As the 20th Century progressed, urban housing became quite homogenized throughout the world. Apartment buildings in Sao Paulo are very similar to those in Seoul, Moscow, and even Chicago. It is clear that the modernist architectural vocabulary made famous by the so-called “International style” has gone much beyond corporation identity buildings and prevails in the housing sector in most of the urbanized world. According to a study supported by the United Nations Habitat (ANGEL, 2000), residential buildings – although varying in size, shape and construction materials – now take on one of four basic forms: the single family house, the row house, the walk-up apartment building and the high-rise.
This book is the result of almost a decade of research on multi-family buildings, known worldwide as apartments. The main goal is to investigate the extent to which those buildings are or are not alike, or whether the similarities are more visual than experiential.
