Housing Forms

In the debate in this country about housing and the settlement area the “urban” is often played off against the “rural” – a practice in justifying architecture that is astonishing, given the obvious character of our settled areas. It is certainly not incorrect to describe our ways of life as “urban”- as discussed with Henry Lefèbvre and the Studio Basel. But in fact the city only occupies a fraction of the developed area. Over the last 80 years built development has never produced truly urban structures outside of the historic centres and the areas directly adjoining them. The attractiveness of urban forms must, to use the words of Bart Lootsma, have more to do with “their ‘rarity value’ rather than [with] their absolute, formal, social, political or aesthetic tipicality.” What forms therefore can be suggested for housing on the edges of the centres - or outside them, using a lower density for building and perception? Is the densely built city the only alternative to urban sprawl in the landscape – and, conversely, is the free-standing apartment building or the single family home the only economically and culturally influential typologies? If this were the case, the desire to use urban typologies in the periphery could be welcomed without reservations. However, we have looked around for alternatives and searched for forms of housing that create meanings and spaces in indeterminate surroundings, that allow independent identities and take “high density building” seriously, far beyond any of the conventional schemes. The current issue attempts to find an answer to the question posed by approaching it from two sides. On the one hand we found buildings and groups of buildings that by virtue of their scale mediate between the estate and the individual house. Their size and form allows them to react with highly differentiated housing forms to a rapidly changing market environment shaped by different target groups. At the same time their typological variety promises lively surroundings for housing. On the other hand we bring a report about building and spatial structures that offer a very high level of flexibility of use – almost any kind of function is imaginable, from the workshop to office spaces and the loft type apartment to the traditional flat divided up into separate rooms. The adaptability of such structures takes account of the constant changes in the demand for housing while also promising a sustainable use of space that extends beyond conventional amortization cycles. Venturing beyond the urban block, the housing row, “point building” and the single-family house we identify differentiated, made-to-measure solutions and housing forms not pre-determined as regards function that introduce new possibilities to the discussion about building “out there”.

The editors