The last decade has seen a growing social movement toward collectivity, sharing and participation.

This paradigm shift is reflected in architecture as well: in recent years, increasingly innovative collective housing projects, organized around the principle of trading-in private spaces for larger, more luxurious shared spaces, have been emerging across the globe--many of them realized through bottom-up grassroots initiatives. The return of the collective in architecture has resulted in surprising architectural solutions that also create new urban spaces.

Together The New Architecture of the Collective presents around 20 international building projects from Europe, Japan and the US that provide innovative platforms for collective living in the present day. A selection of projects is discussed in detail, and extensive photo essays offer vivid impressions of the daily collective and private life and everyday routines in these buildings. Interviews with movers and shakers from the collective housing scene, written by international journalists, offer insights and background information on the processes and people that have made each project possible. All this is complemented by theoretical and historical context, including analytical essays by experts in the field, infographics providing facts and figures, diagrams explaining how different collective housing models work and an extensive timeline detailing the genealogy of the collective housing movement in the 20th century.