When cities grow, fuelled by an expanding population, housing becomes an essential component of the urban character of a metropolis. Across the world, housing experiments have been propagated by governments and states, with mixed results, and undoubtedly mixed opinions. The Soviet-era housing estates of Central and Eastern Europe are particularly interesting in that regard. These mass housing projects have been dismissed as eyesores and viewed as unimaginative monolithic structures. The legacy of these developments, however, is a lot more complicated than that.
The end of the 19th century in the Americas is marked by a wave of historical disputes and political transformations that have as a backdrop the search for a national identity. The period records a series of conflicts and disputes for the independence of what we now know as sovereign countries and republics. In this context, the Pan-American or Spanish-American movements emerged, which, despite having different political influences, aimed at the unification of all the territories of the American continent.
Since the beginning of the war, over 7.1 million people have been internally displaced within Ukraine. In response to this growing humanitarian crisis, Kyiv-based practice Balbek Bureau has developed a modular temporary housing system that aims to provide a dignified dwelling to internally displaced Ukrainians. RE:Ukraine is designed to adapt to different types of terrain and settlement density while being deployed in a short time frame. While the project was intended for areas of Ukraine that are not under fire, the framework can also accommodate refugees abroad.
John Chapman House. Image Courtesy of Plus Architecture
Student housing takes on many forms around the world, but most commonly, it’s envisioned as close quarters in a bleakly designed dormitory. While prospective students choose universities based on academic rigor, athletic programs, extracurricular activities, and future career opportunities, they’re now wanting to know what living on and off-campus will be like- and it has forced designers to rethink the traditional designs of dormitories into something more innovative that better reflects what students want (and expect) in their university homes.
In urban design, suburbs can be a contentious topic. That is in part because the term lends itself to nebulous and ever-changing definitions. In its simplest form, the suburbs are residential communities within commuting distance, located a fair bit away from the heart of metropolitan areas. The American context sees suburbs viewed with some hostility, with racist ‘redlining’ practices a dark legacy to particular suburbs in the country. In a more superficial sense, American suburbs have often been criticised for their uniformity in appearance – portrayed as soulless dwellings absent of a sense of community.
Recently, the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times about the causes of unaffordable housing in New York City. He blamed the crisis on a few things, including a powerful financial “monoculture” in the city, NIMBYs, and the city itself blocking new construction. That last element, however—that the city blocks new construction—is an increasingly popular myth that needs examination.
California, as with most American states, has a housing crisis. Unlike the rest of the country, it is actually working to ameliorate the situation, with private and public initiatives that critics can’t help but label inadequate. The Bay Area made accessory dwelling units legal by changing zoning laws, but that has hardly made a dent. Some cities are now pushing for additional upzoning to give developers more room to bring new buildings to market at lower rents. There are all sorts of studies, university sponsored or underwritten by the industry, that recommend more-or-less radical fixes for a seemingly unfixable problem. Environmentalists are naturally cast as villains because they don’t condone greenfield developments. And Californians are tough on their elected officials, as the current governor learned last year.
https://www.archdaily.com/975506/new-construction-is-not-always-the-answerMark Alan Hewitt
West Campus Neighborhood, Austin, Texas. The University of Texas campus is in the foreground. Image Courtesy of Jack Myer/The Daily Texan.
Juan Miró, co-founder of Miró Rivera Architects reflects in an opinion piece on the student housing situation in the United States. The architect explores different dormitory conditions across the country and questions whether these leading public universities "enthusiastically endorse the idea of putting thousands of its students in windowless rooms in the name of density and efficiency".
Valuing formal simplicity and delicate attention to details and finishing, Studio MK27 was founded in the late 1970s by Marcio Kogan and currently has more than 30 members based in São Paulo and other collaborators around the world. Its work, as described on its website, seeks to fulfill the task of rethinking and continuing Brazilian modernism.
Buildings contribute nearly 40% of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, so the push is on to “get to zero” on many fronts. What happens when ambitious goals like zero energy meet a conventional building industry that’s structured on repetition and cost, in a market that struggles to keep up with massive demand? This is often—too often—our challenge.
The first wooden housing modules of Juf Nienke, a new circular prefabricated timber housing project by SeARCH, RAU, and DS landscape architects, has been installed in Amsterdam. The project will feature 61 rental homes made entirely of wood, and will sit at the entrance of Centrumeiland, a newly raised piece of land on Lake IJmeer that features 1500 housing units. It is set to be one of the most sustainable apartment buildings in the Netherlands, incorporating an innovative cross-laminated timber construction and utilizing recycled materials.
ADUs or accessory dwelling unit, a word mostly used by architects, is "a smaller, independent residential unit located on the same lot as a stand-alone single-family home" according to the American Planning Association. They can be converted spaces of existing houses, additions, or new stand-alone structures. In this piece, author Walter explores the recent policies in California that seek to reduce the shortage of housing.
Only 18 months ago, everyone around the globe had their life upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost immediately, architects and designers began to speculate on how they could design for a better world that would be flexible, functional, and healthy. While the pandemic is far from over, with many scientific advancements and public health policies still needed to truly allow us to live out our “new normal”, perhaps its time to reflect on our predictions and examine what aspects of the pandemic were short-term reactions, and which aspects of life might be permanently reflected in how we think about the built environment.
The housing shortage has long been the catalyst for architectural speculation over adaptive resue scenarios or the valorisation of underused places in cities. At the same time, the health crisis and its work from home imperatives have brought into sharp focus the adaptive reuse potential of offices spaces into housing. The probability that some office buildings remain vacant post-pandemic opens up the possibility of bringing back housing to city centres, enabling the implementation of a 15-minute city vision. The following discusses the challenges and opportunities of transforming office spaces into housing, highlighting this limited phenomenon's long-term feasibility and impact.
Planning cities and the way that we comfortably live in them is often a pull between many things. From creating affordable housing for all, enhancing community facilities and amenities, and designing walkable neighborhoods, all aspects of urban design have trade-offs, or do they? While there are many reasons why cities are becoming increasingly more expensive, dense, and less pedestrian-friendly, one of the key drivers behind the increase in unaffordability has to do with the way that outdated zoning codes drive the lack of available housing that they regulate.
Kigali, Rwanda - September 21, 2018: a wide view looking down on the city centre with Pension Plaza in the foreground and Kigali City Tower in the background against a backdrop of distant blue hills. Image via Shutterstock/ By Jennifer Sophie
The urban metropolises of our planet are home to an abundance of stories. They are home to stories of wealth, of innovation, and of architectural marvels. They are home, too, to stories of inequality, inequity and of urban divides – places where one’s income determines the quality of the spatial environment around them. Within these stories has developed an increasing advocation for making cities “smarter”, the goal being to use data and digital technology to build more efficient and convenient urban environments.
The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have announced the second list of 85 works competing for the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. Joining the batch of first nominations announced in February 2021, the full list comprises now of 532 competing works for the EU Mies Award 2022. The shortlist of 40 will be announced in January 2022, the winners in April 2022, and the Award ceremony will take place in May 2022.
