Based on the increasingly popular concept of the ‘region’ or the ‘regional’, this publication examines the forms and functions of "Heimatschutz" and other reform as well as vernacular architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that have received little attention to date. Based on specific phenomena, the contributions pursue two main theses: firstly, that references to land and home were constructions primarily developed in urban milieus whose ideal-typical conceptions were simply transferred to other spaces; secondly, that endeavours in the various arts were not only closely interlinked but were also accompanied by a range of efforts such as the multitude of reform movements, which demonstrate the enormous need to construct a cultural identity during this period. In the introduction, the three authors explore the questions of historiographical traditions and architectural research, the constitution and delimitation of ‘regional’ spaces, various constructions of identity and tradition, and reform movements, both theoretically and using practical examples. Richard Kurdiovsky thematizes the construction of the primarily visual view of the regional using two small housing projects from the last decades of the Habsburg monarchy: the workers' housing of the Hallstatt salt works and the Kaiser Franz Joseph workers' colony near Bad Aussee. Based on the paradigmatic development of the construction of workers' housing estates in Great Britain, Atli Magnus Seelow presents the situation in the Nordic countries and in Germany, where the construction of new national identities can be recognized in both the forms of expression of the "Lebensreform" movements such as "Heimatschutz" and the reference to the regional as an expression of home.