Katharina Borsi – författare

Housing and the City explores housing histories, theories, and projects in diverse geographies. It presents a geographically dispersed history of the twentieth-century modern housing project and its social diagram, juxtaposed with case studies from the past and the present that suggest that we can live and work differently.

While the contributions are diverse in their theoretical approach and geographical situation, their juxtaposition yields transversal connections in the conception of the home and the city and highlights the diversity of architectural solutions in the formation of housing and its communities. The collection also reveals architecture’s contribution to the construction of the self and communities, the individual and the collective—as both urban spatial entities and socio-political concepts.

Housing and the City provides essential reading for students, academics, and practitioners interested in the history, theory, or current design of housing. At a time when cities are witnessing new ways of working, changing social demographics, increased geographical mobility, and mass migrations, as well as the pervasive threat of the climate crisis—all trends exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic—Housing and the City presents a historical and theoretical reflection on the question: what does it mean to be at home in the city in the twenty-first century?

Housing and the City explores housing histories, theories, and projects in diverse geographies. It presents a geographically dispersed history of the twentieth-century modern housing project and its social diagram, juxtaposed with case studies from the past and the present that suggest that we can live and work differently.

While the contributions are diverse in their theoretical approach and geographical situation, their juxtaposition yields transversal connections in the conception of the home and the city and highlights the diversity of architectural solutions in the formation of housing and its communities. The collection also reveals architecture’s contribution to the construction of the self and communities, the individual and the collective—as both urban spatial entities and socio-political concepts.

Housing and the City provides essential reading for students, academics, and practitioners interested in the history, theory, or current design of housing. At a time when cities are witnessing new ways of working, changing social demographics, increased geographical mobility, and mass migrations, as well as the pervasive threat of the climate crisis—all trends exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic—Housing and the City presents a historical and theoretical reflection on the question: what does it mean to be at home in the city in the twenty-first century?

The Berlin Tenement and the City describes the development of the Berlin tenement from 1860 to 1914, showing how it became both Berlin’s standard housing type and its principal urban component – the city’s ubiquitous typology. In contrast to earlier historical categorizations of the tenement as a ‘rental barrack,’ here it is described as an evolving typology that dynamically responded to the demands of the city and urban reform.

In this dynamic understanding of architecture, the tenement is the protagonist of the actual unfolding of the city, its growth and densification, as well as its spatial and social differentiation. Charting the evolution of the productive tenement into a morphology combining living and manufacturing and the rise of tenements increasingly differentiated according to class traces their contribution to the evolution and generalization of norms of housing and domesticity.

This book is essential reading for scholars, students, architects and urbanists interested in Berlin or the history of housing and the city.