Renovation of high rise apartment buildings in The Netherlands has just been executed, is at hand now or is planned for the nearby future. Typical problems are lack of thermal comfort, loss of functionality of the floor plan and social deterioration of the neighborhood. Changes of the dwellings in the housing complexes should include energy saving, alteration of the floor plan functionality in more differentiated housing types and upgrade of socio-economic services in the immediate neighborhood of the high rise housing complexes. The technical improvements are not that difficult to make, considering that the standard in comfort, energy saving and functionality of the floor plan for newly build houses has been proved being technical and economical feasible. The problem is the organizing of the existing inhabitants, with their small budgets and many differentiated expectations. Financing the insecurities of this kind of logistical processes is forming the bottle-neck.

In this paper the existing standard in functionality of dwellings in relation to comfort and energy saving will be addressed. In comparison with this standard the technical problems of high rise building stock will be addressed. Next the paper will shortly address the socio-economical problems concerning the organization of large scale renovation of high rise complexes in The Netherlands. Two exemplary case studies in the Amsterdam South-East Quarter and in the Delft Quarter of the Poptahof will be elaborated to illustrate the practical meaning of improvement of comfort and energy saving in high rise building stock in The Netherlands.