Building Community: New Apartment Architecture

Design professionals will appreciate being introduced to these projects and trends. For general readers, this work will expand the notion of what apartment design can be.” - Library Journal. The greater portion of this book showcases contemporary designs, with brief texts describing the challenges the architects addressed. “This attractive and informative volume, filled with color photographs and black-and-white drawings, offers 30 bold, innovative case studies of solutions to myriad challenges of urban living, including overcrowding, housing shortages, neglected neighborhoods, and sustainability issues. Webb begins with a brief essay outlining the evolution of the apartment building as typology and introduces readers to exceptional examples of 20th-century modernist dwellings

450+ illustrations, 350+ in color, 60+ plans. It also includes interviews with Bjarke Ingels, Édouard François, Michael Maltzan, Lorcan O'Herlihy and Stanley Saitowitz: architects who have each set an example for their peers. Nine projects currently under construction anticipate the surge of innovation as architects become increasingly involved in this area of design.Creativity is the theme that links these diversified examples: finding new ways to share space, while maintaining a balance of privacy and community. These range from the pioneering projects of Henri Sauvage and Michel de Klerk to the landscaped housing estates of Weimar Germany, the radical proposals of Le Corbusier, and public housing in post-war Europe.Thirty recent apartment complexes are grouped by theme, from compact urban villages to mega-structures, and from social housing to upscale high-rises. BuildingCommunity offers dozens of proven successes, offering valuable lessons in the creation of good living environments. These challenges have led to the creation of some of the most inventive contemporary buildings of the last few years.In his new book Building Community, author Michael Webb explores apartment buildings as a typology of growing significance and traces the history of multiple-occupancy housing through its most innovative 20th-century exemplars. Each is considered for the way in which it enriches the lives

He is also a regular contributor to leading journals in the United States and Europe. Growing up in London, he wrote for The Times and Country Life before moving to the US to direct film programs for the American Film Institute and curate a Smithsonian exhibition, Hollywood: Legend and Reality, which traveled to