Injecting new impetuses into sustainable housing

With one or two exceptions the rented-housing market of the 1970s to mid-1980s produced very few innovations. The handful that emerged – mostly small-scale initiatives – were initiated by private developers or newly established housing cooperatives.

One such private developer is ProMiet AG, who in the 1980s realized the Schauburg model housing project in Hünenberg in Canton Zug. The aim of the project was to provide affordable, ecological, tenancy secure and user-managed living. Following the sale of the estate in 2013, ProMiet AG took the decision to become deeply involved in innovative housing-construction processes. Using new insights and findings, the intention is to set pivotal and innovative impetuses so as to promote sustainable housing construction in Switzerland.

The research-and-development project undertaken jointly by the ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE and ProMiet AG is comprised of three subsidiary projects. These produce a basis to assist ProMiet AG in deciding, in terms of compositional relevance and public impact, which options to pursue in order to plan and realize concrete stimuli. This requires a knowledge of the relevant innovations in housing development and the extent to which they have proven their worth in practice.

The knowledge base developed in sub-project 1 provides information about the innovations and challenges in the housing sector that can be viewed as currently relevant. The implementation of these aspects is considered in sub-project 2 by means of an evaluation of a representative selection of housing projects. The objective of sub-project 3 is to generate a concept for the subsequently planned publicity and media work, aimed at the concrete realization of these innovative impulses.