Book Review: Highrise of Homes

Highrise of Homes by SITE
Rizzoli, 1982
Paperback, 108 pages

James Wines and his art/architecture/environmental design incarnation SITE have strived to "unite building design with visual art, landscape, and green technology" for the last 35 years. This ecological ingredient is evident in 2000's Green Architecture that Wines authored, an overview of environmentally-friendly architecture of which is firm is an influential voice. As an architect, SITE is known most for their series of Best Showrooms designed and built from 1970-84. These one-of-a-kind design were a refreshing antidote to corporate branding that produce to this day repeated, cookie-cutter boxes that litter the American landscape and other parts of the world. Part of Wines' intention with these designs was to make an architecture that used architecture for inspiration, instead of looking elsewhere for a rational or meaning. For example, the Indeterminate Facade presents a crumbling brick exterior, an ironic play on architectural materials and construction. 

This same thinking extends to another well-known project by SITE, the Highrise of Homes. Designed in the early 1980s with the goal of actually being built, it featured an open structural frame filled with single-family houses, a collision the city and suburbia. Green space and light would be accommodated by a U-shaped plan. Here, the image of the project would be an accidental mish-mash of house styles (colonial, ranch, Modern, etc) made up of architectural components (doors, windows, sidings). Wines wanted the singular voice of the architect to be downplayed in favor of chance and the voice of the people. Paradoxically, these ideas made it likable to some people but detestable by others, evidenced in this book's comments from residents of New York City apartments, building developers, urbanists, and so forth. While the project was never realized, it's influence is felt in the vertical greening of many cities and even the designs of superstar architects.