A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction. It is used as a residential, office building, or other functions including hotel, retail, or with multiple purposes combined. Residential high-rise buildings are also known in some varieties of English, such as British English, as tower blocks and may be referred to as MDUs, standing for multi-dwelling units. A very tall high-rise building is referred to as a skyscraper.
The Nikolaiviertel is an old quarter of the German capital of Berlin, founded c. 1200. Together with nearby Cölln, they jointly make up Alt-Berlin, the reconstructed historical heart of the city. Located in the Mitte locality, it is five minutes away from Alexanderplatz.
An apartment, flat, or unit is a self-contained housing unit that occupies part of a building, generally on a single storey. There are many names for these overall buildings. The housing tenure of apartments also varies considerably, from large-scale public housing, to owner occupancy within what is legally a condominium, to tenants renting from a private landlord.
A housing estate is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country.
The Unité d'habitation is a modernist residential housing typology developed by Le Corbusier, with the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afonso. It formed the basis of several housing developments throughout Europe designed by Le Corbusier and sharing the same name.
Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. Some researchers refer it to “various materials joined together to form a component of the final installation procedure“.
Panelák is a colloquial term in Czech and Slovak for a large panel system panel building constructed of pre-fabricated, pre-stressed concrete, such as those extant in the former Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in the world. Paneláks are usually located in housing estates.
Prefabricated homes, often referred to as prefab homes or simply prefabs, are specialist dwelling types of prefabricated building, which are manufactured off-site in advance, usually in standard sections that can be easily shipped and assembled. Some current prefab home designs include architectural details inspired by postmodernism or futurist architecture.
A prefabricated building, informally a prefab, is a building that is manufactured and constructed using prefabrication. It consists of factory-made components or units that are transported and assembled on-site to form the complete building. Various materials were combined to create a part of the installation process.
Khrushchevkas are a type of low-cost, concrete-paneled or brick three- to five-storied apartment building and apartments in these buildings, which were designed and constructed in the Soviet Union since the early 1960s, during the time its namesake Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union. Khrushchevkas are sometimes compared to the Japanese danchi, similar housing projects from the same period, which by some accounts were directly inspired by them.
Multifamily residential, also known as multidwelling unit (MDU)) is a classification of housing where multiple separate housing units for residential inhabitants are contained within one building or several buildings within one complex. Units can be next to each other (side-by-side units), or stacked on top of each other (top and bottom units). Common forms include apartment building and condominium, where typically the units are owned individually rather than leased from a single building owner. Many intentional communities incorporate multifamily residences, such as in cohousing projects.
Panelház is a Hungarian term for a type of concrete block of flats, built in the People's Republic of Hungary and other Eastern Bloc countries. They are also known as Plattenbau in German, Panelák in Czech and Slovak, Blok in Polish.
Prefabs were a major part of the delivery plan to address the United Kingdom's post–World War II housing shortage. They were envisaged by war-time prime minister Winston Churchill in March 1944, and legally outlined in the Housing Act 1944.
Stadthaus is a nine-storey residential building in Hackney, London, completed in 2009. With nine stories, it was considered the second tallest timber residential building made of wood in the world at the time of its construction, after the Forte apartment complex in Melbourne, Australia. It was designed in collaboration between architects Waugh Thistleton, structural engineers Techniker, and timber panel manufacturer KLH.
Michenzani is a large neighbourhood of Ng'ambo, the more modern part of Zanzibar City in Tanzania. It is located just across Creek Road, that separates the historical part of the city, Stone Town and Ng'ambo. The place is mostly known for the Plattenbauten, i.e., the large apartment blocks that were built here in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the aid of East Germany.
P2 is the abbreviation for a type of residential panel building found in former East Germany. The P stands for parallel and refers to load-bearing walls arranged parallel to wall surfaces. 2 denotes the arrangement of two stairways in a building.
The FOCSA Building is a residential and commercial block in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Cuba. At 121 meters (397 ft), it was the tallest building in Cuba for over 6 decades until the construction of La Torre López-Callejas. It was named after the contracting company Fomento de Obras y Construcciones, Sociedad Anónima, and the architects were Ernesto Gómez Sampera (1921–2004), Mercedes Diaz, and Martín Domínguez Esteban (1897-1970), who was the architect of the Radiocentro CMQ Building. The structural engineer was Luis Sáenz Duplace, of the firm Sáenz, Cancio & Martín, and professor of engineering at the University of Havana. The civil engineers were Bartolome Bestard and Manuel Padron. Gustavo Becquer and Fernando H.Meneses were the mechanical and electrical engineers, respectively. It is located on a site bordered by Calles 17 and M and Calles 19 and N in the Vedado.
Unité d'Habitation of Berlin is a 1958 apartment building located in Berlin-Westend, Germany, designed by Le Corbusier following his concept of Unité d'Habitation. Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation concept was materialised in four other buildings in France with a similar design. The building is constructed in béton brut and is part of the initial architecture style we know today as brutalism. The structure was built with on site prefab cast concrete panels and poured ceiling slabs. The Modulor system is the base measure of the Unité and Corbusier used not more than 15 Modulor measures to construct the entire structure form. Ultimately the work has been eliminated from Le Corbusier's oeuvre, which he confirmed himself until his death in 1965 and which has also been confirmed posthumous in 1967 in his last authorized publication of his work.
Q3A is an abbreviation for a type of three, four and five storey prefabricated buildings constructed in the GDR in the 1950s and 1960s. The letter "Q" in the word stands for "Querwandbau".
Wilfried Stallknecht was a German architect, planner and furniture designer. He was known chiefly for his significant role in shaping Germany's post-World War II built environment – particularly that of the former East Germany (GDR) – through his major contributions to the designs of the country's ubiquitous, iconic and often standardized housing blocks – the so-called Plattenbau – as well as a similarly ubiquitous and standardized single-family house design known as the EW58. He was affiliated with the GDR's Bauakademie from 1959 to 1973 and served as planner for the town of Bernau bei Berlin from 1974 to 1984.
