Architecture is an art that we use daily, although understanding of it varies greatly. We usually don't consider our own dwelling as a part of an artwork or city architecture, even though housing is organised in housing blocks which shape districts, mikrorayons, large scale housing blocks and parts of the city that we see, perceive and evaluate as a whole, which have been endeavoured by building architects and urban planners to ensure their functionality, quality and aesthetic value. By virtue of currently topical energy-efficiency needs many buildings acquire new outlook, but the housing blocks and districts become motley and visually fragmented. Naturally, one can name many influencing aspects - the housing stock is deteriorated; the state has effectuated an inappropriate form of property; the apartment owners can't come to agreement of the building facade maintenance and therefore each facade renovation is considered a great achievement; few are interested in architecture etc. Many seminars and conferences promote fine examples of unified housing block renovations from abroad, but in Latvia there are no such examples so far. Instead, 3-, 5- and 9-storey soviet housing blocks once in style unified acquire a few new structures within them, as well as some new striped or motley facades meanwhile losing their architectural integrity and urban conception of comfortable and beautiful quality environment. This article presents information about Riga's large scale housing origins and serial housing architecture. In numerous Latvia's places, as well as in Riga dynamic housing facade renovation process is occurring. Unfortunately each project is conceived individually without visual coordination with the neighbouring buildings. In addition, there is no architecturally unified city development plan that would regulate the process in Riga. In order to understand large scale housing block and mikrorayon genesis and maybe in near future find an appropriate solution for renovating their facades this article concentrates on architectural solutions of 4 generations of this type of housing. Riga's large scale housing development was influenced by two main factors. Firstly, the USSR regulations were having certain demands towards the design, construction organisation and its amounts that needed to be followed. Secondly, the construction technology had advanced. According to that a great amount of post-war modernist large scale housing blocks and districts was constructed in Riga between 1958 and 1991. They consisted mainly of serial buildings. Depending on the generation they were made either of brick or panel constructions. During this period approximately 11 different apartment building series were constructed that consisted of around 200 000 apartments totalling 40 % of today Riga's housing stock. This development on urban level was connected with generational progress of apartment building series, though other factors were at play as well.