DETAIL 4.2020

From the editorial of issue 4.2020

Urban Densification

Colourful blobs emerge from the rooftops of Ron Herron’s “Tuned City ”. The collage from 1969 shows a futuristic vision of densification along urban peripheries, and in many ways it anticipates the situation faced by cities today. Existing buildings are gaining extra floors, gaps are being filled, parking lots are becoming building plots and vacant spaces converted and repurposed.
Our April issue on densification shows current projects in Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg as well as in London, Amsterdam and Bahrain, which are successfully creating more space for education, living and working in densely populated city centres. In each case they have successfully confronted difficult conditions. Meanwhile, former industrial buildings are being converted into microlofts or family apartments. Now as then, existing stock offers enormous potential for densification.