A socio-spatial approach to the first legal hall dwelling setting in Switzerland: the case study of Hallenwohnen in Zurich

The study explores the collective settings of Hallenwohnen (hall dwelling) as a section of the Zollhaus settlement, which is the follow-up project by the Kalkbreite housing cooperative, functioning since January 2021 in Zurich, Switzerland. Hallenwohnen is the first legal hall cohousing arrangement in Switzerland. The private and semiprivate spaces of Hallenwohnen consist of a large open hall with collective basic structures and mobile residential towers (rollable spaces) as the core concept, which offer an affordable, self-managed/self-build, collaborative living and coworking arrangement in the center of Zurich. The qualitative case study method has been applied through the face-to-face semistructured interviews mainly with three occupants of Hallenwohnen as representatives of this residential community, in-situ observations, spatial investigations and document analyses. The theoretical framework of the study is grounded in the concept of collaborative housing. The results reveal that the innovative socio-spatial potentials of the collective spaces have been activated through the participatory intentions of the microcommunity and intended functional mix of the setting. Living as one collective household , multiplicity usage of hybrid spaces and the spatial activation of intermediate spaces have enabled participation-capable residential spaces and have resulted in optimal usage of housing spaces. Nonetheless, constraints and points of conflicts, which trigger the (re)negotiations and reinterpretations of the usage of collective housing spaces facilitate collective solutions of the residential community. A bottom-up initiative such as Hallenwohnen is helped along, through the long-term planning and top-down support of the cooperative housing model of Zurich.