
Case Study 4.
Borneo Sporenburg, Amsterdam, 2000
The masterplan of Borneo Sporenburg was focused on the development of new low-rise high density housing typology to provide attractive housing for middle-class families in proximity of the city center. The municipality wanted to attract users not catered for by the standard production and that can guarantee long term attractiveness for this site on the Eastern Amsterdam Docklands From the beginning on the city focuses on a long term agenda, wanting to ‘build sustainable housing neighbourhood that you do not have to tear down after 30 years’ (extract from an interview with the director of the City Planning Department, 2005).
Even if subsidies are available, it is however up to private actors (mostly housing corporations) to carry the main financial risk connected with a non-standard housing typology. The innovative approach consequently needs to break the existing routines of private developers as well as to fulfil their expectations in terms of return of investment. The aims are consequently multidimensional: there are the specific users (middle class families with children), in order to guarantee long term social balance in the city; there are the housing corporations, who need to join the project and take over the short term financial risk involved in the ambitions of the project. In this the project mirrors the mix of public and private perspectives that need to be combined in much contemporary housing provision in Europe. The final result had to create a win-win solution, in line with the visions of the municipal planning department, as well as to guarantee the necessary return of investment for the investors and developers.
In terms of design, the solution had to combine two contradictory requirements. It had to respect a mandatory density of 100 dwellings per hectare, stipulated by the Dutch national law. And it had to fulfil the expectations in terms of ‘family living’ usually connected to low density typologies such as single-family housing or row housing. As no such solution was available on the market, the planning process had to be designed in such a way that a solution could be found.
The question ‘how to organize an invention’ is explicitly formulated within the planning team from the beginning on Not surprisingly, the first step was a design competition, yet this was not successful.
‘First we did a competition among six architects We gave them a slice of the area, ca 6 hectares and said: put your 600 houses on it keeping in mind the questions that we have put on the paper. Of course we had the secret idea that one of the six would come out with the brilliant idea and we would be finished, but this did not happen. (...) We could see one of the consequences of what we had required: everybody was thinking about the 60s and 70s estates in London, where everybody walks on these decks that are not very attractive, they do not have a feeling of being a public space. So we said, this is not what we want. We really wanted a public space, and this in the Amsterdam sense of the world is a street with bicycles’.( interview with the director of the City
Planning Department, 2005)
As the competition failed, the next steps are more complicated. A second round with an architect, a landscape architect and urban planner is set up as a work. The landscape planner came up with a novel and intriguing scheme for low rise high density housing, but it is not clear how the housing can work. An architect is directly selected by the planning department in charge to develop the housing type, while the planning department designs the public space and infrastructure. The stakeholders ( Municipality and developers’ corporation) finally decide to give it a try and a pilot project is started, the success of which made the completion of the project possible.
The actual architectural product achieved is a low-rise high density housing development based on a patio typology, with each house having an own front-door. Patio housing goes way back in housing history, but these forms of housing are typical of southern climates, and were practically
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unknown in the Netherlands. They represented here an innovation according to the fact that they were new in the specific urban context, and not in absolute terms.
Its success in doing so can be linked to a series of essential features:
- the freedom and steering power given to the managing team, in combination with their personal involvement also as planner and designer. They designed the public spaces, as usual in the Netherlands, but also saw this as a ‘hobby project’. They felt that ‘to make something new is always more attractive than to go on and on and on’ (Schaap interview).
- the fact that it was possible to pull the plug and restart in case the intermediate results were not satisfactory enough. This willingness and possibility to restart the process as the competition results were not in line is a very rare possibility, especially within public administrations.
- the fact that time was made available. A development process that is aimed at creating something new needs to make time for the unexpected.
Case study 5
Cité Manifeste, Mulhouse, France, 2005
This pilot project was built by a French non profit housing developer to test alternatives to low-quality standard housing production and to show that within the standard frame much more generous typologies can be achieved. The project was developed according to the predefined standard procedure in place in France for subsidized rental housing project of this kind (habitations à loyer modéré, HLM). It did not entail a competition, the client directly selected by the client. The typologies developed by the five architects teams provides additional ‘appropriable’ spaces that extends the dwelling surface.
Specific free spaces in the process allowed and/ or contributed to the innovative level of its output. The work of the architects was based on a program (cahier des charges) unusual in a number of ways. Next to a series of ‘practical’ pieces of information concerning issues such as time tables, budgets, norms applying to social housing and the historical background of the site, the document indicated a series of innovative aims that the client expected to achieve in the project. Yet this was done not in terms of constraints – as usual – but in an open formulation, exploring general and specific issues that the projects should relate to, and at the same time avoiding the fixing of a strict functional or spatial program. What emerged in the brief is a specific focus on three aspects: life quality and comfort, the possibility of evolution and modularity of the spaces, and the link between public and private spaces. The result is a very open programmatic document, concentrated not on the quantitative aspects of the project but on a series of qualities or attributes deemed relevant to achieve the overall aim of the project. The architects are asked to develop, through their projects, a position on these issues.
The normative requirements the proposals had to fulfil are equal to any other project of this kind. Still, the total buildable surface per plot is variable – and can therefore be raised, as long as the budget per flat is kept. This allowed both the production of the central innovative proposition of all the projects (appropriable spaces) and the possibility to control the budget by raising the number of flats built and achieving better economies of scale. Usually the price of the site is calculated on the maximum buildable surface, and appropriable spaces such as the one proposed here represent a loss of fully usable surface and lower the return of investment.
One of the few constraints of the brief was that the involved architects had to collaborate intensively with each other to achieve a coherent ensemble was. Yet the fact that this collaboration actually took place can be connected to the selection procedure, done by direct commissioning by the director of the housing cooperative, on the basis of a list provided by the leading architect, Jean Nouvel. Some kind of shared background among the architects could be thus expected from the start. Further more, the fact that the project was directly commissioned to the architects, and not based on a competition procedure, is explicitly named by some of the involved architects (Poitevin, Lacaton) as a relevant positive factor contributing to the success of the operation, as it gave the group more freedom to interact and exchange.
In the project setting the architects played a central role in the innovative perspective, as they had to find a different approach to solve what is a ‘usual’ problem. Their role corresponded to the traditional understanding within the profession of what design oriented architects do: find creative, out of the box design solutions. Yet they had to have as well specific skills to cope with the collaborative set up of the process as well as to make sure that their proposal could match the strict budget requirements. The project was far away from a routine assignment, it required personal commitment beyond the fee, and enthusiasm.
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Abernathy, W.J. and Clark, K.B.(1985) Innovation: mapping the wind of creative destruction, in: Research policy vol.14 n.1. pp. 3-22.
Forlati, S. (2013) Innovation in collective housing. Theoy/Practice/Gudelines. Phd Thesis, Vienna University of Technology (publication in process).
Europan (2011) Theme Europan. 12 Adaptable city. Paris: Europan.
Internationale Bauausstellung Hamburg (2009) Smart Price Houses. Schön und preiswert bauen.
Auslobung von Modellvorhaben der Iba Hamburg Gmbh.
Hamburg: IBA Hamburg GmbH.
Kreiner, K (2010) Designing architectural competitions: Balancing multiple matters of concern.
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Rogers, E.M. (1983) Diffusion of innovation. 3rdedn. New York NY: Free Press.
Schluder M. (2005) 10 Jahre Bauträgerwettbewerbe - Veränderungen Im Wohnbau. Wiener Wohnbauforschungstage. Workshop 2. Vienna: Wiener Wohnbauforschung. [Online]. Available at: http://www.wohnbauforschung.at/Downloads/Praesentation_Schluder.pdf. (Accessed: 16.02.2013)
Sieverts, T. (2011) The Europan Challenge for young architects. Interview, in: Forlati S., Isopp A., Piber A. (eds.): The wonderland manual for emerging architects Vienna New York: Springer. pp..304-307.
Van Hippel, E. (2002) Horizontal innovation networks- by and for users, paper, MIT Sloan School of Management.
