Total Housing. Alternatives to ubran sprawl
Necessity and investigation are prerequisites for the design of housing: social, environmental and economic factors affect form. This new survey into multi-family housing focuses on the responses proposed by architects who are dealing with the dynamic and diverse demands of contemporary society. Total Housing, published by Actar, is conceived as evidence supporting the qualities of dense, urban living, and as a hopeful antidote against sprawl. Featuring works by Lacaton-Vassal, BIG, + JDS, Sadar Vuga Arhitekti, Ryue Nishizawa, FOA, SHoP, and many emerging new architects, this volume is not a simple catalog, but rather a studied collection of inventive projects. 
The selection of works in Total Housing (in hard copy and on its supplementary website www.actar.com/totalhousing) begins where Manuel Gausa’b book Housing: New Alternative, New Systems (1998) stops – at the turn of new century – and spans a period coinciding with the height of the housing boom, and consequent bust, experienced in most “developed” economies.
From among the huge amount of projects developed in this period, the volume selects 61 of them from 22 countries which exemplify outstanding innovations in construction systems, layout of residential space, systems of unit aggregation, integration of the residential program into the other functions that make up our
cities, and repercussions in the formation of the urban fabric. These innovations are summarised in a series of concepts or keywords that identify their “virtues” as a residential model on the first page of each project.
Category: Artelibro suggests
