Building Community: New Apartment Architecture

This is the first survey in many years to explore contemporary apartments not as raw canvases for interior decoration but as a building type of growing significance. An introduction presents the history of multiple-occupancy housing through its most innovative 20th-century exemplars, from the urbane blocks of Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage in Paris, to the landscaped housing estates of Weimar Germany and the visionary schemes of Le Corbusier. The heart of the book features 38 recent and ongoing projects, designed by leading international studios and rising talents. Buildings range from social housing and micro apartments to `vertical villages', megastructures and luxury high-rises. Each project is considered for the way in which it enriches the lives of residents and the city, and is shown through drawings and photographs, taken from the street and within. The book also includes interviews with such contemporary masters of apartment design as Michael Maltzan, Lorcan O'Herlihy, Edouard Francois and Bjarke Ingels. As our cities grow more crowded, it is critical that we produce large-scale buildings that enhance the lives of their inhabitants, their surroundings and the urban environment as a whole. Building Community offers dozens of proven successes to designers and apartment-dwellers.

“"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. The greater portion of this book showcases contemporary designs, with brief texts describing the challenges the architects addressed. 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."”

'Ambitious in scope and geographical reference' - Architectural Review 'A well-judged book, useful, interesting and attractive' - World of Interiors 'With cities all over the world struggling to keep up with the demand for social and affordable housing, these inspiring buildings...showcase what good design can actually do for communities' - Culture Trip 'The journey through the book is interesting and fact-heavy, providing new perspective on the walls that surround most people' - Book Witty 'In a world of risk-averse, profit-driven developers, creativity has taken a back seat. But Michael Webb celebrates the shining examples in which design has reached the next level' - Independent 'It's fascinating to see these creative responses to the deceptively simple challenge of fitting a lot of people into a small space' - 1843 (The Economist)

Michael Webb has authored more than 20 books on architecture and design and is a regular contributor to leading journals in the US and Europe. He lives in a classic Richard Neutra apartment in Los Angeles.

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