A place for people - apartment housing

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 1995 by Peter Blundell Jones

Graz has often been fertile ground in which seeds from the outside world were propagated, but these were usually mixed and modified. In Hubert Riess's case the external influence has been Ralph Erskine, and remarkably unadulterated it has been too. Riess is originally from north-west Austria near the Bavarian border, and went to Graz to study architecture. Halfway through his studies in 1972 he was working on a project for an Alpine hotel when he discovered as a precedent Erskine's ski hotel at Borgafjall of 1950, one of the most exuberant of the architect's early works.(1) Erskine became his idol: 'from this moment I was crazy about architecture - who is this man?'(2) In 1979 he managed to obtain a grant for postgraduate studies in Sweden, where he met Erskine again, and also worked with Jan Gezelius and Arne Klingborg. In 1980 he began to work for Erskine, at first informally, then with increasing commitment.

Returning to spend Christmas in Graz, he learned of the Wienerberge competition and suggested that Erskine be among those invited. The Erskine scheme won, and Hubert Riess became job architect in charge of its realisation. He has since become a well-known housing architect in Graz.

He acknowledges having learned much from Erskine on the social organisation of housing and response to a site(3) but distances himself somewhat from his master's formal freedom. This is partly a question of temperament, but Riess also believes that for economy the disciplines of construction must play a strong role in social housing, and he looks forward to prefabrication processes to bridge the gap between the expensive one-off craftsmanship of traditional building and the oppressive repetition of the mid-twentieth century factory.

Tannhofgrunde was built on a substantial virgin site in a narrow valley at Mariatroost on the western edge of Graz, divided into two parts by a stream and tramline. Riess won the housing competition against eight others in 1983, and built the first phase on the east side with a series of buildings around small courts. There is an evident hierarchy of spaces, from the public central green and picturesque lake, through more private passageways into the enclosed courts surrounded by groups of house-like structures. The virtue of the development rests largely in the exceptional quality of place which results from the sensitive site planning.

The second phase, completed in 1990, shows the more experienced Riess of a few years later, It is divided from the adjacent third phase (given to the second prize winners) by a compulsory fire-service road, leaving an approximately triangular plot. Cars are lost in underground garages (as with most of the other housing developments considered in this issue), both in this and the earlier phase. The social unit is a court enclosed by an L-shaped building to north and west, which is repeated in varied and eroded forms. Again the main form of dwelling is the single-storey flat, those at ground floor having small private gardens to south and west. In a gesture that changes the scale of the whole for the better, some dwellings in the north wing are turned into maisonettes through addition of a third floor. This is set back from the garden side to look attic-like across the roofs, and treated as a roof-like element, clad in horizontal boarding. The upper flats have external stairs, which are seen by Riess both as declarations of individual territory and as an important source of architectural articulation. These descend into a series of alleyways connecting the courts, which are bridged over rhythmically by the corners of the building. Everyone must come and go along them and they are therefore well animated, but the decorated porches and private areas of planting give them nonetheless an intimate feel. The open courts beyond the gardens are social spaces with children's play equipment, and creches or community rooms are housed there in single-storey cabins.

It was a famous part of Erskine's programme at Byker in the mid-1970s that inhabitants be consulted and their wishes accommodated, but such ideas were rife in Graz long before his first visit, being planted as early as 1972 at the 'Styrian Autumn' festival by Lucien Kroll and Christian Hunziker, and developed in a very radical way by Eilfried Huth (see AR December 1988, November 1993). There was a period when particular dwelling requirements - a large piece of family furniture, for example - became the basis for all kinds of projections and irregularities in an untidy architecture. Riess doubts the efficacy of this policy because of the high costs and the production problems, and it seems generally to have fallen out of favour. For Riess, effective participation is much more a question of giving people choice within set limits, of allowing some flexibility of internal layout, for example, but also of creating and turning over to them certain defined territories in outdoor space - for example the planting beds along the alleyways - which they then feel obliged to reinterpret. It makes them take possession quickly and helps establish the community.