An international survey of the most inventive contemporary apartment buildings to inspire architects developers urban planners and informed city dwellers

There's an urgent need to build more and better apartments: to relieve an acute shortage of affordable housing in major cities; to use scarce land more economically; to save energy wasted on long-distance commutes; and to revitalize urban centers. These challenges have led to the creation of some of the most inventive contemporary buildings of the last few years.

In his new book Building Community author Michael Webb explores apartment buildings as a typology of growing significance and traces the history of multiple-occupancy housing through its most innovative 20th-century exemplars. These range from the pioneering projects of Henri Sauvage and Michel de Klerk to the landscaped housing estates of Weimar Germany the radical proposals of Le Corbusier and public housing in post-war Europe.

Thirty recent apartment complexes are grouped by theme from compact urban villages to mega-structures and from