Red Emma Housing in Vienna
Updated 13 July 2026 + 25 Feb 2021
Design: ARGE Gerner Gerner Plus AllesWirdGut
Location: Vienna, Austria
Photos: tschinkersten
Affordable housing, social diversity, and ecological innovation: Red Emma takes its very name from the respect of what was there before it. An ensemble of timber-hybrid housing buildings with a strong commitment to not just ecological but also social sustainability.
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The extensive timber-hybrid residential development is among the first projects of its kind in Austria. Comprising 360 residential units in total, Red Emma stands not only for sustainable construction, but also for a vibrant culture of community living.
In creating everyday-usable-residential quality, the project, planned as an accommodable quarter, is informed by three core ideas: First, the design provides for a reduced building depth, so that the more stretched-out, yet compact residential units each get a larger façade, which, on the inside, translates into the possibility of partitioning off a flexible-use extra room.
Second, the balconies in the Red Emma estate are built into fully functional green open-air spaces which, with windbreak panels and planter troughs, are an ideal outdoor extension of the own four walls.
Third, barrier-free accessible areas were created on the ground-floor level, which, with a mix of cultural, social, and commercial offers, importantly contributes to urban neighborly relations.
In addition to public institutions such as the local adult-education center, a kindergarten, an event venue, or a flower and a grocery store, the plinth area with a uniform four-meter ceiling height also accommodates rooms for communal use with washing facilities and access to open spaces. Each floor of the slender structures in hybrid-timber construction also has a multipurpose room for collective use as well as a separately rentable coworking space.
On top of the buildings, there are freely accessible roof gardens, which are informed by local agriculture in typology and use and fully compensate for the development’s built-up footprint. Pergolas with photovoltaic modules offer weather-protected retreats and possibilities for urban gardening: what is watered with grey water here can later be sold as socially sustainable produce in the ground-floor store.
Completion date: 2026
Photography: tschinkersten
The Red Emma is a potato cultivar. Inspired by its red-skinned namesake, which used to be cultivated on these grounds, the concept of the residential quarter situated in the 22nd district of Vienna places the focus on regional and social rootedness.
In creating gender-sensitive and everyday-usable-residential quality, the project, planned as an accommodable quarter, is informed by three core ideas: First, the design provides for a reduced building depth, so that the more stretched-out, yet compact residential units each get a larger façade, which, on the inside, translates into the possibility of partitioning off a flexible-use extra room.
Second, the balconies in the Red Emma estate are built into fully functional green open-air spaces which, with windbreak panels and planter troughs, are an ideal outdoor extension of the own four walls.
Third, barrier-free accessible areas will be created on the ground-floor level, which, with a mix of cultural, social, and commercial offers, importantly contributes to urban neighborly relations.
In addition to public institutions such as the local adult-education center, a kindergarten, an event venue, or a flower and a grocery store, the plinth area with a uniform four-meter ceiling height also accommodates rooms for communal use with washing facilities and access to open spaces.
Each floor of the slender structures in hybrid-timber construction also has a multipurpose room for collective use as well as a separately rentable coworking space. On top of the buildings, there are freely accessible roof gardens, which are informed by local agriculture in typology and use and fully compensate for the development’s built-up footprint.
Pergolas with photovoltaic modules offer weather-protected retreats and possibilities for urban gardening: what is watered with grey water here can later be sold as socially sustainable produce in the ground-floor store. So that’s how she is, the Red Emma: environmentally sensitive, close to nature, grounded.
Red Emma Housing in Vienna, Austria – Building Information
Architects: ARGE Gerner Gerner Plus AllesWirdGut
Project stages: 1–5, 7
Client: BWS Gemeinnützige allgemeine Bau-, Wohn- und Siedlungsgenossenschaft und MIGRA Gemeinnützige Wohnungsges.m.b.H.
Competition: 12.2020 – 1. Preis
Construction start: 2022
GFA (est.): 37,270 m²
Competition team: Bogdan Hămbășan, Jan Schröder, Peter Jakubicek
Landscaping: Carla Lo Landschaftsarchitektur, Vienna
Building physics & fire protection planning: Röhrer, Vienna
Electrical, building services & structural engineering planning: Dr. Ronald Mischek ZT GmbH, Vienna
Social sustainability: Sonja Gruber
Illustrations: ARGE Gerner Gerner Plus AllesWirdGut
Visualization: ARGE Gerner Gerner Plus AllesWirdGut
Model: mattweiss
Red Emma Housing, Vienna images / information received 250221
Location: Liesing / Hietzing, Vienna, Austria, central Europe
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