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Living Complex: From Zombie City to the New Communal
Cities today have become portfolios of investment properties with token patches of green. The cost to live in a fortress-like luxury housing complex in London or Manhattan is so high that most of us can’t afford it. As the masses move to the suburbs, the construction industry responds by churning out clusters of the same barracks-style row houses, ensuring that, there too, one can live in utmost privacy and security. But what do these buildings say about us? Do they have anything to do with the way in which most people actually want to live?
Niklas Maak provocatively argues that the construction industry and a number of outdated or poorly thought-out policies have prevented us from rethinking how we live in the city.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 connected to problematic forms of accommodation in our cities. And the problem will only get worse: Over the next twenty years, influx into the world’s cities is expected to create the need for an additional one billion units of housing. Fortunately, Maak shows, there are practicable solutions. In Europe, Japan, and the United States, the author explores promising new forms of housing.
Cities should be reflections of their inhabitants—not forces to be contended with. Controversial, yet well-researched and wryly funny, Living Complex is a call for change from the “comfortable defense lines” that epitomize the current sorry state of housing.
Niklas Maak provocatively argues that the construction industry and a number of outdated or poorly thought-out policies have prevented us from rethinking how we live in the city.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 connected to problematic forms of accommodation in our cities. And the problem will only get worse: Over the next twenty years, influx into the world’s cities is expected to create the need for an additional one billion units of housing. Fortunately, Maak shows, there are practicable solutions. In Europe, Japan, and the United States, the author explores promising new forms of housing.
Cities should be reflections of their inhabitants—not forces to be contended with. Controversial, yet well-researched and wryly funny, Living Complex is a call for change from the “comfortable defense lines” that epitomize the current sorry state of housing.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 11, 2015
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 because I feel like this book is saying things that need to be heard. I'd like to see more books that discuss the role of architecture in promoting community, and discuss the need to modify building and zoning policies that promote isolation in their attempts to protect people and property value.
The author dedicated a lot of time to discussion of core architectural concepts. Is there an alternative to doors? Do floors need to be level, or would sloped floors make our spaces more playful? What role do walls play, and can we replace them with curtains? While these are interesting questions, and do have some bearing on the topic, I was expecting the book to spend more time analyzing today's most successful community-living projects, and to explore more deeply some practical ideas for new projects.
I found myself irritated several times by what I think is ungrounded academic analysis. One small example of this is the discussion of Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park -- known to most people as "The Bean". Maak describes it as a "hermetic, exclusive object that can be viewed, but not appropriated, lived in, accessed, or taken over", an object that "primarily demonstrates the power of private agents in public space". I had to wonder whether the author has ever visited it in person. People walk under it, touch it, take selfies in its curved reflection, and almost always love it. The author indulges in idealistic disdain, and in doing so lays bare his disconnection with reality.
However, there is much to love here, too. This passage, near the end of the book, sums up much of what I loved about the author's message:
"Every good house proves that architecture can change society and lifestyles: any house in which the isolation of the occupants is abolished; in which people have breakfast on a roof terrace or in a conservatory rather than in a dark kitchen; in which the children can run from the kitchen into a huge communal, jungle-like garden; in which neighbors can meet, if they feel like it, in common spaces; any house that does away with the separation between work and living areas and combines both in a new kind of dwelling landscape that also fosters a new form of microeconomy and local production; any house that proves that there are other conceivable ways of dwelling and lifestyles beyond the model of a 'home for singles or nuclear families' -- such as homes for six octogenarians who do not want to move to a retirement home, or homes for three single parents with five children and a gay couple.
"Any house where one's monthly rent or mortgage payment is lower, because it has been planned and built more intelligently, and one can thus live more relaxed and freer, changes society."
The author dedicated a lot of time to discussion of core architectural concepts. Is there an alternative to doors? Do floors need to be level, or would sloped floors make our spaces more playful? What role do walls play, and can we replace them with curtains? While these are interesting questions, and do have some bearing on the topic, I was expecting the book to spend more time analyzing today's most successful community-living projects, and to explore more deeply some practical ideas for new projects.
I found myself irritated several times by what I think is ungrounded academic analysis. One small example of this is the discussion of Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park -- known to most people as "The Bean". Maak describes it as a "hermetic, exclusive object that can be viewed, but not appropriated, lived in, accessed, or taken over", an object that "primarily demonstrates the power of private agents in public space". I had to wonder whether the author has ever visited it in person. People walk under it, touch it, take selfies in its curved reflection, and almost always love it. The author indulges in idealistic disdain, and in doing so lays bare his disconnection with reality.
However, there is much to love here, too. This passage, near the end of the book, sums up much of what I loved about the author's message:
"Every good house proves that architecture can change society and lifestyles: any house in which the isolation of the occupants is abolished; in which people have breakfast on a roof terrace or in a conservatory rather than in a dark kitchen; in which the children can run from the kitchen into a huge communal, jungle-like garden; in which neighbors can meet, if they feel like it, in common spaces; any house that does away with the separation between work and living areas and combines both in a new kind of dwelling landscape that also fosters a new form of microeconomy and local production; any house that proves that there are other conceivable ways of dwelling and lifestyles beyond the model of a 'home for singles or nuclear families' -- such as homes for six octogenarians who do not want to move to a retirement home, or homes for three single parents with five children and a gay couple.
"Any house where one's monthly rent or mortgage payment is lower, because it has been planned and built more intelligently, and one can thus live more relaxed and freer, changes society."
November 2, 2023
A very interesting book that brings together international examples of complex housing to consider the housing of the future. Japan is a clear favourite of Maak as he describes the ways in which new Japanese architects are developing new housing typologies in stark contrast to any European built examples.
I breezed through this book as it is quite easy to read and very funny in parts as Maak analyses the contemporary climate.
Definitely could have more of an environmental/sustainable edge (this will be the real challenge of future housing) but give it the benefit of the doubt as it is now a few years old.
I breezed through this book as it is quite easy to read and very funny in parts as Maak analyses the contemporary climate.
Definitely could have more of an environmental/sustainable edge (this will be the real challenge of future housing) but give it the benefit of the doubt as it is now a few years old.
November 25, 2020
Niklas Maak puts together a wide range of examples and arguments for how new spaces for living can be created in cities and discusses the various reasons for why we are stuck in the destitute state of housing today. The book is optimistic and encouraging and it inspires one to look more closely into the various elements of designing living spaces, as well as providing a number of methodologies to approach such issues.
April 8, 2019
An interesting essay about contemporary city problems.
The new forms of living doesn't fit with the housing market offer. And the public sector and the politicians aren't interedted today in these new social issues.
In the end we have also a bad architectural aproach to this question.
The new forms of living doesn't fit with the housing market offer. And the public sector and the politicians aren't interedted today in these new social issues.
In the end we have also a bad architectural aproach to this question.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews