Negotiating Ungers 3. Self Help Housing

In 1972, German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers and his students at Cornell University developed a prototype for a Self-Help Housing System (S-HHS). Around the same time, Ungers and his wife Liselotte published a study titled Communes in the New World 1740–1972, examining utopian communities in the U.S. Ungers’ 1972 architectural approach fused typological research, modern urban planning, and utopianism in a novel way. The S-HHS concept aimed to integrate community-driven initiatives with broader political, social, and economic frameworks. Together, the projects highlighted alternative forms of communal organization and emphasized the dynamic, collaborative nature of architectural production. This third publication, initiated through a 2021 summer school at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, explores systematic and inventive architectural strategies through essays, interviews, and artistic research.