Modern Housing

The original guide on modern housing from the premier expert and activist in the public housing movement Originally published in 1934, Modern Housing is widely acknowledged as one of the most important books on housing of the twentieth century, introducing the latest developments in European modernist housing to an American audience. It is also a manifesto: America needs to draw on Europe’s example to solve its housing crisis. Only when housing is transformed into a planned, public amenity will it truly be modern. Modern Housing’s sharp message catalyzed an intense period of housing activism in the United States, resulting in the Housing Act of 1937, which Catherine Bauer coauthored. But these reforms never went far enough: so long as housing remained the subject of capitalist speculation, Bauer knew the housing problem would remain. In light of today’s affordable housing emergency, her prescriptions for how to achieve humane and dignified modern housing remain as instructive and urgent as ever.

Here are 32 notable examples of multi-family housing from many countries, selected for their importance as prototypes. Designed by such masters as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Alvar Aalto, the buildings are illustrated with photographs, site plans, floor plans, elevations, and striking axonometric drawings.

In an era when many decry the failures of federal housing programs, this book introduces us to appealing but largely forgotten alternatives that existed when federal policies were first defined in the New Deal. Led by Catherine Bauer, supporters of the modern housing initiative argued that government should emphasize non-commercial development of imaginatively designed compact neighborhoods with extensive parks and social services. The book explores the question of how Americans might have responded to this option through case studies of experimental developments in Philadelphia and New York. While defeated during the 1930s, modern housing ideas suggest a variety of design and financial strategies that could contribute to solving the housing problems of our own time.

After World War II, France embarked on a project of modernization, which included the development of the modern mass home. At Home in Postwar France examines key groups of actors — state officials, architects, sociologists and tastemakers — arguing that modernizers looked to the home as a site for social engineering and nation-building; designers and advocates of the modern home contributed to the democratization of French society; and the French home of the Trente Glorieuses, as it was built and inhabited, was a hybrid product of architects’, planners’, and residents’ understandings of modernity. This volume identifies the “right to comfort” as an invention of the postwar period and suggests that the modern mass home played a vital role in shaping new expectations for well-being and happiness.

Following intense debate throughout the 20th century, the issue of residential housing is becoming increasingly central to the contemporary situation, characterised by large cities, urban sprawl and general fragmentation in spaces of the home and collective life. Projects are attempting to give answers through flexible systems that try to give form to new public and private spaces for the individual. The home speaks of a world that is changing very rapidly and the selected projects can be seen as experimental attempts to give shape to new ways of experiencing the home in the future. Through an analysis of some of the most significant projects built in the last ten years, this book traces pivotal themes such as density, flexibility, the relationship with the land, constructing on the constructed, and the image of the house. Analysis is made in essays written by leading authors in the field

Modern American Housing brings together the most enlightened thinkers from the worlds of architecture, social practice, and real estate development to present the latest developments in the design and construction of new housing stock in re-urbanizing cities throughout the United States. New housing is grouped into three sections—housing towers, reused historical structures, and urban infill—and documented with photographs, pre-construction renderings, floor plans, and maps indicating location in urban settings. An accompanying essay and a discussion with urban planners, architects, and policymakers round out this fresh look at the past and future of the American house.

Housing and Dwelling collects the best in recent scholarly and philosophical writings that bear upon the history of domestic architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Lane combines exemplary readings that focus on and examine the issues involved in the study of domestic architecture, taken from an innovative and informed combination of philosophy, history, social science, art, literature and architectural writings. Uniquely, the readings underline the point of view of the user of a dwelling and assess the impact of varying uses on the evolution of domestic architecture. This book is a valuable asset for students, scholars, and designers alike, exploring the extraordinary variety of methods, interpretations and source materials now available in this important field. For students, it opens windows on the many aspects of domestic architecture. For scholars, it introduces new, interdisciplinary points of view and suggests directions for further research. It acquaints practising architects in the field of housing design with history and methods and offers directions for future design possibilities.

In the wake of the Great Recession, housing and its financing suddenly re-emerged as questions of significant public concern. Yet both public and academic debates about housing have remained constricted, tending not to explore how the evolution of housing simultaneously entails basic forms of socio-spatial reproduction and underlying tensions in the political order. Drawing on cutting edge perspectives from urban studies, this book grants renewed, interdisciplinary energy to the housing question. It explores how housing raises a series of vexing issues surrounding rights, identity, and justice in the modern city. Through finely detailed studies that illuminate national and regional particularities- ranging from analyses of urban planning in the Soviet Union, the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans, to squatting in contemporary Lima - the volume underscores how housing questions matter in a wide range of contexts. It draws attention to ruptures and continuities between high modernist and neoliberal forms of urbanism, demonstrating how housing and the dilemmas surrounding it are central to governance and the production of space in a rapidly urbanizing world.