New York-based Leeser Architecture, which divides its time between Europe and the United States, is made up of Thomas and Joerg Leeser, and a large team of architects. As an experienced agency, both in unit projects and residential and urban projects, it does not shrink, where the latter are concerned, from applying complex strategies which in some instances give pride of place to residents' choices. With a keen eye on the expression of a certain form of eclecticism and commonplace-ness, Thomas and Joerg Leeser thus shatter any claim to formal homogenization. This is the case with the garden city project for 200 families in the old Krupp steelworks at Bochum, in Germany. The huge infrastructures, which they are using as the sole compact, three-storey mass supported on posts freeing up use of the ground, here acting as a pretext for the formulation of a residential typology capable of being incorporated within this built context. Thomas and Joerg Leeser here turn density into not only an economic argument, but an ecological one, too. By reducing the spaces required for movement to a minimum and keeping the ground floor for collective activities, they are proposing an "intermediate" type combining certain collective housing features with others peculiar to individual housing. Each housing unit is thus endowed with a roof garden which, taken all together, turn into a huge planted expanse offering a sweeping view.	(USA/D)
	Leeser Architecture Leeser (Thomas) (1952), Leeser (Joerg)
	• Villa for 200 families Bochum, Allemagne, 1998 (concours 2ème phase)