Living the High Life, Or is it?

Photo from starchitects big.dk.
Alan Davies recently let loose an interesting analysis into living at higher levels. It's something that Melbournians are doing more and more of (at least in the inner areas), and its only going to become more important with time. Apartment living elicits the kind of hysterical, knee jerk responses I usually associate with religious or football related discussion. Given the growth of cities, I don't see us having much choice other than learning to make the best of apartment living, and that requires some sensible debate.

In this piece, Alan looks at whether or not living high up is 'unnatural', and explains that despite the public perception of high rise housing, there is significant demand. Some great comments and discussion occurring at the bottom of the article as well.

In my opinion, the key is good design. Not randomly limiting heights based on perceptions of 'human scale' or 'pedestrian friendliness'.

While you're here, its worth checking out the website for http://big.dk/, despite it sounding kind of rude, it's probably the greatest architect/designers website on the web.