The Sunflower Houses

 

The Sunflower Houses, 

a walkable neighborhood of gardens

Located in Wildgarten, a new neighborhood in Vienna’s Meidling district, VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Architects: Arenas Basabe Palacios, Buschina & Partner

Year design began: 2015, year constructed: 2022

Photographs:Kurt Hoerbst

Lead Architects: Enrique Arenas, Luis Basabe, Luis Palacios

The Sunflower Houses are a single and multifamily mixed use housing development that evolved out of a design commission for 11 blocks of the city with 82 dwelling units.  The units consist of 3 scales of units: small scale units of single family and duplexes, and two sizes of multi family dwellings.  There is also a historical building and area that has become the community center.  The lower part of some of the multifamily buildings is for retail space. 

The character of the development is consistent in style, colors, and materials for a cohesive design.  There is also private and shared garden space and a walking system as the development is largely pedestrian.  There is shared car and bicycle parking. 

Each unit is built around its garden facing it to the south with south facing windows and yellow colored ceramic building materials.  So, the beautiful sunlight reaches all the rooms and allows for heat gain for the interiors of the buildings and helps with heating in the predominantly cool environment.  The design creates a sense of place for the people living there with the style and arrangement of the buildings and the natural gardens at each unit.  The gardens include water infiltration, porous paving, and native plantings that require little care and are rather wild looking. 

The layout of the buildings around various gardens creates social space as the front doors are arranged the same direction and the walkways weave through the design from dwellings to places the people want to go. 

The mixture of the types of housing also creates social space allowing for differing age groups and time of life experience.  The use of retail space in the ground floor of the multi family buildings also adds to the sense of place and the use of the neighborhood as people can live and work and shop in the same area.  It creates the sense of a true community instead of just a housing development.

The natural materials and native gardens connect the people to nature and help to garner their longing to connect to nature and the land.  There is much opportunity for the people to connect to one another, the land, and their surrounding communities.

 

Further Reading:

https://www.archdaily.com/994206/the-sunflower-houses-arenas-basabe-palacios-plus-buschina-and-partner?ad_source=search&ad_medium=projects_tab

https://arquitecturaviva.com/works/proyecto-residencial-wildgarten-en-viena#:~:text=The%20Sunflower%20Houses%20(Die%20Sonnenblumenh%C3%A4user,neutral%20spaces%2C%20flexible%20and%20reconfigurable.

https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/new-wildgarten-district-sunflower-houses-arenas-basabe-palacios