A rent house above a police station

There is a landmark building where every tourist visits. It is the Hundertwasser House, a building that looks like a house from a fairytale. The building on a 1,543-square-meter floor is colorful and the façade is curvy and even the sidewalk looks like waves. The artistic architecture is a city-run rental housing where 52 households live. It started to be remodeled in 1983 and reborn as it is today in 1986.

The architect of the building is Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The city-run rental housing, which was built to address the lack of housing for low-income households in Vienna, was a place like a prison with small rooms along the corridor. The city chose Hundertwasser’s design to remodel the ugly rental housing in downtown Vienna. It was a big success as many as 30,000 applicants wanted to live in the house of the remodeled building.

Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Kim Hyun-mi said Monday that the ministry will supply 50,000 share-houses by 2022. It plans to build high-rise rental houses by adding floors to a community center or a police station when it is reconstructed. The former administration announced that it would build 140,000 “happy houses” on properties near railroads or reservoirs owned by the public sector. Classic examples of “happy houses besides railroads) are the Gajwa district in Seoul for college students and the Oryu district for the newly wed. It was an idea to secure land for rental housing in urban areas.

The typical stages of owning a home – starting from a basement house to a semi-basement house or a rooftop house and then to a real house - does no longer seem valid. Many college students who leave their rented room empty for two or three months for internship or prepare for an exam sublet their room because they struggle to save housing expenses. It would be a good idea to build a landmark community center or police station. A design competition will be an idea to attract competent architects. Hundertwasser designed the Hundertwasser House for free for Viennese citizen by the way.