Suburbia. Leben im amerikanischen Traum

Description

How did the American dream of suburbia end up in Austria? The model of the detached single-family home was adopted with enthusiasm. The associated dependence on the car was accepted. However, the single-family home rarely appears in combination with large-scale, uniformly developed settlements. Austria has long been the country of house builders, shaped by personal sweat equity and highly individually designed living dreams. Private homes are built as a testimony to individual life stories, personal taste, and, not least, financial strength. The cultural successors to single-family homes are shopping centers and business parks as building blocks of an alarming urban sprawl. This makes the question all the more urgent as to how we can bring the huge stock of single-family homes into a good future. Successful examples should be encouraging, they should show what architecture can achieve and that the potential is far from exhausted.