1 Highrise Housing as a Building Event

Multi-storey or highrise housing in the UK is currently at a crossroad, and many Housing Authorities have to decide whether to refurbish existing multi-storey flats or to demolish them and invest in entirely new housing stock. Our wider research project on ‘Modernist Highrise Housing ’ locates itself in this context and seeks to contribute to debates on urban sustainability, density and optimal land use, as well as pressure for access to affordable housing in cities. In this paper we wish to bring into view the technological life of the highrise. Technology does not stand outside of the question of highrise living (as a ‘cause ’ or ‘solution ’ to its quality) it is entirely entangled with it. We therefore suggest understanding highrise living as a building event including various agents. We argue that the ability of a highrise building to ‘hold together ’ and provide a satisfactory home for its residents or to ‘fall apart ’ and become unliveable – sometimes even demolished – is dependent upon the extraordinary and ordinary dramas of associations between people and technologies. We are going to show examples of empirical data collected at different scenes where such associations are created, reorganised and sometimes given up