Some architects, citizens and researchers are daring to conduct bold experiments in order to redress the imbalance and counteract climate-hostile concrete apartment blocks and dull, uniform buildings. They are committed to ecological building, devising community-promoting concepts, colourful neighbourhoods, minimizing costs and developing innovative floor plans. So what could the housing of the future look like? Perhaps like what a cooperative in Hamburg is currently dreaming up. There, on the foundations of an old multi-storey parking lot in the middle of the old town, an innovative residential and work building oriented towards the common good is to be built, including cultural and gastronomic uses, a kind of vertical city in miniature. In terms of sustainability, the Gröninger Hof cooperative is killing two birds with one stone by using existing architecture on the one hand and building with the climate-friendly raw material wood on the other.

Originally, the building, designed by Swiss firm Duplex Architekten, was to be built on top of the former parking garage. However, chemical tests revealed that all above-ground components would have to be demolished. However, retaining the floor slab, foundations and basement walls saves 42 percent of the CO2 emissions that a conventional new building would have caused - an important finding for similar projects, as the wrecking ball usually rolls in far too quickly at present. The Hamburg project is also a prime example of new living because different housing typologies from one to six-person households are being created there, meaning there will be well-designed, affordable space for many instead of overpriced monotony for a few. The design by Duplex Architekten follows the forward-looking strategy of minimizing private space and sharing everything that is not constantly needed - guest rooms, playrooms, sports rooms or offices - with the house community; for the sake of the climate, the wallet and social exchange. Young cooperatives in particular are doing pioneering work in many places in this respect, because they are looking at the housing of tomorrow beyond a profit-oriented construction industry and defending the right of every individual to participate in urban life with moderate rents despite rising building and land prices.

A particularly bold form of condensed living in a community is so-called hall living, which is not being tested in Hamburg, but in some Swiss projects. This involves a large group of people coming together - formerly semi-legally in empty commercial buildings, nowadays as part of cooperative projects - to move into an XL apartment without predetermined room layouts. They take over the shell of the unit, which is only equipped with a kitchen connection and sanitary facilities, and do the rest themselves. The residents creatively adapt the space in which they live and sometimes work according to their needs. Traditional rooms are replaced by open, fluid spaces. In the Zollhaus of the Kalkbreite cooperative in Zurich, which will be occupied in 2021, resourceful tenants have designed modular furniture for a four-metre-high, 260-square-metre hall that resembles a tiny house. The two-storey residential towers, which can be moved around the space and docked together, usually have sliding windows instead of walls and serve as private retreats.

Another trend that can be seen in many progressive projects is apartments that can be flexibly enlarged or reduced in size. In the Zollhaus, which also offers more conventional living typologies in addition to the Hallen-WGs, there are joker rooms that can be temporarily rented in addition to a unit; in an experimental settlement by French architect Sophie Delhay, which was built in Nantes in 2008 but is still radically modern, "plus rooms" were so cleverly positioned and constructed that they can be added to different units without much effort. If an adult child moves out of apartment X, the plus room can dock onto apartment Y, where a baby has been born. And in a project by the Viennese office AllesWirdGut, in which multi-family timber hybrid houses are being built for hundreds of people, the apartments are planned with an additional window that is not needed to provide them with sufficient light. This means that a bonus room can be separated off within your own four walls with simple means; as a home office or retreat for a carer. The future of living therefore also means: architecture is open and flexible, it adapts to the flow of life, not the other way around.

Peris+Toral from Barcelona impressively demonstrates that even in social housing, where the financial framework is tight, clever concepts for future construction can be created. Not only did they build Spain's first wooden social housing building - and were among the finalists for the Mies van der Rohe Award, the most important European architecture prize, in 2022 - but they also realized a social housing project on Ibiza that is largely made of clay. Clay has an excellent carbon footprint, is completely recyclable, is available in abundance almost everywhere on our planet and, in the case of the Ibiza building, is an excellent building material when pressed into compact bricks. The fact that the use of a centuries-old material that is still underestimated in this country can even be combined with ultra-modern technology is demonstrated by the work of Italian architect Mario Cucinella, who, together with the company WASP, which produces 3D printers, has had the prototype of a cosy two-room hut made of clay printed; an entire eco-village could be created from several of these archaic-futuristic dwellings.

Whether in a house from the printer, in a cluster or even in a hall - the living of tomorrow will be one thing above all: colourful. Because social diversity urgently needs structural diversity. Just like a hundred years ago, in the days of the Bauhaus, building culture must reinvent itself. The pressure is high, because we can no longer afford the houses we live in today in view of the climate crisis. The visionary projects of the present point the right way; towards a better, socially and ecologically sustainable future - because a good life also needs good architecture.