Poverty and Architecture: The Fuggerei as an Early Example of Affordable Housing

As Rafael Moneo asserted in his seminal article “On Typology,” the emergence of a new type can be considered a tangible signifier of changed architectural and historical circumstances, new modes of production, or social attitudes towards specific subjectivities. In response to Moneo’s stance, the paper argues that the Fugger foundation in Augsburg presents a case of typological innovation. Built in 1523 by the Fugger family in Augsburg, part of today’s southern Germany, the Fuggerei’s affordable housing complex was established to accommodate the so-called “Hausarme,” or “house poor,” in two-story, dual-occupancy row houses within a walled compound. Within the context of early capitalist development, the new religious ethos of the Reformation, and the rise of the High Middle Ages bourgeoisie, the Fuggerei’s architectural framework departed from previously established housing types for the poor to provide a new solution to a new, contingent, problem: its deserving “house poor” inhabitants—a subjectivity that can be seen as a precursor of the modern working class. The modern approach to architectural standardization and repetition and the structural promotion of familial privacy are here discussed as progressive devices for the education of its inhabitants to the new work-life values consistent with the growing centrality of early capitalism typical of the time. By comparing the Fuggerei to other architectural precedents in Europe in an effort to trace its typological genealogy, this paper demonstrates the foundation’s novel architectural approach and its unique attitude towards its deserving poor tenants.