Main entry:

Maak, Niklas, author.

Title & Author:

Living Complex : From Zombie City to the New Communal / Niklas Maak.

Publication:

Munich : Hirmer, [2015]
©2015

Description:

240 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 232-238).
[Table of Contents] -- PROBLEMS OF CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE -- Holding on to the idyll -- Housing as fetish -- Empty shells for lifestyles that no longer exist -- The problem of structure and form. The cult of downsizing -- A billion housing units -- The two crises of housing -- Super objects -- How to argue about architecture? -- The anthropologization of habitation -- Revolt against the building mafia -- Radicalized spatial qualities -- Building law as a problem -- The language crisis of architecture -- After the house -- Agoraphobia: the flip side of compaction pressure -- Architects to the barricades: self-empowerment -- CHAPTER 1: CITY AND SUBURB -- The Zombified City -- Suburbia -- Worlds without an outside -- CHAPTER 2: BEING AT HOME. A BRIEF PHENOMENOLOGY OF HABITATION -- Elements of architecture -- Thinking of life from the perspective of death -- The rooms of the house -- CHAPTER 3: DIFFERENT HOUSES -- Architecture and language -- Building beyond categories -- Inclusiveness: the maze replaces the wall -- A theory of the threshold -- CHAPTER 4: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE SINGLE-FAMILY HOME -- How Neanderthal man goes into the single-family home -- Men hunt, women do the housework -- "Cottage Economy" and the consequences -- Collective living or individual home? -- Economic reasons for the triumph of the single-family home -- Explosives against the collective -- CHAPTER 5: AFTER THE HOUSE, BEYOND THE NUCLEAR FAMILY -- What comes after the single-family home? -- Manifestoes for post-familial housing -- Sharing -- Collective housing: what went wrong -- The new housing collectives -- CHAPTER 6: TRANSFORMATIONS OF PRIVACY -- Openness and intimacy -- Early history of private housing -- Utopian dreams of utter publicness -- Robbery and property -- Architecture of hospitality -- CHAPTER 7: SHARED SPACES -- A square is a forest -- New spaces: strategies of creating form -- CHAPTER 8: CLOSED AND OPEN SYSTEMS -- Architecture as sculpture -- The city as image: Celebration -- A theory of nidation -- Remaining on site: a new role for the architect -- The Colony: models for new communal spaces -- CHAPTER 9: ATMOSPHERES -- Housing and what unconsciously affects it -- Paradox atmospheres -- The control of perception in commercial space -- CHAPTER 10: CHANGE THE LAWS! -- Housing, bureaucracy, capitalism -- Legislation as a design device -- Money for communities -- Changing building regulations -- Joint building ventures and adaptive reuse -- Conversions -- The Room of Janus -- Notes -- Picture Credits.
Translated from the German.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

"Cities today have become portfolios of investment properties with token patches of green. The prices of fortress-like luxury complexes in London and Manhattan don't just affect the wallets of their buyers--they drive up prices for everyone. The result is unaffordable, aseptic, privatized "zombie" cities, even as worldwide trends predict a mass urbanization in the coming decades. Meanwhile, the construction industry has responded to suburbanization by churning out clusters of the ever-same barrack-style row houses. But what do these buildings say about us? Do they have anything to do with the way most people actually want to live? Niklas Maak provocatively argues that the construction industry, the commercialization of housing, and a number of outdated policies have prevented us from rethinking how we live in the city. Yet many of our current crises--from the mortgage crisis to global warming--are closely linked to problematic forms of accommodation in our cities. And the problem will only get worse: over the next 20 years, influx into cities is expected to create the need for one billion new housing units. Fortunately, Maak shows, there are practicable solutions. In Europe, Japan, and the US, he explores promising new forms of housing and collective living. Cities should be reflections of their inhabitants, not forces to be contended with. Controversial yet deeply researched, Living Complex is a wryly funny analysis of how we live today--and calls for change from the "comfortable defense lines" that epitomize the current sorry state of housing."--Publisher's description
"The world will need approximately one billion new housing units in the next twenty years. Given the strain on resources and land, houses as we know them today will no longer be economically or ecologically viable. But what should take the place of contemporary dwelling structures? What will new housing concepts look like? And what prevents us from building them?"--Page 4 of cover.

ISBN:

9783777424101
3777424102

Subject:

Architecture, Domestic History 20th century.
Architecture, Domestic History 21st century.
City planning History 21st century.
Housing.
Architecture, Domestic
City planning

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Maak, Niklas. Wohnkomplex.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 291033
Call No.: BIB 234330
Notes: Project: Dear Architect
Status: Available