Housing Construction in Socialist Slovenia: Single-Family Houses as Compared to the Socially Directed Multi-Unit Residential Buildings

Abstract

Quantitatively speaking, detached houses were the most important part of housing construction in the period in question, even though the socially directed collective construction of multi-unit residential buildings occupied the foreground of the post-war residential construction. Following an increase in single-family houses in the 1950s, the construction of detached houses grew into a veritable mania in the late 1960s, becoming an ideal of a large portion of Slovenes. In the sphere of individual construction, housing cooperatives proved successful in cities and industrial or administrative centres in the technical, economic, urban planning, and architectural respect. The housing cooperatives accepted lined row houses as a basic form of a single-family house. These cooperatives fl ourished in the 1950s and 1960s; however, they were stifl ed in the 1970s in order to protect residential enterprises and residential units built to be sold on the market. The 1980s saw a revival of housing cooperatives.