After WWI, the new socialist city council built housing superblocks both to end the housing shortage and to express the new self-confidence of the working class. The most famous of these buildings is the Karl-Marx-Hof.

While this architectural masterpiece of Red Vienna still stands today, the ideas that animated it were destroyed when the guns of the fascists fired on the Karl-Marx-Hof in 1934. The weird fascinating blend of large-scale housing construction, Wagner-style Modernism, and visionary socialism still impresses architecture enthusiasts from all over the world.