Arch+ Agency for Better Living documents the Austrian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, placing Vienna's municipal social housing model in direct dialogue with Rome's grassroots self-organised communities to ask what affordable housing could look like today.
About This Book
The 2025 Austrian Pavilion takes housing as its central subject, structured as a productive tension between two radically different approaches: Vienna's top-down tradition of state-led social housing and Rome's bottom-up informal activism. Curated by Michael Obrist, Sabine Pollak, and Lorenzo Romito, the exhibition and this accompanying volume ask whether these models can inform each other — and whether a synthesis might begin to address the acute shortage of affordable housing facing cities today. Published as a special issue of ARCH+, the book works across essays, discussion formats, and infographics to give the argument both analytical depth and visual clarity. Essential reading for anyone working on housing policy, urban design, or the political dimensions of architecture.
Key Features
- 216 pages of essays, discussion formats, and infographics on housing models and urban self-organisation
- Edited by Anh-Linh Ngo, Michael Obrist, Sabine Pollak, and Lorenzo Romito
- Case studies contrasting Vienna's social housing system with Rome's civil society activism
- Published by Spector Books, 2025
What You'll Discover
- How Vienna's municipal housing tradition and Rome's informal civic activism represent opposing — and potentially complementary — responses to the affordable housing crisis
- What a synthesis of top-down state planning and bottom-up self-organisation might produce for contemporary urban housing
- The terms on which good housing and a better quality of life are being debated in European cities right now
- An argument about architecture's agency — its capacity to act as a force for social change rather than merely a reflection of existing conditions
About the Author
The volume is edited by Anh-Linh Ngo alongside curators Michael Obrist, Sabine Pollak, and Lorenzo Romito, who together conceived the Austrian Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 216
- Dimensions: 23 x 29 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783959059152
- Publisher: Spector Books
- Publication Date: 2025
Perfect For: Architects, urbanists, housing researchers, and policy thinkers engaged with social housing, affordable housing design, and the politics of the built environment.