Description
By Alan Power
The concept of home represents fundamental human needs – both for physical shelter and emotional belonging – yet housing provision is a perpetual and global issue. Could awkward, unusual and difficult urban sites hold the key to unlocking more homes?
At Home in the City: Domestic Architecture for Challenging Urban Sites examines how architects can overcome the restrictions and challenges of these overlooked sites to create dwellings of imaginative power. The projects showcased demonstrate the potential hidden within a place, engaging with the character of the site, its location, orientation and aspect, in order to create reflective and expansive domestic space for a variety of lifestyles.
Featuring historic and contemporary buildings from all over the world, the projects are organised around themes derived from the characteristics of each site, including thresholds and privacy, pushing boundaries, finding nature and retrofitting. The book is both a guide to working with difficult sites as well as a masterclass in how a deep understanding of site and place leads to special, poetic outcomes – and, critically, more much-needed houses.
