Public housing is never merely a social service – it is an architecture of governance. This lecture traces how three housing regimes – Vienna’s social democracy, Hong Kong’s colonial managerialism, and Taiwan’s (post)-authoritarian transformations – translate political ideals into built form. Drawing on thinkers such as Foucault and Lefebvre, it examines housing as a moral and spatial technology that classifies citizens, organizes care, and embeds ideology in urban morphology.
By comparing the Red Vienna courtyards, Hong Kong’s vertical estates, and Taiwan's trajectory from military dependents' villages to contemporary social housing, the lecture argues that “where you live” becomes a reflection of “who you are” within each society’s political imagination. Public housing thus emerges as a material archive of statehood – revealing not only how societies house their people, but also how they define belonging itself.
San-Hwan Lu studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). After several years of professional practice in Vienna, he worked in Asia until 2010 on international projects, among others with architects such as Richard Rogers and Kisho Kurokawa, and later with Hans Hollein. He has been teaching and conducting research at TU Wien for 15 years, where he has been a Senior Scientist since 2019. His main areas of focus are building construction, building regulations, and building culture in an international context.
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- DATE: Thursday, November 27, 2025
- TIME: 17:00 – 18:30
- LOCATION: SIN 1, at the Department for East Asian Studies/Chinese Studies, Altes AKH, Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Yard 2, Entrance 2.3
