HausWirtschaft is a participatory housing cooperative in Vienna's rapidly developing Nordbahnviertel (North Railway Quarter), combining living and working in a radically mixed-use building within the city's subsidised housing programme. The project represents one of Vienna's most innovative approaches to cooperative housing, pushing the boundaries of what subsidised development can achieve in terms of community engagement, spatial flexibility, and social integration.
The building integrates residential apartments with shared workspaces, community rooms, a neighbourhood café, cultural programme spaces, and commercial units, all governed through a cooperative structure that gives residents and users direct democratic control over the building's management and programming. This radical mix of uses creates a micro-neighbourhood within a single building, fostering the kind of spontaneous social interaction and mutual support that characterises Vienna's most successful residential communities.
HausWirtschaft emerged from a participatory design process in which future residents worked alongside architects to develop the building concept, floor plans, and governance structure. This co-design approach ensured that the building responds to the actual needs and aspirations of its community rather than assumptions about how people want to live and work. The cooperative continues to evolve its programming based on resident input, maintaining the participatory spirit beyond the construction phase.
The project is particularly significant as a demonstration that Vienna's subsidised housing system, already one of Europe's most successful, can accommodate experimental and community-led approaches alongside its large-scale conventional production. HausWirtschaft has attracted attention from housing researchers and cooperative developers across Europe as a model for how participatory cooperatives can deliver affordable, socially rich, mixed-use urban housing within existing public funding frameworks.