Missing Middle Housing

A century ago, there were a wide range of housing types throughout American cities and towns. Until very recently, there were only two American for-sale housing types being built: single-family homes (attached and detached) and multi-story condominium buildings. Partners in business and in life Dan and Karen Parolek of Opticos Design set out to change that in 2010. They began by questioning why this middle-size housing has gone missing from American cities beginning at the end of World War II. Then they built their Missing Middle site, which garnered wide acclaim. Their Missing Middle Housing book laid the proposition out in greater detail afterward. Get one. Or several, for all your city planners and administrators.

Our only involvement beyond advocacy for Karen and Dan's work is to photograph Missing Middle Housing types in as many places as we can find them, both at home and abroad. And as we're building our image database, we're tagging each Missing Middle Housing image with metadata for both the type at large and all the subtypes so that when the image database goes live you can find the types you're looking for.