Modernist Villages explores a distinctive trajectory within Swiss modernism: low-rise, high-density housing developments created between the 1950s and the 1980s.
Through the analysis of eleven case studies, supported by archival research, interviews, and on-site investigation, this monograph reveals how pioneering architects reimagined urban form, domestic space, and modes of communal life. These projects synthesise the qualities of single-family dwellings within collective housing environments, where architecture, landscape, and social interaction are carefully interwoven.
The book's threefold structure – comprising the main chapters Memory, Archive, and Theory – offers a layered approach through which these works are examined. Combining historical narrative, primary sources, and conceptual reflection, it explores how themes such as modularity, spatial depth, and the delicate equilibrium between built form and nature continue to be relevant for a critical dialogue with contemporary architectural discourse.
Far from representing static artefacts of modernism, these projects resonate today as models for sustainable urban density and community-making opportunities.
Modernist Villages will be of interest to architects, urbanists, historians, and all those interested in the future of housing and the evolving potential of low-rise, high-density living.
The book combines a research synthesis and a travel journal focused on eleven case-study buildings of low-rise, high-density housing from the 1950s to the 1980s, designed by Atelier 5, H. U. Scherer / Metron, Itten + Brechbühl, and Spirig + Fehr.
Map: introduction
Memory: buildings and landscapes
Archive
Theory: parallel themes
Drawing board: open notes
On the road again: conclusion
Biographical notes
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
ISBN
9789893368541Title
Modernist Villages - Low rise / high density housing in Switzerland 1950s-80sAuthor
João ValérioPublisher
João ValérioPublication year
2025Binding
SoftcoverLanguage
English (with interviews in EN, FR, ES)
