This research deals with the study and analysis of contemporary examples of collective housing in Europe, designed during the 1990s and beyond.More specifically, the projects of this research were constructed between 1994 and 2008. They are high-rise buildings that constitute representative examples of contemporary collective housing while they fulfil the specific criteria set by this research. These buildings have been selected according to their general geometric set-up, the typological set-up of the individual units and collective spaces of each building, as well as the architectural interest that they present. At the same time, there is an attempt to determine a general limit regarding which residence buildings should be considered as “collective” and to which extend. The examples of collective housing selected for this research are residences that: a/ were designed and set for particular users groups with common or specific characteristics, b/ were made by the famous Baugruppen or Building Cooperatives, c/ can accommodate a large number of people and are designed so that they/in order to enhance the collectiveness and the sociability among their users through communal spaces. 

Collective housing is not a new type of housing that emerged as a consequence of modern life,but one that has regained ground in the contemporary architecture in recent years for various reasons. The reasons for its popularity have their origins in the fact that the social structure of most countries has undergone significant changes because of social, political and economic factors. The new family and lifestyle models that have appeared during the last years, the ever increasing average age of population in affluent European countries, intense urbanization of recent decades, citizens’ intense mobility and way of life, as well as people’s searching an "identity" in a globalized world through the model of collective housing are some of these reasons. This research examines, consequently, the changes and similarities that the model of collective housing is undergoing nowadays.

Collective housing nowadaysgives everyone the right to determine their life in the “community” with a new aim: keeping the balance between individual and public interest. Today, each person chooses to which extend he/she wants to participate or get collectively involved. Collectiveness is enhanced and encouraged through communal spaces, while individual’s privacy is at the same time respected and protected.

Collective housing cannot be strictly standardised anymore or of no architectural interest, as it used to be in previous decades. Individuals seek a sense of “identity” in it, while at the same time its neutrality should also be maintained. Flexibility and adaptability, the wide variety in number, shape, surface and typology of collective residence housing units constitute now essential and basic characteristics of a contemporary unit of residences. Collective housing nowadays comes to replace and assume the role of “neighbourhood”, or, in many cases, to upgrade and strengthen it, while its potential/possible arrangement is chosen with the aim of developing and upgrading the wider region through the new residents and the uses that will be attracted.