Residential Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

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Atelier Thomas Pucher has won first prize in an invited competition to realize a cluster of “Urban Terraces” in Vienna. Described as a product of the “modern patchwork city,” the project is designed to connect its residents to the surrounding districts and open space through the “countless sight lines” preserved by the circular nature of the mid-rise buildings. This is intended to achieve a sense of “urban porosity” within a stacked residential landscape.

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Friis & Moltke has designed a new housing project in Aarhus inspired by a Scandinavian forest. Just as “moss-covered hillocks and majestic towering trunks with crowns filter light and create shimmering patterns on the forest floor,” says the architect, the Løvhusene housing complex adapts to its natural surroundings as circulatory “boardwalks” weave between a “forest” of clustered wooden residences, all centered around a shared community “clearing.”

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Last week the UK Government appointed a new housing design panel, intended to "ensure that new homes are not only lower-cost but also high-quality and well-designed." The panel will be led by Terry Farrell, classical architect Quinlan Terry and aesthetics philosopher Roger Scruton, as well as representatives from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), the UK Design Council and lobby group Create Streets. However, the profession was quick to criticize the selection of the three lead members of the panel.

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In 1970 the BBC followed architects Alison and Peter Smithson through the construction of their seminal housing project, Robin Hood Gardens (London). The impact of their architecture continues to resonate well into the 21st century, most recently in the British Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale. Robin Hood Gardens was demolished in 2013, bringing an end to the Smithson's utopian vision. Listen to Alison Smithson explain the European Housing Condition (as the vision stood in 1970), the state of British infrastructure as it was, and hear Peter Smithson discuss the impetus for their most famous collective housing project.

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With nearly 120 museums, Paris has the largest concentration of museums in the world. This, as MenoMenoPiu Architects believes, puts the city at risk of becoming a living conservatory. Therefore the Parisian practice has proposed the “EauBerge Paris Capsule Hotel” as a way to mitigate the need for short-term housing for tourists and preserve the quality of everyday life for residents.

"Just like the other European capitals such as Rome, Venice, or Barcelona, Paris risks to become a city museum,” says MenoMenoPiu. “The increase of tourists in the French Capital causes panic and also leads to a gradual decentralization from the Parisians.”

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