Social Design Theory Course | Winter Semester 2026/27

with Christina Schraml | christina.schraml@uni-ak.ac.at

Productive Frictions: Housing, Everyday Life and Conflicts – Negotiating Co-Existence in Wiens Gemeindebau

„To think about the city is to hold and maintain its conflictual aspects: constraints and possibilities, peacefulness and violence, meetings and solitude, gatherings and separation, the trivial and the poetic, brutal functionalism and surprising improvization.” (Henri Lefebvre)

Urban co-existence inevitably involves friction. Wherever people share space and resources, different needs, values, routines, and expectations meet, overlap, and sometimes collide – creating tensions that are not exceptions but an inherent part of everyday urban life.

These dynamics are particularly visible in the social proximity of Vienna's Gemeindebau (municipal housing), where everyday conflicts around noise, accessibility, shared spaces, or different ways of living reveal broader questions of urban co-existence, democracy and social justice. Rather than treating conflict as something to be eliminated, this course approaches it as a lens for understanding social dynamics and the ways people negotiate shared spaces and everyday life in the city.

Through critical readings, discussions, and field-based observations, we explore how conflicts emerge, how institutional and regulatory frameworks manage, suppress, or render them invisible, and how they are negotiated in everyday practices. What can everyday conflicts reveal about the city and its inhabitants? Whose perspectives are heard and whose remain excluded? How do built environments shape encounters, relationships and possibilities for participation? And how can Social Design engage conflict as a starting point for dialogue, collective action, and new forms of living together.

Requirements are regular attendance (at least 80%), preparatory readings and presentation of texts, active participation, as well as contribution to the final output (further details in the first session).