Cooperative Conditions

Recent cooperative housing projects in Zurich have become icons of architectural design internationally. But what makes innovation in nonprofit housing possible within a largely for-profit real estate market? What has enabled Zurich's lasting commitment to nonspeculation for more than one hundred years? How does built architecture partake in these processes and how does its partaking expand the definition of architecture? Cooperative Conditions answers these questions in a systematic investigation of eight conditions that have allowed Zurich's cooperative housing to thrive under the principles of public benefit, or Gemeinnützigkeit . By analyzing specific financial and regulatory instruments, their history, and their intersection with the built environment, this primer shows that the exceptional quality in Zurich's cooperative housing is possible because of, not despite, the commitment to nonspeculation.

Auteur
Rebekka Hirschberg ist Architektin, Forscherin und Aktivistin im österreichischen Kollektiv wohnlabor.

Texte du rabat

Zurich is a center of global finance. Its financialized real estate influences not only the rise of rent and property prices but also methods of extracting value from housing and residents. And yet, Switzerland's largest city has a century-old commitment to public benefit and nonprofit housing, implemented through a cooperative model of sharing resources. Even more strikingly, cooperatives have been at the forefront of architectural and urban design innovation for a broad mix of uses and household formations. Eight specific conditions have enabled a long-standing commitment to nonspeculation within Zurich's for-profit real estate market. Through its original reading of contemporary and historic projects, Cooperative Conditions makes tangible the interplay between architectural, regulatory, and financial instruments in housing. In doing so, aspects of Zurich's cooperative model become transferrable to other places.