Pop-Up Housing

Urban areas and growing cities such as Vienna are experiencing an increasing demand for temporary housing solutions. The reasons for requiring affordable temporary accommodation are manifold and span from the planned (educational training) to the unforeseen (natural disasters, migration). These forms of living should also be designed to be as sustainable as possible regarding the materials used, power supply or reusability.

These living concepts must be easily integrated into (currently) unused urban spaces and must allow waste-free living with low energy and water consumption. The unique feature of this WWTF-funded project lies in the consideration of temporary housing solutions as spaces for social learning and experimentation. These “interim solutions” become new elements of local innovation systems, offering a wide scope of possibilities to explore, apply and evaluate new technical and social concepts. In order to meet diverse needs and requirements involved in designing forward-looking temporary living models, technical, scientific, spatial planning and social science disciplines collaborated intensively. Using the example of the city of Vienna, six different models for different applications were be designed and tested with the help of different scientific methods, among others in the field of sustainability assessment and technology assessment. Another important part of the project dealt with the possible implementation of these models, which was discussed with various decision-makers in Vienna.

Within the framework of the project, the ITA closer examined the aspect of temporary housing as a space for innovative forms of interaction, integration and learning. For this we made use of methodological approaches from the field of constructive TA. Consequently, modern pop-up environments can be used as strategic development spaces in which the preferences of the residents, the advantages and disadvantages of the applied solutions and the unintended side-effects and risks can be detected at an early stage.