Kassandra Löffler

Kassandra Löffler studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the Bauhaus University Weimar, where she also completed her master in urban planing. She was active in many areas of housing policy and co-founder of a common housing project. Since 2017 she has been working as a research assistant at the Bauhaus-University Weimar. Initially for the Chair of Management in the Built Environment and later for the Chair of Structural Engineering and Design. 

Architectural strategies for affordable new housing

- An analysis of ten prize winners from four architectural competitions -

Housing - especially affordable housing - has become a current and central issue in our society. Just the restrictions caused by the pandemic has reminded us that living is not only a place of retreat, but increasingly also a place of work and childcare. However, especially the provision of housing for lower income groups is a major problem. A remaining popular solution of the Federal Government is the construction of new buildings. But is it possible to generate affordable housing in new construction?

This situation questions  how architects can contribute to a socially equitable housing. Attached to the junior research group „Soziale Wohnraumversorgung in wachsenden Metropolstädten" I will investigate and point out the potential of reducing construction costs in the provision of adequate housing.

In the first step I analyze best practice examples of architects and identify their four different design strategies. Based on an inductive categorization, the potentials will be measured and recommendations for architects will be formulated. In a second step, the winners of architectural competitions will be analyzed which were awarded to identify just these architectural potentials in cost reducing constructions. Because of the quality assurance of architectural competitions I choose their results as the object of research on one hand. on the other hand, it represents a research gap, that these competitive results ham never been evaluated. The analysis includes ten prizewinners from four competitions which are evaluated according to qualitative and quantitative criteria.

The dissertation contributes to a systematic understanding of current planning and design strategies and their improvement. Through this work, the actual yield of the competitions will be identified and their results will be evaluated comparatively. Thus, circulating contradictions in the polarizing discussion about the influence of construction costs can be clarified and the guiding principles of housing construction can be described.

November 2020

Current housing shortage
Affordable Housing 
Affordable buildings with Affordable rents
Cost-effective new residential buildings

Architectural strategies 
Planning approaches

Inductive categorization
Theoretical Sampling 
Qualitative and quantitative Evaluation
Guiding principles of housing in the 2010s