My Dreamhouse is not a House 

Designed and sequenced by Alejandro Cartagena and Fernando Gallegos
Publishing press The Velvet Cell

Copies are also available at
Shop Alejandro Cartagena

152 pages
21.5 x 28 cm
Hardcover, with Japanese binding
ISBN 978-1-908889-85-0
Limited Edition of 600
40,00€

My Dreamhouse is not a House is a long-term project by Julia Gaisbacher that focuses on the Austrian architect Eilfried Huth and one of the first, publicly funded participatory social housing projects in Austria from the 1970s. Huth developed a working method that allowed architects and future residents to collaborate on equal terms, resulting in single, occupant-designed houses within residential blocks. His projects were unique because no participatory approach was available outside the privately financed market in Austria at that time.

About 50 years later, Julia Gaisbacher started an artistic research project observing the results of Eilfried Huth’s architectural experiment. In interviews, she asked residents how they had experienced the participatory planning process and its impacts on the long-term living quality in these built environments and combined them with archive material. On a visual level she documented the unique facades of the houses each representing the owners.  


Winner
Bronze Medal, German Photobook Award 2023  Category artistic-conceptual

Shortlisted for
- PhotoESPAÑA, Best Photobook of the Year Award 2023
- Les Recontres Photographiques d' Arles,
Author Book Award 2023,
- Germany’s most beautiful Books, 2023
- EI Photobook Award 2023, Encontros
da Imagem, Braga (PT), 2023

Book review
photo-eye bookstore blog, review by Britland Tracy

Presented at
Polycopies, Paris (FR) 2023 by Los Sumergidos
Stuttgart Book Week, 2023 (DE)
Frankfurt Book Fair 2023 (DE)
Vienna Art Book Festival, 2023
Photobook Festival, Leipzig (DE), 2023, by The Velvet Cell
ICP Photobook Fest, New York, USA, 2023 by Los Sumergidos
L.A. Art Book Fair, Printed Matters 2023, by Los Sumergidos

Reviewed at
Eikon Magazine, by Margit Neuhold (AT)
dérive - magazine for urban research (AT)
Issue nr. 92-92, by Michael Zinganel
KATALOG magazine journal for photography and video (Denmark), Issue # 102

Artist talk
As part of Publish your Photography Book, by Mary Virginia Swanson & Darius Himes, La Luz Workshops
“My Dreamhouse is not a House” with Markus Waitschacher, Forum Stadtpark, Graz (AT)


Please also see the other project parts
My Dreamhouse is not a House I
My Dreamhouse is not a House II
My Dreamhouse is Daydreams (documentary film)