A long overdue survey of the world’s most inventive contemporary apartment buildings, which explores how to make our dwellings comfortable and suitable for 21st-century living.



This is the first survey in many years to explore contemporary apartments not as raw canvases for interior decoration but as a building type of growing significance. An introduction presents the history of multiple-occupancy housing through its most innovative 20th-century exemplars, from the urbane blocks of Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage in Paris, to the landscaped housing estates of Weimar Germany and the visionary schemes of Le Corbusier. The heart of the book features 38 recent and ongoing projects, designed by leading international studios and rising talents. Buildings range from social housing and micro apartments to ‘vertical villages’, megastructures and luxury high-rises. Each project is considered for the way in which it enriches the lives of residents and the city, and is shown through drawings and photographs, taken from the street and within. The book also includes interviews with such contemporary masters of apartment design as Michael Maltzan, Lorcan O’Herlihy, Édouard François and Bjarke Ingels. As our cities grow more crowded, it is critical that we produce large-scale buildings that enhance the lives of their inhabitants, their surroundings and the urban environment as a whole. Building Community offers dozens of proven successes to designers and apartment-dwellers.