3 – 2017

Affordable Living

An exercise in mental arithmetic: in 1923, following the winning competition project by Otto and Werner Pfister, Enge train station in Zurich would have cost 1 700 000 Swiss francs, the SBB estimated the cost of a “practical project” at around 800 000 francs. Thus “pure and applied beauty” was worth 700 000 francs or 46 per cent to them, an enraged Mart Stam wrote in the magazine ABC. According to Stam’s socialist logic this sum could have been used for the common good. For instance in the form of “the loveliest square metres of automobile highway”(!).
In the field of building today the relationships are the other way around. Those who, after the umpteenth round of savings cuts, still manage to reduce the building clients’ or investors’ return by one percent regard themselves as fortunate. This one percent is then quickly spent on a somewhat more coarse grain render, larger windows or better balcony railings. Architecture gives the general public beauty; this does not represent more than just a very thin coat for earning money. The additional value generated by building rarely benefits those that need it most, the residents or the users. Therefore why not simply build more cheaply?
Where the additional value created in this way is not added to the return, it becomes interesting. It can be converted into social or architectural capital (in the best of cases into both). However, joint capital does not arise by itself, and economizing alone is not enough. Each of the examples presented in this issue is the result of a special commitment that had to initiated, consolidated and developed in what was often a lengthy process. Negotiation processes require social resources. And such “investments” are also indispensable for successful architecture.
Most of the examples shown in this issue have in common the logic of the niche. To ensure that a conceptual added value is achieved there has to be a lack of more profitable alternatives, or the site has to be removed from the reach of the market in some other way. The result can be that housing unexpectedly becomes affordable and offers more than “pure and applied beauty”. Also in the lower, single figure per cent area.