Urbanism of the Air

Abstract

With housing demands rising in already dense urban environments new housing typologies must be tested. In the seventeenth century the medieval version of the London Bridge addressed issues of a growing city by coupling infrastructure with acts of domesticity included a central chapel, shops, and housing. In 2003 the Porter House by SHoP Architects challenged conventional housing typologies in New York City with their air rights proposal.The Porter House functions on multiple levels and challenges historic conservation and current zoning code. In 2009 twenty-five luxury villas were illegally built by developers on the roof of the multi-story shopping mall inHengyang, China. These examples challenge normative building practices and provide a foundation for further investigation of housing typology and urbanism of the air. In order increase density in land-poor modernizing cities, the architectural discipline must balance the opportunities of air rights proposals over historic buildings by challenging the nostalgic notion of preservation.