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SOCIAL HOUSING LOS ANGELES
CHELSEA KIRK & ZARA PFEIFER

IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL OBRIST AND SABINE POLLAK
10.11.2026, 18:00 – HS7, Schütte-Lihotzky

Michael Obrist & Sabine Pollak in conversation with Chelsea Kirk & Zara Pfeifer about "Social Housing Los Angeles"

 

"Social Housing: Vienna-Los Angeles" unfolds at the Schindler House, designed in 1922 by Austrian émigré architect R.M. Schindler as an experiment in cooperative living. Its construction coincided with the emergence of Red Vienna, when the city began developing the municipally supported housing system that would transform Vienna over the following century. These parallel experiments in collective life provide a historical frame for considering the sharply different trajectories the two cities have followed: Vienna's sustained public investment in housing alongside the largely market-driven conditions that have shaped Los Angeles. Rather than proposing Vienna as a model to be directly replicated, "Social Housing: Vienna-Los Angeles" asks what these distinct histories can reveal about the possibilities for housing today, and how architecture, public institutions, and collective action might contribute to new forms of affordable and shared urban lite.

In the framework of the exhibition "Social Housing: Vienna-Los Angeles." which brings together case studies from both cities to examine the relationship between architecture, housing policy, and civic responsibility. Curated by Michael Obrist, Sabine Pollak, and Beth Stryker.

 

Chelsea Kirk
Chelsea Kirk is a tenant organizer and writer from Los Angeles. She is a founding member of the Rent Brigade, an organization that formed in the aftermath of the 2025 wildfires to document and combat illegal rent gouging. Her writing has appeared in n+1, The Baffler, Dissent and other publications. She is a current Activist-in-Residence at the University of California Los Angeles. Her primary focus is on advancing social housing in Los Angeles.

Zara Pfeifer
Zara Pfeifer is an artist based in Vienna and Berlin whose work focuses on the social dimensions of large-scale architecture and infrastructure. Her documentation of the modernist housing project Alterlaa (Du, meine konkrete Utopie, 2013–2017) and her series on truck drivers (Good Street!, 2018–2022) involve extended periods of immersion in the day-to-day lives of her subjects.