VinziRast am Land offers homeless people “ground under their feet”
a former luxury hotel is converted into a housing and employment project for the inclusion of homeless people. around the centre of the project, permaculture-farming, more and more functions settled in the course of the project development. architecture as process for with-and-through-one-another / The hybrid concept at VinziRast am Land shows what architecture can achieve when it identifies and exploits opportunities beyond the drawing board.
Regional
Austria
municipality alland
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-12-31
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Vinzenzgemeinschaft St. Stephan (& gaupenraub+/-) Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: alexander Last name of representative: hagner Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Function: general planners Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: hackinger kai stadtbahnbogen 2u Town: vienna Postal code: A-1130 Country: Austria Direct Tel:+43 1 5225050 E-mail:office@gaupenraub.net Website:http://gaupenraub.net/
Vinzenzgemeinschaft St. Stephan is a non-profit volunteer organization fighting marginalization also with its latest project, VinziRast am Land.
as a new home, living space and workplace, VinziRast am Land, launched in 2019, offers homeless people a perspective of getting their feet back on the ground 30 km south of vienna. the heart of this hybrid project is the transformation of the vacant lot of a former luxury hotel into an agricultural farm according to the principle of permaculture. in addition, many other functions were developed in a collaborative process: in the search for opportunities & potentials, the structural site as well as the surroundings - from the open spaces of the property to the particularities of the different neighborhoods - were investigated. through the resulting identification of as many connecting points as possible, a place was created that, despite its target group (people in homelessness), addresses the entire spectrum of society, particularly young people.
this is true not only after the construction is completed. because doing things together brings people together, the construction process was designed to involve not only people from the target group but also neighbors, volunteers, students, companies, etcetera. this also made it possible to dismantle entire buildings such as the empty glass house in st. pölten, 60 km away, or the former barn in kamptal, 80 km away, and to rebuild them/ give them a second life in the VinziRast am Land. in this process, a chicken coop, greenhouses for fruit & vegetables and the associated vegetable box network, a farm store, seminar & event rooms, a catering kitchen, a hotel for people who otherwise cannot afford a vacation, a dormitory for school class excursions, various workshops, recurring farm markets and many community areas indoors & outdoors for mixed living together have already been created or are still being created in addition to permaculture agriculture.
reduce homelessness / right to housing
reduce inequalities / inclusive society
agricultural system modeled from natural ecosystems
circular constructing systems / circular use concepts
responsible consumption & production / green energie
the hybrid project approach both with regard to the construction process AND the overall concept pursues several goals in terms of sustainable development: first and foremost, the goal of an inclusive and thus fairer society, in that VinziRast am Land brings homeless people from the margins to the center of life via a wide variety of temporal & content-related settings in the hardware, the spatial program, the structure, etc., where they are enabled to participate fully on an equal footing. from the pilot project VinziRast-mittendrin (in which students and formerly homeless people live and work together), which was realized in 2013, we as an association and we as an architectural office have learned that doing things together can form a community. if people are very different, talking to each other helps - but it helps much more to work on something together, to overcome differences and prejudices. so, VinziRast am Land was not only developed with the goal of creating a community employment project of the future, but designed from the very beginning with the goal of involving as many young people as possible, because they are our future. an example of this is the chicken coop project: a vacant barn in the kamptal valley was dismantled with the help of homeless people, teachers and students and rebuilt at the project site with over 50 members of the nearby htl-mödling and adapted for use as a chicken coop. the project was not only about circular building, the (further) use of wood or the learning effect of dismantling and rebuilding wooden buildings, but also about the possibility of overcoming stigmas through the cooperation of students and homeless people.
in this way - but also with every other part of the project - VinziRast am Land actually pursues all 17 objectives of the sustainable development goals from the very first day of project planning, and does so despite enormously limited financial resources.
the example of the process of building a "new" chicken coop, described above, so excited a manufacturer of pv modules from the south of austria that he donated pv modules to cover the entire southern half of the roof. today, not only do 200 chickens live there and provide the permaculture areas with the necessary fertilizer through their manure, supply the eggs for the farm store or the restaurant in vienna belonging to VinziRast-mittendrin, but a large part of the electricity for the project is now also generated here. this special barn building - especially due to its history of origin and therefore also very particular in its architecture - then promptly became the trigger for success in another project part of VinziRast am Land -> the farm:
at the annual meeting of the "fqp-forum qualitätspflaster" we had the opportunity to ask the approx. 40 people present for support of our project. due to our presentation of the example of the origin of the chicken coop, the members of the fqp were so enthusiastic that they not only agreed to provide all the materials necessary for a high-quality paved courtyard area, but also developed the idea of producing this project part with apprentices from styria, vienna and switzerland. so three more weekly work assignments with young people in this homeless project followed. the result: another chance to effectively counter stigmatisation and a beautifully paved community courtyard - in an agricultural "courtyard project" as a center for the coming together of all - and that just as much at its creation as in the future! the chance that the idea of lively courtyard festivals or that of regular weekly markets can also be implemented increased many times over with this high-quality execution and the story behind it.
over the last decades, the location with its luxury hotel was reserved exclusively and thus exclusionary for the rich fringe of society until it went bankrupt. the primary target group of the new project VinziRast am Land is also assigned to the social fringe, but diametrically opposed to its predecessor. As such, an occasion for us to radically turn the exclusionary aspect of its predecessor into its opposite -> as a maximally inclusive project. Everything from the software/the conception of the space program and the organization to the hardware/the architecture inside and outside was formulated so that it wouldn’t matter where you came from and where you are going for the period of time in which you participated in the project. Whether you stop by for a coffee in the community kitchen or the snack station or you have been living there for two years and are employed in agriculture should make no difference. People should be able to meet each other everywhere, ideally do something together or even just talk to each other, regardless of whether they are volunteering, just passing by for a visit, or living there altogether. For this purpose, appropriate interior and exterior spaces were created by, for example, radically gutting everything that was a barrier or threshold in the former existence. It was precisely this motivation and the subsequent intervention that turned the original disadvantages of the different spaces in the ugly existing building into a great advantage: the great diversity of the users is now met by the diversity of the spatial offers and at the same time the relationship to the community and its possibilities remains because now structurally/spatially everything is connected to everything without restricting the need for individual retreat.
Community as an offer and – although a social project for the homeless – never as a constraint!
our implementation of projects for homeless people (or generally for groups of the so-called “social fringe”) over the last 20 years has unfortunately proven time and again that they are vehemently rejected by the so-called “majority society” – especially if they are supposed to take place in the neighborhood -> “definitely not in my backyard!"
experience has taught us that proper communication of upcoming social projects, especially to the neighborhood, is of the utmost importance. although the VinziRast am Land property is in an isolated location/without direct neighbors, we started the project in the then vacant building and in the overgrown outdoor space with a flea market & festival and invited everyone from the surrounding area and neighboring communities. this created the ideal setting to get to know each other, but also to deal with fears and anxieties in a relevant and constructive way. the result was not only no resistance, but also a list of people who wanted to help. this setting was the first chance for neighbors/people from the surrounding area to at least proactively help shape a social project that they might not have necessarily wanted. thus, from that moment on, the development process also received essential inputs that make up today's hybrid and thus the innumerable offers to the surrounding area. with this resulting diversity of the project's points of contact to the outside world, it very quickly became an important building block in the surrounding slowly grown rural fabric. the majority of the volunteers involved in the construction and still today do not come from vienna, 30 kilometers away, as expected or hoped, but from the immediate surroundings. it is communicated far too little in the creation of new social projects that they can also provide opportunity for people to not have to stand idly by and watch the misery of the world everywhere, but to open up a field of activity in which one can take effective action against grievances.
many aspects of this question have already been mentioned in the previous descriptions. in summary, however, the most important point is that people in homelessness or from other marginalised groups suffer severely from exclusion, which makes their hopeless condition even more entrenched. For this reason, it was an important goal of all those involved in the development of the project to design VinziRast am Land as a place where as many different people as possible could interact - as a three-dimensional network node, so to speak. this led to the necessity of designing the project as a hybrid/as a maximally heterogeneous project with the most diverse addressees. one tool for this was the multi-layered spatial program on the one hand, but also the strategy of starting as early as possible. however, this requires a complete rethink in architecture & construction production. the classic chronological processing of performance phases in planning and construction aims exclusively at a completion date or the opening of the project in order to finally be able to fulfill the purpose of the project. as a result, these conventionally realised undertakings not only lose a lot of time (it is always years), but above all an enormous number of opportunities for participation. However, "inclusion projects" - and projects for marginalised groups must be thought of in a maximally inclusive way - live from the participation of as many people as possible, preferably many young people, because they are the future.
without a doubt, it is difficult, especially for professionals in building development and implementation, to involve external and non-professionals. but the quality of the project definitely benefits, the people for whom a project is created definitely benefit, and so do all those who are otherwise necessary for the project (employees, volunteers, customers, visitors and even passers-by), and that years earlier.
much has already been written on this point. immediately after it was decided that the former luxury hotel was to be transformed into a housing & employment project for homeless people, we formed a project development group. it consisted of interested and experienced members of the association Vinzenzgemeinschaft St. Stephan (which was the building owner and operates the project), people from our architectural office gaupenraub+/- and external consultants who were repeatedly called in depending on the focus of the meetings. in the course of this open process of project development, the content of the project was expanded more and more and the number of people involved also increased. this made individual parts of the project possible in the highest quality of execution, which we would never have dared to dream of at the beginning - especially since the whole project had to be financed through donations and voluntary work.
this open process has meant that new supporters have always been able to take on the role of partners and have thus made a much greater difference than if they were merely sponsors.
The Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW) is another example: after 17 years, the permanent exhibition on Austrian architecture was redesigned and the displays of the old exhibition found their way into the VinziRast am Land as furnishings for the future courtyard shop. but that's not all: the new permanent exhibition in the AzW "hot questions - cold storage" takes up important questions of the future and in the part of the question "how do we want to live?" VinziRast am Land is exhibited, although it was not yet "finished" at the start of the exhibition - apparently we are still in the early stages of realising that good architecture could be much more about the process of getting there than about the finished building.
most projects that aim to address homelessness provide a place to sleep. if these projects are good, the place to sleep can become a home for the person. this is a huge achievement, because we are convinced of the statement "a home is not everything - but everything is nothing without a home". But if we now turn back to the first part of this sentence, the question arises of what happens next when a person who was homeless now has a home. the vast majority of homeless institutions lack this much-needed perspective. however, we all more or less draw our self-esteem from our relationships and also from what we do. especially in the context of people who are "damaged", whose health is physically and/or psychologically affected, the projects designed for them absolutely need perspectives in themselves. people are capable of enduring a lot, especially if there is hope for an end to a bad condition or at least for improvement. therefore, it is simply not enough to only have accommodation as a goal. Refugee camps, emergency accommodation, overnight shelters, homeless shelters, etc. are certainly necessary emergency measures - but at least in europe and other rich areas of the world, we have to overcome these emergency situations in general. it is not enough to want to counter homelessness with a place to sleep! people need perspectives and a lot of that starts with participation.
VinziRast am Land is geared precisely to this. those who come there today may know that this project is about combating need, but they don't see it. what they see is a friendly, welcoming place with many different people and offers and a lot of togetherness.
again, see also the description above. VinziRast am Land is the first social project for homeless people that pursues such a holistic goal. here, lack was not answered with lack, thus perpetuating stigmatisation and downward spirals, as is unfortunately still common in so many social projects. we have found out that architecture, if it is oriented towards lack and is poorly located/cheaply built/simply poor, virtually ossifies hardship - in other words, minimises any prospect of opportunities or perspectives; but also that we can turn the tide with architecture, especially in the area of marginalisation: on the one hand for those affected, against whose hardship our design is supposed to be directed, but at the same time also for those involved in the fight against hardship, because we can animate them to participate with the best and most beautiful architecture. conclusion: we must by no means build thresholds! on the contrary: architecture for disadvantaged people must be even more sensitive to the special framework conditions of the target group and for this reason must be better, more beautiful and have more functions. only in this way there is a chance that the users will be able to help themselves at some point and that the project will even be able to pay for itself at some point. in any case, our project shows how much attractiveness works and how important it is for "marginal group projects" to be magnetic, because then the "marginal" falls away.
Perhaps many people recognise and even know this, but unfortunately there are almost no examples of this in practice. the fact that VinziRast am Land is built and can be visited means that the demand for high-quality projects, especially for the poorest, no longer remains in the realm of pious wishes - it is now a built invitation to imitate - if we are really serious about a fairer europe!
the approach is professionalism. for us as an architectural office, for example, this means that in the first step we have to take a very close look at the situation and especially at the people for whom we want to plan. in the case of members of marginalised groups, we will then notice that there are special needs and also special difficulties compared to "normal" building tasks. if we then remain professional, this means that we prepare ourselves for a larger task and we need more of everything we know and can do. this brings us to the first conflict: the building sites for marginal group projects are worse, the budgets are lower, there is less remuneration for us, etc. there remains a lack everywhere. unfortunately, there is still no consensus in our society that more needs to be invested in working with the "weaker" (see the poor pay in the care sector, the health sector, but also in the school system, kindergartens ...), so our architectural office cannot afford marginal group projects either, especially since we want to work highly professionally on every construction task. the fact that we still work on them again and again is due to the fact that we do not participate in open competitions. to compensate for this, we use a joyful method especially for building tasks in connection with disadvantaged people: we go in search of potentials and opportunities, because even in every context, no matter how bad it is, there are aspects that can be built on. we do not set to work as problem solvers (as architects are usually thought to be) but as specialists in identifying possibilities. finding points of contact is the prerequisite for developing symbionts from parasites (which buildings generally always are, since they take away space and light, suck up infrastructures, etc.). in the last 20 years or so, we have learned to take the headwind out of the sails and sometimes even turn it into support.
many elements of the approach to and impact of VinziRast am Land have been described in the previous sections, which can be applied as best practice. especially when it comes to appropriate methods to counter marginalisation with built projects, the project we submitted and the associated process have proven to be exemplary since the start until today. for example, the dismantling of two existing buildings elsewhere and their re-erection in our project. this circular approach avoided a lot of waste and did not consume any new resources for our building needs. the collective work that this concept of dismantling and rebuilding has required has brought people together, eliminated stigma, helped young people advance in their education, acquired further support for the overall project, produced a solar power plant, etc. the learning from this fragment of the overall project itself: building in existing structures is not only one of the most sustainable climate-neutral forms of space production, but the structure does not even have to be available on site, we can harvest it elsewhere. the stories that emerge from this approach are very enriching - on multiple levels. and the result for the barn, for example, is - at least according to some experts - the most beautiful chicken coop in austria and probably even beyond.
VinziRast am Land as a whole is the sum of many such building blocks, each of which can be added elsewhere and also in a different context and of course in a different form - the important thing is the willingness to make a special contribution if there is to be imitation.
having been twice in los angeles invited by the goethe institute L.A. to do research on homelessness I studied, what impact a problem could have on society if there is no idea how to handle it. before there is a chance to implement the necessary amount of effective measures, a fundamental shift in the mindset of the general public is needed. without a radical change of consciousness in society, there is little chance of improvement in L.A. - which has catastrophic consequences and not only for those affected by homelessness.
in europe, or at least in our context of central europe, we still perceive a great capacity for empathy in society. we consider this to be the basic prerequisite for effectively countering marginalisation, which is growing here too. however, due to the aforementioned growth of the problem in europe, greater efforts are now needed here as well. we need gratifying, motivating efforts to counteract this if we want to maintain social peace here, because even european democracies cannot withstand growing inequality without a positive perspective.
Projects like VinziRast am Land cannot save the world, but they are proof that many of the prejudices that we have developed do not hold if we deal differently with "the others". things and people are not what they seem to be to us, but rather it is about how we deal with them - in our respective professions, but also quite simply as people.
