Housing architecture is a distinctive subject of artistic expression, being closest to man himself, as it provides spatial framework for his life and psychophysical development. Housing architecture for the most part fills the urban texture and determines the cultural aspect of cities and streets.
For the twentieth-century architectonic thought, housing turned out to be an essential issue. It became an area of exploration for the greatest luminaries of architecture, as well as a matter of interest for both national leaders and ordinary people. Probably, there never had been such an era in history before, where architectural creativity interwove so much with the housing problems.
This dissertation deals with the modern apartment housing, which appeared in Cracow, Vienna and Graz in 1980-1995. The object of this study is to select, describe, compare and analyse the works of architecture from the point of view of their form and substance.
Comparing modern architecture of the three cities could be justified by the similarity of the context of the existing development. Likewise, it seems that those three urban centres could well serve as a basis for presentation of the fundamental problems relative to the modern shaping of the form and functions of apartments.
This dissertation presents housing architecture of Cracow, Vienna and Graz of 1980-95 as set within the context of modern stylistic trends, i.e. those of postmodernism, late modernism, new modernism, deconstruction, minimalism and high technology. It investigates the circumstances which triggered off the emergence of artistic tendencies (related to the housing of selected period); attempts to explain their origins, demonstrate the effect of certain architectural works on others and define the meaning of the aforesaid tendencies as both iconographic patterns and models of functional and formal solutions.
In fact, the presentation of the creative development and achievements of housing architecture in relation to artistic trends has an ordering character. In showing problems related to the shaping of architectonic form, the object was to reach into the housing architecture and find those aspects that serve man and his needs, in other worlds - find the "truth whose beauty is radiance" (St. Augustine).