Cooperative Conditions: A Primer on Architecture, Finance, and Regulation

Seminar Architecture and the City II (056-0002-01)
Organizer: MAS
Lecturers: Dr. Anne Kockelkorn, Dr. Susanne Schindler, Marie-Anne Lerjen
 

[pic-nolightbox-20200316-143905-z495.jpg]Students in conversation with Raphael Frei and Andreas Sonderegger, Pool Architects, February 20, 2020. Photo: Sanna Kattenbeck.

QUESTION
Over the course of the past twenty years, Zurich’s housing cooperatives have realized a series of impressive experiments in the architecture of living together. In so doing, they have challenged established notions of what, or who, constitutes a household. Recent projects include dwellings for more than fifty residents, micro-units clustered around shared space, and apartments for living and working or for short-term lease—to name just a few.

But what makes possible these new forms of living together which are both nonprofit in perpetuity (gemeinnützig) and of such high quality architecturally? Who owns the land, on what terms, and as a result of which historic precedents? Why do banks consider Zurich’s cooperatives, even though they are committed to non-speculation, to be excellent borrowers? What are the interest rates and who fixed them when and how? In a world increasingly shaped by financialized real-estate investments and the resulting socio-economic inequality, these are key questions if we are to imagine alternative ways of living together.

RESEARCH PROJECT
Students’ work is part of the research project «Cooperative Conditions: A Primer on Architecture, Finance, and Regulation» and basis for a Research Station exhibited at the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale «How will we live together?», on view from August 29 to November 29, 2020 in the Arsenale.

GOALS
By considering more than one-hundred years of cooperative housing in Zurich, the seminar seeks to understand not only the architectural and urban characteristics of this housing, but their financial, legal, and political-cultural conditions. By considering architectural form in tandem with the history of a political economy, we aim to gain greater latitude for architectural agency in in the twenty-first century.

STRUCTURE
Through a series of conversations with architects, cooperative housing developers, as well as decision makers from banks, pension funds, and public authorities, students develop a basic understanding of cooperative housing through the lenses of architectural, urban, and economic history. In a second phase, students visit archives and synthesize existing scholarship. In a third phase, students are responsible for one of eight Dossiers, each dedicated to a single regulatory instrument and its interplay with architectural and urban form.