Book Review: Platform.Middle—Architecture for Housing the 99%

Platform.Middle—Architecture for Housing the 99%

By 5468796 Architecture (Arquine, 2024)

Winnipeg architecture firm 5468796 is known for working outside of the norm—the puzzle-box Bloc 10, the flying-saucer-like 62M—and their first publication is no exception. Rather than a traditional monograph, platform.MIDDLE is a box set of four volumes. Together, the publication’s components distill lessons learned from 5468796’s portfolio of missing middle housing projects, offering context and practical tools for architects to address housing affordability.

The first of the four books, titled platform.MIDDLE, reports from a symposium of the same name held at IIT’s College of Architecture in 2019. The symposium explored the current state of multi-family housing in North America, and architects’ role in shaping its future. The paper version is structured around illustrated summaries of the presentations by architects, developers, and educators who participated in the symposium. Especially engaging are the interludes between these summaries, where the transcripts from panel discussions are excerpted. These discussions point to the complexities of the housing challenge, and the imperatives to shift policy, harness data, and reform regulations, among other drivers for change.

Personal stories are interwoven through the conversations. Montreal architect Rami Bebawi, for instance, recalls meeting 5468796 principals Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic soon after founding KANVA with Tudor Radulescu. “We met them the first time we had ever won a medal. Out of the blue, they shared everything they knew. That stuck with us.”

That spirit of sharing is at the core of the next two volumes. The slender platform.MACRO is a primer to the many policy and financial tools that affect the affordability of housing: from zoning strategies and government investment, to alternative ownership models and hybrid housing policies. While beyond the scope of the architect, these systemic issues profoundly shape the profession’s work.

Aspiring and practicing architects, as well as others engaged in producing housing, will find the third and fourth volumes, platform.MICRO and projects.MODELLING to be the most directly relevant. In the former, 5468796 offers a toolkit of design strategies for architects producing housing: from introducing interstitial courtyards and plazas that make the most of communal outdoor space, to creating adjoining suites to skirt zoning by-laws that mandate maximum unit counts. These strategies are illustrated with their own work, which is presented in greater detail in the last volume.

Driven by a sense of purpose, this publication is not so much a manifesto or pure celebration of 5468796’s work, as it is a guidebook that aims to open-source knowledge gleaned from that work for a greater cause. “It is our hope that the following micro strategies and solutions will allow others to leapfrog the lessons we have spent uncovering since 2007,” writes Hurme in the introduction to platform.MICRO. “This head start will hopefully allow more of us to take on the housing and environmental crises on a larger scale through the mid-scale multi-family building typology, and give architects some practical, straightforward options to increase livability and quality of the spaces they design, while still meeting the financial goals of their clients.” 

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