5468796 Architecture: platform.MIDDLE

Research on multifamily housing and its impact on the daily lives of ordinary people, from a leading Canadian architectural firm These four slipcased volumes build on 5468796 Architecture’s housing manifesto “Add via Edit: A Decade in Housing”, the symposium “platform.MIDDLE: Architecture for Housing the 99%” hosted at Illinois Institute of Technology and examples by practice-related offices. The work and research of the Winnipeg-based firm 5468796 Architecture (described as “one of the most talented young design firms worldwide”) has focused on “missing middle” and midrise housing in its many forms and ownership models, from refugee and social housing to market-rate condominiums. With the condominium boom taking hold across North America, the number of residential units passing across architects’ desks is unprecedented. As a result of the typology’s inherent repetition and potentially banal program—as well as the private sector’s pursuit of profit, often at the expense of quality and livability—the margin in which architecture can operate is very narrow. Architects must respond to the challenges of this typology with the rigor it deserves.