Sh2016 Ebook

SUSTAINABLE HOUSING 2016
Proceedings of the International Conference

on Sustainable Housing Planning, Management and Usability
Porto, Portugal
16-18 November
Edited by
Rogrio Amoda
Cristina Pinheiro

Proceedings of the International Conference on Sustainable Housing
Planning, Management and Usability
Edited by
Rogrio Amoda & Cristina Pinheiro
2016 The Editors and the Authors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without prior written permission from the Publisher.
ISBN 978-989-8734-20-4
e-ISBN 978-989-8734-21-1
Published by
Green Lines Instituto para o Desenvolvimento Sustentvel
Green Lines Institute for Sustainable Development
Av. Alcaides de Faria, 377 S.12
4750-106 Barcelos, Portugal
mail@greenlines-institute.org
http://greenlines-institute.org
1st edition, November 2016
Legal Notice
The Editors and the Publisher are not responsible for the use which might be made of the following information.
Sustainable Housing 2016

Foreword
Foreword
SUSTAINABLE HOUSING 2016 International Conference on Sustainable Housing Planning, Management and Usability was an initiative of Green Lines Institute for Sustainable Development that aimed to go further on the discussion of the sustainable improvement of housing
design and construction, including the user point of view.
Currently, the issue of housing is shown as a major challenge within the latest Sustainable
Development concept brought by the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which is based on 17 objectives called as Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Among the many goals that were settled, objectives 1 (No poverty), 3 (Good health), 6 (Clean
water and sanitation), 7 (Renewable energy), 9 (Innovation and infrastructure), 10 (Reduced inequalities), 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), 12 (Responsible consumption), 13 (Climate
action) and 17 (Partnerships for the goals) are of particular relevance to rethink how to build our
homes, as well as establishing more participatory processes for communities. These objectives
include economic, social, cultural and environmental issues that cross the participation of various actors as promoters, technicians and users.
In this context, thinking sustainable housing lists a large group of heterogeneous matters and
approaches involving:
- The occupation of the territory so the cities will continue to expand due to population
growth;
- The management of public investment in social housing, including both the refurbishment
and upgrading of existing units;
- The means of financing and costs of housing units, promoting affordable housing solutions;
- The promotion of equity and social inclusiveness, including the right to housing, as well as
the appreciation of neighborhood conditions;
vi

R. Amoda & C. Pinheiro (eds.)
- The consideration of cultural phenomena related to traditional ways of living and housing
typologies;
- The efficiency of the design and construction of housing units, promoting the proper management of the used resources, the assessment of embodied energy indicators and embodied
carbon, the spatial adaptability and the management of the life cycle of buildings;
- Operational efficiency of housing, with emphasis on energy and water efficiency;
- Improvement of health, hygiene and safety in the use of housing, including indoor air quality (e.g. presence of volatile organic compounds and radon), quality of water supply, wastewater
treatment, and the conditions of thermal, acoustic and visual comfort.
The variety and quality of papers presented and published allow a final and positive balance.
Double-blind peer-review of papers was applied and the number of definitive rejections was relatively low, confirming the over-all high quality of submitted material.
This Conference also gave stage to early stage researchers and students willing to share the
results of their research projects, namely post-graduation projects and doctoral projects. Sustainable Housing 2016 received a significant number of such proposals, the quality of which
was confirmed during double-blind review.
The Editors and the Organising Committee would like to express their gratefulness to all the
partners of this Conference who joined their efforts to make a significant event. Our special
word of recognition to the Fundao Minerva and the University Lusada Norte that welcomed
the event, the Municipality of Porto and Domus Social for the technical support on the visits to
social housing neighborhoods, to Porto Vivo by their technical support on the visit to the Historic Centre Housing interventions, to the Instituto da Habitao e Reabilitao Urbana (IHRU),
the Portuguese Order of Architects (OA) and the Portuguese Order of Engineers (OE) for their
institutional support.
The Editors and the Organising Committee also express their gratitude to all Members of the
Scientific Committee who reviewed the papers and made relevant suggestions that improved the
quality of individual work and the over-all quality of the event.
The Editors
Rogrio Amoda
Cristina Pinheiro

Organising Committee
Organising Committee
Rogrio Amoda
Cristina Pinheiro
Srgio Lira
vii
viii


Scientific Committee
ix
Alfredo Serpell
Edwin Chan
Pontificia Universidad Catlica, Chile
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
Artur Feio
Elma Durmisevic
University Lusada, Portugal
University of Twente, Netherlands
Aslihan Tavil
Ettore Maria Mazzola
Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, Italy
Beisi Jia
Francisco Peixoto Alves
University of Hong Kong,China
Carmine Falasca
Frank Schultmann
University G. D'Annunzio Chieti-Pescara, Italy
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Cecilie Andersson
Gerardo Wadel
Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway
Societat Organica, Spain
Clara Vale
Henk Visscher
University of Porto, Portugal
Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Cristina Pinheiro
Ikbal etiner
Green Lines Institute, Portugal
Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
David Green
Karina Landman
Perkins + Will, United Kingdom
University of Pretoria, South Africa

Katrin Paadam
Ricardo Mateus
Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
University of Minho, Portugal
Kazunobu Minami
Rob P. Geraedts
Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan
Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Kerry London
Rogrio Amoda
University of South Australia, Australia
Melvin Delgado
Roode Liias
Boston University, USA
Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Michele Paleari
Sandra Monteiro Silva
Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy
Mohammad Fadhil
Soofia Elias-zkan
University Technology MARA, Malaysia
Middle East Technical University, Turkey
Paulo Mendona
Srinath Perera
Northumbria University, United Kingdom
Per Franson
Sten Gromark
The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Philip R. Heywood
Thomas Luetzkendorf
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Pilar Mercader-Moyano
Thomas McQuillan
University of Seville, Spain
Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway
Ratna Santosa
Institute of Technology Sepuluh Nopember, Indonesia

Partners
Partners
xi
xii


Contents
xiii
Contents
Foreword
Organizing Committee
vii
ix
Partners
xi
Contents
xiii
Chapter 1 - Cities and neighbourhoods

Evaluation of livability and sustainability in 100% subsidized housing projects developed in
Colombia
C. F. Agudelo Rodrguez, A. Bedoya Ruiz & H. G. Ramos Calonge
Towards new way of living: sharing for promoting the transformation
13
A. F. L. Baratta, F. Finucci & L. Montuori
Diversity comparison of Bangkok shophouse community for creative community development: Siam
Square and Suan Mali community
27
T. Chamnarn
Quality of architectural and urban space. Social housing in Italy
37
V. Ciulla & A. De Capua
Possibilities and limits of urban pattern design: the case of Canakkale Social Housing neighborhood
urban transformation competition
S. Ekinci & A. Otkunc
45
xiv

Holistic methodology for a pilot rainwater runoff plan in na existing densely urbanized area: case
study in Montreal, Qubec
55
A. Germon & V. Mahaut
Discovering the ecological principles of traditional architecture: Cappadocia Region
67
. Karakul
Infill housing strategies to transform low-density suburbs
75
G. London, N. Bertram & L.-A. Khor
Climate change impacts assessment on wastewater sewers overflows for a sustainable water
management plan for the city of Nantes and its surrounding areas
87
V. Mahaut & H. Andrieu
Suburban development - a search for public domains in Danish suburban neighbourhoods
95
B. Melgaard & C. Bech-Danielsen
Big urban crunch, rethinking Neza
109
G. Multari, V. DAmbrosio & C. di Bernardo
Indias Smart Cities can only work against its true aspirations
119
K. Sha
Social bricks? Integrating social sustainability in housing and neighbourhoods
129
M. Stender
Top-down and grassroots approaches to sustainable housing
139
P. Wilkin
Womens safety in urban spaces: case study of a low-income urban neighbourhood in Ghana
153
C. Wrigley-Asante, J. A. Tornuxi & G. Owusu
ASHA- Affordable and Socially sustainable Housing Application. A user-friendly tool that enables
community building and social sustainability in Housing
161
M. Yu & A. Zaveri
Chapter 2 - Financing and management of social housing

Social housing finance in Australia as a missing or incompletemarket: a review of the literature
173
G. Earl, J. Kraatz, B. Liu, S. Mohamed, E. Roca & N. Jayawardena
Chapter 3 - Development and advances in efficient housing typologies

Adaptive residential system for variable frameworks of needs
189
C. C. Falasca & A. Gigante
Tracing a timber breakthrough - the introduction of CLT to the student housing market in Norway
O. K. Flindall & M. Nygaard
199

Contents
Design strategies for low-rise high-density prefabricated timber housing
xv
211
U. Groba
Applications of building information modeling for high performance homes
227
R. Grover, T. M. Froese, S. Staub-French, Y. Bai, A. Fallahi, S. Kim, S. K. Thontepu, M. Kasbar & P. Zadeh
Architecture and ecology as agents and symbols of community transformation
237
B. Jia, Y. Jin & Q. Wang
Architecture and ecology as agents and symbols of community transformation
249
L. O. Nylander
The [meta]project and the episodic articulation of the space/form
263
M. C. Surez & K. Vandenhende
Chapter 4 - Ecology and development of housing solutions

Housing buildings as a feedstock of materials resources to be harvested: a review of the Portuguese
scenario and opportunities
275
R. Amoda
Senda, progressive environmental quality system for rooftop flats
285
J. Arts, L. Volpi, G. Wadel & N. Mart
A comparative study on conventional and sustainable construction with special reference to housing
development administration buildings of Turkey
293
T. Guzeloglu
An investigation on both sides of the ocean: how to turn waste into ecological housing solutions
developed through research at public universities
303
M. P. Mercader Moyano, M. Edith Yajnes, S. Caruso, M. Belen Putruele, M. Carla Berardino, L. Leone & P.
Goi
Biobased building materials. Resources for a bright future in housing?
315
M. A. R. Oostra & M. Sailer
Fisherman housing and settlement renovation to avoid slum at coastal area
325
H. R. Santosa, B. W. Isworo & A. Hayati
Unlocking sustainable routes for dwellings: assessing Earthships buildings
335
S. X. Toh
Chapter 5 - Inclusivity and equity in housing

Sustainability in residential solutions
345
B. Andersson & S. Gromark
Low-tech housing built by universities: two case studies

D. Aureli
355
xvi

Residential design affecting dimensions of equity
361
A. B. Eriksson
People with health vulnerability: strategies and designs for housing
369
F. Giofr & L. Porro
External expectations of potential acquirers of real property rights according to sustainable housing
379
B. Grum & D. K. Grum
Economic Housing Cooperatives (CHE`s) in Matosinhos: legacy and promises (1974-1990)
387
M. R. Mesquita
Chapter 6 - Housing in disaster and conflict scenarios

Refugee city - an emerging and distinct form of urbanism
401
A. Dantas
Household risk management and social protection: case study of Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam
411
S. Lee
The role of reversible solutions for post-disaster temporary housing
425
D. V. Monteiro, D. Flix & A. Feio
Chapter 7 - Refurbishment and upgrading of residential buildings

Using BIM to streamline the energy renovation processes of residential buildings during the early
design stages
435
J. P. Carvalho, S. M. Silva & R. Mateus
Impact of bionic facades on a sustainable refurbishment of highrise apartment buildings
445
A. Hammer
Architectural membranes on building refurbishment - contribution to functional performance and

sustainability
455
P. Mendona & M. Macieira
Post-occupancy evaluations of the adaptable housing in Japan
467
K. Minami
Improving energy performance of homes: coping with general investment behaviours
477
N. Nieboer
The progress of energy renovations in the housing stock in the Netherlands

H. Visscher
485

Contents
xvii
Chapter 8 - Comfort, health and safety

Non invasive indoor air quality control through HVAC systems cleaning state
493
M. C. Basile, V. Bruni, D. De Canditiis, D.Vitulano, F. Buccolini & S. Tagliaferri
Locked by spatial structures? Spatial resilience in times of ageing
503
P. De Decker, E. Schillebeeckx & S. Oosterlynck
University students show and tell what they want in accommodation
519
N. Ike
Residential architecture and atmosphere: what is the impact on wellbeing and health? - A study on
Norra lvstranden, Gothenburg, Sweden
529
H. Morichetto, H. Wijk & L. O. Nylander
The antimicrobial effect of three different chemicals for the treatment of straw bales used in housing
projects
537
J. Raamets, S. Kutti, A. Vettik, K. Ilustrumm, T. Rist & M. Ivask
Chapter 9 - Affordable housing solutions

The potential of innovative local building materials in Cameroon
545
J. F. Asah, F. H. Abanda, M. B. Manjia & C. Pettang
New perspective on more sustainable and affordable housing for lower income group in Turkey assessing life cycle cost
555
. Emekci & A.M. Tanyer
Multi-perspective sustainability analysis of magnesium oxide structural insulated panel
565
T. M. Froese, P. Li, D. L. Behar, M. Alijla & A. Chutskoff
Success factors & bottlenecks in the transformation of vacant office buildings into student housing; a
tool to support the decision process in the initiative phase
577
R. P. Geraedts, H. T. Remy & N. de Kat
Policy options for affordable housing
589
P. Heywood
The impacts of cost determinism in architectural foundation design education: quasi-experiment
601
S. Lee
Redesigning a dysfunctional neighborhood to be healthy
611
E. M. Mazzola
Affordable housing solution through the adoption of IBS and MMC in the Malaysian construction
industry
631
M. F. Mohammad, M. F. Musa, A. S. A. Shukor, R. Ahmad & I. Din
Affordable low rise high density flexible housing

F. J. M. van der Werf
641
xviii

Chapter 10 - Safeguarding of cultural aspects of housing typologies and usability

On the way to implementing sustainable Open Building in Israel
653
G. Bar Abadi & E. Hanina
Globalization and invention of identities lessons from vernacularism
663
H. Benacer
Preservation + sustainability: housing the coincidence of the opposites
675
M. Eufrasia
The vacuum-space between tradition and innovation. Flexibilityand use
691
S. Solinas
Chapter 11 - Prefabricated houses and transportable homes

Prefabricated, expandable and portable houses in the Italian magazine Domus from the thirties
703
M. T. Feraboli
A.l.p.s. - Antiseismic lightweight prefabricated system
713
A. Gaiani & G. Cattoli
A collaborative practices typology for Australian prefabricated housing networks: convergence,

alignment and coordination
725
Z. Pablo & K. London
Index of Authors
737
Chapter 1
Cities and neighbourhoods

Chapter 1: Cities and neighbourhoods
Evaluation of livability and sustainability in 100% subsidized

housing projects developed in Colombia
C. F. Agudelo Rodrguez, A. Bedoya Ruiz & H. G. Ramos Calonge
University of La Salle, Bogot, Colombia
ABSTRACT: The paper expose partial results obtained from the research project titled "100%
subsidized housing program, a comparative study of its implementation and housing products in
Bogot and other main cities of Colombia". This housing program was created by the
Colombian government in 2012, in order to provide 100.000 formal housing solutions for social
and economically vulnerable families without saving capacity or access to credit conditions,
including victims of the countrys armed conflict, in the framework of the policy established for
that matter since the nineties. In this sense, the paper takes into account the results of the
research project in issues such as: i. Representative features of the program, ii. Model designed
and implemented for the housing projects evaluation, iii. Results of the evaluation model
application in representative housing projects developed in Bogot, taking into account
sustainability, livability and social inclusion criteria in the urban and housing complexes scales.
1 INTRODUCTION
This text aims to socialize some results made so far in the research entitled "100% subsidized
housing program, a comparative study of its implementation and housing products in Bogot
and other main cities of Colombia", which has been developed by the authors of this work,
professors of the Faculty of Habitat Sciences at the University of La Salle, and one coinvestigator of the Corporacin Universitaria Minuto de Dios of Bogota.
On one hand, the paper will expose an overview of the program, taking into account legal,
regulatory and policy aspects, as well as land management operational issues in the initial stage
of its execution, which corresponds to the construction of the first hundred thousand dwellings
in different regions of the country. Particularly, in the case of Bogot, some initial findings
evidence a paradigmatic approach regarding the programs implementation in front of the
results obtained for other major cities of Colombia.
On the other, it will provide a summary of the theorizing and conceptualization exercise that
supports this research, as well as the main elements that are part of its state of the art. Also, a
model designed for the program and housing projects evaluation is presented, this one strongly
supported in the approaches of eco-urbanism, sustainability and livability. Emphasis will be
made on the description of the methodology and variables that were selected for the assessment
of the insertion conditions of the housing projects in the city, as well as for the evaluation of the
conditions of housing complexes design and social inclusion of new residents.

Finally, the results of the evaluation of two representative housing projects carried out in
Bogota will be exposed, emphasizing in aspects such as: i. Connection with the urban context,
especially regarding their articulation and relationship with major systems and city services
(public services, mobility, social facilities, etc.), ii. Design conditions at neighborhood and
housing complexes scales, taking into account, comfort and livability at the community level;
and iii. Inclusion of the resident population, covering issues such as opportunities and resources
to participate in economic, social and cultural life of the city.
2 REPRESENTATIVE FEATURES OF THE PROGRAM
The 100% subsidized housing program began in 2012, though the law 1537 of 2012, in response
to some challenges included in the development plan for the first period of President Juan
Manuel Santos (2010-2014) and had objectives such as: i. Recognition of new profiles of
demand for social housing; ii. Handling the housing issue in coordination with other social
policies and programs aimed at overcoming poverty and care for victims of the armed conflict
and affected by natural disasters; and iii. Return to the direct provision of housing from the
government.
In this sense, the quantitative goal was the production of a hundred thousand social houses
(less than 70 minimum salaries each -) for population in extreme vulnerability (victims of armed
conflict, affected by natural disasters and reinserted from armed groups outside of the law) on
the next four years in different cities of the country (Ministerio de Vivienda, Ciudad y
Territorio, Gobierno de Colombia, 2014).
As shown in the graph below, there were several municipalities and departments where 100%
subsidized housing projects were built, many of whom had critical conditions for the reception
of displaced people by the armed conflict in Colombia.
Figure 1. 100% subsidized housing projects in Colombia. Source: The authors.

As for the distribution of such projects, a concentration in the main cities of the departments
was observed. Cases like Antioquia and Magdalena, where its capital cities covered more than
the 60% of the supply, as well as Atlantic and Valle del Cauca, where its capital cities provide
near than the 50% of the 100% subsidized housing solutions.
Moreover, this ambitious program involved the design and implementation of an effective
management and implementation scheme throughout the Colombian territory, which required
the creation of fiduciary assignments in which the National Government, through the Ministry
of Housing and Territorial Development, local governments (district and municipal mayors) and
construction companies with extensive background and experience are involved.
In concrete terms, the national government pays the total cost of the housing project to the
builder, who is responsible for the design and construction of it (respecting the national and
local standards required for this type of buildings), and the local government provides the land.
For the supply of urban facilities, national and local governments invest resources through its
social programs.
About some specific aspects of the program, its important to say that the houses are given in
property to its beneficiaries, who must meet certain requirements as: occupy the house, don't
sell it before 10 years, pay the domiciliary services and taxes, and cover the maintenance costs
related to the common areas.
Figure 2. Sample of projects and their impact on land management. Source: The authors.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, as shown in Figure 2, the effectiveness of the management

scheme of these projects did not involve, in some cases, a sustainable management of the
territories in which were built. Evidence of this is the existence of projects in remote areas
relative to the center of cities, the increasing of the urbanized area, the location in areas with
agricultural potential or limited in their development because of its threat and risk condition.
The following table presents a sample of some projects with its corresponding impact on land
management.
Particularly, the case of Bogota city shown as contrary to the above situation, taking into
account projects like Plaza de La Hoja, located in a central area of the city, that showed
consistency in terms of sustainable management of territory, staying within the intention of
promote a compact city model, through the intervention in to the "expanded center".
3 MODEL FOR THE HOUSING PROJECTS EVALUATION
For the research that supports this work, an evaluation model was designed. Consequently, three
basic dimensions for the analysis of the products generated under the 100% subsidized housing
program were established, as they are: i. Integrated urban management; ii. Livability and
sustainability; and iii. Social inclusion.
The definition of these dimensions of study arose from the need to assess the housing projects
of the program in terms of some of the main weaknesses identified in the initial approach to it,
as were: the poor implementation of soil management tools for construction; the inadequate
location relative to the main urban services; the poor comfort conditions that offer the housing
solutions; and the strong conflicts of coexistence and security presented in many housing
projects, motivated by the diversity of social profiles residing together.
This model, which takes into account the above three dimensions, is structured in three
levels. The first, called attribute, contemplates the qualities that describe the dimension, the
second corresponds to the variables that give evidence of the attributes, and at the third level we
can find the indicators, that are qualitative or quantitative expressions observables that allow the
variables measure. The following figure shows the general structure of the model, which took
into account the proposed of the National Administrative Department of Statistics - DANE of
Colombia (DANE, 2005) about statistical tools for territorial management.
Figure 3. Evaluation model structure. Source: The authors.
Considering the base structure described above, the evaluation model include the three
dimensions mentioned a few paragraphs before, with their corresponding attributes, variables
and indicators, attempting to facilitate the objective assessment of the implementation and
products of the 100% subsidized housing program, from the review of four study cases (housing
projects), built in three main cities of Colombia.
The decision to make the evaluation of a such size program from a few cases was justified
due to the very limited information available about all the housing projects that were built (more

than 283 projects in 205 different municipalities) and the limited economic resources and time
to cover the entire universe of study. Consequently, the selection of the study cases took into
consideration fundamental criteria oriented towards identifying different situations at the three
dimensions of study.
As we mentioned in the introduction, this paper focuses in topics as the insertion conditions
of the 100% subsidized housing projects in the city and the design conditions of the housing
complexes, so, its important to say that the Livability and sustainability dimension of the model
is strongly based on the contributions made by the Gobierno de Espaa (2011), Atkisson (1999),
Higueras (2006), among others, that are related to ecological and sustainable urbanism, and the
concepts about livability proposed by authors like Rueda (1997) and Arcas-Abella et al. (2011).
In this sense, this second dimension addresses different territorial scales (municipality, city,
urban sector, housing complex and housing unit) and topics that are included in various
attributes, some of which are presented in the following figure.
Figure 4. Sample of attributes and variables of the Livability and sustainability dimension. Source: The
authors.
4 RESULTS OF THE EVALUATION MODEL APPLICATION

As mentioned in a previous section, the evaluation took into account four 100% subsidized
housing projects built in three main cities of Colombia as study cases. In this context, for the
purpose of making visible some representative results obtained after the application of the
evaluation model, some conclusions related to Plaza de La Hoja and Villas de San Pablo
projects (built in the cities of Bogota and Barranquilla respectively) are presented below,
focusing at its locating conditions within the city and at the design of the housing blocks, as
well as at the social inclusion conditions of its residents.
Figure 5. Evaluated housing projects. Source: The authors.

4.1 Findings regarding urban scale

In terms of sustainable land consumption, Bogota and Barranquilla cases are complete
opposites. Particularly, Plaza de La Hoja project was located in a central area of the city of
Bogota, which is equipped with urban infrastructure and services. In addition, the project did
not increase the urbanized area of the city and it was located in a soil without productive
vocation.
Figure 6. Plaza de La Hoja location within the city. Source: Google maps (edited by authors).
Moreover, Villas de San Pablo project is located within the social housing macroproyect that
has the same name, which is located approximately 12 kilometers from Barranquilla, on the far
side of a vast area of urban expansion. The urban development which hosted the 100%
subsidized housing project, ignored at its time the land classification defined by the District,
since it was built in a rural area. In this sense, the project increased the urbanized area of the
city, but not in an area adjacent to the city, but on a very remote location from it.
Figure 7. Villas de San Pablo location within the city. Source: Google maps (edited by authors).

In addition to the above, the ground where the Villas de San Pablo project was located
presents special conditions in terms of productive vocation and risk condition. As for the
productive vocation it can say that this soil had a potential use more related to agricultural
activities and, in terms of the risk condition, it became clear that this area is affected by
flooding, given the existence of high flow streams when it rains.
As for the joint with the main urban systems of the city, the contrast between the two projects
is also evident. In the case of Plaza de La Hoja, central location ensured a proper relation with
the main city structuring systems, especially with mobility and urban facilities.
About Villas de San Pablo, its location in an area with a very low urban development has
been the main cause of its weak link with the main structure systems of the city, mainly in what
has to do with mobility and the provision of high level urban facilities.
Particularly at the level of access to urban services, the analyzed projects also have dissimilar
conditions. In the case of Plaza de La Hoja, its central location guaranteed a short walking
distance to a large range of urban services for the resident population, such as: el.shore, schools,
health care centers and entertainment and leisure places.
In this regard, particularly in terms of high-level services in the area of influence of the
project (2km radius) there is a hospital with a high level of service, a public school with good
capacity, an hypermarket, one of the main supply points of agricultural products of the city
(Plaza de Paloquemao), and one of the biggest shopping centers of Bogota (Calima Shopping
Mall).
Faced with the same subject, the case of Villas de San Pablo is different, taking into account
that its very remote location relative to the city resulted in a shortage of supply of high level
urban services as health care centers, permanent work, el.shore, entertainment and leisure.
On the conditions of mobility, contrasting situations between Bogota and Barranquilla
projects were also identified. A critical situation of public transport was identified in the case of
Villas de San Pablo. The routes of public transport that facilitate the displacement to different
points of the city are almost nonexistent, so the residents have to take several services, which
implies a very high cost of transportation and much travel time.
In Plaza de La Hoja the situation is completely opposite, as the project is located less than
300 meters from one of the principal lines of the system of mass transit in the city
(Transmilenio) and near from a major road (the 19th street). This situation ensures a good supply
of public transport for the project residents.
4.2 Findings regarding housing blocks
Figure 8. Villas de San Pablo location within the city. Source: Google maps (edited by authors).
10

Turning to the livability and sustainability conditions of the housing blocks, similar conditions
were identified in some respects and different handlings in others. Then it mentions some
relevant conclusions about the evaluated housing projects.
First, in relation to the provision of services and infrastructure for the resident community,
particularly about the existence of meeting spaces, a more favorable situation was identified in
Villas de San Pablo, taking into account that it has an specific area for the functioning of a
community hall. Otherwise, Plaza de La Hoja does not have a formal definition of this type of
space for community use. In this project, for now, the community uses, informally, a free area
on the first floor of one of the blocks for the co-owners meetings.
Figure 9. Infrastructure for communal meetings. Source: The authors.
Continuing with the findings regarding communal infrastructure, specifically about the
availability of parking space for bicycles, a similar situation was identified in both projects. In
any of the two cases were defined specific areas for this purpose, and so all the residents who
have bicycles must store them inside their homes daily.
As for the supply of green communal spaces, the difference between the two projects exists
mainly in terms of the way of implementation. In the case of Villas de San Pablo, the offer of
green areas was mainly generated through the fringes of insulation between housing blocks. In
Plaza de La Hoja, the green areas were generated in the isolation zone between the street and the
project, as well as by implementing trafficable green roofs in some housing blocks.
Figure 10. Green areas in projects. Source: The authors.
Talking about the diversity of uses within projects, notable differences between the two cases
studied were also identified. In Villas de San Pablo there are spaces within common areas for

11
commercial uses, which provide a permanent offer of everyday consumer products for residents.
In the case of Plaza de La Hoja, the complementary uses are also located in common areas, but
only provide social services for residents, such as the nursery school and the center for the
elderly.
Figure 11. Complementary uses inside the projects. Source: The authors.
Finally, about the climate comfort within housing projects, particularly regarding proper
orientation of buildings according to the solar path, both cases have a rotation near than 45
degrees relative to the solar trajectory, which generates a homogeneous exposure to solar
radiation for all the apartments. This situation is unfavorable for Villas de San Pablo project
taking into account that it is located in a city with a fairly warm climate, unlike Plaza de La
Hoja, given its location in a city of cold weather.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The 100% subsidized housing program of the Colombian government was highly effective in
the provision of housing solutions for vulnerable population, having achieved the goal of ten
thousand solutions in a maximum of four years.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, as we discussed in this paper, the conditions of
implementation of some of the projects were not positive, particularly in terms of sustainable
land management, because they strengthened the dynamics of city expansion, increased the
urbanized area, and developed soil that previously had some kind of threatening condition or a
high productive potential. This situation justifies, in large part, certain livability deficiencies
presented in such projects, especially in terms of the link with the main urban systems and the
access to social services.
This leads to the need to establish, within such programs, some minimum requirements for
the approval of housing projects in any context, based on livability and urban sustainability
criteria. In this regard, within the research underlying this work an evaluation model was
proposed, taking into account different dimensions (Integrated urban management, Livability
and sustainability and Social inclusion), in an attempt to provide elements for the best execution
of programs that promote the production of social housing.
Turning to the urban conditions of the evaluated projects, a clear contrast exists between
these in such important aspects as sustainable use of soil, the joint with the main urban systems,
the access to urban services and the mobility conditions. The Barranquilla case presents a
precarious situation, which is determined by the location of the project in a very remote area
from the city. Moreover, in the case of Bogot the project presents more favorable conditions in
those aspects, given its location in a central area of the city.
Finally, as to the design conditions of the projects, a contrast condition between the evaluated
cases was also identified, but also matches in some aspects. Particularly, about the supply of
12

community infrastructure, in Barranquilla exist a formal offer of meeting space for the residents
that differs from Bogota, where such spaces has not been formalized so far, forcing people to
use a provisional space for conducting community activities.
A differentiated situation also occurred in aspects such as diversity of uses within the
projects, the supply of green communal spaces and orientation of the housing blocks according
to the solar path. As for the former, Bogota has uses related to child and elderly care, while
Barranquilla have an offer of commercial locals of everyday consumer products. As to the green
communal spaces, Barranquilla has green isolation zones between blocks and common areas,
while Bogota has green roofs in some housing blocks.
Moreover, homogeneous and deficient conditions between evaluated projects were presented
regarding the availability of bike parking quotas, given the lack of parking areas for such
vehicles, and, at the level of the orientation of the blocks, both cases present similar conditions,
but, due the city climate, Barranquilla must be consider in disadvantage against Bogota.
REFERENCES
Arcas-Abella, J., Pags-Ramon, A. & Casals-Tres, M. 2011. El futuro del hbitat: Repensando la
habitabilidad desde la sostenibilidad. El caso espaol. INVI, 26(72), 65-93.
Atkisson, A. 1999. Developing indicators of sustainable community: Lessons from sustainable Seattle. In
D. Satterthwaite (ed.), The Earthscan reader in sustainable cities, Sustainable cities. London.
DANE, Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadstica. 2005. Gua para Diseo, Construccin e
Interpretacin de Indicadores. Estrategia para el Fortalecimiento Estadstico Territorial: Herramientas
estadsticas para una gestin territorial ms efectiva. Bogot: DANE.
Gobierno de Espaa. 2011. Sistema de Indicadores y Condicionantes para ciudades grandes y medianas.
Madrid: Gobierno de Espaa.
Higueras, E. 2006. Urbanismo bioclimtico. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
Ministerio de Vivienda, Ciudad y Territorio, Gobierno de Colombia. 2014. Colombia: Cien aos de
polticas habitacionales. Bogot: MVCT.
Rueda, S. 1997. Habitabilidad y calidad de vida; ciudades para un futuro sostenible. Available at:
http://habitat.aq.upm.es/cs/p2/a005.html.

13
Towards new way of living: sharing for promoting the

transformation
A. F. L. Baratta, F. Finucci & L. Montuori
Department of Architecture, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy
ABSTRACT: As a result of a multi-disciplinary research project under way at the Department

of Architecture of Roma Tre University, the paper defines some fundamental aspects of the
economy of sharing and proposes an implementation of the habitation graph, declining the cohousing topic in accordance with new ways of living. Finally, case studies are presented related
to the topic of sharing in the resident for students and co-housing projects.
INTRODUCTION
According to the common definition, sharing means "dividing, splitting with others," thus it
refers to the joint or alternate use of a good or a service. The term sharing is now used
interchangeably in many different sectors.
Although the scenario is highly heterogeneous, sometimes even inconsistent, the sharing
topic is certainly one of the most exciting and current field of investigation and planning when
considered in relation to the transformations which new forms of work have brought about with
regard to living spaces in the city. The evolution of forms of public-private relations in the ways
of perceiving city space, the transformation of meaning undergone by some classic dialectic
pairs temporariness - stability/temporality, sharing of places and services/private property - are
the basis of a reflection on the evolution of the conceptual horizon of the field of study of ways
of living.
No longer a response to an emergency, a temporary crisis, but the ascertainment of the
development of a transition phase, starting from economic conditions, which requires a
transformation of the paradigms on which a large part of modern theories has been based.
These are the findings of the on-going research project implemented by the Department of
Architecture of Roma Tre University, conducted with a multidisciplinary approach and with the
involvement of researchers from different disciplines: this research puts forward theoretical and
practical considerations that focus attention on the collective way of living, with particular
attention to the issue of co-housing in the broadest sense of the term (Baratta et al., 2014). The

14
study on shared ways of living starts with the consideration that it should be necessary to
rethink relations between spaces, in particular, between private space and common space within
the sphere of living.
After defining some key aspects of the new approaches to the economy of sharing and having
found the first reflections in an urban key, the paper proposes a relative summary graph relating
to the topic of living, developed during the research project and obtained by observing the topic
of co-housing according to new living needs.
Finally, case studies are presented: the first relates to the issue of the sharing of university
students housing and another to a co-housing project.
2
THE APPROACH TO SHARING
For over 15 years now, it has been known that access, use and sharing would become ordinary
modes of enjoyment of assets and services, rivalling the concept of property. Many of our daily
actions are typical of the ''age of access" (Rifkin, 2000) both in their less visible forms, such as
software for which we acquire only the licenses and in more aware forms, such as the pleasure
of a disc or film which we enjoy without buying a copy but by accessing the resources available
on the web. Such methods of consumption have easily crossed the border of intangibility to
interfere effectively with daily practice, thanks to the offer of different types of actions: crossing
the city by bicycle or shared car, splitting expense of moving from one city to another using
private means, giving up ones couch to a foreign guest for a night, transforming ones home
into a restaurant for an evening or using the journey of someone else's truck to provide free
space to transport our belongings.
These are just some of the recent innovations introduced by the so-called Sharing Economy
and affecting an increasing number of aspects of our lives. As for the majority of contemporary
phenomena, difficulty exists in tracing a single definition, in particular, because the
phenomenon is declined in different forms and with specific definitions (Botsman & Rogers,
2010).
By Sharing Economy is generally meant an economic system based on the sharing of
underutilized assets managed directly by individuals. Collaborative Economy refers to an
economic system based on decentralized markets which favors the use of under-utilized assets,
connecting the person who needs it with those who possess it, avoiding any market broker.
Collaborative Consumption is a traditional market behavior (loan, lease, management, sale,
exchange, etc.) boosted through the use of new information technologies. Finally, On Demand
Services means the digital platforms that link users with the immediate exchange of assets and
services. The whole sharing economy sector is steadily growing: in the United States, 52% of
the population has been involved at least once, while in England the figure rises to 64%.
By dividing consumers into three categories such as no-sharer, i.e., those who are not yet
engaged in a sharing economy, re-sharers, those who buy or sell goods via online services and
neo-sharers, who use innovative forms of sharing economy, the spreading of sharing services is
as follows (Owyang, 2014): 80 million users in the US (39% of the population) are divided
between re-sharers (16%) and neo-sharers (23%) leaving out of the sharing economy 61% of the
population. In the UK, the spread is even greater: 23% of the population is classified as resharer and 29% as neo-sharer, with a total of 23 million people (or 52% of the population)
making use of sharing economy services (Fig. 1).

15
Figure 1. Distribution of services related to the economy of sharing in the U.S.A. and the UK (original
processing according to data provided by Owyang 2014).
The greatest spread of sharing practices has mainly concerned the exchange of goods sector,
followed by services (professional and for the individual) and transport services. Less
widespread than in the former, yet booming, are space-sharing services (both offices and
housing) and collaborative services such as micro-finance loans or crowdfunding (Owyang,
2014).
In Italy, the sharing economy sector is still contracted: until only a few years ago, it had
involved 13% of the population, a further 10% said they were interested but only 59% were
acquainted with the phenomenon (data provided by Doxa Duepuntozero as part of Sharitaly
2013).
The increase in sharing practices is made possible by the implementation of the network but
the increase in the number of people who use them can be considered, besides a cultural
phenomenon, a side effect to the current economic period. Crisis periods, in fact, seem to favor
the switch of sharing from the restricted community already philosophically oriented towards it,
to the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, the top three reasons that lead users to turn to forms of
sharing are (in descending order of importance) the convenience, the best price and a higher
quality of the product or service (Owyang, 2014). At the top there are, therefore, reasons that
have to do with an individualistic approach while the first motivation of a collaborative nature,
namely the pursuit of a sustainable way of life, is found only in 6th place after the motivation
relating to the fact of not having found the goods or services on a traditional market.
Even the spread of co-housing, which initially took place in the countries of northern Europe
in the Seventies, was a response to various social crises such as job insecurity and changes in
family structures (Lietaert, 2007). In that case, the sharing concept began with the existing
community and its strengthening, achieved thanks to the physical proximity of people, spaces
and places for socializing. The network has expanded sharing dimensions, broadened the
spectrum of goods and services which can be accessed in shared forms, improved the logistics
capacity of sharing times and spaces, and made some services independent of physical
proximity.
However, can everything we access really be considered sharing economy? Think of the
urban service we can now more easily share - private transport; in the world, between 2010 and
2012, sales of automobiles rose by only 9%, while the sharing market of transport means grew
by 20% (Megatrends, 2015). It is undeniable that car sharing systems ought to be further
promoted, and the industry players themselves furnish the reasons: in Italy, a car is used for an
average of 11 minutes a day, a figure which, in the case of car sharing rises to 60 minutes and,
with the new platforms related to taxi services, exceeds 8 hours. Furthermore, the sharing of
private vehicles allows exceeding the average of 1.4 people per car registered in the city. An
optimization process of private mobility with undeniable environmental benefits, in which we
16

can participate in different ways. For example, one of these modes provides a platform that
connects us to a private user intent on going in our same direction, and able to share travel
expenses (carpooling). Or, alternatively, we can access the cars made available by a company to
which we pay for the use of the car for the time it is used (car sharing). In this latter case, the
prerequisites are missing to make this a car sharing experience. In fact, even if assisted by a
technology that makes the experience more accessible and usable in a shorter time, the
dynamics of such service appertain to typical car hire. Net of technologies, these sharing
arrangements do not differ from the locatio conductio of Roman Law, to be found in every
economic context. This is true of many activities today which are classified as Sharing
Economy activities, but which in reality are nothing but typical market economies; more
specifically car rental markets, rooms, services or beds. At the basis of sharing is the assumption
that the exchange takes place in a market in which the needs of individuals prevail; a market
that is able to place itself in parallel mode or, better yet, integrated mode, compared to
traditional markets where exchange is regulated by profit and utilities. The two markets cannot
be loosely confused or compared as occurs in a number of guidelines available for the
implementation of shareable cities. Towards these issues, briefly exposed, building production
and the way this reflects on cities shows a typical slowness of its own and, in some cases, a real
counter trend.
2.1 A problematic framework of housing and new collaborative finance tools
Sharing and alternative economies could provide an answer to the pockets of inefficiency which
real estate markets have shown in recent years. In fact, the framework provided by the report
The State of Housing in the EU 2015 (Pittini et al., 2015) still shows widespread instability.
2015 recorded a higher number of people without a home than in 2009; most European
countries lack the houses required to support what is a burgeoning demand in this respect, also
considering that these figures do not take into account the increase in demand which is bound to
follow in the wake of current migration. High building costs, although substantially differing in
the EU of 28 members, represent an additional barrier to adequate response to housing demand.
Countries, which have an index above the European average of 100, are precisely those towards
which significant migratory flows are directed and which will lead to an increase in the
population and the demand for housing.
Access to housing is furthermore hindered by various factors: private rents are too high;
purchase is impossible for low-income levels and because of the numerous credit barriers.
Public housing is limited and unable to meet demand (waiting lists are endless, particularly in
Italy, the UK, France and Ireland). From the perspective of the younger generation, the
phenomenon brings with it even greater social problems: the majority of young people between
18 and 34 live with their parents; in Italy this figure touches 66%, 58% in Portugal and 74% in
Slovakia. Despite this, in Europe (except Germany) less building is going on than in 2008,
whether publicly, privately or through cooperatives. The expectations of the people are also
very pessimistic: in Europe, on average, 71% believe that it will be difficult to buy a home in
the future; this percentage reaches 91% in Luxembourg, 90% in Italy, 85% in the UK and 80%
in France. Finally, although there is a general increase of those who choose to live in rented
premises, the solution of home ownership remains the most widespread in Europe (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. Distribution of the population by tenure status, average for the EU 28 (original processing
according to EU SILC, data referring to 2013).

17
This figure increases dramatically if we compare the Europe of 28 States (where just over
40% of people live in a home with no mortgage) to the figures of the new EU member states
(which reaches almost 80%) due to low income and difficulties in accessing credit. Almost 25%
of the European population live in mortgaged houses and the remaining 25% are split between
those who rent a house at market price (just over 15%) and those who live in a house with a
reduced rent (social housing, etc.).
The situation has many critical aspects in the US as well. According to data provided by
Curbed (US Agency for Real Estate and Urban Planning) 80% of millennials plan on saving to
buy a house, while greatly underestimating the amount of money required and the associated
saving time to put away the amount needed to pay the purchase deposit alone (which in some
cases in the US reaches 50% of the total value of the property). The years of savings necessary
to accumulate the deposit is on average 10 with a peak of 27.8 years in San Francisco, 26.9 in
Sacramento or 20 in Los Angeles; Phoenix, Las Vegas, New York, Boston and Minneapolis are
around the average of 10 years. This scenario portends that the younger generation, unlike their
parents, will tend to be made up of renters rather than owners.
Yet, the share phenomenon seems to offer some solutions thanks to new ways of
collaborative finance, rapidly spreading but still at an embryonic stage. In 2015, The Economist
estimated that the area of collaborative finance has received more than 12 billion investment
dollars (4 billion more than the previous year). For any conventional product or financial
service, there are at least 10 start-ups offering the same service in a cost-effective, innovative,
and transparent way and, above all, using alternative forms than traditional credit institutes.
First of all, in recent years, the crowdfunding phenomenon has offered a definitely more
advantageous although not always easy source of funding. According to a recent report entitled
"Crowdfunding Industry Report 2015" (available on www.reports.crowdsourcing.org), in 2014
the crowdfunding platforms were 1,250 (including 600 in Europe and 375 in North America).
Again, in 2014, 16.2 billion dollars were collected (2.7 billion in 2012 and 6.1 billion in 2013);
such growth trends (Fig. 3) describe a phenomenon, which is still far from any final adjustment,
making any prediction difficult.
Figure 3. Growth in the volume of financing activated via crowdfunding platforms (Source:
www.reports.crowdsourcing.org).

18
However, the power of crowdfunding is not so much in the volume of resources provided, as
in the fact that it is forcing traditional credit institutes to adapt to new funding models. Many
banks are in fact reacting in two ways: on the one hand crowdfunding platforms are being
activated, available among the services offered (e.g., Metrobank or Banca Etica); while on the
other hand, horizontal forms of funding among peers are being established where loans can be
activated between private individuals without brokers (such as Citygroup or Lending Club).
Other methods of collaborative financing concern experiments of a social nature, which allow
managing own, finances or own debts in both forms compared to other users, and by taking
advantage of the aid and guidance of stakeholders outside the credit institute. There are also
social networks that focus exclusively on investors and savers (E-Toro is a good example)
which are put into contact with other parties in order to compare their strategies or synergies
with more experienced users. This way, the brokerage of own savings or own investments is
moved into a community (albeit virtual).
These innovative methods of financing will facilitate access to credit above all for the social
sectors in greater difficulty such as the younger generations, especially if they are able to
compete and represent an alternative to traditional forms. Of course, such tools will not be
deprived of a reference market if we consider that according to a survey conducted by Scratch, a
US consulting agency, available at www.millennialdisruptionindex.com, the four major US
banks are among the top ten brands less loved by the millennials: 53% of the sample
interviewed did not find any differences between the products offered by their bank and those of
others, and 71% prefer going to the dentist rather than listening to the proposals of their own
bank.
A further important element is the ability of these methods to be implemented, until they are
adequate and competitive for the fair and transparent funding of a building production of a
social nature.
3
FROM CO-HOUSING TO CO-NEIGHBORHOOD
While technologies extend the opening possibilities of sharing, in the US, "private
neighborhoods" (often conceived as Gated Community) rose from about 10,000 in the Seventies
to over 333,000 in 2014 (CAI, 2014): these are areas where spaces and public services are
managed and delivered privately, with controlled access, wherein quality is directly
proportionate to income levels. Sharing, established a priori through a neighborhood agreement
is, in some cases subject to ethnic and cultural origin, to lifestyle, income bracket or, in some
cases, even to age, as in the case of Retirement Communities (Fig. 4).
Figure 4. A retirement community in Arizona (Source: www.prweb.com).

19
Paradoxically, some views of co-housing may facilitate this drift. Certainly private
neighborhoods are space and service sharing experiences that pose some problems in terms of
territorial governance, urban policies, fragmentation of the city and, not least, as regards the
"right to the city" issue (Lefevre, 1968). There seem to be no unique and automatically
exportable models for the implementation of housing projects based on shared spaces, goods
and services, which are able to cope with the complexity of current social changes. What is
certain is that the community building process should be based on sharing keyed to the needs of
less-affluent population groups with new, real and clear forms of welfare to be obtained from
inclusion, sharing, the exchange between availability and needs, the contribution of
communication technologies, the market and the public sector, through a pool of shared
resources, effectively managed and optimized.
To cater to the difficulties of accessing the rental market, a major factor is represented by the
search for new residential systems able to satisfy a number of requirements which traditional
forms of living are not always able to consciously legitimize. In this sense, the study of the most
recent experiences shows how the analysis of co-housing can help formulate new axioms
through mutual aid patterns, social cohesion processes, tools for environmental protection and
economic sustainability. The identity of contemporary living, with a multiplicity and a
dynamism that still recognize and preserve the independence of each individual household, does
in fact appear to be more and more characterized by a complex model based on shared interests,
spaces and services. Today we live longer "away" from home that in what we identify as being
intimate and private. The re-definition of the two terms and their relationships should therefore
be investigated by identifying new boundaries for the problem. Among the various models and
numerous practices, co-housing, which is certainly a resource for testing innovative
applications, is seen as
"a special form of neighborhood, in which private accommodation and shared
facilities come together to safeguard the privacy of everyone and at the same time
the need for sociability, providing an efficient response to some practical issues of
city living" (Lietaert, 2007).
The coexistence of residential functions and common services, generally managed directly by
residents but not always exclusively focused on them, is the natural adaptation to the almost
total disappearance of the physical production of the city, which gives way to the management
of intangible services, such as the environment, quality of life, culture, participation and
citizenship, but forgetting however that what defines the quality of a neighborhood is not only
population density but also the "density of uses" and, above all, the "density of encounters"
(Surkin, 2003).
It has in fact been ascertained that the development of the contemporary city can no longer
occur through expansion policies but, rather, must take place through strategies of regeneration
of consolidated parts: the architectural culture which had been previously directed towards the
construction of new parts of the city must now be oriented towards the reorganization of what
already exists and the enhancement of stratification. For this reason, it is important to focus on
building in what is already built, on the redevelopment of underutilized or abandoned housing.
To do this, local government bodies must understand the potential of urban center
requalification that determines co-housing projects that could well represent the germ of selfregeneration compared to the city (Jacobs, 1961).
From what has been said, it appears that, starting with the historical data which sees cohousing as a form of habitation created to cater to specific requirements of communal living, the
co-housing model is evolving and making contractual community forms look like "private
enclaves of a residential nature" or even "gated communities" (Chiodelli, 2010).
Therefore, if we want to imagine an evolution of this model towards forms of creation of
urban communities, towards forms of cohabitation that take into account the new needs of city
dwellers, it will be necessary to review the balance between private initiative and public
interest, especially in cases where urban regeneration problems are to be addressed. The
transformation of the traditional form of co-housing to new "contractual" forms seems necessary
if a recovery policy, including public, is to be conceived not only as regards individual buildings
but also, more generally, the revitalization of entire degraded areas.

20
For over 10 years, between economic crisis and demands for a balanced budget, governments
have sharply cut back on many services and welfare instruments such as medical care, education
or simply the opening and management of social and cultural spaces dedicated to the population
as a whole. Numerous experiences of self-determination of local communities have tried to
compensate for the absence of the public sector; in many cases these have been precarious
experiences which quickly terminated, while others have bequeathed a repeatable and
improvable modus operandi.
In Berlin, for example, a public building of some 10,000m2 has escaped property speculation
thanks to shared purchase by citizens. The ExRotaPrint project (www.ExRotaPrint.de) aims at
the redevelopment of an old industrial printing concern which now hosts numerous cultural,
social and small business projects. The profits from these activities, plus a minimum rental paid
by the owners, are used to repay loans taken out by two different foundations: the first (nonprofit) which manages the project and owns the building and the other (a pension fund) that has
taken out a mortgage to perform recovery and restructuring jobs. The entire decision-making
process concerning the property is regulated by a general meeting with the participation of 12
partners representing tenants and in agreement with neighborhood associations.
In England, new housing revitalization models are being developed based on collective
property management. One example is the Liverpool Homebaked project
(http://homebaked.org.uk) in which, in a neighborhood where housing operations based on
demolition and reconstruction remain unfinished because of the crisis, and thanks to the
Community Land Trust instrument, the local community has acquired and operates a bakery
that has become a point of meeting and dialogue for key decisions affecting the district. The
experience has developed to the extent that, to date, the Land Trust is promoting the recovery of
an abandoned building for the creation of spaces for small businesses and social housing. This
trailblazing initiative has been followed by another, in a nearby neighborhood, the
Granby4streets Community Land Trust (www.granby4streetsclt.co.uk) which has taken over a
block for the creation of housing and spaces for businesses at subsidized rents.
In many other countries, the number of neighborhoods is growing where the inhabitants,
through classic forms of association, rent out premises to be used as social spaces such as
canteens, or recreational and cultural premises.
In Italy, although still far from the previously detailed experiences, the first co-neighborhood
projects are starting to take shape; one example is the "welfare for all" project launched by the
Cariplo Foundation which intends including among the traditional services required by
condominiums (gardening, concierge, etc.) also welfare services such as medical or social
assistance. This way, specialized professionals (nurses, caregivers, physiotherapists, baby
sitters, entertainers, etc.) can be directly hired by the condominiums, with contract expense
sharing benefits.
4
A CONTEMPORARY LIVING GRAPH UPDATE
What is the role of architectural design in a society in which long-term planning and the very
life project of individuals seem impossible? And if, on the indeterminacy of individual
trajectories, we superimpose that of the meaning of sharing, how does the architectural project
respond? The profile of a typical inhabitant-worker of the contemporary city could well be
outlined as follows.
"Since I left my parents' house to study reasons, I have changed four cities and
eighteen apartments, all rented. Moreover, all this probably happened because the
material conditions of my work are those of a temporary/freelance knowledge
worker and depend on whether he/she has more or less control over the product and
more or less bargaining power. Membership of a particular social class is
determined by the material conditions of production, someone with a very long
beard might say. It is precisely this condition of contemporary living which has
permitted the exponential spread of collaborative consumption practices and the
emergence of non-property oriented lifestyles" (Bonini, 2014).

21
To address "the new material conditions of contemporary living" a prevailing search exists
for new residential systems able to satisfy a series of requirements which traditional forms of
living are not always able to consciously legitimize. To identify possible project outcomes of
the paths of investigation under way, in March 2016 the research team turned the Cohousing
Degree
Lab
into
The
Space
of
Living
university
laboratory
(http://corsiarchitettura.uniroma3.com/LabSA).
To ask oneself about the meaning of living in the contemporary condition appears to be a
necessary condition to be able to verify the meaning and possibilities of declining the idea of
sharing spaces, services and places outside predefined or selected groups of inhabitants. The
laboratory consists of a team of fifteen teachers from different Italian and foreign universities,
and of eighteen students. The purpose of the Laboratory is to create a moment of strong
integration involving research and teaching, fueling confrontation through which to manage to
check out some of the possible outcomes of the project research path. The two words in the title
of the Laboratory immediately make explicit the desire to address architectural issues related to
the definition of spaces stemming from a confrontation with the changes under way, from the
analysis of new data relating to those who live in the spaces: a figurative register and an
anthropological register (Bil, 2014) out of which the dwelling space is created. The aim is not
therefore so much the analysis of processes, the discovery and the narration of new forms of
sharing, phenomenological observation of changes taking place, the registration of new
community building paths, as the possible spatial outcomes which these imply, and the
possibilities these offer to the project. In the project field and in current literature, great attention
is being given to the transformation of the relationship between private space, the home, and
shared space (which is not public in cohousing); this is a dialectic which in our opinion limits
our way of seeing how to address the problem of the transformation of living to typological data
without investigating the potential transformation of the spaces offered by new dynamics,
spaces to different scales: from the city to the intimate venue represented by the single room.
We believe the issue should therefore be dealt with by widening the field of vision of the
changes taking place, and seeking in this original relations: from the new form of living-work
relations, production-residence spaces, to the transformation of sense undergone by some of the
classic dialectic pairs of urban space: temporariness-stability, sharing of places and servicesprivate property, intimacy-rituality.
During the first stage of the debate, the topic of co-habitation and the meaning of communal
living has been declined in various ways and different points of view have confronted one
another from cohousing to housing as individual datum. From such comparison four poles
emerged, establishing complex relationships from which to determine possible research paths
and project themes. The synthesis of the first three months of work is shown in a diagram which
attempts to express the nature of the issues involved and the mutual relationships in a systematic
way. From the city to domesticity of places, from individuality to sharing, from intimacy to the
idea of the house as infrastructure, the terms are not opposed to creating dialectical pairs but
rather combine in complex ways to search for possible relationships that establish a new field
inside which to redefine the needs of living in the contemporary world.
The themes were thus named: 1 City, between density and dispersion; 2 Transformability and
specialization; 3 Domesticity; 4 Cosines, Privacy. To each theme, several keywords were
associated which can be grouped together and united to define project themes.
The theme of the city and the urban condition in the post-metropolis age (SOJA, 2008)
involves thinking about where you live in relations between inside and outside, between private
space and public space, between workplace and place of residence. Hence come the problems of
density and dispersion, the analytical recovery of abandoned areas and possible new
interventions.
The convertibility and specialization of places go to join the theme of the city inasmuch as
they define as a whole the problems of the context in which the project is located. Between the
two in fact the primary relationship which is established concerns the problems of the figuration
of the project. The problem of the flexibility of spaces in fact, which is increasingly more
evoked, implies a reflection on the idea of living as a specific space or as a generic space, on the
idea of home or "infrastructure", on the neutrality or specificity of the places and on relations
with the objects which animate them between architecture and design. Specialization and
convertibility lead to the relationship with the domestication of space. In the modern world,

22
domestic space is the other place with respect to working space which leads to the
transformation of urban space and the regionalization of the metropolis. Today this system of
relations is redefined starting with the transformation of the space-time relationship between
living and working; the dissolution of traditional relations between home and work-family
involves a transformation of the places which bypasses the purely typological issue to rethink
the spaces in which we live. Between domesticity and intimacy, in fact, a ritual is shared which
is defined in the experience of space starting with the relationship between public and private no
longer as urban spaces but as relations between individuals and society. The personal needs of
individuals can no longer be reduced to an objective and therefore generalizable fact.
5
CASES STUDY
As regards cases study, two specific topics are presented: the first relates to housing for
university students inasmuch as an example of uniform-user habitation condition, and therefore
with comparable and associated needs, easily reducible to spatial organization.
The second case study deals with the topic of cohousing, useful for defining a housing system
based on the search for common needs of residents; it is assumed, therefore, that after mapping
the recurring elements of such organization within the research, we can go on to identify some
archetypes declined in contemporary times. The proposed case study is a planning effort to
decline some of these invariants in a real context in the face of a sustainable program identified
by the City of Rome.
5.1 The sharing of spaces and services in university residences
The university students residence is, including because of the specific needs of its users and its
specific social character, one of the most suitable types for the regeneration of existing urban
areas, and one of the most prone to sharing space and services. The residential function of a
student tends in fact to express itself through a lifestyle that requires the joint presence of
private spaces and common areas, according to a program based on "common areas for carrying
out joint activities of a social type in which exist different levels of appropriation and use of
space, both by smaller groups and larger ones "(Annex A to Ministerial Decree 27/2011,
paragraph 6.3). The services provided in university residences, i.e., the availability of spaces
dedicated to specific activities and as services for users, can be classified as follows (Piraino &
Rizzitelli, 2013):
functional services: a clean and comfortable place to sleep, wash, eat, etc.;
services for better quality studying: reading rooms, library, internet terminals, Wi-Fi,
etc.;
services for a better quality of life: spaces for leisure and outdoor and indoor sports.
The same Annex A of M.D. 27/2011, in order to ensure the coexistence of residential
functions and related services so that both requirements - individuality and sociability are
catered for, calls for the implementation of student residences with functional activity areas:
cultural, including study rooms, meeting rooms, libraries, conference rooms and
auditoriums;
recreational - accommodating video rooms, music rooms, games rooms and gyms;
management and administrative, including offices, canteens, cafes, convenience store,
laundry/ironing, stores, warehouses and a cloakroom.
Depending on the needs and priorities defined by different intervention programs, some
residences also offer much more.
In the fifteen years of application of Italian Law no. 338/2000, residences have been built
with large libraries, fitness centers with courts and swimming pools, recording studios, cinemas,
restaurants on panoramic terraces, shopping centers: all services that extend the offer for
students (resident or not) and which contribute to integrate student presence in the city. It is
clear that the latest university residences built in Italy, in particular the most virtuous ones, show
that the quality of student life depends mainly on the type and nature of the shared places or on
the complementary activities and support services considered not only within the residential
structure but also as regards the relationship with the city. A good example is the residence of

23
the Crociferi in Venice by means of which not only was a major monastic complex recovered
and developed, which had been closed to the city for over 50 years, but a whole neighborhood,
which had become strongly degraded, underwent regeneration.
Designed by IUAV (University of Venice) Foundation with the support of numerous
organizations and institutions, it features 53 student rooms, with sharing of cafs, restaurant,
library, meeting room, study room, gym, store and laundry. Extensive historical literature exists
emphasizing the benefits deriving from the presence of spaces dedicated to sharing and
community life in university residences.
The ease of development of intercultural relations (especially of an interracial nature) has
been known since the 70s, but further benefits and advantages have come to life during the
course of several research projects. For example, it is a known fact that the students who live in
university residences are often individuals who develop a greater predisposition for diversity
(Pike, 2000) and it is in shared spaces that interaction produces numerous effects such as the
creation of a sense of community and belonging. These senses permits considerably reducing
dropouts (Berger, 1997) as well as improving the scholastic performance of students (Wisely,
2000); this is also thanks to the extension of the classroom atmosphere in the common areas so
that social activities maintain continuity with learning activities (Palmer, 2008). Finally, the
favorable atmosphere created by sharing and interaction allows promoting and enhancing the
social capital of the students (Pretty & Ward, 2001).
The very layout of the shared spaces has a significant impact on how these are used; central
spaces, easily accessible and spread over transit areas promote the setting up of common
activities, especially if they act as a filter between private and public areas (Fromm, 1991). By
the term natural movement, which indicates the relationship between the physical distances in
the distribution spaces and the social activities performed in them, it is stressed that areas such
as hallways or doorways have a remarkable ability to interfere with the possibilities of
relationship between individuals (Hillier et al., 1973). When users are asked to judge the quality
of common spaces, the overcrowding of distribution spaces is perceived as much less negative
than the overcrowding of common or private areas (Hill et al., 1999). Among the indicators of
the level of privacy, a prominent role is played by noise from common areas, especially when
these are closely linked to private areas; fragmenting the shared spaces, dividing them up so that
only a small number of private rooms exist, can be a typological solution that simplifies the
creation of environments most suitable for maintaining low noise levels (Devlin et al., 2008).
A US survey (Nasar, 1994) points out that the intrinsic characteristics that most affect the
perception of quality of common spaces by students are visibility, color, materials and lighting.
From the point of view of relations, the visible common areas characterized by a plurality of
uses (recreational, social, play, educational, etc.) appear more effective in promoting the
communal academic life processes (Godshall, 2000).
Finally, from an economic point of view, the application can be indicated of a procedure
based on the Willingness to Pay (WTP) technique which, by means of simulated markets,
measures the willingness to pay declared by a group of individuals on the basis of changes to a
number of characteristics. Such application of the 2002 (Poria & Oppewal, 2002), although
limited to 152 individuals, has shown how the users of university residences seem more
prepared to make an economic contribution towards improvements involving private areas and,
in particular rooms and toilets. The study also however found a willingness to pay component
based on the perception of "non-exclusive" and "non-rival" characteristics, and therefore of a
more public nature, regarding the aesthetic appearance of the building and social conditions.
Basically, the areas where students spend most of their time seem to have a greater influence on
their willingness to pay.
From what has been said above it becomes clear how important it is not only to promote the
sharing of spaces and services for students staying in a residence but also to encourage widerranging actions by starting requalification and re-infrastructural processes which involve all the
university campuses or city outskirts where the residences are usually located, to ensure
effective integration of student residences with services and city functions (Schiaffonati, 2010).
Without forgetting that the presence of residences and community services constitutes one of
the most important factors of attraction for foreign students, as evidenced by the direct
relationship existing between foreign students and the availability of accommodation in
24

university campuses or in places where the sharing of spaces and communal services is more
readily available.
5.2 The Flaminio cohousing
The project of restoration of the former barracks in Via Guido Reni was conceived by Sara Di
Rosa in the context of the graduate workshop on the Cohousing theme staged in the 2014-2015
academic year in the Department of Architecture. The thesis project stems from the desire to
determine the possibility of maintaining and recovering the current structure of the former
barracks buildings, reinterpreting spatiality in the light of new residential densification
programs drawn up by the City of Rome for the competition which took place in 2014.
The context of which the project is part is located in a central part of the city, characterized
by a high density of residential buildings and city services. Near the barracks area is the
Olympic Village, built for the 1960 Olympics, and the Foro Italico which, since 1930, with the
Del Debbio plan, directed expansion to the north of Rome, where new city sports facilities were
concentrated. Around 2004, the PUF (Piano Urbano Flaminio) defined the overall goals of the
context. imagining that Via Guido Reni could become an important cultural site in which to
envisage (and realize in later years) major cultural facilities - the MAXXI 21st century Art
Museum, the Rome Auditorium, now linked again to the Foro Italico by a new pedestrian bridge
over the Tiber (the Ponte delle Arti). In this framework of strategic development, the question
which the project asks itself in defining its program is whether and how it might be possible to
collocate in the area a series of functions which includes, besides the residences (reviewing
however the social housing units and those intended for private use), neighborhood services for
the inhabitants of the neighboring streets.
In the early stages of analysis of the context, and through comparison with similar operations,
attention has focused primarily on the density and shape of the existing built-up areas and an
attempt has been made to identify the best building density for the specific area. To this has
been added a careful evaluation of existing services and the study of a way to define functional
balances. The project identifies a set of new transverse and longitudinal public paths which bind
the area, once fenced in and inaccessible, to the urban context with a gradualness of public and
private spaces, domestic and open. Along the new system of paths are placed a number of
services that can be imagined as managed directly by the public authorities (a nursery) or by the
inhabitants, but open to the neighborhood (meeting spaces, event festivals, gardens) or marked
by possible collaboration between public and private (the library for example).
From the point of view of functional choices, the project starts from the quantities and mixes
identified by the Rome Municipality by slightly changing the residential share in favor of a
share of services while maintaining the overall economic sustainability of the system. An
efficient allocation of facilities close to the housing units is one of the major parameters with
respect to the market appreciation of the housing project; this increased appreciation with
respect to the housing units intended for the market could represent a way of offsetting the
slight reduction in residential share.
As regards morphological choices, this difference can be reinterpreted as the desire to
maintain the existing industrial buildings, rethinking their margins and relations with the urban
context and reinterpreting spatiality. The original vehicular corridors are transformed into a
sequence of courts, spaces arranged around a center of a most intimate and private dimension,
onto which the cohousing residences face.
The courts, despite having a clearly private vocation, are crossable and reconnect the public
areas to the heads of the system (Fig. 5). The pedestrian crossings are shared between
cohabitation spaces and private residences, located in the tower buildings. The routes link the
common cohousing services.

25
Figure 5. The outdoor courtyards connecting the public spaces on the head of the system [Sara Di Rosa].
The tower residential buildings stand 8 floors high and reach the average heights of the
context buildings, thus perfectly resolving the dialectic between horizontality and verticality
which links the site with the surrounding landscape. The project therefore analyses the real
potential of the cohousing project in an urban context, imagining that the allocation of public
property to private individuals can take place on the basis of a program which sees an
integration between cohousing and cities, between people, services and management procedures
which tend to an increasing extent towards collaboration between public and private and not
towards processes of further specialization and isolation of urban areas.
Outside such scenarios, the co-housing project does not differ from other examples of private
intervention or, in any case, from private groups that realize a shared goal within a small group
of citizens. As such, cohousing is not a model with any possibility of being a real interlocutor
for the city. On the contrary, by extending to the urban context the concept of sharing spaces
and, above all, the idea of management of places of common interest, it could well become an
instrument for urban regeneration.
REFERENCES
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Programmi e progetti per la riqualificazione del patrimonio esistente Programs and Projects to
Recover Heritage Buildings. Pisa: ETS.
Berger, J. B. 1997. Students Sense of Community in Residence Halls, Social Integration, and First-Year
Persistence. Journal of College Student Development, 38 (5): 44152.
Bil, F. 2014. Tessiture Dello Spazio, Tre Progetti Di Giancarlo De Carlo Del 1961. Macerata.:
Quodlibet.
Bonini, T. 2014. C Sharing E Sharing, Sharing Is the New Welfare?. Available at:
http://www.doppiozero.com [Accessed on 1 August 2016].
Botsman, R. & Rogers R. 2010. Whats Mine Is Yours, The Rise of Collaborative Consuption. New
York: Ipercollins.
CAI - Community Association Institute. 2014. National State Statistical Review for 2014. Available at:
http://www.cairf.org/research/factbook/2014_statistical_review.pdf [Accessed on 1 August 2016].
Chiodelli, F. 2009. Abbasso Il Cohousing? Analogie E Differenze Fra Cohousing E Cosiddette Gated
Communities. In XXX Conferenza Italiana Di Scienze Regionali, Firenze. 121. Firenze.
Devlin, A. S., Donovan, S., Nicolov, A., Nold, O. & Zandan, G. 2008. Residence hall architecture and
sense of community Everything old is new again. Environ. Behav, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 487521.
Fromm, D. 1991. Collaborative Communities: Cohousing, Central Living, and Other New Forms of
Housing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
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Godshall, R. 2000. Creating Communities. American School & University, 12: 5359.
Hill, B., Shaw, M. O. & Oevlin, A. S. 1999. Sense of Community in Cluster Versus Corridor Dormitory
Design. In The Power of Imagination: EDRA 30 Proceedings. Orlando (USA): EDRA.
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attraction in urban pedestrian movement. Environ. Plan. B Plan. Des., vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 2966, 1993.
Jacobs, J. 1992. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage Books.
Lefebvre, H. 1967. Le Droit La Ville. Paris: Anthropos.
Lietaert, M. 2007. Cohousing E Condomini Solidali. Firenze: Aam Terranuova.
Megatrends. 2015. How is Sharing Economy affecting Industry. Infografic Available at:
www.pwc.co.uk/megatrends [Access on August 2016].
Nasar, J. L. 1994. Urban Design Aesthetics: The Evaluative Qualities of Building Exteriors. Environment
and Behavior, 26 (3): 377401.
Owyang, J. 2014. Report: Sharing Is the New Buying, Winning in the Collaborative Economy | Web
Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang. Digital Business. Available at: http://www.webstrategist.com/blog/2014/03/03/report-sharing-is-the-new-buying-winning-in-the-collaborativeeconomy [Accessed on 1 August 2016].
Palmer, C., Broido, E. & Campbell, J. 2008. A Commentary on The Educational Role in College Student
Housing. The Journal of College and University Student Housing, no. 2: 8699.
Pike, G. R. 2002. The Differential Effects of On- and Off-Campus Living Arrangements on Students
Openness to Diversity. NASPA Journal, 39 (4).
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Universitarie. Aspetti Metodologici ed Esperienze Applicative. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Pittini, A., Ghekier, L., Dijol, J. & Kiss, I. 2015. The State of Housing in the EU 2015. Available at:
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August 2016].
Poria, Y. & Oppewal, H. 2002. Student Preferences for Room Attributes at University Halls of Residence:
An Application of the Willingness to Pay Technique. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 4 (2).
Pretty, J. & Ward, H. 2001. Social Capital and the Environment. World Development, 29 (2): 209-27.
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Surkin, M. 2003. Pensieri Sulla Densit. Lotus International, no. 117.
Wisely, N. & Jorgensen, M. 2000. Retaining Students through Social Interaction: Special Assignment
Residence Halls. Journal of College Admission, 167.

27
Diversity comparison of Bangkok shophouse community for

creative community development: Siam Square and Suan Mali
community
T. Chamnarn
School of Architecture and Design, King Mongkuts University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok,
Thailand
ABSTRACT: The Creative Economy is one of the economic policies to drive the new Thai
national economy, while the creative environment has not been promoted. To promote the
creative environment, the Creative City has been mainly focused for increasing economy in
many countries. In addition, diversity is one of the keys in encouraging the creative persons.
Thus, the study aims to investigate and compare the diversity of each shophouse community
influence on creative atmosphere, based on a hypothesis that the diversity conditions of
shophouse community can provide a creative community atmosphere. The investigation areas
are Siam Square and Suan Mali. The survey of 60 questionnaires and 10 interviews of the
business owners in both communities are carried out. The results show that the diversity of each
shophouse community is valid. The unique business area, walkable community and various
business activities are the most attractive diversity characters. In addition, accessibility of
people and public transportation, and small block are important. The results of the different
diversity character priority reflect the degree of importance in major business activities, aging,
and family conditions from both communities. However, the primary use is the main key
difference of promoting creative communities. Retails and rentable units in Siam Square
encourage openness; while the wholesale business leads to negative atmosphere on the streets
and unfriendly walking atmosphere in Suan Mali. The shophouse characters greatly brace the
openness of place and people, place identity, and business opportunities. The diversity of
shophouse community can be stimulated and reinforced by the physical creative community to
nurture the new creative class in Thai society. Note: SS = Siam Square; SM = Suan Mali.
1 INTRODUCTION
Thailand has applied policies to promote Creative Economy in the 11th National Economic and
Social Development Plan (2012-2016) (NESDP) to encourage the national economy of the
country (Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board, 2015). This plan has
been implemented since 2012. However, the Creative Economy policies have not been recently
mentioned, it has been initiated since 2001 with One Tambon One Product (OTOP) policy
(United Nation Industrial Development Organization) and the creative design center called
Thailand Creative and Design Center (TCDC) in Bangkok started in 2004 (Thai Creative and
Design Center, 2005). However, the policies have seldom mentioned the physical environment
issue in details of how to nurture and create a creative community, but emphasized the policies
and organizations.
To promote Creative City, the relation between place and creativity is relied in 3T:
technology, talent, and tolerance (Florida, 2005). The technology and talent persons (creative
persons) are dynamic and moveable. In the meantime, the tolerance (diversity of the place)
assures that technology and creative persons can be nurtured and developed their ideas (Florida,

28
2005). In addition, Jacobs (1992) states that mix of uses, short blocks, variety of building ages,
and population density encourage diversity. It emphasizes the importance of the place diversity
which attracts the creative people to live in the place.
In Bangkok, shophouses are the mixed-use and flexible buildings which open to variety uses
and activities. These characters of shophouses are comparable to the tolerance. Therefore, the
study aims to investigate and compare the diversity of each shophouse community influence on
creative atmosphere, based on a hypothesis that the diversity conditions of shophouse
community can assist a creative community atmosphere. The shophouse communities are Siam
Square, which is defined as a creative area (Keawlai, 2013), and Suan Mali which shares similar
and different characters (see Figs. 1 and 2).
Figure. 1 The variety of shophouses activities and

functions in Siam Square.
Figure. 2 The shophouses on one of the Suan Mali

streets.
2 CREATIVE CITY AND DIVERSITY

2.1 Creative community development and diversity
Creativity does not come out only from an individual, but it increases and multiples when
exchange with others. Landry (2000) also introduces the Creative City which promote cultural
resources into the economy and environment to support the creative persons and enrich the
creative economy of places. Thus, opportunities for meeting new people, gaining new
experiences, and exchanging new ideas are the most important creative seeds. Tolerance is one
of the Creative City indexes. It includes the openness of various aspects: cultures, ethnics, or
policies. Especially, a diverse place, where welcomes to all ethnics, is the most preferred living
for the Creative Class (Florida, 2014). Therefore, flexible buildings and spaces for adaptability
is also one of the major keys to serve various needs.
2.2 Creative community in Bangkok
In 2009, there were also initial studies to address and identify locations of work places of the
talented people. One of the studies addresses 6 locations of the creative locations: Siam Square
(fashion center), Jatujak (biggest weekend market for Thai local products), Thonglor (wedding
studio and designer office center), Town in Town (residential mixing with multimedia and
design offices.), RCA (entertainment and music industries), and Sukumvit (foreign
communities, especially Japanese community) (Keawlai, 2013). Former studies show that the
shophouses flexibility favors to mixed-use development and community atmosphere (Davis,
2012; Tirapas & Boonyachat, 2012). This study points out the potentials of Bangkok city for the
creative city development.

29
2.3 Diversity and Bangkok shophouse community

According to Jacobs (1992), the diversity conditions are mix of uses, short blocks, variety of
building ages, and population density. The shophouses characters; 2-5 storey in heights, built as
a row of building, and block pattern planning, can be positively supported the ideas. The
regulations allow them to be used for both residence and commerce (Riensriwilai, 2005).
Furthermore, scholars also emphasize its bi-functional character in the economic and social
practice (Nimmanhemint, 1981; Suchakul, 1982). According to these definitions, the shophouse
owners often adapt spatial and physical elements according to their purposes to suit different
uses or changes that can be occurred. However, there are limitations of alteration of shophouses
due to the regulation controls, technical supports, leasing and rental contracts (Tirapas &
Boonyachat, 2012). This mix of uses of shophouses, then, becomes a key of diversity of
activities in the shophouses locations.
For shophouses, the adaptability and flexibility of uses are the main important factors for the
diversity development within in an area. The former study shows that the shophouses spatial,
physical, and stylistic characters; and shophouse support aid the adaptability and flexibility of
shophouses (Tirapas & Suzuki, 2013).
In addition, shophouse planning also encourages the diversity and meeting among residents.
Besides, there are 3 different types of shophouse arrangements: linear, mixed pattern and block
pattern (Chantawarang, 1985). The mixed and block pattern support the Jacobs ideas of short
block and population density. These arrangements also urge the community assembly along the
streets. Furthermore, the survey reveals that the residents recognize the good neighborhood in
their communities (Tirapas & Boonyachat, 2012).
According to Florida, the creative places characters are quality of place, density, walkability,
open-mindedness, and diversity (Florida, 2014). With the flexible and adaptive characters of
shophouses, these assists diversity of activities, density, walkability and even diverse of ethnics
within the communities.
3 METHOD
3.1 Survey method
The survey investigates the shophouse communities; creative community and non-creative
community to compare the diversity conditions, mainly mix of use, short block, and mix of
different building types. The survey takes two approaches: questionnaires and interviews in two
districts: Siam Square and Suan Mali. The survey takes 31 questionnaires are distributed in
Siam Square and 29 questionnaires in Suan Mali (total of 60 questionnaires) and 5 interviews of
the owners of the businesses each area (total of 10 interviews).
The questionnaire survey aims to identify the priority of shophouse community characters
impacting to their businesses; and in what issues are the main concerns for selecting the place
for their businesses. These influence the creative place identities. The interviewees are asked to
identify the major characters of the business in the areas.
3.2 Site survey selection and characters
There are many shophouse communities in Bangkok. However, for comparison, the criteria of
site selection are made. The place should be well-known for its business. They should share
similar shophouse pattern, and the location should be surrounded or nearby creative resources
(cultural, academic, and technological resource).
Therefore, Siam Square and Suan Mali have been selected. Siam Square is the shophouse
community in the shopping area of the city where young creative entrepreneurs initiate their
new shops (Keawlai, 2013). It is nearby Chulalongkorn University, one of the famous
universities in Thailand. It also connects with mass transit system called Bangkok Mass Transit
System (BTS) and Metropolitan Rapid Transit (MRT). While, Suan Mali is a car-auto part
business. Especially, it is near the one of the biggest electrical appliance, music instrument and
machinery markets. It is surrounded with many cultural and old districts such as Saket Temple,
30

a hand-made monk bowl and wooden door maker community. There is also near a water
transportation. In addition, the new subway extension line nearby this area is nearly finished in
the next few years.
Both of them share similar and different characters. Siam Square and Suan Mali are both
business areas. Their arrangements are the block pattern. They can be accessed from different
transportations. On the contrary, Siam Square is no longer a resident area; while Suan Mali is
still mixed of residence and commerce. Most of the families moved to suburb areas resulting the
sprawl city (Meesiri & Perera, 2011; Klimalai & Kanki, 2013).
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
4.1 Questionnaire results
4.1.1 The place diversity characters of Siam Square and Suan Mali for living and business
attraction
Figure 3 shows the results of what the diversity characters attract them to live and start their
businesses in Siam Square and Suan Mali shophouse communities. For Siam Square, the most
important issue for business attraction is Well-Known Business of Area (90.3%). Second
importance is Mix of Age (74.2%) and Walkable Community (74.2%). Third is Career
Opportunity (71.0%). Fourth is Mix of Professionals and Careers (61.3%). Fifth is Variety of
Business (61.3%). For Suan Mali, the most important issue is Walkable Community (79.3%).
Second importance is Well-Known Business of Area (62.1%). Third is Variety of Business
(58.6%). Fourth is Neighborhood Network (51.7%). Fifth is Meeting and Exchange Ideas
(48.3%). Among the top five issues, there are 3 similar selected issues from both communities:
Well-Known Business of Area, Walkable Community, and Variety of Business. These confirm
the characters benefit to the business atmosphere (Jacobs, 1992) and attract the creative class to
join the area (Florida, 2014). However, Siam Square prioritizes the Well-Known of Business
Area more than Suan Mali (90.3% in SS; 62.1% in SM). This results from the high degree of
commercial district which will attract same customers to buy and use the products and services.
Figure. 3. The comparison of place diversity attracting people for living and business of both places.

31
The Mix of Age is the second important issue in Siam Square (74.2%). This offers a variety
of users in different time period. This supports an opportunity for the variety of business which
increases the diversity of place as well, while Suan Mali scores this issue quite low (24.1%).
This emphasizes a specific group of customers and low degree of welcoming to the new people
of Suan Mali business character. As a result, it reduces the opportunity for diversity of activities
and new businesses in the place.
Even though, in Siam Square, the Neighborhood Network is scored as low as 22.6 %. Suan
Mali scored it as high as 51.7%. Meeting and Exchange Ideas have the same rate from both
communities (48.3%). This expresses the similarity of importance on this issue for business and
living atmosphere. These two issues are explained by Florida that there are two network
relations: bonding and bridging. Bonding is the tied relationship between close relations within
the community. Bridging is weak tied relationship within community which preferred for the
creative class (Florida, 2008). In Suan Mali, the neighborhood network reflects a strong
relationship between communities where they have bonding relationship. On the contrary, in
Siam Square, exchanging for ideas is more important.
Furthermore, the questionnaires are asked to prioritize the characters (see figure 4 and 5). For
Siam Square, the most priority is Well-Known of Business Area (38.7%). Second is Walkable
Community (22.6%). Third is Density of People (22.6%). Fourth are Mix of Professionals and
Careers, Well-Known Business of Area, and Variety of Business (12.9%). The last one is Career
Opportunity (16.1%). For Suan Mali, the first priority is Walkable Community (27.6%). Second
is Well-Known Business of Area (20.7%). Third is Educational Opportunity (17.2%). Fourth is
Career Opportunity (13.8%). The last are Meeting and Exchange Ideas and Safe Environment
for Children (13.8%).
The results show that both communities share the most priority on Well-Known Business
Area and Walkable Community. These characters also support the Jacobs and Floridas ideas
on promoting the diversity of place. In addition, Siam Square has prioritized Density of People
as its 3rd range. The 4th and 5th range are also the characters of place attracting creative class to
join the place (Florida, 2014). On the other hand, Suan Mali has pressed the importance on
Educational Opportunity and Safe Environment for Children. This is a result of the difference of
age which causes a different concern on the place conditions to live or do businesses. Florida
(2008) has also defined 3 stages of life: when they graduate from colleges, when they have
children, and when the kids move out. Their choices of the place diversity characters are
different.
Figure. 4. The priority of place diversity: Siam

Square.
Figure. 5. The priority of place diversity: Suan

Mali.
4.1.2 The importance of place diversity characters for living and business
Figure 6 shows the comparison of the importance of diversity character results. For Siam
Square, there are 8 issues that rated as 4.00 or higher are Mass Transit System Accessibility
(4.55), Unique of Business of Community (4.50), Accessible of Outside People (4.25),
Walkable Street (4.21), Diversity of Business (4.10), Support Business (4.07), Sub-leasable
32

(4.00), and Density of People (4.00). For Suan Mali, there are only 3 issues that rated above
4.00, Mass Transit System Accessibility (4.26), Unique of Business of Community (4.14), and
Walkable Street (4.07). These could be the positive issues to draw people to live and do
business.
Both communities rate Mass Transit System Accessibility as the first importance (4.55 in SS;
4.26 in SM) and rate Unique of Business of Community as the second importance (4.50 in SS;
4.14 in SM). Accessible of Outside People as the third importance in Siam Square (4.55), while
it is rated the fifth importance in Suan Mali (3.64). Walkable Street is rated the fourth
importance in Siam Square (4.21). However, it is rated as the third importance in Suan Mali
(4.07). The different issues are that Diversity of Business is rated as fifth importance in Siam
Square (4.10), whereas Building Function Adaptation is rated as fourth importance in Suan Mali
(3.76). This reveals that Mass Transit System Accessibility, Unique of Business of Community,
Walkable Street, and Accessible of Outside People are the shared significant importance for
both communities. In general, this presents the uniqueness of the place which draw the talent
people to come to find their opportunities and new challenge. Furthermore, with the easy access
and open for outsiders, this reflects the importance of the openness of place which welcomes the
talent people to join the place.
Besides, there are some similarities of rating the issues. Change of Physical Elements is only
0.01 differences (3.21 in SS; 3.22 in SM). Rearrange Planning is 0.19 differences (3.31 in SS;
3.12 in SM). Small Block is 0.29 differences (3.17 in SS; 2.88 in SM). Building Function
Adaptation is 0.38 differences (3.38 in SS; 3.76 in SM). Low Rise Building is 0.41 differences
(3.18 in SS; 3.59 in SM). These are fairly importance for both communities. In addition, all
issues relate to the building flexibility and physical environment which are tremendously served
with the shophouses characters.
There is also some different prioritized importance. Sub-Leasable for Small Business is 0.89
in differences (4.00 in SS; 3.11 in SM). Mix of Various Building Design is 0.91 in differences
(3.41 in SS; 2.50 in SM). Open Space for Flexible Activities is 1.04 in differences (3.71 in SS;
2.67 in SM). Open Space for Community Sharing (3.86 in SS; 2.58 in SM). These differences
show that Siam Square, defined as the creative community, pays more value to rental space for
the opportunity for new businesses which offers the chance to young businessmen to initiate
their businesses. The various building designs also make the environment more interesting and
motivate the new ideas. Moreover, the open space for the community sharing and serving
various activities are also rated almost 4.00 in Siam Square; while Suan Mali is rated less than
3.00. The open spaces provide opportunities for new experiences to attract the creative class to
come to the place. The new experiences are also a life preference for the creative class (Florida,
2014).
Figure. 6. The comparison of importance of the place diversity for living and business of both places.

33
However, both communities similarly rate the height and age of buildings with the lowest
among others. Mix of Various Height Building is rated 2.80 in Siam Square and 2.65 in Suan
Mali. Medium Rise Building is rated 2.34 in Siam Square and 2.32 in Suan Mali. High Rise
Building is rated 2.21 in Siam Square and 1.62 in Suan Mali. Mix of Various Building Age is
rated 2.62 in Siam Square and 2.44 in Suan Mali. It presents that these issues are less important
to them. However, Mix of Various Height Building and Mix of Various Building Age is rather
high in Siam Square. These still reflect the need of the variety of functions and activities.
4.2 Interview results
4.2.1 Major business of the district
The question asks them how they view the main business of their areas. People view the main
businesses in Siam Square as fashion, restaurant, accessories, lifestyle businesses, and
entertainment. The main businesses in Suan Mali are furniture, mechanical parts (wholesale),
warehouses, electronic appliances, shoes, and wholesale business.
4.2.2 Attractive place characters for business
Owners in Siam Square express the reasons that draw them to live and do businesses are the old
shopping area, the best shopping area of Bangkok, the center of fashion in the city, a good place
to start their businesses, and mixing of different aging come to the place. This expresses the
uniqueness and strong character of the place, openness, and mix of people. In Suan Mali, the old
district and well-known business, easy to find support businesses (storage and workers), and its
location offer a convenience to go around the city. This also expresses the same uniqueness and
strong characters of the place, supporting business, and accessibility.
4.2.3 The social and economic factors encourage and discourage the business
In Siam Square, the uniqueness of business activities is its main benefit. The community
positively opens for new businesses. The changeability of shophouses allows the shop design
possibilities. The same business competition reinforces them to create new products which is
positive for product developments.
Furthermore, the unique business draws the same interested group to start their businesses.
The meeting with similar business is seen as a support for the businesses. They can exchange
new ideas and new trends, learn new markets; build up the identity of the area which attract
customers to come as well.
However, there are negative external factors. The city expansion has caused new shopping
centers. This has reduced Siam Squares reputation as the fashion center. In addition, the
landlord has not promoted activities within the area. The rental price is also unreasonable. In
addition, the street hawkers on the main roads block the access and reduce walkable street
atmosphere. This causes a conflict between hawkers and businessmen.
Suan Mali has a stronger relationship. They emphasize the bond of relationship with their
neighborhood as the encouragement of the area. The meeting with similar business also
recommends and shares the degree of reliability of the customers to each other. This also offers
more product orders to each other as to help similar businesses. The negative issues are danger
at night, price competition, traffic jam and difficulty to access by cars and walk. The business
competition is viewed as negative aspect. There is a difficulty of renting or subleasing a
building which reduces opportunities for new businesses.
4.2.4 The physical environment characters for the business support
In Siam Square, the small shophouse block creates a pleasant walkable street; an identity of
place, a comfortable walk, and easy access to all the shops. In addition, within the blocks, there
are some certain products and services which create identity and recognition of the area within a
block.
Even though, Suan Mali has a similar shophouse block character, street patterns in some
areas are confusing. As the business type is wholesale, products are mostly mechanical and
electronic products. The car parking for loading occupy the pedestrians walkways. This reduces
the pleasant walkability. Furthermore, shophouses are mostly used as storages and daily offices;
34

therefore, there are fewer activities after evening causing the crime at night. Lastly, even if the
area can be accessible from many roads, it is more private for local business than public to
access. Most of the cars and motorbikes are owned by those doing business in the area.
4.2.5 The support of shophouse for living and business
The interviewees express that the shophouse support their businesses in many ways. In Siam
Square, they positively view the shophouse flexibility potentials; freely to create and decorate
their shops. In term of design, it is more variety than those department stores, freely to adapt to
other kinds of businesses. In addition, the shophouse allows them to open-close the shop at any
time. It can also create a good atmosphere for walking and welcome people from the street to
come in. Besides, the shophouse offers the casual relationship between the shop owners and
customers.
In Suan Mali, the owners state that the shophouses offer adaptability to suit their needs and
can freely adapt to warehouse. It is also the mixed-use building which emphasizes the unique
character of shophouses. It is convenient to sublease small spaces.
5 CONCLUSION
Siam Square and Suan Mali reflect the place diversity characters. The most business attractive
diversity characters are the unique business area, walkable community, and various business
activities. In addition, the most significantly important characters are mass transit system
accessibility, uniqueness of business, walkable street, and people accessibility. With
accessibility, walkable environment, and uniqueness of business area, these present the
openness of the place which invite people whom seek for their opportunities, and also the target
groups to the places for join and exchange ideas.
Even though, unique business area and walkable community remain the most prioritized
issues, the result of different priority reflect the degree of importance in the main business
activities, aging, and family conditions of both community interviewees. The different diversity
characters show that Siam Square highlights the importance of the place openness, chances for
new experiences, and exchanged ideas more than Suan Mali.
The interview results illustrate that both communities have clearly defined their business
characters. Siam Square businesses are mostly retails which strongly support the concept of
diversity to establish creative community. On the contrary, in Suan Mali, the wholesale business
causes the negative community conditions (difficulty of leasing, danger at night, business
competition, and traffic jam) which relegate the potential of the creative community
encouragement.
In term of physical characters, both communities have strongly small block character. Siam
Square has very good outcome of small block which support the accessibility and walkable
street. Suan Mali, on the contrary, has some confusing traffic directions and uncomfortable
accessibility for the new people which contradict with the questionnaire result where people
accessibility is the important issue. This results from its wholesale businesses, storage function,
and residents migration.
The shophouse characters also convincingly benefit for the creative community by bracing
the openness of place, people, and opportunity. The similar important diversity characters of
both places are those related to the building flexibility and physical environment. The
shophouses offer a great potential to create mix-use building for diverse functions and activities,
to open for new people and businesses; to welcome for idea exchanges and new experiences in
the area. Most importantly, it creates a good atmosphere for walking and welcoming people
from the street, and offers informal relationship between shop owners and customers.
Lastly, the key to promote the creative environment is to create and improve the diversity
characters of the place. Both communities present that the shophouse community greatly
sustains the diversity conditions. This can be reinforced the physical creative community to
nurture the new creative class in Thai society.

35
REFERENCES
Chantawarang, P. 1985. Shophouse: The Transition of mixed-use building in Bangkok metropolis. [MA
Thesis]. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. 35.
Davis, H. 2012. Living over the store: architecture and local urban life. New York: Routledge.
Florida, R. 2005. Cities and the creative class. NYC: Routledge.
Florida, R. 2008. Whos your city? How the creative economy is making where to live the most important
decision of your life. NYC: Basic Books.
Florida, R. 2014. The rise of the creative class-revised: revised and expanded. New York: Basic Book.
Jacobs, J. 1992. The Death and life of great American cities. NYC: Vintage Books.
Keawlai, P. 2013. Creative city: urban development from Thai creative local resources. Bangkok: King
Prajadhipoks Institute.
Klimalai, S. & Kanki, K. 2013. Characteristic of sustainable location for townhouse development in
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Sustainable Development: Approaches for Achieving Sustainable Urban Form in Asian Cities,
Netherlands: Springer. 155-172.
Landry, C. 2000. The Creative city: a toolkit for urban innovations. London: Earthscan Publications.
Meesiri, P. & Perera, R. 2011. Habitat transformation and sustainable development of urban fringe area
a case study of Ladkrabang district of Bangkok. Journal of Habitat Engineering, 3(2): 177-188.
Nimmanhemint, U. 1981. Shophouses problems. The Academic Seminar, Faculty of Architecture,
Chulalongkorn University, Oct 13-14, 1981. 43.
Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board. (n.d.). Summary. The Eleventh national
economic
and
social
development
plan
2012-2016.
Available
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https://ims.undg.org/downloadFile/d7c6e7a0057f244e9c4d842ed739243e301dab2877ee21840ee2218e
cae2964e [Accessed on 8 August 2016].
Riensriwilai, S. 2005. ASA building regulations V.1. Bangkok: The Association of Siamese Architects
under Royal Patronage. 207.
Suchakul, V. 1982. Bangkok shophouses: socio-economic analysis and strategies for improvements.
University Microfilms International Michigan, 1982. p. 4.
Thai
Creative
and
Design
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at:
http://www.tcdc.or.th/about/profile/?lang=en [Accessed on 27 January 2015].
Tirapas, C. & Boonyachat, S. 2012. Flexibility survey of Bangkok shophouse for mixed-use development.
Long lasting building in urban transformation, 18th International Conference on Open Building.
Beijing, 19-21 November 2012. 170-179.
Tirapas, C. & Suzuki, K. 2013. Bangkok shophouse support design for accommodation changes and
future missed-use building. The 12th International Congress Asian Planning School Association.
Taipei, 1-3 November 2013.
United Nation Industrial Development Organization. (n.d.). Creative industries and micro & small scale
Available
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enterprise
development
and
contribution
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alleviation.
https://www.unido.org/uploads/tx_templavoila/69264_creative_industries.pdf [Accessed on 8 August
2016].
36


37
Quality of architectural and urban space. Social housing in Italy

V. Ciulla & A. De Capua
Department of Architecture and Territory Mediterrane, University of Reggio Calabria, Calabria, Italy
ABSTRACT: In Italy the housing issue has been addressed for the first time in the early 900,
when the Countrys industrialization produced, among its effects, the urbanization of
agricultural workers, and it showed the need to provide them a comfortable and healthy house.
In 2007, in order to cope with this new social need, the social housing issue was addressed
again. The following year, with the Ministerial Decree of 22 April 2008, partially reported
below, for first time in Italy we talk about Social Housing.
1 INTRODUCTION
Historically in the European Union, the social housing issue has been known and conceived
differently among Member States. As it is related to the cultural and economic social typical of
each State and to urbanize specific policies adopted by each of them.
So, the differences simply are not related to the different state official definitions, but are
realized in the variety of approaches that each state has addressed over time the social housing
issue, in terms of:
x size and building types,
x recipients and beneficiaries of the service,
x economic mechanisms,
x administrative procedures.
For some years in Italy the concept of social housing is gradually replacing the traditional
public housing policy of so-called economic and social housing. This, in addition to reverberate
current EU strategic guidelines for the environmental quality of the city, it aims to adapt both
the architectural and urban heritage where the procedural framework in the field of public
housing, both concerned with issues of Italian past such as the housing crisis of the postwar
period; speculation public building of the sixties and nineties; controversial housing
experiments proposed in the last century by distinguished representatives of Italian architecture.
The objectives of the social housing, in fact, reflects a systemic vision of the policies for the
residence that can address the critical issues briefly. This vision, as it is known, brings together
38

aspects of the urban morphology, architectural sustainability, social cohesion, the limitation of
social problems and the governance of the building process.
In Italy, this is being accomplished through residential interventions that regenerate and reuse
unoccupied industrial buildings, incomplete and abandoned structures which spoil the landscape
and that, instead, have an environmental retrofit. An example, to save the soil, to recycle
monitoring life of the materials, to the flexibility and adaptability of different internal spatial
configurations.
Other interventions concerning the redevelopment of existing public and residential
construction recovery, both in terms of 1) energy efficiency of buildings to adapt current
requirements fruition and in 2) general the contemporary living needs.
These interventions are aimed at more types of users, and are conducted in public-private
partnerships. The lather point is not the only news that is affecting aspects of governance.
Thanks to the considerations born around social housing, in Italy, the specific procedural
framework is innovating. This concerns both the legislative system of reference, for example,
the recent Law no. 56/2014 which introduced the metropolitan city.
At the time, the rising widespread need for adequate housing supply, and parallel
development of a new liability of the Public Administration system for the city management.
Public property has sparked renewed interest in the insolvency proceedings.
The architectural competition seems to be an opportunity, because the regular use of this
methods of application of intervention formulation improves the definition of the request and
understanding of the requirements in this phase of their design interpretation.
The case studies that reflect what has been said are very different, they can be accomplished
projects or visionaries one. Between these we remember: the proposed reuse of the unfinished
structure of the railway station of San Cristofero in Milano, project known as the eco monster
tamed and presented in the exhibition "Italy seeks home to the Italian Pavilion at the 11th
International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale"; the project of the production
building winner of a public and private partnership competition held for the design. The
masterplan will be based on which the non-conventional housing interventions in abandoned
areas in Mestre (VE).
2 EXPERIENCES OF SOCIAL HOUSING IN ITALY
The housing issue in Italy was faced, for the first time in the early 1900s when the countrys
industrialization generated amongst its effects of the urbanization of agricultural workers, with
the need to provide them with a comfortable and salubrious home. The construction of these
homes was made possible thanks to a law, law n.254 of 31st May 1903, which started the
involvement of different divisions such as Municipalities, mutual aid organizations, charity,
benefit institutions and banks involved in this branch. This laid the foundations of the so-called
ICP Istituti per le Case Popolari (Social Housing Institutions) non-profit public-private
organizations, structured subsequently with the T.U. (Consolidated Act) on Social Housing of
27th February 1908.
Several years later, immediately after the postwar period, due to military destruction and to
the growth of urban population, housing demands arose once again as a social need. In this
context, the aim of the so-called Fanfani law (Law n. 43 of 28th February 1949) was that of
building low cost homes for employees with the well-known Piano INA Casa (INA House
project). The project was assigned to and managed by the Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni
(National Institution of Insurances) and for the first seven years (from 1949 to 1955) it was
focused on the less privileged classes and extended throughout the following seven years (from
1955 to 1963) also to small-scale savers.
The horizontal residential property by Adalberto Libera in Rome is an example of social
housing wanted by INA Casa and still today, an important example for the study of housing
techniques. The aim of the residential complex, designed to hold 1000 residents, was that of
becoming a model neighborhood and of reinventing an architectural and figurative style
between tradition and technological innovation, however it was never designed anywhere else
again.

39
Figure 1. Residential units, Tuscolano, 1950-54: overview, exterior of the building to the balcony and
aggregation form of patio houses (http://socks-studio.com; http: //www.pabaac.beniculturali. it;).
The home developed by the INA Casa projects focused its attention on the spiritual and
material needs of mankind, it introduced cozy environments but at the same time in movement,
which were preferred compared to the standard and identical types. From the urban point of
view, the interventions of INA Casa were designed as self-sufficient neighborhoods and for this
reason were created in marginal areas. Although much appreciated from the architectural point
of view, they however turned into ghettos.
Only recently, with the experimental urban recovery plans started in 1998 and in 2002 with
the Contratti di Quartiere1 (District Contracts), some INA Casa neighborhoods accomplished the
home construction and urban quality designed by the Plan.
Figure 2. Immagini di fasi di realizzazione di un Contratto di Quartiere e quartiere INA Casa Tiburtino
(http://abcitta.org; http://acerimini.it; http://paroladarte.altervista.org).
However, to try to find a solution to the unsolved INA Casa interventions, in 1962 the Area
Plans or Plans of Economic and Popular Plans (PEEP-Piani di Edilizia Economica e
Popolare) through which Municipalities could easily obtain areas where homes for the less
privileged class and low income workers could be built.
The housing need was faced once again in 1964 with a ten-year program, named GESCAL Gestione Case per I Lavoratori (Home management for workers), through which expenditure
was approved for favorable and state-run residential building; and in 1971 with the
establishment of the Edilizia Residenziale Pubblica (Public Residential Buildings) and the
Istituti Autonomi Case Popolari (Independent Social Housing Institution). For the first time,
the public construction sector is integrated within the welfare state system.
In 1978 the ten-year plan for public residential construction is implemented to indicate and
determine the financial resources which can be allocated for the construction of new homes.
The recovery of the existing assets and for the acquisition and urbanization of areas assigned as
residential settlement.
During this historical stage, social housing is once again addressed to families with low
incomes and is divided into three different possible methods of realization:
Subsidized Residential construction, built by the public authority by means of public funding;
Easyterm loan residential construction, built by private construction firms supported by
specific public easy-term credit loans;
State-run residential construction, also built by private construction firms following the
stipulation with the Public Administration of an agreement concerning the allocation of
construction areas or granting of tax deduction.
As for the project, the tested residential models were very different compared to those
suggested by INA Casa, where the urban dimensions and the architectural framework were
40

closely tied to the ability of the user to find within them his own identity and culture. On the
other hand, the interventions of social housing carried out by Istituto Case Popolari were not
made taking into consideration the individual but the community of residents that the project
intended to develop. The most symbolic example is the Corviale2, considered to be a monster
and by others a monument of contemporary Rome. With this monument the Istituto Case
Popolari wanted to give life to the rationalist utopia of Le Corbusier, the Swiss architect and
urbanologist, or to the utopia of the Philandrists, Charles Fourier.
Figure 3. Corviale: Aerial image of a common interior space and views of the square and part of the
prospectusa cerimini.it.
The construction of homes was suspended in Italy in the 90s, when GESCAL funds run out.
Despite this the demand for low cost homes continued.
Since then, the housing demand grew and over the years became more and more urgent and
articulated. Due to the economic crisis and job uncertainty, the progressively aging population
and the alteration of families were not in an economic position to obtain a subsidized home.
They still had great difficulty in accessing the real-estate free market.
If in the past the need for a home was related to poverty, to a part of the population, over the
last ten years it has become a reason of difficulty for a wider social target: young couples, single
parent families or one income families, extended families, elderly, single and separated people,
students, precarious workers and city users who are in search of homes for brief periods; forced
to:
Buy or rent a small house and/or far from the city center or from areas with high
prices in the real-estate market;
Occupy illegally vacant property;
Remain or return to their families of origin;
Splitting up their own homes.
1. In 20073 the social housing issue, was faced again to deal with this new crisis. In the
following year, with the Ministerial Decree of 22 April 2008, partly shown below, for the
first time, in Italy we speak of social housing. Favoring European impulses in terms of
residence. The whole sector has updated the definition, the content and the subjects. A
new buildings typology called "residence of general interest was introduced destined to
location" which includes "non-luxury buildings located in densely-populated
municipalities and bound to a sustainable canon location for at least 25 years".
2. The social housing is defined as the property unit used as residence in a permanent
location which fulfills the function of general interest and the safeguarding of social
cohesion.
3. Reducing the housing problems of disadvantaged individuals and families; which are not
able to access the location of housing in the open market. The social housing is
configured as an essential element of the social housing system that consists of a set of
housing services geared to meeting the basic needs.
4. The definition includes (...) housing built or recovered by public and private operators,
with the use of grants or public facilities - such as tax exemptions, assigning areas or
properties, guarantee funds, urban planning incentives - to be leased temporary for at least
eight years.
5. The social housing service is provided by public and private operators through the offer
of rental, the prevalence of available resources, as well as support for access to home

41
ownership. Pursuing the integration of different social groups and contributing to the
improvement of the living conditions of the recipients.
6. The social housing, as a service of general economic interest, constitutes additional urban
standards to ensure through free distribution of land or housing, on the basis and the
procedures established by regional regulations.
7. The social housing needs to be adjusted, healthy, and safely built or recovered in
compliance with the technical and structural characteristics indicated in Articles 16 and
43 of the Law n. 457 of 5 August 1978 (Standards for Residential Construction). It
considered an adequate apartment with several habitable rooms for family members - and
in any case not exceeding five - in addition to ancillary rooms such as bathroom and
kitchen. The social housing should be built according to the principles of environmental
sustainability and energy saving, using, where possible, alternative energy sources.
After a decade of institutional silence about the housing crisis, the new visions of social
housing brought interest to this issue. In 2009, Law 133 of August 6 introduces a new housing
plan. The plan is for the increase of real estate for residential purposes by offering residential
housing dwellings, to be carried out in compliance with the criteria for energy efficiency and
reducing polluting emissions, with the involvement of public and private capital.
The three cited legislative interventions, in addition to updating the social housing
requirements, identified new fund studies through the Integrated System of funds, so that the
social housing projects are the result of complex real estate transactions in which converge
architectural design, social project and financial plan.
This new situation has given input to more municipalities and several private foundations to
promote the competition procedure; with the dual objective of transforming parts of degraded
cities and solve the housing problems.
Amongst these, particularly interesting is the case of the international design competition area
Cenni in Milan, considered among the best Italian practices. The winning project, called
Elements of change, named after the street in which it stands, has proposed a complex of four
buildings of nine floors with a total of 124 apartments in energy class A.
Figure 4. Images Area Cenni in Milan.
42

The supporting structure of the buildings is made of wood from certified forests in Austria
and in X-Lam panels and stands on an underground garage with reinforced concrete.
To promote the collective life and to facilitate the creation of a network of good neighborly
relations, the project involved the insertion of a series of paths and places that are structured so
as to be usable in different times of day and different types of inhabitants. Some architectural
elements have been designed (balconies, staircases, bridges, gatehouses, hallways and
stairwells) destined to become relational spaces where the community can meet and relate. The
heart of the project is the inner courtyard, designed as a small park, also open to the public,
which includes play areas, rest areas and pergolas.
The end users of this intervention are mainly young people, meaning both new households as
outgoing single from their families. The complex should facilitate them in the purchase of their
first house: the apartments will be places for regulated-rent or with a future purchase agreement.
3 CONCLUSION
As written we ask ourselves whether social housing is the right response to the current demand
for housing, but it's premature to give assessments that only time will demonstrate the
correctness of this new formula.
The problem of Public Housing is a current global issue, not just in Italy. The buildings built
in the last sixty years already manifests severely degraded material to such an extent that the
younger generation feel the permanence in these places as a personal failure and the flight as a
success.
The severity of the emergency that these urban areas pose, is evidence of the current debate
involving the disciplines of Sociology, Anthropology, the Cultural Geography, Urban Planning,
Transport, Architecture and Technology.
The responsibilities and the causes that led to the status of the metropolitan suburbs are under
investigation. Next to the social, cultural and economic factors it is necessary to take note that
the architectural culture and the project operators, with complex models, are often more
quantitative than qualitative. The spatial and architectural shapes are sometimes experimental
and contributes to cancel the sense of belonging of inhabitants. Generating criticism not only
related to livability and habitability of the spaces, but also the durability of the architecture.
Even the most recent interventions of Social Housing cannot constitute an absolute reference
for future projects, although its been signaled and published, but only sometimes rewarded, for
the fact that they are characterized only for the valorization of certain principles concerning the
identity of location, the mix of the inhabitants, the flexibility of the spaces and the
environmental sustainability of the intervention.
Our homes are inadequate to new needs, are not cheap, consume materials and energy
resources, they are made through a complex legislative process and are accessible by following
a complicated bureaucratic process. But, today, we have a great opportunity, to question this
project.
This paper aims, therefore, is evidence of how in this historical moment it is no longer
possible to experiment utopia, but rather the theme of living should be faced with great
responsibility, questioning the correctness of the choices, policies, and sustainability social,
urban, environmental and economic feasibility of the architectural and urban projects proposed
(recovery of existing or new design) and new procedural methods developed.
Although considering the right to support and encourage new living visions, the text wants us
to focus on two terms that are of value and still only partially considered in the current project
development.
1. the multidisciplinary approach,
2. the questioning of the complexity of the procedures and processes of architectural
interventions, especially regarding the control of the project tools.
We affirm that such conditions can form the basis from which to ensure that the
abovementioned principles of the Social - Housing era are altogether a good response to the new
needs of contemporary living.

43
ENDNOTES
1
Contratti di Quartiere are urban recovery projects (urban and social) supported by the Municipalities in
neighborhoods where there is urban decay and there is a lack of services in a context of scarce social
cohesion and a strong housing difficulties. With the direct participation of the residents, the aim of the
project was that of improving the housing and settlement quality.
2
Corviale building / district designed by the architect. Mario Fiorentino and built in 1982 in the Roman
countryside, is a complex of 958 meters long, 200 meters thick, 30 meters high divided into no -ve
plans all for a total of 750,000 cubic meters of concrete, on a 'building area of about 60 hectares. It
contains 1,202 apartments where about 8,500 people. And 'since its construction subject of study and
debate for architects, urban planners, sociologists.
3
Law No. 9 of February 8, 2007 on "Measures to reduce housing problems for particular social
categories".
REFERENCES
AAVV. 2010. Housing sociale innovativo sostenibile. Il Progetto Sostenibile. n.25. Monfalcone: Edicom
Edizioni.
AAVV. 2012a. Social Housing. TECHNE Journal of Technology for Architecture and Environment, n.04.
AAVV. 2012b. Abitare sociale: nuovi strumenti e nuove domande. IRES (Istituto di Ricerche
Economico-Sociali del Piemonte). Torino.
Capelli, E. & Otti, L. 2015. Social Housing in Italy. Urbanistica tre, n.06.
Clemente, C. & De Matteis, F. 2010. Housing for Europe. Strategies for quality in urban spac, excellence
in design, performance in building. Roma: Dei.
De Matteis, M., Del Brocco, B. & Figliola, A. 2014. Rigenerare la citt: il Social Housing come
opportunit di rinnovo urbano e sociale. Universit Iuav di Venezia.
Delera, A. 2009. Ri-pensare labitare. Politiche, progetti e tecnologie verso lhousing sociale. Milano.
Hoepli.
Di Alberti, L. 2008. Finanziaria 2009: il Piano Casa. Housing sociale o aiuto ai costruttori edili?. Il
Giornale dellArchitettura, vol 65/2008, pp.1-14.
Fondazione Housing sociale. 2011. Nuove forme per labitare sociale. Catalogo ragionato del concorso
internazionale di progettazione di housing sociale per le aree di via Cenni e Figno a Milano. Milano:
Altraeconomia.
Ministero delle Infrastrutture Direzione generale per ledilizia residenziale e le politiche urbane e
abitative. 2007. Rapporto: La condizione abitativa in Italia Fattori di disagio e strategie. Roma:
Nomisma.
Sassen, S. 2006. Perch le citt sono importanti. In La Biennale di Venezia. 10a Mostra internazionale di
architettura. Citt. Architettura e Societ, vol.1-2 Catalogo della mostra. Venezia: Marsilio, pp.27-51.
44


45
Possibilities and limits of urban pattern design: the case of

Canakkale Social Housing neighborhood urban transformation
competition
S. Ekinci & A. Otkunc
Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey
ABSTRACT: This paper is an attempt to problematize and reflect upon the basic concepts of
urban pattern, defined as the way how different functions and elements of a settlement form are
distributed and mixed spatially, in the light of an architectural experiment carried out on the
occasion of an architectural competition on social housing in Turkey. The paper aims at
exploring both the possibilities and limits of designing not only the buildings of a housing, but
the whole urban pattern of which it is a constitutive component, with a view to create socioeconomic sustainability. The authors of this article, who also participated in this competition
and received a purchase award, attempt at showing, via a subtle analysis of their own working
process, how designing urban pattern can be a very insightful exercise and playful experiment,
both conceptually and practically, in order to expand our understanding of the relationship
between architectural practice, mass housing and sustainability.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is increasingly acknowledged that the significance of mass housing is not only pertinent to
architectural typology but also urban morphology. By occupying a vast territory of the built
environment, housing defines the physical and social character of the city. Therefore, it is
almost inevitable that the identity of a city is formed as a result of its housing production model.
That is why it has to be developed in relation to open and semi-public spaces of the city, which
it shapes.
During the modernist period, in order to deal with the rising complexity of social housing and
density issues, urbanists and architects developed the method of an "object in a field" with a
quantitative approach. But such isolated apartment blocks were unable to create urban patterns.
For the cities, the continuity of the patterns is more important than the aesthetics of individual
buildings, because social life is embedded not in the buildings but in the voids of the pattern.
This is one of the reasons why municipal administrations open more and more architectural
competitions concerning entire neighborhoods rather than individual buildings, in order to
achieve social sustainability. This approach to urban transformation is an opportunity for
reconstructing structurally unqualified neighborhoods as better urban environments, without
causing any displacement of the inhabitants, who are mostly lower and middle class residents.
46

2 URBAN PATTERN
In order to understand the existing limits of the morphological approach to create a design-based
planning, it is necessary to rethink the history and definitions of the "pattern", which can be
considered as a conceptual tool for architectural production.
2.1 History of urban pattern
The historical origins of the way the contemporary city was shaped date back to 19th and early
20th century mass housing production. Until the 20th century, the dominant model for the cities
was road/ plot/ parcel in terms of the urban form. Especially in Europe, it was mass housing in
adjacent settlements that formed the identities of historical cities. Urban perimeter block
constituted a dominant typology that defines clearly the city's open spaces. This typology
defined areas including courtyards, streets, as well as neighborhood parks, big parks and places,
in line with the general planning principles that constitute the urban pattern. This construction
style, which promotes the human scale, was an appropriate built environment to mixed use.
Through physically defined hierarchy of open spaces, it constituted a healthy urban living for its
time (Bingol, 2011). However this typology was subject to certain criticisms including the
invasion of the common courtyards with small constructions such as storage and the discarding
of private courtyards.
The transformation of urban fabric and development of multiple urban patterns in European
history can be observed in major cities such as Paris, Barcelona, London, Amsterdam, Istanbul
etc. Habraken's detailed study of Amsterdam's illustrates this transformation by showing
different urban blocs (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Amsterdam-Transformation of urban fabric over time. (a) The medieval core of the city. The
axis was originally formed by Amstel River. (b) The seventeenth-century "Third Extension". Rich
traders built their houses along the three major concentric canals around the old city. (c) Nineteenth
century working-class tenements. [] (d) Berlage's Amsterdam South extension []. Apartment
buildings the size of a block define the urban space of streets and squares. (e) The van Eesteren postWorld War II extension. Note the freestanding block and early hige-rise buildings. (f) The Bijimermeer
extansion of the 1960's and 1970's. Megablocks on pilotis are set in uninterrupted public green space
(Habraken, 2000, p.83).

47
The first half of the 20th century witnessed the emergence of three different approaches and
solutions for settlements form:
The first one is reconsidering the way urban settlements are structured in order to implement
to large areas outside the city. At this point, there was not yet a break from the urban form of the
19th century but there was a revision of the old method. While maintaining urban perimeter
block's character, the inner courtyard became semi-public and more accessible (ex: Hendrik
Petrus Berlage's South Amsterdam Plan) (Fig. 1.d.).
The second approach is the garden-city model developed by Ebenezer Howard. He proposed
the creation of new suburban towns of limited size, planned in advance, and surrounded by a
permanent belt of agricultural land in which people live harmoniously together with nature (ex:
Raymond Unwin's Letchworth and Hampstead Garden-cities in England).
The third approach is the model consisting of single and linear, high-rise and large blocks.
While achieving maximum density vertically, these large-scale, single blocks are able to form
an urban pattern (ex: Le Corbusier's city models). The last two approaches eliminated the road/
street/ island/ parcel model and created new typologies.
Some of the pioneering examples of Modernist housing explicitly use the notions of lowcost and easy to construct as a response to the housing shortage crisis in the 1920s and '30s.
Especially after World War II, Modern Movement is driven away from its humanist thoughts on
architectural artifact and city and became a productive mechanism at the hands of socioeconomic market.
The built environment constructed after the 60's crisis inaugurated a debate on housing silos.
A reaction towards mass produced housing has brought the search for alternatives. The
intellectual contributions of John Turner, Christopher Alexander and Habraken are examples,
amongst others, concerning the essence of the issue.
2.2 Definition of pattern
In his books A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander
(1977 and 1979) proposed a system to observe and identify the pattern of individuals behavior,
and thereby discern the relationship of these patterns with the qualities of the spaces they
inhabit. Repeatedly built over different generations, a housing type gives rise to a town
structure. The repetition is not just duplication, because it also conveys an adaptation to
changing needs. Alexander gave the term pattern to the archetype, which in itself contains a
set of rules to be reproduced throughout time. As long as these rules are understood and adopted
by inhabitants, the process of repetition and adaptation can be applied to the design and
construction of the built environment over time (Madrazo, 2011).
According to Alexander, Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again
in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way
that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice
(Alexander, 1979). The rules embedded in a pattern describe both the problem and the solution
to the problem. These rules can be of different kinds: i) social, insofar as there is a pattern in the
way inhabitants interact among themselves and with the built environment ii) design, which
determines the arrangement of spaces and formal languages iii) constructive, which guides the
process of construction. All of them are interwoven in the pattern. A pattern embodies both the
formal at the building and neighborhood levels and anthropological characteristics of a
particular culture materialized in the built environment (Madrazo, 2011).
The idea of a form, a language that serves as communication between designed objects
(including buildings) and users, can also be found in the work and texts of Allison and Peter
Smithson. The notion of a form-language, expressed in the article Signs of Occupancy, 1972,
bears a resemblance to Alexanders pattern language (Madrazo 2011).
How can one make these concepts operational in analyzing and designing the built
environment?
The empirical perception of the urban tissue by individuals is at the level of street, not at the
level of plan, unless one looks from the bird eye view or from a map. This perception of the
urban tissue at the level of the street has a determining effect in the maintenance of neighbor
relations, feeling of belonging and urban sustainability. The plan pattern of the buildings has
48

certain influence on the formation of a coherent unity, yet the human scale is achieved where
the continuity and sustainability are experienced.
Although the volume, form and faade of the buildings contribute to this very perception, it is
the way the building blocks come together, which defines the private, semi-private and public
voids of the city. Thus, the spatial features of the voids surrounded by the building blocks are
more significant with respect to the characteristic features of the urban pattern.
3 MUNICIPALITY OF CANAKKALE (TURKEY), SOCIAL HOUSING DISTRICT
URBAN TRANSFORMATION COMPETITION
In contemporary Turkey, our cities are increasingly restructured through new large-scale
housing projects. The housing supply generated by public and private sector initiatives is far
from creating quality residential environment. Usually, they provide high-rise buildings as
isolated objects, incapable of allowing the formation of an urban culture. Public authorities and
private construction firms rarely consider buildings in relation to the built-environment and the
district in which they are located. They rather prioritize rent and speculation possibilities
buildings offer and take into account solely parcellation scales. Nevertheless, there still exist
urban and architectural competitions whose objective is to encourage socially and
environmentally sustainable projects. The competition project depicted below illustrates one of
these projects.
3.1 About the competition
anakkale Municipality (Turkey), Social Housing District Urban Transformation Competition
was opened as a single stage national competition aiming for the development of anakkales
spatial, cultural and aesthetic values (Fig. 2). The competition sought for projects that provide
original and characteristic spaces allowing functional, sustainable, innovative and economic
solutions while integrating the competition area with the city and its existing values (Canakkale
Belediyesi ..., 2015). Another concern of the Municipality was to ensure and maintain the
structural integrity of the buildings in the context of permanent risk of earthquakes in the region,
especially since the disastrous consequences of the 1999 Marmara earthquake.
The projects were expected to come up with design ideas that aimed at the transformation of
urban space and the propositions for guiding this process. The competition was aimed to
discipline and direct the process, based on the idea that the city will witness a rapid
transformation due to pressures from the changes that can be observed throughout the city
acting on various scales such as residential, commercial and cultural areas, through design and
planning. Among 37 projects evaluated in the competition, 3 awards, 3 mention (equal) and 4
purchase awards (equal) were granted (Canakkale Belediyesi ..., 2015).
The area covered by the competition project is of 83.440 m2. It is a residential area
constituted of five floor building blocks which were constructed as social housing during the
1980s (Fig. 3). These building blocks consist of 866 residential units in total.
Over time, changes in user profile, amendments in relevant by-laws have resulted in
variations with respect to needs and expectations. Interviews conducted with users and field
studies revealed that existing blocks are spatially inadequate and pose spatial defects.
Furthermore a raise in the repair and maintenance costs in the context of ageing buildings and
problems of physical comfort has a negative effect on physical sustainability. Given that the 32
per cent of users are above 55 years old, lack of lift services creates a serious problem of access.
According to Users Survey Results, users have also emphasized the lack or insufficiency of
social facilities (Canakkale Belediyesi ..., 2013).
The main objective of the competition is to renovate the residential area by completing
missing social facilities, protecting the existing neighbor relations, increasing the physical and
spatial quality, ensuring safety against earthquake with a view to create sustainability of all
these properties.

49
Figure 2. Canakkale City (Turkey) and Social Housing District Urban Transformation Competition Area,
Municipality of Canakkale (Canakkale Belediyesi..., 2014).
Figure 3. Existing pattern and construction limits (dotted line) of the Competition Area (Ekinci, S &
Otkunc, A., 2014).
The renovation is also expected not to bring any additional economic costs to the users.
Canakkale Municipality anticipates that the costs of reconstruction for 866 units would be met
50

by the sale of additional residential and commercial units. The number of new housing and
commercial units would be set by the participants to the competition, although the commercial
and social areas are required to cover not more than 10 per cent of the total construction space.
The relationship between financial criteria and space which construction is allowed to occupy
can be formulated as follows (Fig. 4):
Figure 4.
When the market value of construction and real estate sectors is taken into account, a plan to
renovate 866 housing units without any cost to their users requires the doubling of the density of
construction. Therefore meeting the expectations determined by the competition in a more
densely built environment becomes a key factor while making design decisions.
The original district was built by a housing cooperative. The competition was coordinated by
Canakkale Municipality, but it would be financed by housing investors or mass housing firms.
This was an additional reason for augmenting the density of the built environment, for no
investor would accept low profit rates.
3.2 Common features of award winning projects
Most of the award winning projects propose vertical densification so that the investment for the
transformation can be acquired economically (maximum floor height is limited to 13 floors).
In general most of the competitors have chosen block buildings with courtyards in order to
form private and semi-private spaces. These yards were thought as semi-private spaces in
certain projects by enabling access from the outside via voluminous rips and or gateways on the
ground floors. A design perspective made up of single block was not preferred (Fig. 5a-g).
Almost all the projects anticipate an orthogonal residential area, parallel to the limits of the
competitions. Thus, the building blocks themselves are similarly parallel to each other. One can
observe how the main transport axis for vehicles is left outside of ward. Traffic of vehicles in
the ward is thus prevented except for the service and emergency roads.
Commercial units in all the competition projects are located on the avenue, which goes in the
north-south direction and located at the west of the ward. This design approach was affected by
the decision of the municipal development plan to extend the avenue so that it becomes one of
the main arterial roads of the city. This avenue, which is the busiest one among the roads
surrounding the ward, constitutes the faade of the ward looking over the city center.
Throughout this avenue, the upper floors of the commercial units (located on the ground floors)
are mostly designed as housing units.
Unfortunately, particularly for this competition, "The definition of urban transformation,
which means the interventions implied on the existing qualities to adapting new qualities, has
changed to the demolition of the existing structures for the sake of attaining higher quality
buildings" (Ozgen Kosten, 2016).
In the competition, there is one project, which did not choose a tabula rasa method (Fig. 5h).
According to their designers, even though the existing fabric cannot be considered to be a
qualified settlement in a structural sense, the transformation method should consider the
multiple values of the existing settlements. The area should be taken into account with its
existing pattern and trees.

51
Figure 5. Site plan analyzes of award winning projects (Ekinci, S & Otkunc, A., 2014): (a) First Prize: O.
Caliskan, M. Z. Hattapoglu, I. Alp, J. Alp. (b) Second Prize: O. Bingol, I. Barka, T. Bilgic, M. Sen, N.
Tirben, E.F. Ozgur. (c) Third Prize: A. Aksu, T.N. Caglar, Z. Aksu, E. Basar, N. Aksu, I. Asak. (d)
Mention: U. Iyigun, M. Aksu, M.A. Yuzer, O. Yuzer. (e) Mention: S. Gursoytrak, U.N. Ugurel, S.
Ozdede, Y. Konkan. (f) Mention: B. Mangut, N.M. Eraydn, S. Cakr, E. Uzunhasanoglu (g) Purchase
Award: A. Crakoglu, I. Avc, D. Cavus, E. Ekim (h) Purchase Award: E.Y. Kosten, M. Uysal, Z.G. Mert
(i) Purchase Award: A. Otkunc, S. Ekinci, H.C. Gorgulu, N.P. Seckin, A. Ataman.
3.3 Ekinci, S. & Otkunc, A.'s project: urban block decomposition as a design tool
As participants to the competition, we have chosen to adopt a typo-morphological approach in
design. We argued that since one of the problems in rapidly growing new developments is the
lack of unity in architectural and morphological language, the operational use of pattern in
design (previously mentioned) would be an important element in making our design decisions.
We designed 1720 housing units, a commercial area of 1170m2 and social facilities of 4750m2
(The total area was 200.000m2). We proposed a continuity of public, semi public, semi-private,
private open spaces. In our view, it was not the building themselves but the void between them,
52

which was the most important objective to emphasize. For the space defined by the buildings
provided social sustainability in urban, semi-public open space systems. By revisiting the city of
the 19th century, we developed a contemporary approach to urban perimeter block's character as
a viable alternative. The residential neighborhood with courtyards replaced the minimalist linear
structures and towers of the large-scale social housing districts from the 1970s. We followed
Komossa who argued that "the Urban Block is where the private and public domain of the city
meet, and forms the intermediary between both" (Komossa, 2010).
We made this approach more operational while we studied the given data on the site, mapped
existing studies, built a physical model of the site. We visited the project area multiple times and
conducted small interviews, which gave the opportunity to see some behavioral patterns of
inhabitants.
The strategy for the competition site was to generate a plan and volume based reinterpretation
of the urban perimeter block with a contemporary and playful approach. The closed courtyard of
traditional urban blocs was reconfigured to be open at least from one side in a way to allow
semi-public access. The most important component of neighborhood's life was the courtyards'
network, which created a promenade with varying sequences. The blocks, which are usually
based on a strict grid, were geometrically altered to avoid facing each other and to create
diversification (Fig. 6).
Instead of just providing mass-produced housing with high density with a modernistic
approach still valid in developing countries, our project tried to respond to density sensitively.
Instead of a grid, the project was defined by irregular configuration of narrow places, each to be
seen in a different way. Despite a certain degree of repetition, the project was based on spatial
differentiation. It focused primarily on the spatial aspects and forms of the settlement. Our aim
was to develop a plan that could be a model for neighboring residential sites while designing a
new urban pattern.
Figure 6. Design stages of the project: Deconstruction of urban block (Ekinci, S & Otkunc, A., 2014).

53
The existing neighborhood had already a collective unit of life, a place of social practices of
inhabitants, connected by proximity. It was a living space that was strongly invested by its
inhabitants. The neighborhoods' project represented then an intermediate space between the
private space of the housing and the city itself.
The project area did not enable to create lively residential streets. We therefore designed
continuous courtyards where people could meet easily and enjoy spending time together (Fig.
7). The design of the interface between public streets and semi-public courtyards and private
housing blocs was carefully studies towards this aim. Those courtyards were anticipated to
encourage people to perform some daily natural activities. They were thought as the continuity
of city space as a meeting place at many levels, from quiet conversation to children playground.
The design decisions tried to answer the need for appropriate places in which people could
choose to spend their time, to relax, to socialize. The courtyards were envisaged as tools for
managing flows and relationships between spaces. We anticipated the integration of various
public and semi-public spaces in the housing project rather than considering these spaces as
residual or external. Therefore the housing itself was designed as a part of a greater assemblage
of interrelated elements.
Figure 7. Use of private, semi-public, public and commercial spaces (Ekinci, S & Otkunc, A., 2014).
The purpose of this competition project was to understand users' needs, propose flexible or
adaptable solutions, determine clearly the level of comfort and usability of the house. That is
why we revisited urban perimeter blocks. Thanks to this concept, we were able to introduce
greater differentiation and diversification into our design work. We proposed 1+1, 2+1, 3+1,
4+1 apartments and most of them had faades at both sides of the building.
This project for Canakkale was a playful experimentation, which could test the urban pattern
and open up further debates within the discipline of architecture. Urban renewal projects
frequently tend to exceed the mono-functional character of existing urban fabric, causing
difficulties in the life of a district. The competition proposed limited urban functional diversity
due to the specifications of the program. The problems caused by mono-functional spaces were
recognized: They are usually land-locked and poorly accessible. Interfaces, such as already
existing school and mosque and designed commercial spaces with additional complementary
functions are important in a sustainable vision of dynamic urban life.
The purpose of urban renewal policies is to give "structurally risky" areas a new structure and
more openness by creating attributes that constitute an attractive urban lifestyle. Residential
functions are combined with economic activities, public equipment and utilities. The goal is to
create mixed-use housing development site in order to have revenue-producing land use.
Vitality and attractiveness are important for the role of partnership in promoting affordable
housing. The adoption of mixed-use patterns can promote community living as well as
improved access to services. It can also improve safety through the around-the-clock presence
of people.
One major weakness of the project was the limits posed by the density of the built
environment. The goal of creating of a residential courtyard environment was only partially
reached due to these restraints.
54

4 CONCLUSIONS
It is often argued that competitions are platforms for discussing alternative approaches and
subsequent symposia are occasions to advance those ideas with a more theoretical point of view.
In fact, urban and architectural project competitions are rare platforms for developing
alternative approaches, testing theories in real life conditions. The presented project used urban
pattern formed by urban block as a conceptual tool for architectural production.
The land to be developed was exceptionally large in relative terms to play with alternative
settlement forms and patterns, for the case of Canakkale, which was an advantage for the
competition participants. According to the dominant mode of residential production, the housing
sector depends on standard building types and forms with similar construction techniques.
Thanks to urban and architectural competitions, such as this one, there is a small increase in the
possibility of developing an increased and nuanced variety of building patterns.
It is possible to create diversified and complex forms and patterns with standard elements, but
this necessitates the revision of the domain of design thinking. In this project, we wanted to
show that by using the potential of the urban block, typo-morphological design can be a flexible
tool to generate spatial diversity and achieve well-performing urban patterns.
Architects, urban planners and designers are no longer all-powerful figures they once thought
they were. We are away from searching ideas like the ideal city form or housing typologies but
still hope to act as articulators of spatial visions. Historically and theoretically informed design
and inspiration can still make significant improvements in the lives of people and the built
environment.
REFERENCES
Alexander, C. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Alexander, C. 1979. The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bingol, O. 2011. Toplu Konut Yerlesmelerinde Oruntu Sorunu [Pattern Issues in Public Housing
Settlements]. Bilim Teknik, 518: 60-64.
Canakkale Belediyesi Sosyal Konutlar Kentsel Yenileme Projesi Anket Sonuclar [Municipality of
Canakkale Social Housing District Urban Transformation Project, Users' Survey Results]. 2013. 23
September-30 October 2013. Canakkale Belediyesi [Municipality of Canakkale].
Canakkale Belediyesi Sosyal Konutlar Mevkii Kentsel Yenileme Ulusal Mimari Proje Yarismasi
Sartnamesi [Municipality of Canakkale Social Housing District Urban Transformation Competition's
Specification]. 2014. Canakkale Belediyesi [Municipality of Canakkale].
Canakkale Belediyesi Sosyal Konutlar Mevkii Kentsel Yenileme [Municipality of Canakkale Social
Housing District Urban Transformation]. 2015. January-Febuary, Mimarlik. 381: 41-45.
Ekinci, S. & Otkunc, A. 2014. Municipality of Canakkale Social Housing District Urban Transformation's
Purchase Awarded Project.
Habraken, N. J. 2000. The Structure of the Ordinary: Form and Control in the Built Environment.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Kendall, S. & Teicher, J. 2000. Residential Open Building. London & New York: Ill., E & FN Spon.
Komossa, S. 2010. Hollands Bouwblok en Publiek domein. Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Vantilt.
Madrazo,
L.
2011.
Pattern.
OIKODOMOS
Housing
Concepts.
Available
at:
www.oikodomos.org/oikopedia.
Ozgen Kosten, E. Y. 2016. Kentsel Donusumun Tek Alternatifi mi var? YIK-YAP [Is there a Single
Alternative to Urban Transformation? DEMOLISH-CONSTRUCT]. Mimarlik. 387: 58-63.

55
Holistic methodology for a pilot rainwater runoff plan in an

existing densely urbanized area: case study in Montreal, Qubec
A. Germon
cole Centrale de Nantes, Nantes, France
V. Mahaut
cole darchitecture, Facult de lamnagement, Universit de Montral, Qubec, Canada
Institut de Recherche en Sciences et Techniques de la Ville, Nantes, France
ABSTRACT: Due to its transversal characteristics regarding multiple scale interventions,

multidisciplinary and ability to raise citizen involvement, runoff water management is
considered in this study as the main catalyst for a sustainable housing project. Water
management should be planned both at plot scale and overall watershed scale, therefore
allowing various possibilities of intervention affecting other aspects of sustainable housing
(such as energy consumption, infrastructure optimization, cities resilience increase, transport
and sustainable mobility improvement, ecological, human and social connections improvement,
city security increase, preservation of cultural and natural heritage, citizen awareness about
sustainable development). In this context, a pilot rainwater runoff plan is proposed for the Island
of Montreal, throwing together a basis for a more sustainable development for both the city and
the island. This project aims to make good use of runoff water potential to deal with sustainable
housing issues. It is conceived to be an inspiration for the surrounding neighborhoods and
nearby cities. Its repeatable characteristic is therefore fundamental to reach the project goals. As
a result, the sites generic features guarantee the process is repeatable in other urban areas. The
methodology explaining and organizing criteria to choose the site has been developed and will
be presented in this paper. This methodology will then be illustrated by the feasibility study
designed for Montral within a specific action plan in an area strategically chosen. This
approach differs from other ecological districts because it fits into an existing built area. This
holistic process, restructuring an existing area while preserving it, envisions the city as a
palimpsest.
1 INTRODUCTION
The current way to manage city water as a waste to flush out as fast as possible leads to harmful
effects to the environment and public health at several levels: flooding by sewers outflowing,
wastewater overflowing into the environment bringing diffused pollution (Mahaut et al., 2011a),
decrease in water infiltration into the soil, water tables level going down, soil erosion and heat
island effects. Those are consequences of soil sealing as a result of urbanization. To limit these
urban, environmental and public health nuisances, more sustainable rainwater management
would be profitable. The most generally accepted method is to disconnect rainwater from the
sewer system and put it back in its natural cycle, to slow it down or to use it for domestic,
recreational or industrial purpose. The Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) follow
those guidelines and begin to spread out worldwide through new developments (Fuamba et al,
2010; Vogel et al, 2015). These new practices usually are developed at the plot scale (Jimnez et
al, 2016; Mahaut, 2010), the street or block scale (Romne et al, 2014), but it rarely includes the
watershed intervention scale (Mahaut, 2015). Unlike traditional pipeline network that gives the
water management a mono-functional dimension, SUDS lead to multi-functional areas (Mahaut,
56

2009). Therefore, they require a multidisciplinary team: in addition to the basic engineering
teams, they need planners, councillors and biologists (Mahaut et al, 2011b; Bell, 2015). SUDS
have a high potential to federate citizen participation, allowing people to feel part of the project
and ensuring its maintenance and sustainability over time. In the US, the Jolly Giant Creek was
reopened on the request of a school that got very involved in the project and is now used as an
open laboratory (Wild et al., 2011). The benefits of projects like this one are both
environmental, social and economic (CIWEM, 2007; Wild et al., 2011). These benefits are part
of those sought for the broader implementation of sustainable habitats.
Our research fits within this context of new practices to manage rainwater. One of the
solutions adopted to solve water management problems consists in separating rainwater from
wastewater. However, it is unrealistic to reopen the existing roads - in combined sewers system
mode - in order to add a second line to the network, with that line dedicated to rainwater. This
would not be economically justified because according to Wild (2011), which compares the case
studies of "restoration of culverted rivers" in the world, several authors indicate that it is more
expensive to renew a pipeline network that manages runoff water in the open air. Moreover the
lack of innovation regarding technical choices continues to create inconveniences such as
important work annoyances, underground connection mistakes and mono-functional sewers.
Plus, taking climate change into account, we would be confronted with a limited capacity on the
long run (Mailhot & Duchesne, 2010; Willems, 2013). Our proposal to separate the
management of the two types of water consists in the conservation of the current sewer system
for wastewater while rainwater would be managed on the ground level by disconnecting the
current downspouts. The concept of New Urban Rivers network (NUR) (Mahaut, 2009) was
born from this desire to establish a long-term plan to generate a new hydrography that would
drain all urbanized areas of a specific watershed. All the ramifications of the NUR will serve as
a receiver for its watershed runoff. Runoff water volume generated by plots and public spaces
would flow to an existing watercourse in the watershed area.
In this study, the concept of generalizing NUR to the urban territory is the global
environmental objective. The goal is to provide a sustainable territorial management that would
become impervious due to urbanization. Runoff, seen as an annoyance by conventional
techniques, becomes an opportunity to develop a project beneficial for sustainable housing. To
achieve this goal, the first step is to propose a pilot project that would serve as a model for the
development of a new global river systems in other cities. This case study is led on the island of
Montreal.
For the pilot project to be considered a model, it must have certain reproducibility over the
rest of the territory where it is set up. In order to develop a methodology applicable to other
cities, we sought to define generic criteria that ensure NUR pilot reproducibility in existing
urban areas (Mahaut, 2015). The study specifically aims to define the process to find a suitable
site for a NUR pilot. The methodology aims to assist the government and other project leaders
to develop this new water management in existing urban territory with a global and holistic
vision. We hypothesize that there are reproducible mappable criteria (with a spatial dimension)
to identify potential sites for these NUR pilot.
Other authors took up the subject with different approaches and perspectives. We have
focused our research in literature on the former rivers exhumation projects, the creation of new
rivers and rainwater management projects implemented through city scale in existing urban
areas, in order to understand the process to carry out these projects, and particularly to choose
their site. The reintroduction of the river in the district Praille-Acacias-Vernets in Geneva is in a
dense urban environment. However the choice of the site was not motivated by a search for
generic criteria, but by an urban planning opportunity that aimed to change this commercial area
in mixed activity and habitat area (Larue et al., 2013). The famous restoration of the
Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul meets some strategic objectives to revitalize the urban
downtown. According to Lee & Anderson (2013), the purpose of the restoration was to
improve the quality of cultural and environmental life in central Seoul, thus making the urban
environment more attractive for residents while creating a more favourable economic climate.
It was not a project aiming for comprehensive rainwater management across the whole city, but
a local operation of a social and economic purpose. Frank Warwick and his team from the
University of Coventry (Warwick et al., 2013) work on the research of strategic locations for the
implementation of SUDS. They use criteria with a spatial dimension (physical criteria like

57
geology, topography or water table and anthropogenic criteria like: sites of current and former
industrial usage) to identify suitable sites for stormwater management. However, their method
attends to find sites to implement locally specific types of SUDS (detention, infiltration,
filtration, conveyance, source control) whose selection criteria are mostly related to physical
features or urban planning constraints rather than consider a comprehensive land management
with a structured water network. Martin SEIDL and his team (Seidl & Barroca, 2016) have
developed a process starting from the existing situation to suggest possible improvements and to
build future cities in a better way by designing an urban hydromorphy index. This index
highlights the gaps and potential of urban areas in the management of water. However, alike the
work of the University of Coventry, the index seeks to spot isolated sites where it is possible to
build infiltration equipment rather than consider a global approach for the drainage of the
territory. Vanderwater (2009) in her thesis on the hidden waters in Halifax proposes the
architectural and landscape design of a new neighborhood along a creek to exhume. The
proposal does not include a comprehensive solution for the whole watersheds rainwater
management. The work of Sara Luca Jimnez and her team (Jimnez et al., 2016) in Bogota,
gets closer to our approach. Their multi-scale vision of the stormwater management can identify
the potential sites for the development of sustainable solutions via criteria with spatial
dimensions. However, the ultimate goal is not to create a new global water system, but to put in
place for each identified site its appropriate SUDS.
Our approach differs from other proposals, by attempting to ramify the whole existing urban
territory with a new hydrographic network, and by the search for a repeatable methodology that
each city could use and apply to its context. This methodology, applied to the island of Montreal
includes three components that we identified as necessary to ensure the success of these
objectives. The first part analyses the different spatial or mappable criteria to highlight potential
sites. The second component targets the feasibility of sustainable developments considering
local politics. The third component anticipates recurring local constraints and provides both
technical and integrated answers in the design of public spaces. The first two components
identify potential sites for the creation of a NUR pilot project. The final component allows its
realisation and its replication in other contexts. Only the first component is discussed in this
paper. The methodology proposes and articulates criteria ranked according to their importance
for the development of a pilot neighborhood rainwater management. It assesses the sensitivity of
each criterion in relation to the features of the territory.
2 METHODOLOGY
2.1 Case study: Montreal
The methodology is presented through the case study of the island of Montreal. The study is
confined to the contours of the main island; perimeter that matches the cartography prepared by
Mahaut (2016) on the former streams of the island and their watershed boundaries.
The administrative city of Montreal is divided into 19 districts and is inhabited by 1.6 million
people. It is situated on the eponymous island of 500km, which is shared with 16 other
municipalities. This island is one of the many Montreal Archipelago islands, located at the
mouth of the Ottawa River, in the St. Lawrence River, that flows from the southwest to the
northeast. The island is bordered by the St. Lawrence River to the south and the Prairies River
to the north. 50km long and 11km wide at its reference axis, the St. Lawrence Street, the island
reaches 24m above sea level at its upstream end (southwest) and 7m at its downstream end
(northeast). Its peak, Mount Royal, rises at 234m. Apart from this steep mountain, the island has
a very slightly undulating topography, once crossed by many streams. It is estimated that there
were around 370km of rivers and creeks on the island, which represents 0.8km of streams per
km.
Montreal has undergone the same transformations as most other Western cities in terms of
water management. Urbanization has led to the drying up of wetlands and the burial of most of
the old creeks in pipes for safety reasons and mobility of people and goods improvement. Two
thirds of the wastewater sewers network are in combined mode (City of Montreal, 2016). The
other third is a separate sewer system and exists in less populated areas. It is not uncommon,
58

during intense rainfall events, that sewers outflows into the streets and buildings or discharges
its wastewater into rivers surrounding the island. The administration of the City of Montreal
records up to 24 overflow episodes per year, concentrated between June 1 and August 31 (City
of Montreal, 2016). Montreal is a dense and representative agglomeration of the current water
management problems in towns drained by the same type of sewer system. This methodology
aims therefore, through the example of Montreal, to inspire other cities around the world.
2.2 The three components of the research
The methodology is divided into three components that allow together, the design of a
reproducible NUR pilot project in other cities according to our work.
1) Component "mappable criteria" uses spatial data to identify sites where the project
could be implemented. The criteria are chosen to make a living pilot project that fits
into the urban environment with generic characteristics allow reproducibility
elsewhere on the island using the same variables or even in other cities when the
variables could be adapted. This component is the subject of this paper and is detailed
hereafter.
2) Component "urban planning": Master plans such as urban planning and sustainable
development for each district or municipality are analysed to understand their
orientations and identify favourable administrative entities for major environmental
projects. This analysis ensures that projects can be done within the existing master
plans as they are or by adapting them slightly.
3) Component "integrated local design": Pilot design will resolve the recurring issues
that can inspire future projects in Montreal or elsewhere. This component aims to
elaborate holistically different elements for the overall design. For example, it is
crucial to carefully design the outlet of a NUR, where the water comes back to its
natural receiving environment. In the early stages of the global development, the
waters of the still incomplete NUR network will return to the sewer. The design of
this part should be drawn with attention to arouse the peoples imagination and their
desire to extend the of NUR project over time (Mahaut, 2009). The typical section
that drains water from roads to the old bed of the disappeared stream is to be
considered carefully. It is also proposing spatial resolutions through or around blocks
that the former streams were crossing diagonally. These integrated local designs will
help establish a process over time to create a new urban acosity (Mahaut, 2009)
draining the whole territory, integrating technical aspects and social and spatial water
qualities.
2.3 Mappable criteria
As mentioned before, the choice of the intervention scope for a pilot project should meet criteria
that enhance reproducibility in Montreal and other cities. The site is chosen for its generic
features, among others, by mappable criteria. The criteria and the benefits associated are
summarized in Table 1. Data were collected from the City of Montreal, Province of Quebec or
local districts. Data about watersheds and former rivers come from Mahaut (2016). All data are
processed using a Geographical Information System (GIS) that ensure criteria spatial
superposition.
The list of criteria is applicable to any other city. The criteria regarding the watershed ridges,
the former riverbeds and soil sealing were identified as critical factors and will be specifically
detailed in the following points. To allow the reproducibility of the pilot area, the areas
intersecting all the criteria must represent a certain percentage of the islands area. A criteria
sensitivity study analyses multiple values for each criterion. The objective is to define the
appropriate value for each criterion and reach between 20 to 40% of the total area of the island
surface after the intersection of the three critical criteria analysed in detail below in order to
guarantee an area from about 5 to 15% of the islands surface after intersection with the other
criteria.
The values used in the criteria sensitivity study were previously estimated according to the
average size of Montreals blocks. The island typology has an impact on the minimum size of

59
the pilot project and on the criteria sensitivity study. It seems appropriate that the pilot project
should be at least as long as a blocks length to facilitate its urban integration. The distance to
the ridge and former riverbeds should be about the average length of a block. The blocks
typology study is presented in part Results and discussion.
So far, only those six criteria have been analysed and therefore shown in this paper. There are
nine other useful criteria that will be processed in another part of the research. This other
secondary criteria are: floods, inhabitant density, percentage of homeowners and Cooperative
housing, distance from downtown, public transport, bike paths, green lanes projects and major
infrastructure (highways, canals, railways, airport). They were not yet included in this study
because of a lack of data.
Table 1. Mappable criteria list for NUR pilot site search.
Criteria
Distance from a watershed ridge

CRITICAL
CRITERIA
Distance from an former riverbed
Soils sealing
Distance from a park
5
6
SECONDARY
CRITERIA
Surface temperature
Distance from a school
Associated benefits
Water management
Manage volumes
Water management
Collect and conveyance
Heritage
Former rivers and creeks
Water management
Increase infiltration
Environmental
Reduce heat island effects
Environmental
Link with ecological corridors
Environmental
Reduce heat island effects
Social et pedagogical
Aware inhabitants
2.4 Distance from watershed ridge and former riverbed criteria

The distance from the watersheds ridges criterion is important to choose the site for two reasons.
(1) In a hydrological and gravity logic, it is necessary to consider the watershed boundaries but
not the administrative boundaries, to establish water management projects (Mahaut, 2015). (2)
The NUR pilot project has to be regularly supplied with water to be a model and encourage
other projects. Runoff must be disconnected from the sewer network to allow the water to flow
into the New River. The distance from a ridge criterion allows us to predict the potential amount
of water collected and therefore to size the structure of the waterworks so that it is often filled
with rainy weather. The farther from the ridge the pilot project is, the more oversized the design
will be to anticipate the additional water volume that will be added after future project
extensions towards the ridge. Oversized design should be avoided because it could seem
unnecessary or inappropriate for the inhabitants. Proximity from a ridge allows a well-sized
design and ensures its hydrological efficiency even from the beginning of the project.
The distance from the former riverbeds criterion is important to choose the site for four
reasons. (1) For symbolic reasons and collective memory, it is recommended that the pilot
project join the bed of a former stream. Compliance with this criterion can encourage citizen
participation at the watershed scale (Mahaut, 2015). (2) So that the overall project can be
understood by the inhabitants, it seems appropriate that the project should integrate the
construction of a NUR section near a former riverbed. (3) At first, the surface water may not
flow into a natural river but will need to be temporarily redirected to the sewer system. It is
important that this temporary return to the sewer is highlighted and explained to the public. The
location of future NUR sections should also be a project with citizen participation: activities
linked to water management, the drawing of the future locations of NUR on the roads, group
walks along the future creek, particular drawings on the sewer covers, etc. (EGEB). The purpose
for such participation is to make the NUR project exist symbolically, until its completion. (4)
Strategically, the pilot project should reach a riverbed ridge to present a comprehensive section

60
including all possible cases. The criteria of ridges and rivers should represent 30% to 50% of the
islands, and contain 30% to 50% of the former riverbeds, to facilitate the reproduction.
2.5 Soils sealing criterion
Soil sealing is a decisive criterion to establish a NUR pilot. Targeting a pilot area on a site
where the impervious rate (IR) is close to the IR frequently encountered in Montreal allows the
projects reproducibility. The current methodology proposes three steps to set the correct
variable to use: (1) draw up a map of impervious rates by dividing the territory into a100x100m
grid, (2) define the IR calculation hypothesis, (3) establish an IR histogram, (4) calculate the
average rate for the island and the maximum IR frequency. To allow methodology
reproducibility, this criterion must represent a non-negligible portion of the island. From the
maximum IR frequency, a sensitivity analysis evaluates the range of IR that should be
considered in order to obtain coverage from 30 to 50% of the islands area. These three steps,
applied to the case of Montreal, will be presented in part Results and discussion.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1 Blocks typology study
The studied neighborhoods are residential and offer a homogeneous network, within an overall
radius of ten kilometres from the city centre. This study is not exhaustive, but representative of
an overall average, to have a general idea for the variability study of the distance from ridges
and riverbeds. Table 2 shows the minimum, maximum and average for Montreals blocks
lengths. The pilot project should have a minimum length of 260m. The following values will be
used for the distance sensitivity study of ridges and riverbeds: 120m, 260m and 400m. We
added 600 and 800m to analyse the islands coverage percentage after crossing both criteria.
Length of the
block (m)
Plateau
Villeray
Mile End
Le Village
Outremont
Westmount
NDG
Hochelaga
Verdun
TOTAL
Table 2. Evaluation of the average length of the blocks in Montreal.
Minimum
Maximum
Average
150
350
250
200
300
250
300
400
350
120
200
160
200
320
260
150
300
225
180
400
290
150
330
240
220
400
310
120
400
259
3.2 Distance from ridges and riverbeds

The variability study (Table 3 and Fig. 1) allows finding the right distance from ridges and
riverbeds to achieve the objectives previously established, concerning the island and riverbeds
coverage percentage. After testing different values identified throughout the blocks typology
study, it turns out that the most appropriate values to reach our goals are between 400 and 600m
because (1) the covered surfaces resulting from these values match the expected range (30 to
50%), covering 27 to 45% of the islands area, and 46 to 58% of the former riverbeds, (2) while
being larger than the minimum size of 260m and (3) remaining close to the size of Montreals
blocks (maximum of 400m). The 500m value is then selected because it crosses the greatest
number of the above criteria. For each of the other criteria, a similar approach should be
established to determine its appropriate value.

61
Former rivers
Ratio
3%
14%
27%
36%
45%
61%
riverbeds
intersected
(km)
Islands area
Ratio
470
13
64
125
169
211
285
islands
creeks (km)
Surf
intersection
(km)
120
260
400
500
600
800
Islands area
(km)
Distance
from ridges
and riverbeds
(m)
Table 3. Variability study of the distance on the percentage of former rivers and islands coverage.
370
40
118
172
196
215
251
11%
32%
46%
53%
58%
68%
Figure 1. Criteria riverbeds and ridges four steps: data layers, application of variable value, intersections
between criteria and intersections with the former rivers.
3.3 Impervious rates

To map Montreals IR (Fig. 2), we treated data provided by the City of Montreal. The data was
not created expressly for this purpose, so we made the following hypothesis: (1) buildings,
streets, alleys and parking lots are considered as impervious surfaces, although some of them
may have green roofs or permeable materials (considered as negligible). (2) Sealing rates for the
courtyards is unknown, so it is considered permeable. Figure 3 shows the histogram of the
island's IR distribution frequency using the data from the IR map. The average IR of the island
is 39%. The IR with the highest frequency is 51% (excluding areas of 0% IR, which represent
parks that are not interesting in our approach). From this value we deduced the range around
62

this maximum frequency that represent respectively 30 and 50% of the area of the island. Areas
with an impervious rate from 42% to 60% represent 30% coverage of the island. Areas with an
impervious rate from 34% to 68% represent 50% coverage of the island (Fig. 4). To avoid
pixilation of the image, we created a buffer zone of the grids size to create joint areas.
3.4 Crossing critical criteria and other secondary criteria
Figure 5 (a) shows the crossing of the three critical criteria discussed above. Each selected area
meets the three criteria according to the values defined previously by our methodology: (1)
500m from a ridge, (2) 500m from a former riverbed, (3) 42% <IR <60% plus a buffer zone
around the grid. When crossing these three criteria, the resulted sites cover 25% of the islands
area, which correspond to the 20% to 40% range expected.
Figure 2. Impervious rates in Montreal Island.
Figure 3. Impervious rates histogram and islands coverage according to different ranges.

63
Figure 4. Sites with impervious rates from 42 to 60% and from 34 to 68%.
For each of the other criteria, a similar approach has been established to determine its
appropriate value. The results are shown in Figure 5 (b). In addition to the criteria (1) to (3)
above, they include the intersection of the following: (4) 500m from a green space, (5) 100m
from the hottest points of the islands heat map (6) 500m from a school. The total area of the
resulting sites covers 8% of the islands area. The more we add criteria, the more the area to find
a pilot project site is narrowed down. Every time a criterion is added, the values of variables
associated must be reviewed to make sure we are able to find potential sites for a pilot district.
Figure 5. (a) and (b): Potentials zones for NUR pilot project.
4 CONCLUSION
This work presents a reproducible methodology for a New Urban River pilot project
implementation in existing urban areas in order to create a hierarchical river system to drain the
whole territory. This methodology integrates three components to create a pilot project for a
sustainable stormwater management. The components are: mappable criteria, urban planning
and integrated local design.
This paper focusses on the mappable criteria component. This component, using GIS tools,
aims to identify potential sites for a pilot project implementation. Six criteria (among 15 criteria
listed), their importance and the associated variable are presented in this paper. The three
64

criteria that we consider as most critical: the distance from a ridge, the distance from a riverbed
and the impervious rates. This paper presents the methodology to determine the variable values
for each of these criteria, using the case study of Montreal. The input data is critical for this type
of methodology. We have to make sure to get complete and current data, and determine the
selected hypothesis clearly for these data.
Future research would establish the methodology of the other two components. The dialogue
with local representatives and their support is crucial for the accomplishment of such a project
(especially urban planning component). It is necessary to seek innovative solutions to solve the
future issues in terms of integrated technology (integrated design local level). It is important to
remember that this New Urban River overall project is a long-term process, with strategically
organized phases to ensure its sustainability. These successive stages and the precise phasing of
the project definition are the subject of the work process. This methodology aims to be
reproducible in other dense urban areas worldwide, by the generic nature of spotted sites.
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67
Discovering the ecological principles of traditional architecture:

Cappadocia Region
. Karakul
Seluk University, Turkey
ABSTRACT: The concept of sustainability in architecture, is mainly related to a conscious

approach to natural environment, the efficiency and moderation in the use of materials in the
design of the built environment. Emerging through the ongoing discussions about
environmental pollution, the disappearance of natural resources, the term sustainability is
mostly handled by using the terms ecological architecture, green buildings, nature
friendly in the area of architecture. In recent years, due to the rapid increase in environmental
pollution, the ecological approaches in architecture have strictly tried to be formulated and
applied to the construction process of the new buildings. To discover the ecological principles,
traditional architecture actually presents a valuable source of information with regard to the
variety of the nature friendly designs included, the usage of local materials and the creative
building methods to be inspired by architects. The traditional architecture in Anatolia is the
product of a complex process in which building masters handle local environmental
characteristics and materials and the needs, expectations and values of local people. In the
production process of traditional buildings, building masters try to integrate the buildings into
the nature and, use the local materials available nearby environment. Thereby, they have
continued a nature friendly and ecological building tradition for centuries. In this respect,
traditional buildings in historic environments carefully need to be investigated for drawing
lessons about the ecological principles of architecture. This paper mainly focuses on discovering
the ecological principles of traditional architecture in Cappadocia Region, specifically, the
traditional buildings carved-out of tuff rocks; and to integrate them into a sustainable new
vernacular architecture.
1 INTRODUCTION
The term sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of today without sacrificing the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs in the 42nd General Assembly of United Nations
in 1987. In his extensive study about ecological architecture, Steele (2005: 6-7) develops this
previous definition by elaborating it into eight issues, specifically, resource equity, embodied
energy, global community, economics, renewability, traditional wisdom, institutional change
and technology. The term traditional wisdom as one of these issues, can be related with the
benefit or learning from traditional and local architecture, which has been grown out of many
trial-and-error attempts to deal with nature; and need to be respected. Arising from the idea of
benefit from traditional wisdom, this study try to investigate local architecture in the
Cappadocia Region to put forward the ecological principles embodied within traditional
buildings.
The sustainability has three main aspects as environmental, socio-cultural and socioeconomic according to the definition made by VERSUS Project1 (Correia et al., 2014: 26). The
68

environmental sustainability aims to respect nature, to benefit of natural and climatic resources,
to reduce pollution and waste materials, to contribute to human health and welfare and to reduce
natural hazards effects. The socio-cultural sustainability aims to protect the cultural
landscape, to transfer construction cultures, to enhance creativity, to recognize intangible
values, to encourage social cohesion. The socio-economic sustainability aims to support
autonomy, to promote local activities, to optimize construction efforts, to extend building's
lifetime, to save resources. When reconsidered all these aspects with built environments, it is
seen that most of them are appropriate to be the specific principles searched for creating more
livable and sustainable environments.
The term sustainability, in relation to the built environment, is generally discussed with the
terms ecological or green which are used to describe environmentally responsive architecture
(Steele, 2005: 7-8). In ecological architecture, the terms tradition and technology especially
come forward to understand the relationship between natural environment and traditional
building technologies. Today, the main objective of the ecological design approaches is
to achieve acceptable indoor environmental conditions for occupants with the
least expenditure in energy and materials, replacing non-renewable energy sources
with renewable ones and doing away with environmentally unfriendly processes
and materials (Weber, Yannas, 2014: 2).
From this respect, embodying this objective in a great variety of building examples,
traditional architecture includes specific lessons to be learned by architects and students
designing new buildings. Therefore, this study investigates traditional buildings in Cappadocia
Region as a valuable resource to draw the sustainability principles for designing the ecological
new architecture.
The method of study is based on the information obtained through literature review and the
site surveys carried out in brahimpaa Village and nearby settlements in rgp in the
Cappadocia Region within the scope of the doctoral study of the author focusing on traditional
buildings, observations, documentation with photographs, architectural sketches and in-depth
interviews made with villagers.
2 TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURE AS A SOURCE FOR DRAWING LESSONS FOR
NEW BUILDINGS
Traditional architecture is a valuable source to discover the ecological principles with regard to
its inclusion of the variety of the nature friendly designs, the usage of local materials and the
creative building methods to be inspired by architects. Turkish traditional architecture is
specifically accepted as a successful model for new buildings in terms of representing our
cultural values and the reflection of their erection period honestly (Bekta, 1992: 5). From this
respect, these buildings have already been the sources of inspiration for some of architects, like
Le Corbusier, to develop the principles of Modernism (Kortan, 1983: 41-75).
Turkish traditional architecture is the product of a complex process through which local
building masters handle local environmental characteristics and materials and the needs,
expectations and values of local people carefully to construct buildings. In the production
process of traditional buildings, building masters try to integrate the buildings into the nature
and, use the local materials available nearby environment. Thereby, actually, they have
continued a nature friendly and ecological building tradition for centuries. In this respect, the
traditional buildings in historic environments carefully need to be investigated for drawing
lessons about the ecological principles embedded in their architecture.
Bekta (1996: 23) investigates Turkish traditional architecture to highlight certain common
principles to be considered for sustainability as (1) suitability to life, nature and environmental
conditions, (2) realism and rationalism, (3) solution from interior to exterior, (4) harmony
between interior and exterior, (5) frugality, (6) the principle of easiness in construction methods,
(7) selection and use of local materials nearby environment, (8) elasticity. When reconsidered
these principles within the scope of ecological architecture, it is seen that they completely
coincide with the main objective of ecological approaches mentioned above on a large scale.

69
Bektas approach (1996) was also discussed and developed by Karakul (2002) to highlight the
sustainable principles of life culture within the traditional riverfront buildings of Amasya, which
were determined as (1) legible architecture created by modular planning, (2) tradition of
building with courtyard, (3) integration with context.
Evaluating these previous conceptual approaches with their principles related to sustainability
and ecology mentioned above, the study focuses on two main ecological principles of traditional
architecture to be sustained in new buildings to be investigated in the Cappadocia Region in
detail: (1) Integration with context, (2) rational and creative building solutions: (a) Use of local
materials and traditional construction techniques (b) Incorporation nature into space and spatial
qualities. The reason for the selection of the Cappadocia Region as the study area is that
traditional buildings are valuable resources to draw the sustainability principles with regard to
the continuation of the use of tuff stone, local building material, with its high thermal qualities,
and the traditional building methods, the rational solutions in many settlements both in
traditional and new buildings, and in restorations.
3 THE ECOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURE IN THE
CAPPADOCIA REGION
The Cappadocia Region can be defined as a geographical region between Kayseri, Nide and
Krehir in terms of their common architecture shaped within tuff rocks (Korat, 2003: 15-16).
Nevehir Province and the surrounding settlements of Urgup, Ortahisar, Derinkuyu and Goreme
are at the center of this triangle and have the cultural and architectural relationships, buildings
and settlements that reflect in the best manner the Cappadocia Region (Cokun, Karakul, 2016:
82).
The Cappadocia Region, which has hosted many civilizations since prehistory, has included a
great number of historic buildings including fairy chimneys, the rockhewn traditional buildings,
storage depots, dovecotes and subterranean settlements, besides the traditional buildings builtout from tuff stone (Cokun & Karakul, 2016: 53). The Cappadocia Region possesses a peculiar
earth formation, which is the product of a very long geological process (Erk, 1984: 14). The
geological formation of the region has been very suitable for construction in terms of carving
out easily and as building stones getting hard after exposed to air (Erk, 1984: 34).
3.1 Traditional architecture in Cappadocia Region
The traditional residential architecture of the Cappadocia Region is the product of the local
building culture and tradition. The traditional residences in the region are the product of the
interactions within different cultural layers in the historical process of those experiencing the
cultural practices, the cultural expressions of the building masters and environmental factors.
The Cappadocia houses can be divided into three main groups with regard to the construction
techniques of the tufa rocks: (1) Rock Hewn Buildings (2) Stone Masonry Buildings (3) Mixed
Houses (Karakul, 2011a, 2011b; Cokun & Karakul: 2016: 73).
Using the carving-out and building-out techniques produced the traditional buildings in the
Cappadocia Region. According to the construction techniques used to shape tufa, the buildings
can be defined as rock hewn or stone masonry. The traditional buildings in the region
presents an architectural variation that is the product of the different unions of two different
units made by either carving-out or building-out methods. The mixed houses, which are formed
of hewn and stone masonry units in different combinations, are the building types observed the
most intensively in the region. There are examples of a mixture of both housing types by
hewing the part of the houses leaning on rock that is used for a pantry, storage depot or stable.
70

Figure 1. General view of the geological formation of Cappadocia Region (Source: Mevlt Cokun
Archive).
Besides natural and environmental features, cultural practices are reflected to the spatial
organization of the traditional dwellings. The most basic characteristic reflected to buildings in
these relations is the separation between production and living activities. This separation and
grouping also determines the order of hewn and stone masonry spaces. While preparations for
winter, the making of grape molasses and daily production activities are generally made in the
hewn spaces, the building-out units are generally used as living spaces.
The traditional buildings in the Cappadocia Region, which make use of the sloping land and
have underground hewn rock units, generally have two stories above the ground level. The
buildings include many terraces at different levels which are used for carrying out different
cultural practices.
3.2 The ecological principles of traditional buildings
As in any other historic environments, the traditional buildings of the Cappadocia Region
embody a great variety of ecological principles which can mainly be investigated under two
topics: (1) Integration with context, (2) rational and creative building solutions: (a) Use of local
materials and traditional construction techniques (b) Incorporation nature into space and spatial
qualities.
3.2.1 Integration with context
As in all traditional buildings in Anatolia, the traditional buildings in the Cappadocia Region are
completely integrated with their context, both with natural environment and the existing built
environment. Respecting for nature, the existing natural surrounding is accommodated by the
buildings according to the users demands. Buildings have been built without struggling with
nature, in contrast, matching with the special topography of area.
Besides their unity with natural environment, traditional buildings also intimately correspond
to the rest of the existing buildings matching with their scale, plan layout and facade
organization with each other within fabric to create a humanistic environment, responsive for
the life culture of inhabitants. Considering the settlement pattern of buildings, the attached
buildings respect for the rights of others to accommodate their natural surroundings, air, sun and
view and do not look each other.

71
3.2.2 Rational and creative building solutions

The traditional buildings of Cappadocia are so special with regard to their qualities of the use of
the construction techniques and materials to be sustained in new buildings. The buildings have
been constructed by the creative building solutions of local building masters, which have based
on the previous experiences transferred by tradition, creating a common architectural language.
3.2.2.1 Use of local materials and traditional construction techniques
The traditional buildings of Cappadocia have been constructed by using local building material,
tuff stone in two different ways, either carving-out or building-out2 which are the methods
developed by the traditional wisdom of building masters. Using local materials provides to
energy efficiency by optimizing construction efforts, and to save resources economically.
The different ways of using tuff stone in building construction require two different processes
of construction, specifically, subtractive and additive processes (Stea & Turan, 1993: 190).
The carved unit is produced by the subtractive process; and the built-out units are produced by
the additive process, are composed of the stone masonry walls covered with a vaulted ceiling
supported by a set of arches. The traditional dwellings in Cappadocia Region have been
generated from the different combinations of these two types of units. Because of the suitability
of the geological formation, the rocks obtained after the carving-out process have also been used
as building stones for mainly, the secondary walls of the building, as infill material and in the
courtyard walls (Karakul, 2011a, 2011b, 2013).
3.2.2.2 Incorporation nature into space and spatial qualities
The traditional buildings of the region have been designed by local building masters to benefit
from natural and climatic factors enormously. The buildings share a similar understanding about
the incorporation natural light and view to interior spaces. Especially living spaces are always
oriented to sun and the prevailing view to provide a warmer and lighter interior environment by
opening multiple windows on walls.
Figure 2. The traditional buildings in brahimpaa Village in Cappadocia Region (Source: zlem karakul
Archive).
72

Another way of incorporation nature into space is to benefit from the thermal qualities of tuff
stone to provide natural heating, cooling and ventilation within the interior of the buildings. Tuff
stone, which is one of volcanic rock types is very porous in nature, has low thermal conductivity
value and high thermal insulation quality (Yaar et al., 2009: 272). Because of the thermal
insulation characteristic of tuff stone, the rock hewn and stone masonry spaces present a
comfortable environment for their inhabitants since they are warm in winter and cool in
summer. The insulation feature of the walls having a thickness of 60-100 centimeters at the
hewn units constitutes suitable conditions for storing food for long periods of time (Cokun &
Karakul, 2016: 76). Due to the thermal isolation properties of the tuff stone covering the region,
temperature variation in underground spaces is much less than those of the outdoor (Ulusay &
Aydan, 2016: 11). Thereby, underground spaces and carving-out spaces of the buildings is
warmer during winter and cooler in summer, which provides very comfortable living
environment as well as energy saving.
The climatic features of spaces hewn from tufa stone, besides adding hewn storage spaces in
different scales for keeping winter foods and agricultural products to the building program, was
the reason for making a large number of storages throughout the valleys at Cappadocia. The
cold air storages constructed throughout valleys were used for storing of winter provisions.
There are a great number of the cold air storages especially in Uchisar, Greme, Ortahisar and
Mustafapaa to be leased to those who want to store citrus fruits. According to the information
obtained from the local people, the cold environment of these storage depots, just as it prevents
the deterioration of fruits, is preferred since they increase the taste and weight. The moisture of
the tufa has decreased in the present-day under the influence of dry weather caused from climate
change; and this situation has negatively affected warehousing.
4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Historical traditional houses have been designed and built by traditional building masters.
Determining the environmental features of the site to be built, the qualities of local materials
and the needs of the family which will use the dwelling, traditional building masters have built
these dwellings by using the knowledge and skills to be gained by tradition. Thereby, traditional
buildings have been built by the creative solutions of building masters particular to the specific
conditions of environments. These creative solutions of building masters have a great value and
include many lessons to be discovered for sustaining in new buildings. Embodying a great
variety of the principles to be sustained in new designs, traditional buildings need to be
reconsidered with regard to ecological architecture.
This study investigated the traditional buildings in the Cappadocia Region as a valuable
resource to draw the sustainability principles for designing the ecological new architecture.
Besides the general characteristics of traditional buildings like integration with context and use
of local materials which can be observed in all traditional settlements, the buildings in the
region exhibit the various uses of tuff stone with its all potentialities particular to this context to
be sustained in new buildings. Using tuff stone in buildings provides to energy efficiency by
optimizing construction efforts, and to save resources economically. Especially, the thermal
qualities of tuff stone are significant to provide comfortable indoor environmental conditions for
occupants with the least expenditure in energy and materials, and; also for keeping various
foods for long time. The investigation of tuff stone regarding its thermal qualities need to be
carefully conducted; and the continuation of its use in both traditional and contemporary ways
in new buildings need to be provided to create ecologically designed environments.
ENDNOTES
1
2
It is an European project developed in the framework of the Culture 2007-2013 programme, funded by
the European Commission from 2012-2014 (Correia, et al., 2014).
Stea and Turan (1993: 192) use the terms carved-out spaces and built-out spaces among the major
architectural elements to be considered in a study of placemaking in Cappadocia.

73
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Bekta, C. 1992. Koruma Onarm. Y.E.M. Yayn. stanbul.
Bekta, C. 1996. Trk Evi. Yap Kredi Yaynlar. stanbul.
Correia, M., Dipasquale, L. & Mecca, S. (eds.). 2014. Versus: Heritage for Tomorrow, Vernacular
Knowledge for Sustainable Architecture. Frenze University Press.
Cokun, M. & Karakul, . 2016. Greme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia. In N. Ertrk
& . Karakul (eds.), Unesco World Heritage 2016. Grafiker Yaynclk: Ankara.
Erk, M. F. 1984. Akky: A Study on Vernacular Architecture with Reference to a Specific Case. [MA
Thesis]. METU.
Karakul, . 2011a. A Holistic Approach to Historic Environments Integrating Tangible and Intangible
Values Case Study: brahimpaa Village in rgp. [PhD Thesis] Middle East Technical University.
Turkey.
Karakul, . 2002. New buildings in old settings: Riverfront buildings in Amasya. [MA Thesis]. Middle
East Technical University, Turkey.
Karakul, . 2011b. An Integrated Approach To Conservation Based On The Interrelations Of Tangible
and Intangible Cultural Properties. METU Journal of The Faculty of Architecture, Vol: 28, No:2, p.
105-125.
Karakul, . 2013. A Holistic Approach to Historic Environments: Integrating Tangible and Intangible
Values. Lap Lambert Academic Publishing. Germany.
Korat, G. 2003. Ta Kapdan Takapya Kapadokya. stanbul: letiim Yaynlar.
Kortan, E. 1983. Le Corbusier gzyle Trk mimarlk ve ehirciligi. Ankara.
Stea, D. & Turan, M. 1993. Placemaking Production of Built Environment in Two Cultures. Great
Britain.
Steele, J. 2005. Ecological Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson.
Ulusay, R. & Aydan, . 2016. Cultural, Hstorcal And Geo-Engneerng Aspects Of The Cappadoca
Regon, Post Symposium Excursions. 2016 ISRM International Symposium Rock Mechanics & Rock
Engineering: From The Past To The Future, 29-31 August, Cappadocia, Turkey.
United Nations. 1987. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our
Common Future, General Assembly, 42nd session. Available at: http://www.un-documents.net/ourcommon-future.pdf.
Yasar, E., Tolgay, A. & Teymen, A. 2009. Industrial Usage of Nevsehir-Kayseri (Turkey) Tuff Stone.
World Applied Sciences Journal, 7 (3): 271-284.
Weber, W. & Yannas, S. (eds.). 2014. Lessons from Vernacular Architecture. Great Britain: Routledge.
74


75
Infill housing strategies to transform low-density suburbs

G. London
The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
N. Bertram & L.-A. Khor

Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
ABSTRACT: State governments around Australia acknowledge the need to limit urban sprawl
and consolidate the major cities. They do this by setting targets to fill the gaps within existing
metropolitan areas and redevelop selected sites with higher density housing. The market is
taking on this challenge but is not delivering the quality, diversity and amenity that are needed
to enable broader community support for this form of housing. This paper explores design
strategies for enhancing the outcomes of infill housing redevelopment in the middle suburbs of
Australian cities, urban areas which are well-located in terms of urban services and employment
but without a robust housing strategy or tangible high quality development models. Typical
market-led development occurs on a site-by-site, ad-hoc basis, gradually eroding the amenity of
the early 20th century suburban paradigm without offering positive alternatives or suggesting
new ways of living in response to contemporary pressures. This paper explores design strategies
for enhancing the outcomes of infill housing redevelopment in the middle suburbs of Australian
cities, urban areas which are well-located in terms of urban services and employment but
without a robust housing strategy or tangible high quality development models. Typical marketled development occurs on a site-by-site, ad-hoc basis, gradually eroding the amenity of the
early 20th century suburban paradigm without offering positive alternatives or suggesting new
ways of living in response to contemporary pressures. A model is proposed for infill
redevelopment over non-contiguous residential sites, conceived of and implemented as a
coordinated precinct. The research demonstrates a range of design strategies for improving the
density, quality and performance of small-scale infill housing, and shows that a design-led
process can overcome typical barriers and resistance to higher density infill. The design
approach is to intervene selectively and strategically in the existing suburban fabric,
demonstrating its latent potential for liveability and intensification.
1 THE SETTING
This paper focuses on two cities in Australia, Perth, with a hot Mediterranean climate, and
Melbourne, further south with a more temperate climate but still hot and dry in summer. As
with most Australian cities, they are characterized by a colonial grid central business district,
with its closely packed high rise buildings, and surrounded by sprawling suburbs of one to twostorey detached houses.
State governments around Australia acknowledge the need to limit urban sprawl and
consolidate the major cities. They do this by setting targets to fill the gaps within existing
metropolitan areas and redevelop selected sites with higher density housing. The market is
taking on this challenge but is not delivering the quality, diversity and amenity that is needed to
enable broader community support for this form of housing.
76

In 2010 the Department of Planning in Perth and the Western Australian Planning
Commission released Directions 2031 (August 2010), a report in which they proposed a more
consolidated Perth with a target of 47 per cent of all new housing to be infill. That target
translated to 154,000 of the 328,000 new dwellings identified as needed in the 21 years to 2031.
The figure of 47 per cent was nominated as a required 50 per cent increase on the then infill
trends identified as being between 30 and 35 per cent. This figure was to be accompanied by a
50 per cent increase of the current average residential density.
In 2015 the same two government agencies released Perth and Peel @ 3.5 million in which
the 47 per cent infill target was again nominated but, in doing so, the authors acknowledged that
the 2014 rates of urban infill had reached only 28 per cent, short of the trends earlier predicted.
This means that, to reach the 47 per cent target, the required increase in infill has moved from
50 per cent to 68 per cent more than the most recent actual infill numbers in the five years
between the publication of the two reports.
This is a substantial change one that will require significant shifts from business-as-usual
approaches to housing delivery and also to the community acceptance of higher residential
densities. Neither of the two government reports offers anything more than the briefest of
references to the nature of the housing that will provide the increased infill and density. There
is no real discussion of housing types and their design, methods of construction and delivery,
nor of forms of ownership that may encourage a greater take up of higher density types.
At the same time, there remains a level of community resistance to higher residential density
and infill. Some of this resistance is justified in that much of the completed suburban infill is of
a poor quality and too fragmentary to result in the positive changes that higher density can bring
to the public realm and the level of amenity it offers.
The state governments Urban Growth Monitor reports that, between 2011 and 2014, infill
developments yielding one dwelling per lot accounted for 60 per cent of all projects and that
infill projects of between two to five dwellings per lot accounted for only 19 per cent of all infill
dwellings (Western Australian Planning Commission. 2016). Meanwhile, the Perth and Peel
report points out that Western Australia has some of the largest average-sized homes in the
world, peaking at an average of 245 square metres and that the vast majority 78 per cent
of all Perth homes were detached dwellings, compared with 12 per cent for semi-detached and
just 9 per cent for units( Western Australian Planning Commission, 2015).
In another state government report, The Housing Wed Choose: a study for Perth and Peel,
the substantial majority of respondents indicated that location was a primary consideration and
that they would prefer to live in the central area but could not afford to do so. Three quarters of
respondents said that they were prepared to trade off house size or type in order to live in their
preferred area (State of Western Australia, 2013). This finding supports the encouragement of
smaller and more diverse housing types in denser settings.
This paper explores design strategies for enhancing the outcomes of infill housing
redevelopment in the middle suburbs of Australian cities, urban areas which are well-located in
terms of urban services and employment but without a robust housing strategy or tangible high
quality development models. Typical market-led development occurs on a site-by-site, ad-hoc
basis, gradually eroding the amenity of the early 20th century suburban model without offering
positive alternatives or suggesting new ways of living in response to contemporary pressures.
2 DESIGN-BASED HOUSING RESEARCH INFORMING THE CURRENT STUDY
The research starts with two design studies of suburban infill in Melbourne (Bertram et al 2011;
Murray et al., 2015). The middle suburbs falling between 7-25km from the city centre
currently house approximately 54% of Melbournes population1 and have relatively high access
to services and transport infrastructure (in comparison to peripheral growth areas) as the city has
expanded around them. The strategic importance of this middle ring of urbanisation lies in its
extensiveness and its potential to function more actively as a rich connective urban tissue
around the inner cosmopolitan core. Much of the original development in this region occurred in
the post-war era and blocks are of fairly regular size and urban arrangement, leading to a
perception of undifferentiated homogeneity. Over the past 50-80 years substantial growth of
planted vegetation and some scattered areas of remnant bushland means that these suburbs at

77
their best have a verdant, garden quality. Poor examples of suburban infill have removed trees
and tree canopy and seriously diminished the opportunity for deep soil areas. Many areas of
middle suburbia consist of houses now reaching 50-60 years old, ageing and in need of repair, at
low densities, out of step with contemporary demographics and household structures, and with
poor environmental performance reflecting the time at which they were built. These areas of
underperforming, low-density housing stock in well-situated metropolitan locations have been
termed greyfields (Newton et al., 2011), in distinction to brownfield and greenfield
development sites. Intelligent infill redevelopment in greyfield areas has the potential to
improve the overall functioning of Melbourne as a metropolis, however this is difficult to
achieve due to the atomised nature of individual house/land ownership and resistance to change
through fiercely democratic planning processes including tightly held third-party objection
rights. This difficulty is exacerbated by the lack of high quality local medium-density models to
drive demand, meaning that the general community frequently sees infill development as a
negative.
Melbourne has experienced two decades of significant population growth, and an associated
housing boom where the real-estate market has supported substantial and profitable
investment by multiple small mum and dad landowners. There are many aspects to this boom
and its causes and effects have been widely analysed elsewhere2, but one outcome is real
pressure on housing affordability in areas that are within good access of employment choice and
reliable urban services. The market demand for housing in middle suburbs is demonstrated by
the large increase in hidden infill development outside of planned growth centres in suburbs
where no heritage or other controls are preventing its occurrence. Prolific over the past 10-15
years, this piecemeal small-scale development is allowed within the current planning structure,
and involves subdivision and building of one or two additional dwellings on a standard
suburban allotment. Developments typically replicate existing suburban housing types, with a
strong emphasis on internal dwelling size and private vehicle accommodation at the expense
of open space, vegetation and community infrastructure. A fifty-year opportunity for
generational change presented by the replacement of ageing original housing stock is being
used up by low-quality new infill that does not improve the range of housing options and
gradually erodes rather than improves the existing amenity. The quality of open spaces and
vegetation that underpins the existing character of these suburbs is gradually being lost, but we
argue that through design-led strategies could instead be leveraged to transform and enrich them
into diverse and sustainable 21st century places.
Figure 1. Typical market infill: (left) before - existing post-war dwelling; (middle) after - overshadowed
small open space and dominance of impermeable driveway surfaces.
The Infill Opportunities report by Monash University found that typical market infill
development response is strongly determined by a combination of internally compartmentalised
planning and external car circulation requirements within the block, combined with generalised
urban setback rules for new built form (Bertram et al., 2011). This research analysed six
sections of middle suburban Melbourne greyfields to determine a range of the most common
78

allotment sizes (15-16m wide, 38-43m long, approximately 600m2) to design new housing
models with a high degree of replicability across the middle suburbs. This work proposed a rethinking of housing provision from both internal (room-based) and external (site open space)
directions, and demonstrated that high amenity, well-oriented and spacious dwellings at a ratio
of 3:1 above the base density could be achieved on typical blocks within current volumetric
restrictions if market expectations around wet area planning (bathrooms and ensuites) and car
circulation (internalised attached garages) were challenged3. The simple designs address basic
dwelling amenity issues such as light, aspect, cross-ventilation, orientation to sunlight, access to
well-proportioned open space, flexible and adaptable rooms: all aspects that are overlooked or
low in the priority rank in the typical market-led infill. Large front setback planning
requirements were also identified as overly restrictive to quality infill development with an
emphasis on street aesthetics and neatness over performative aspects of landscape such as
overall canopy cover, appropriate species selection, and shape and orientation of the spaces
between buildings.
Figure 2. Infill Opportunities model: (left) plan diagrams; (middle & right) Massing diagrams showing
configuration of compact core and open space amenity.
The current market-led approach, when multiplied, significantly erodes the landscape
character and amenity of the post-war suburbs. Landscape character is fundamental to providing
high amenity, liveable outcomes, accommodating increased density and ameliorating interface
issues with surrounding fabric, and importantly reducing urban heat island effect and health of
residents particularly for an ageing population (Bertram et al., 2015). The Infill Opportunities
work pre-empts this by testing strategies for a single site that also work when these sites are
joined to one or two adjacent neighbours; increasing opportunities for through-block pedestrian
permeability, landscaped ecological corridors and efficiencies in vehicular circulation.
Figure 3. Infill Opportunities model arranged on 2-lots back-to-back (left); 2-lots side-by-side (right).

79
Figure 4. Infill Opportunities model arranged on 3 contiguous lots (left); Street view of proposed caf or
office built up to front boundary (right).
When analysing the combined and cumulative effect of simultaneous adjacent developments
within this type of suburban fabric, it became apparent that a co-ordinated approach that could
strategise and implement such a scale of development as a co-ordinated precinct across noncontiguous sites could realise many benefits that are not possible when working on a site-by-site
piecemeal basis (Newton et al., 2012; Murray, 2013). Such a co-ordinated approach combined
with design strategies for new types of compact adaptable dwellings could improve the density,
quality and performance of small-scale infill suburban housing. It could also realise urbandesign level, infrastructural connections and benefits across multiple sites.
Disaggregation is generally seen as a disincentive to developers, who look for larger,
consolidated sites for ease of construction however there are also many possible benefits. In
comparison to individual sites and consolidated sites, disaggregated/ dispersed development has
a high surface area contact with surrounding fabric and hence a greater chance for uplift,
regeneration and change of the whole community. If this influence is positive then urban-scale
change typically hard to achieve within atomised suburban ownership structures could take
place over time.
Figure 5. Field of influence of coordinated development.
For a range of historical reasons, the current land ownership patterns of public housing
authorities in Australian cities takes a strikingly similar form to the disaggregated virtual
precinct of recent suburban infill development patterns. Policies encouraging home ownership,
sell-off in support of de-concentration and spot purchasing have led to the erosion of
consolidated public housing estates over time, but with public ownership remaining as high as
25% in some areas. This ownership pattern was identified by the research team as a strategic
possibility to realise transformative urban change, in the process of updating old housing stock,
80

out of step with the contemporary household needs of public housing tenants. The question of
co-ordinated land assembly, difficult in the private sector, was here an established starting point.
The research undertaken for AHURI in 2013-15 (Murray et al 2015) analysed public land
holdings against metropolitan conditions for strategic potential and development opportunity.
The team developed schematic design proposals for two neighbourhood precincts of 1 square
kilometre in area, with a focus on site-specific response rather than blanket rules determining
development envelope, setbacks and the like. The process of designing in blocks of twelve close
but not directly adjacent allotments demonstrated that considerable uplift of density and
diversity of housing types was possible, with consideration of amenity impacts on neighbours,
and concentrating development in areas of higher strategic potential such as corner sites, sites
that allow new pedestrian linkages or those without overshadowing impacts on neighbours. A
significant benefit to good dwelling outcomes was to distribute the parking provision across the
twelve sites rather than needing to accommodate parking for each dwelling on its immediate
site. A maximum distance of 50 metres was used as a benchmark, and the benefits in terms of
density, arrangement and typology of dwellings made possible by this relaxation of current rules
demonstrated the large (and generally negative) effect that vehicle parking and circulation rules
have on current development practices.
Figure 6. 1kmx1km study area: (left) existing condition with 23% of sites currently owned by Office of
Housing shaded yellow; (right) proposed urban upgrades on strategic selection of public housing sites.
A design-led, site-specific and negotiated approach to infill development, as trialled in this

project, requires the involvement of all stakeholders in a cooperative process, where shared
responsibility is taken for change towards a common future. In order for this to occur an
informed debate and visioning of what that desirable and plausible future might be needs to
take place in an open and inclusive manner. A critical component of the research process was
community consultation, where a design-led process was enacted with architecture students
working on-site for week long intensive periods in each location, culminating in a presentation,
exhibition and feedback session involving participants from the wider community. This process
found that typical barriers and resistance to higher density infill can be overcome by a designled process that is neither proscriptive nor neutral, but suggestive, highly illustrative of options
and consequences, and engaging with the real potential of local conditions with a long-term
view. The research simulation found that communities are not averse to higher density
redevelopment or increases in population as long as it gives something back to the area, such
as local shops that can afford to stay open, or new facilities like small accessible community
rooms. Further, residents are open to how issues like parking, overshadowing and overlooking

81
can be resolved through careful design and place-specific siting in contrast to setting absolute
or blanket limits.
3 PERTH CASE STUDY
Based on the previous work in Melbourne, a subsequent study was conducted in Perth for the
Western Australian Housing Authority, on a set of similarly non-contiguous residential sites
under single ownership, conceived of and implemented as a coordinated precinct. It
demonstrates a range of design strategies for improving the density, quality and performance of
small-scale infill housing, specific to the scale, materiality and climate of Perth.
Redcliffe is a suburb located on the city side of the airport, about a 15 minute drive from the
city centre. After English settlement in 1829, the bush was converted into a single farming
property with good river access, and subsequently broken up into many small farms late in the
19th century. It is now a mix of semi-industrial, retail, and large tracts of single residential
properties, many of which are owned and managed by the Western Australian Housing
Authority. Because of its proximity to the city, airport and river, Redcliffe is recognized as a
good area for urban renewal. This potential is further enhanced by the proposal to develop the
part of Redcliffe to the west of the airport, divided from larger Redcliffe by a major highway,
into a high density mixed use precinct around a new underground rail station. The market is
already driving a process of patchy intensification but with ill-conceived and isolated housing
models that contribute poorly to the public realm, and attract community hostility to higher
density development.
The Housing Authority and the local government, the City of Belmont, are interested in
promoting better models and in imposing a regulatory regime that enables this. After
commissioning Monash University and the University of Western Australia to undertake the
early phases of this work, a number of key design principles were developed and agreed. They
were directed at meeting ambitions for higher housing density, greater typological diversity, an
enhanced public realm, and greater community amenity.
Figure 7. Precinct plan showing proposed infill (white), existing built context (grey), key pedestrian
connections and the new green spine linking up existing open space network.
82

3.1 Design principles

1. Provide a mix of dwelling types and tenancy/ ownership structures. Dwelling mix to be
distributed in response to existing context (e.g. family-friendly housing adjacent to existing
schools).
2. Achieve an overall intensification and densification of the area, while respecting local
qualities and site-specific opportunities.
3. Control the scale of new infill development, with localised manipulations in response
to existing context.
4. Use the arrangement of new dwellings and entrances (stair halls rather than gallery
circulation that reduces privacy and security), semi-private and private open space to
reinforce both individual privacy and amenity and group identity, and provide passive
surveillance/ increased neighbourhood security through more eyes on the street.
5. Maximise potential for dwelling exposure to outlook, sunlight, air and greenery.
Optimise passive environmental performance of building and site.
6. Increase connectivity for pedestrian and cyclist movement, and between existing
neighbourhood attractions/ distinguishing features.
7. Enable the potential for secure shared amenity areas on rooftop terraces, including
recreational BBQ areas, kitchenettes, planting boxes, and possible shared laundry
facilities.
8. Provide ample deep root zones to enable significant mature vegetation, greening the
suburb and increasing canopy shade over time. Increase porous surfaces and integrate
localised water-sensitive urban design strategies with each development.
9. Use the process of development and densification to contribute appropriately to the
wider public realm, including landscape and streetscape improvements, and increase
the amenity of the area for all residents and visitors.
10. Provide 1 car space per dwelling, within the title boundary. Ground surface
treatments should maximise the potential of driveways and car turning areas to
perform dual roles of vehicle access and safe play/recreation space.
A terrace type 3-5 storey apartment dwelling model was developed in response to the
existing built context, typical allotment sizes, terrain changes and streetscape conditions. It is
one of a number of dwelling typologies that could be pursued within the proposed precinct. In
fact, a diversity of dwelling outcomes would be encouraged. For the purposes of this research,
the proposed terrace and courtyard type illustrates the design principles and considerations for
achieving high density, high quality and high amenity living outcomes.
The base model works across two allotments (or can be halved for a single property), and can
be repeated to form a continuous run of courtyard dwellings on larger sites. The units and
circulation core are designed to provide spatial and formal flexibility at a site level while
offering high levels of privacy and amenity for individual residents.
The three volumes encasing the void of the circulation can be manoeuvred or skewed for
unique siting alignments and stepped across changing ground levels. The shared circulation core
means that each volume is comprised of a discrete dwelling unit at each floor level. This enables
the subtraction of building blocks at sensitive boundary conditions, or unit additions where
higher building forms are appropriate.

83
Figure 8. Base model: terrace / courtyard apartment block.
The dwelling model incorporates a series of simple but effective design and siting strategies
that enhance the quality of individual development outcomes, as well as contribute to broader
improvements in the public realm. For instance, minimising building setbacks to the street and
providing landscape upgrades to footpaths and verges maximises the site usage and amenity for
individual developments while implementing key segments of a proposed green linear park.
The linear park would be further formed from an astute repositioning of a reduced carriageway,
optimising the potential use of consolidated verges and providing pedestrian amenity along its
length. This might include shaded resting spots, benches, rubbish bins, community gardens and
playgrounds to encourage social interactions between a large cross-section of the community.
Permeable ground surfaces and considerate landscape design would support the growth of
vegetation, provide interesting walking paths and indicate areas for bicycle movements and
slower vehicle speeds. Integrating the design of individual sites with a broader strategic plan
demonstrates the potential for future inclusion of surrounding properties (public or private) and
offers a platform for brokering resident support of new development proposals.
The next stage of the project will make use of a water overlay, exploring how the existing
water strategies may be used as the starting points for a more expanded response to water, using
its infrastructure to create permeable links within the suburb, to mitigate urban heat island
effects, and to encourage deep soil planting to protect and enhance tree canopy.
Figure 9. Sectional diagram.
84

Figure 10. Terrace / Courtyard apartment model arranged on 5 allotments (left) Ground; (right) First.
Figure 11. (left) View from street; (right) View from above looking over courtyard amenity.
4 CONCLUSION
The housing types and their suburban setting that is being discussed in this paper were
established between the 1940s and the 1990s. They embody a set of post-war values that may
be recognised throughout the western world and also in a number of Asian countries. They
represent a symptom of affluence as the middle classes evolved. The suburban condition
became utterly endemic in Australia, a cultural imperative supported by political, regulatory and
financial structures, but it now needs to be addressed to limit sprawl and to optimise existing
infrastructure.
To protect the suburbia we currently have from poor quality infill and higher density housing
and to curtail the easy option of forever extending our fringes, we need to demonstrate more
effectively and more consistently that higher density housing can be a desirable alternative. We
need more good examples, a greater diversity of housing types, and the potential that is implicit
in higher density housing made explicit: the opportunities for social engagement, sharing of
facilities, fewer cars, richer urban potential, better public space and urban realm.
The pursuit of higher density housing need not be the threat to suburbia that it is often
assumed to be. It need not be seen as a denigration of the values that recognise suburbia as
having a particular quality that helps establish the idea of an Australian way of life based on the
detached house and its backyard this will remain in place and there is a vast existing stock to
ensure it will. The development of well-designed, high performing and higher density infill
housing will, in fact, protect existing suburbs from the poorer quality infill that is occurring
while allowing the sharing of benefits from an enhanced public realm.

85
ENDNOTES
1
Refer discussion Defining the Middle Suburbs (Bertram et al 2011, p5). Preliminary analysis generated
from a number of information sources, including census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics
and urban analysis by the Victorian State Government.
See for example, Richard Tomlinson (ed.), Australias Unintended Cities: the impact of housing on
urban development (CSIRO, 2012), and Jane-Frances Kelly and Paul Donegan, City Limits: why
Australias cities are broken and how we can fix them, (Grattan Institute, 2015)
Similarly, the recent Nightingale apartment development model led by Breathe Architects (2015-16)
and which has achieved considerable market uptake achieves greater amenity and affordability through
removal of many items considered essential by dominant real-estate conventions; such as second
bathrooms, attached carspaces, internalised private laundries and air-conditioning. The removal of
these features from individual dwellings is made possible by intelligent and well-articulated design
values focused on communal spaces and sustainability.
REFERENCES
Bertram, N., Murray, S., Ramirez-Lovering, D., Khor, L. & Meyer, B. 2011. Infill Opportunities, research
report prepared for the Office of the Victorian Government Architect. Available at:
http://ovga.vic.gov.au/news/75-infill-housing-study.html.
Bertram, N., Rowe, D., Murphy, C., Meyer B. & Board, H. 2015. Practice Discussion Paper: A
comprehensive evidence-base for innovative design methods that can improve accommodation
outcomes
for
TBI
and
SCI
residents.
Available
at:
http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au/research/rethinking-designs-contribution-to-assisted-livingenvironments.html.
Kelly, J. F., Weidmann, B. & Walsh, M. 2011. The Housing Wed Choose, Grattan Institute, Melbourne.
Available at: https://grattan.edu.au/report/the-housing-wed-choose/.
Murray, S. 2013. Infill Precincts, in Weller, Richard. & Bolleter, Julian. Made in Australia: the future of
Australian cities / Richard Weller, Julian Bolleter, UWA Publishing Crawley, Western Australia.
Murray, S., Bertram, N., Khor, L., Rowe, D., Meyer, B., Murphy, C. Newton, P., Glackin, S., Alves, T. &
McGauran, R. 2015. Processes for developing affordable and sustainable mediumdensity housing
models for greyfield precincts. AHURI Final Report No.236. Melbourne: Australian Housing and
Urban Research Institute. Available at: http://www.ahuri.edu.au/publications/projects/52012.
Newton, P., Murray, S., Wakefield, R. Murphy, C., Khor, L. & Morgan, T. 2011. Towards a new
development model for housing regeneration in greyfield residential precincts. AHURI Final Report
No.171. Melbourne: Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.
Newton, P., Newman, P., Glackin, S. & Trubka, R. 2012. Greening the Greyfields: Unlocking the
Redevelopment Potential of the Middle Suburbs in Australian Cities. Proceedings of the 33rd
International Conference on Urban Planning and Regional Development (ICUPRD 2012), World
Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, Venice, Italy, 14-16 November 2012, Vol. 71
(2012), pp. 658-677.
State of Western Australia. 2013. The Housing Wed Choose: a study for Perth and Peel. prepared by the
Western Australian Planning Commission and the Departments of Housing and Planning. Available at:
http://www.planning.wa.gov.au/dop_pub_pdf/housing_full_report.pdf.
Victorian
State
Government.
2015.
Plan
Melbourne
Refresh.
Available
at:
http://www.planmelbourne.vic.gov.au/plan-melbourne-refresh.
Western Australian Planning Commission. 2015. Perth and Peel @ 3.5 million. Government report, p.41.
Western Australian Planning Commission. 2016. Urban Growth Monitor: Perth Metropolitan, Peel and
Greater Bunbury Regions. Government Report, p.80.
86


87
Climate change impacts assessment on wastewater sewers

overflows for a sustainable water management plan for the city of
Nantes and its surrounding areas
V. Mahaut
cole darchitecture, Facult de lamnagement, Universit de Montral, Qubec, Canada
Institut de Recherche en Sciences et Techniques de la Ville, Nantes, France
H. Andrieu
Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Environment and Risks, IFSTTAR, Nantes, France
Institute for Research on Urban Sciences and Techniques, Nantes, France
ABSTRACT: In most cities, overburdened sewer systems regularly discharge large quantities of
wastewater into the environment. This pollution of watercourses gradually weakens the quality
of the environment and reduces the citys resiliency. This paper shows that the direct human
impact of urban development on wastewater management cannot be ignored. While climate
change will doubtless be a source of disruption in our communities, it has a smaller impact in
this study than various demographic and urban development scenarios. It is focused on a case
study in Nantes (France), where the mixed combined and separated sewer system that serves
144km2 of urban and suburban territory often overflows into a tributary of the Loire that flows
through the city centre, polluting the watercourse just upstream from the citys emergency drink
water intake. This study combines and compares the impact of climate change with that of
various urban development strategies based on current practices from now until 2100. It
proposes various approaches for developing a sustainable water management plan for the city of
Nantes and for the sustainable development of its suburbs and surrounding areas. The study
method gives an analytical tool to illustrate the relationships between the main factors in play.
The model weighs the importance of the different factors, allowing determining the order of
actions to implement with regard to land development. This paper does not include the
methodology of hydrologys simulation, but focusses on the assessment of urban management
to mitigate the problem of overflows. The conclusions of the study can contribute to the
decision-making process, helping to elaborate a plan for water management in the city. The
results encourage municipalities to modify their urban development practices, to initiate new
densification procedures and to encourage new management strategies for waste and rainwater.
1 INTRODUCTION
The problems related to urban water management have three main sources: (1) combined sewer
systems mix rainwater and wastewater; (2) extraneous water, such as water pumped or
groundwater infiltration from the water table, overloads the systems transport pipes and (3) old
rivers are being converted into covered canals, thereby eliminating overflowing zones. The first
two points are related to wastewater sewer systems and combined sewer systems, while the third
point is related to rainwater systems.
The consequences are extremely harmful to both human society and the environment, causing
flooding due to overflowing watercourses or sewer systems, erosion of soils and sub-soils,
malfunctioning wastewater plants and environmental pollution.
These problems are aggravated by urbanization and potentially by climate change (CC) as
well. If the proportion of impervious area grows at the same pace as the population, then those
result in a steady increase in runoff volumes. Extending sewer networks to accommodate
urbanization also leads to an increase in the volume of extraneous water transported. In some
88

areas, CC may increase precipitation levels and the incidence of extreme rainfall, as well as the
frequency of dry periods that temporarily increase surface sealing of natural soil (Mailhot and
Duchesne, 2010; Willems, 2013). These phenomena are potential sources of aggravation to both
rainwater and combined wastewater systems.
In such a context, urban planners are forced to rethink their water management plans.
Strategies to separate rainwater and wastewater have to be considered, as well as low impact
development (LID) techniques and sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS). Some studies
have used CC scenarios to show the effectiveness of these tools in dealing with runoff (Pyke et
al., 2011; Semadeni-Davies, 2012). More generally, the impact of CC and urban development
on urban hydrology has been the subject of research over the past ten years. This research aims
in part to help city planners develop sustainable cities and infrastructure. Many of these studies
examine watercourse flow rate changes (Semadeni-Davies et al., 2008b; Praskievicz and Chang,
2011; Wu et al., 2013; Tavakoli et al., 2014) and quality and quantity of water resources
(Astaraie-Imani et al., 2012). Others works evaluate the evolution of flood risk in urban zones
(Olsson et al., 2008; Jung et al., 2010; Huong and Pathirana, 2013; Mikovits et al, 2015). The
evolution of urban sewer networks is also assessed over time (Semadeni-Davies et al., 2008a;
Nie et al., 2009; Willems et al., 2012; Astaraie-Imani et al., 2012; Krieger et al., 2013).
Methods based on evaluation of future extreme events (Nie et al., 2009; Mikovits et al., 2015)
are subject to a high degree of uncertainty due to the uncertainties of climate model outputs and
downscaling methods for rainfall. (Onof and Arnbjerg-Nielsen, 2009; Willems et al., 2012).
This problem of uncertainty is reduced for simulations of frequent events.
Within this broader context, this study focusses on assessment of overflows, a common event
of the sewer system that limits the uncertainty linked to extreme events. These were done
without any downscaling stage for the data coming from atmospheric models.
The study was conducted in Nantes (France) to evaluate the effects of various CC and urban
development scenarios on sewer network overflow, which can be frequent and contribute to
polluting the natural environment (Lau et al., 2002). Under certain conditions, the transfer flow
of the sewer system reaches a critical limit. When the wastewater level reaches the weir, it
overflows into the environment and contributes to the pollution of water resources (Figure 1).
When the water table is high in Nantes (in the winter), wastewater overflow can occur even
when its not raining or only raining slightly, because of the extraneous water that overloads the
network. This phenomenon of wastewater sewer network overload, especially in the winter or
during long or intense rain events, reduces the transport capacity of networks and increases the
frequency and volume of network overflow (Ashley et al., 2007). The resulting nonpoint source
pollution gradually degrades the environment and is a non-negligible factor in reducing city
resiliency.
Figure 1. Overflows mechanism.
The hydrological modelling of transfer flows and overflows of the sewer systems used to
conduct this research was developed in the paper Mahaut et al. (2011). This model calculates
daily transfer flow at the watershed outlet of the wastewater sewer system according to daily
rainfall and potential evapotranspiration, using this data to deduce daily overflow volumes. The

89
application of the model to both climate and urban development evolution patterns allows
assessing the impact of these scenarios on system overflows. The results of this assessment is
discussed in this paper.
2 CASE STUDY: NANTES, FRANCE
Nantes is the last city on the main river Loire, build at the confluence with the Erdre, a small
tributary of the Loire coming from the north (Fig. 2). This study analysed the behaviour of
overflows on a watershed which the outlet is on the border of the old city center (the black area,
Fig. 2). On this place, the main sewer collector has to cross the Erdre with a siphon system (the
star, Fig. 2) where serious overflows from the sewer network into this river are recorded.
Overflows happen during long or intense rainfalls, but also when its not raining, mainly in
winter. These overflows pollute this small harbour that is downstream from the siphon inside
the city centre.
Figure 2. Watershed of the case study in Nantes with the CSS area in grey and the SSS area in white.
The watershed is nearly 150 square km and has an average ratio of impervious surfaces
around 17%. The densely urbanized part close to the old centre is drained by a combined sewer
system (CSS) where rainwater (RW) and wastewater (WW) share the same pipe. The rest of the
urbanized part of this territory, the majority, is drained by a separated sewer system (SSS)
where there are two pipes: one for RW and another for WW.
3 METHODS
3.1 Simulation methodology
The model to simulate daily overflow is a random function of the daily transfer flow that is
calculated as the combination of three components: (1) the WW component, (2) the RW runoff
90

component and (3) the groundwater (GW) component. The latter is due to improper network
permeability, causing GW infiltration to the pipes, according to the GW level. The right part of
Figure 3 shows the case of a CSS with only one pipe for WW (in red) and RW (in blue). The
left part of Figure 3 shows the case of a SSS with two pipes. The pipe conducting WW of the
SSS (in red) joins the flow of the CSS but the other one conducting RW (in blue), flows directly
into the environment. So the RW runoff component flowing at the watersheds outlet is due to
the RW runoff coming from the area drained by the CSS.
Figure 3. Schema of a mixed combined and separated sewer system.
The WW component is estimated to at a constant value proportional to the demography. The

RW and GW components are calculated according to various parameters like rainfall,
evapotranspiration potential (ETP), impervious rate of each area and the average rate of GW
infiltration into the network. All these parameters could vary in the future following different
scenarios. The impervious ratios depend directly on the creation of runoff surfaces, like roads
and buildings. The GW infiltration coefficients are proportional to the density and porousness of
the pipes and depend directly on the extension of roads, networks and pipes.
The data collected daily over 6 years was used to calibrate the model. The validation
criterions calculated assess that the model has an excellent capacity to represent transfer flow
dynamics. Combining the CC, population growth and urban development scenarios, the
equations parameters evolve to simulate progression over the long term.
3.2 Climate change scenarios
Three CC data sets coming from Mto-France were used for the study. Scenarios B1 (very
optimistic), A1B (optimistic) and A2 (pessimistic) correspond to the definition of the IPCC in
2007. According to the climatic scenario for the 21st century in Nantes, the average annual
precipitation might decrease by 10 to 20% and that the average annual ETP might increase by
12 to 30%. In the future, on average, there might be less water volume in Nantes. This paper
presents only results with CC scenario A1B.
3.3 Population scenarios
The first scenario is the status quo scenario without any population growth nor urban
development. Combined with a CC scenario, this first scenario will assess the impact of CC
only. The scenarios 2 and 3 focus on a population growth without any urban development. The
second scenario supposes a high population growth with an increase of the population at the
current rate (1%) for the first half century and at the half rate for the second one. The third
scenario suggests a moderate population growth with half scenario 2s rates.

91
3.4 Urban development scenarios

The scenarios 4 to 7 deal with the evolution of urban development for a moderate population
growth. Scenario 4 supposes a traditional sprawl development with new constructions and roads
(and also the extension of the sewer system network). Scenario 5 proposes a sprawl
development twice as dense as the traditional one. Scenarios 6 and 7 introduce a densification of
the existing areas in the separated or combined sewer system respectively.
Figure 4 summarizes characteristics of scenarios 1 to 7.
Figure 4. Description of scenarios 1 to 7 combining demography, urban development and CC scenarios.

Overflows of the sewer network to the environment are assessed up to the end of the century for
the seven scenarios. Results are summarized in Figure 5 for the optimistic climate scenario
A1B.
4.1 Impact of climate change (scenario 1)
Only with CC, without any population or urban change, the overflows should decrease by half
for the next century. This is mainly due to the dropping of the GW saturation levels caused by
reduced annual rainfall volumes and higher evapotranspiration. The reduced value of the GW
and the RW components of the equation will have a direct impact on reducing overflows. This
explains also why overflows are more frequent in winter when the GW level is higher than in
summer.
92

4.2 Impact of the population evolution (scenarios 1, 2 and 3)

A high population growth might increase the overflows by 60% despite the reduction caused by
CC. The impact of current population growth is more prevailing than others parameters in this
study. A moderate population growth counteracts the effect of this CC scenario.
4.3 Impact of sprawling development type in suburbs (scenarios 4 and 5)
A traditional sprawl urban development has a worse impact on overflows than a dense sprawl
urban development: the more pipes you have, the greater the infiltration from the ground to the
pipes, the greater the overflows.
4.4 Impact of densification development in suburbs (scenarios 5 and 6)
On the contrary, an urban development which densifies the existing areas has a better impact
than a sprawl urban development because there are no extension of roads and pipes and no more
infiltration in the pipes.
4.5 Impact of the place of densification development (scenarios 6 and 7)
These two scenarios record very similar results. However, a densification scenario is more
favorable in a SSS area than in a CSS area because RW runoff in a SSS area is redirected to the
environment and should not affect the overflows, while the RW runoff produced in the CSS area
drains directly into the sewer system contributing to overflows.
Figure 5. Daily overflows (m3) for climate scenario A1B for the scenarios 1 to 7.
5 CONCLUSION
Contrary to the results of scientific literature which predicts an increase in overflow resulting
from CC (Krieger et al., 2013; Bendel et al., 2013; Nie et al., 2009), this study shows that, in the
case of Nantes, climate change will tend to reduce sewer overflows into the environment. The
climate change is less influential on overflows than some urban evolution: demography is by far
the most prevailing factor studied.

93
Without any change in habits or in technological devices, its better, from the hydrological
point of view and for a given demography: (1) to emphasize densification development than
sprawl development, (2) to emphasize densification development in separated sewer system area
than in a combined sewer system area and (3) to manage rainwater in CSS area with SUDS or
LID technologies (Mahaut and De Herde, 2010; Romne et al., 2014; Mahaut, 2015).
All alternative propositions to decrease the volume in the sewer network present a benefit to
decrease overflows. For example, avoiding rainwater in combined sewer system and reducing
wastewater per capita in sewer system. All these propositions participate in usual sustainable
water management. But this study has proposed a methodology to assess the relative importance
of each one and contribute as a decision tool for city planners.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank to the Rgion Pays de la Loire that has financed the research.
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95
Suburban development a search for public domains in Danish

suburban neighbourhoods
B. Melgaard & C. Bech-Danielsen
Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark
ABSTRACT: These years some of the post-war Danish suburbs are facing great challenges
social segregation, demographic changes and challenges in building technology. In particular,
segregation prevents social life from unfolding across social, economic and cultural borders.
Therefore, in this paper, potentials for bridge-building across the enclaves of the suburb are
looked for through a combined architectural-anthropological mapping of public spaces in a
specific suburb in Denmark, the analyses being carried out in the light of Hajer & Reijndorps
definition of public domains and the term exchange. The results so far show that suburban
spaces with a potential for creating bridge-building across the segregated enclaves do exist but
that, among other things, focus on spatial design is needed before actual public domains creating
the basis for exchange are achieved.
1 INTRODUCTION
During the latest decades major Danish cities and suburbs have become still more segregated,
preventing social life to unfold across social, economic and cultural barriers. Wanting to join
with people like oneself is natural, but it is problematic when the residents do not meet across
those communities and when groups from the top and bottom of society keep to themselves
respectively. That adversely affects social cohesion, and it creates insecurity in the
neighbourhoods, thereby getting socially disproportioned (Bech-Danielsen et al. 2014). In the
suburbs this tendency is particularly evident, partly due to the functional separation into zones
and the pronounced divisions between the various types of housing areas, i.e. single-family
housing areas and social housing areas. Therefore, Danish architects and city planners want to
do away with the split-up city as life in the suburb is in danger of taking place in a parallel
society with people living side by side without interacting (Bech-Danielsen, 2013 a). In this
context the present paper is looking for potentials for bridge-building across the suburban
enclaves. It is carried out through a combined architectural-anthropological mapping of public
spaces in a specific Danish suburb.
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2 DANISH SUBURBS A STORY OF CREATING A DISTANCE

In a Danish context it is claimed that the realization of the suburbs started in 1853 when the
Danish Doctors Association erected a very fine quarter of townhouses in the fields outside the
Copenhagen ramparts. The idea then of building houses in the bare fields was to move the
residents at a distance from the city, out into fresh air and green surroundings. As it was,
Copenhagen was cursed with a serious cholera epidemic, in 1853 alone leading to the death of
5000 people (Ltzen, 1998).
The cities of that time were hopelessly unhygienic, and with the cholera epidemic it became
clear that life in the city was detrimental to the health (Zerlang, 2001). That led to a new view of
the city. Earlier the city was considered a secure place where the population pursued security
and protection against external dangers. Now, when it turned out that the danger of infection
was greatest within the city walls the picture changed radically1. Hope of recovery was
associated with the fresh air of the country outside the city, and the expansion of the city
periphery was started (ibid.).
The adjusted view of the city went hand in hand with an adjusted view of nature. In the
middle of the 19th century the poets and painters of the romanticism went out to the Danish
countryside for their motifs (Tress, 2002), and after their exhibitions of the qualities of the
country they were followed by the well-to-do families enjoying the joys of country life. Here
they worshipped the sun and life outdoors, and here, at a distance of the environmental
problems of the city, they were able to pursue the ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body.
The city was the dark dystopia, and in the following decades the suburbs with light, air and
landscape qualities were developed as the utopian contrast to the city (Bech-Danielsen, 2015).
The architects and planners of modernism were mainly responsible for that trend. They
focused on the horizon, not only space-wise but also time-wise. Space-wise by focusing on the
periphery of the city where new housing was to be developed in green areas with an open sky,
and time-wise by focusing on the future where a utopian dream of the good life was to unfold.
Figure 1. Le Corbusiers famous sketch illustrates that his eyes were fixed on the horizon both spacewise and time-wise. Space-wise his eyes were fixed on the periphery of the city where the good life was
to unfold, and time-wise his eyes were fixed on a future where the utopian dream was to be realized.
In the beginning the realization of the utopian ideas about the suburbs in the post-war era was
a success. A great part of the Danish population settled in the suburbs, and for the families
coming from the dark slum of one of the bridge quarters of the city it was felt as a fantastic

97
improvement and a social climb (Dragsbo, 2008). The standard of living was high, the interior
design modern, and daylight conditions were considerable better than in the slums in the city
from where many residents came. The good life was associated with the country-like suburbs
this was the dream while the city was a dystopia to be fled for those who could afford it.
At the same time moving out to the suburbs cleared the way for an extensive refurbishment in
the centers of the cities. The clearances caused the abolishment of 7,000-9,000 apartments
annually up through the 1970s (Lind and Mller, 1994, p. 212). Therefore, the need for more
building in the suburbs accelerated, and from that point of view the development of the suburbs
was essential for an improvement of the living conditions in mid-city. However, the utopian
dreams received serious blows. For instance, during the seventies a number of the new housing
estates in the suburbs ran into trouble. The problems were both economic and social, and at the
same time the post-modern criticism began to hit the buildings. Venturi changes Mies van der
Rohes well-known modernistic slogan less is more to less is a bore (Venturi, 1966), and
while the American criticism was largely aimed at the endless single-family housing areas
primarily the parallel rows of housing blocks were deemed boring and monotonous in the
Danish debate. And when, furthermore, the housing blocks suffered extensive damages of the
buildings in the beginning of the 1980s that was the last straw. Many resourceful residents
started to move out of these areas, leaving a concentration of residents on the lowest step in the
social hierarchy behind.
When, for various reasons, a high concentration of residents living on government subsidies
and with a non-Danish ethnic background emerged, the growing criticism of the style of
architecture of the housing blocks led to a new opinion of the buildings of the suburbs. From
being synonymous with the good everyday life the housing blocks of the suburbs became more
and more stigmatized. That was reflected when in 1982, among other things, a slum clearance
law was replaced by a law about redevelopment of the cities. Instead of clearing the quarters in
the historic city quarters they were to be developed in cooperation with the residents as the
blocks in the city were growingly considered of historical value to be preserved. So while the
buildings of the suburbs were stigmatized the view of the quarters of the city slowly changed for
the better. The housing blocks of the suburbs took over the role of dystopia, and the utopian
notions of life in the suburbs were given up.
2.1 Distance as a means
Looking back, what happened is that that the moving-out to the suburbs made it possible to
solve the problems in the inner city. As mentioned, firstly it facilitated the refurbishment of a
great number of poor dwellings by moving the residents out to the housing blocks in the suburb,
secondly the environmental and health-related problems of the industrialized cities were solved
by moving the city out to the suburb (Tietjen, 2010). The sources of pollution were moved out
to industrial zones at a distance of the city and at a distance of residential areas, and the overpopulated cities were thinned out by moving residents out to the suburbs at a distance of the
city.
Planners and architects way of overcoming the city related problems of industrialism
therefore correspond with the kind of effort characterizing the environmental work in the 20th
century. The German researcher of the environment, Ekhart Hahn, calls this kind of work for the
environment The Principle of the Long Chimney (Hahn, 1991), pointing out that we have
responded to the problems of the environment by putting them at a distance. Pollution was
exported to the surroundings: by way of renovation systems we have moved refuse out to
dumps, by way of sewers we have transported sewage out into the sea, and by way of tall
chimneys we have led smoke and particles away from the city areas. On city level this was
demonstrated physically in the suburbs and their division into zones. By way of the suburbs we
moved housing as well as businesses away from the city, and by way of the functional
separation of the suburbs we moved the polluted businesses away from the housing.
By creating a distance between the functions of the city we solved the environmental
problems of the cities, and by way of mass production of dwellings in the suburbs we solved
multiple housing and health related tasks2. Each place had its own purpose as was the idea of the
separation of the suburb into zones. But at the same time, behind our backs, a social division of
the suburbs emerged along with the functional and spatial division. Together with the problems
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emerging in a number of social housing areas the suburbs got more and more segregated. The
most resourceful residents chose to settle in single-family housing areas while those who were
unable to choose for themselves and could not afford to own a home were left behind in the
social housing schemes. The various socio-economic groups were divided they settled in
clearly defined areas spatially divided carrying various architectural imprints. People settled in
enclaves, and in the latest years the enclaves marked by social problems have been designated
ghettoes.
As mentioned earlier, in these years an intention of building bridges between these enclaves
is expressed among Danish architects and planners. Traditionally in those professional groups
we have a great knowledge of cities and urban life, for one thing because of the studies of urban
life of Jan Gehl, architect and researcher of urban spaces over a period of many years (Gehl &
Svarre, 2013; Gehl, J. & Gemze, L., 2001; Gehl 2010). However, the suburbs and life in the
suburban public spaces is a relatively unexplored field. Therefore, specific suburban spaces are
analyzed to create an insight into the interaction, the routes and routines of the residents. What
is everyday life like, and how is it formed by the physical settings?
The purpose of the empirical studies is to find out if the suburban public spaces create a
framework for meetings across the enclaves, also called exchange (Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001). It
is examined if these meetings or exchanges are building bridges between the suburban enclaves,
and how they take place what links together life in the suburb?
2.2 Urban life and landscape
As described above suburbs emerged as part of an escape from the city, and originally the
landscape was the basic quality of the suburbs. Therefore, it is interesting to note that in recent
years in the competitions concerning development of Danish suburbs3 intentions have been
expressed of developing the urban qualities in the suburbs. Thus, in several competition
programs the lack of urban qualities and the lack of urban life have been emphasized as a
problem, while the diversity and social life of the city is considered an ideal to be reflected in
the suburb. Several competition programs call for urban life, urban environment, urban
qualities and urban identity active urban life all day and all night year round should be
developed, and the landscape is described as increasing a feeling of insecurity in the suburb
whereas a more urban-like atmosphere is viewed as a means to increase a feeling of security.
At the same time attention is called to the fact that the development of the city begins to show
the reverse tendency. Thus, urban development in Copenhagen of the recent years has been
called the vertical suburb, referring to the fact that the qualities of the suburb are brought into
the housing blocks of the city centers. Roof gardens are laid out, barbecues are taking place on
the balconies, and along waterfronts open air swimming areas and other recreational facilities
pop up.
It is a paradox: While striving to urbanize the suburbs the urban planners are introducing the
qualities of the suburbs to the cities. And while correcting the formlessness of the periphery by
urbanizing it in their attempt to regenerate the city centers they have adopted the organizational
principles of the periphery: homogenization, privatization and division into thematic areas
(Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001, p. 24).
3 PUBLIC DOMAINS AS THE BRIDGE-BUILDER OF THE SUBURB?
In the attempt of the presented PhD project to expose the character of the public spaces and their
ability to create a frame for meeting across the suburban enclaves Hajer & Reijndorps
definition of public domains and the term exchange are used (Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001, p. 24).
These terms are introduced with relation to public suburban spaces and used in the analyses to
study if, and if so, how the public spaces create a frame for cultural exchange between the
residents of the different enclaves.
Hajer & Reijndorp makes it clear that the difference between public spaces and public
domains is crucial for their analytical point of view:

99
Public space is in essence a space that is freely accessible for everyone: public
is the opposite of private. That is not to say that every public space is a public
domain. Public domain entails additional requirements. We are interested in the
question of which spaces are positively valued as spaces of shared experience by
people from different backgrounds or with dissimilar interests (Hajer &
Reijndorp, 2001, p. 11).
So, according to Hajer & Reijndorp the definition of a public space is free access for all, it is
the opposite of private. They explain that a public domain entails additional requirements and
only by meeting those requirements a public space can develop into a public domain:
1. The space must have a positive place in the collective awareness, i.e. different groups
must have knowledge of what is mentioned in the above quotation.
2. At the same time it is important that a variety of different social groups are present
and that out of those there is a strong group with a special attachment to the place so
that the unwritten rules of the place get to be negotiated among those groups. It is a
question of getting to an agreement about subordinating to the unwritten rules or
challenging them without conflicts.
We can now say that what dissociates a public domain from a public space is the importance
of attachment to a strong group: Successful public domain requires a relatively strong group
without the position of that group leading to exclusion and repression (Hajer & Reijndorp,
2001, p. 89). And the reason that it is perceived as a public domain is exactly that you do not
yourself belong to the group that dominates the space (Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001, p. 116). But, as
mentioned, at the same time it is essential that different groups do feel attached to the place
giving way to a form of friction or quiet confrontation: Different groups become attached to a
particular place and somehow or other they must reach a compromise (Hajer & Reijndorp,
2001, p 41). So, at Hajer & Reijndorp we meet a requirement for diversity (the presence of
different social groups) and the attachment of a special group to the place for it to develop into a
public domain where exchange is possible and, in fact, also takes place (Hajer & Reijndorp,
2001, p. 11). The term exchange is very central for Hajer & Reijndorp, and we shall look further
into that below. We define public domains as those places where an exchange between
different social groups is possible and also actually occurs (Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001, p. 11).
Hajer & Reijndorp deliberately use the term exchange instead of meeting, as the term
meeting is vague (Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001, p. 12). They refer to the views of Immanuel Kant to
explain exchange, Kant writing: Making judgments is always based on an exchange with
others. It is in this confrontation with other opinions that we develop our own ideas (Hajer &
Reijndorp, 2001, p. 12). That leads us to the conclusion that the purpose of places for exchange
is the confrontation with others who are not like us, in order to eliminate the narrow-mindedness
of people and get an insight into the reality of other people:
The core of successful public spaces thus lies not so much in the shared use of
space with others, let alone in the meeting, but rather in the opportunities that
urban proximity offers for a shift of perspective: through the experience of
otherness ones own casual view of reality gets some competition from other views
and lifestyles (Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001, p. 89).
So, according to Hajer & Reijndorp, exchange requires that you expose yourself to the reality
of other people, other social groups than your own, people with other backgrounds or interests,
thereby gaining new experiences, acquiring a possibility of seeing new angles, developing
personal ideas and social intelligence; and, basically, exchange helps to counteract
stigmatization. And that is exactly where the term gets so be interesting with relation to bridgebuilding between the segregated suburban enclaves.
In a recent article Reijndorp discusses the public domain of the suburb (Reijndorp, 2015),
speaking about the different groups, social worlds and parochial spaces of the suburb, what we
call enclaves, and he state that: At the crossroads of these parochial domains, or where such
domains overlap, a public domain is created, a place of cultural exchange (Reijndorp, 2015, p.
149). According to Reijndorp public domains get the chance to emerge where different enclaves
meet at a crossroad or overlap each other, but later he also emphasizes that the siting of the
100

enclaves in the urban fabric is important. He stresses that the greatest potential for the public
domains to crop up is where the proximity of those enclaves is high, measured either by
distance or by time (Reijndorp, 2015, p. 149). This has been kept in mind when the suburban
spaces are observed in the mapping of the PhD-project, as it is particularly interesting in a
suburban context due to the divided physical structure. For instance main roads, big parking
lots, fences, noise preventing banks and belts of plantation are examples of barriers creating a
physical distance between the enclaves, all of them places with mainly one purpose or one
function.
A public domain is described as a space of cultural exchange4 and in relation to the
functional division of the suburb where the different enclaves may differ in content but isolated
from each other and inwards orientated (Sieverts, 2005), it is relevant to map out a series of
public suburban spaces to study if these promote cultural exchange between the enclaves.
Keeping the previously mentioned challenges around segregation in mind one of our theses is
that some (not all) of the public spaces of the suburb must promote cultural exchange and
bridge-building.
4 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK
The methodological apparatus applied in the PhD-project has an interdisciplinary architecturalanthropological approach. Its purpose is, firstly, to map out spaces and movements in a specific
suburb by way of architectural and urban life analyses, and, secondly, to study social relations
by way of anthropological fieldwork in order to gain a greater understanding of the spaces to be
mapped out and the people living in the suburb. This interplay between methods makes it
possible to examine the research question of the PhD-project: how do the public spaces
influence the social relations in the suburb, and the approach opens up a new way of discovering
unexplored potentials among the residents of the suburb and in the subject of the suburb.
4.1 Method
From the world of anthropology qualitative interviews, situational interviews and fieldwork of a
long period of time have been applied, including, among other things, participant observation,
informal interviews, and a diary method based on visual ethnographies. This was carried out by
the PhD-student who, for nine months together with her family, moved into an apartment in the
selected suburb, Sndermarken in Vejle. From here the family observed and took part in life as
it evolved in Sndermarken. The anthropologist places himself as one among the others in
the community to be studied. The anthropologist must enter the world to be studied, and it has
to be done by settling in it (Hastrup, 2003, p .10).
The participant observation of a long period was carried out by participating in activities in
the new community center of the area, broad meetings, local council work, and social
arrangements. Besides, the family did daily rounds in the suburb when the children were taken
to or picked up at the local day care center, when shopping, when it was time for playing in the
playground or a walk in nature, when bicycling to work in the city (4 kilometers from the area),
and other everyday activities in the public spaces. The participant observation was thereby given
a chance to register nuances of everyday life in the suburb at close quarters.

101
Figure 2. Situations from the everyday life in Sndermarken.
4.2 Preliminary findings

Often, among architects and planners, there is a critical approach to the suburb (Nielsen, 2013).
It is assumed that the suburbs are boring sleeping towns; lifeless places where nothing happens
and where there is no community feeling. (Dirckinck-Holmfeld et. al., 2013). The fieldwork in
Sndermarken clearly disproves this, as here we found a quiet, but alive and buzzing suburb.
Figure 3. The buzzing suburb; at a distance the suburb does not really express the buzzing life which is
uncovered through the fieldwork. The scale and the pace are too high.
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Figure 4. Zooming in at suburban public spaces; here a playground at the boundary of a single-family
housing area and the Hjen river valley. When the pace is slowing down, activity shows. Not many
people, but still, activity and meetings in public spaces.
Both qualitative and informal interviews as well as the participant observation confirm that
the residents of the suburbs do meet, that they are very active in their local area and that they do
make use of the public suburban spaces. The suburb is far from lifeless. The question, then, is if
the residents meet across the different housing enclaves and if an exchange is going on among
them.
Counts from the suburban spaces demonstrate that there is a quiet flow of people, and
observations from for instance joint dinners in the community center, midsummer festival,
soccer practice and other things tell that the residents are committed and take part in the various
types of activities. Likewise, repeatedly stories pop up from the qualitative interviews in which
the residents talk about the cohesion in their street, the community feeling in the immediate
neighbourhood, but typically from residents who have lived in the quarter for a long time. The
opposite takes place when a new resident is to find his fixed place: We have just moved to
Lget and still have no network here. I miss community with people my own age something to
meet over, where you can establish new relations Alex, 32. Here we see a demand for joint
interests within the same age group so what determines the desire is neither the geography nor
the address in a particular enclave, but that there is a will to meet with new people across,
provided you have something to meet over.
That indicates that the theoretical point of view from Hajer & Reijndorp is present in practice:
The desire for new experiences, for looking up other people and the need for meeting places
across the suburban enclaves, is what we find again out there.
One of the observations made during the fieldwork was that the residents were relatively
focused on the area around their home and their neighbourhood for instance the road in front
of their house, the house owners association, or the staircase in the housing blocks. Small close
communities, easy to grasp, were mentioned, and several families with children mentioned that
they were ready to use more local offers (e.g. activities in the community center of their area,

103
joint dinners, parties, etc.), time permitting: Children are a common interest here. We would
like to join the dinners in the community center, when the children get a little bit older. Our
spare time is limited our weekdays are chaotic Jan, 37. That indicates that more local options
would facilitate everyday life of the residents (here the target group was families with children),
so pressure could be eased, offering time for engaging in activities beyond their limited
everyday radius. This can be seen as an indication towards the importance of the local aspect
where distance and time counts heavily with regard to participation in the community. The
residents used the word community when talking about meeting and interacting, and we, as
researchers, inspired by Hajer & Reijndorp employ terms like friction, confrontation and
exchange (Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001, p. 89).
Figure 5. Expansion of the closed social worlds towards new communities and possible public domains.
In the above diagram a draw from the qualitative interviews is visualized in which many
families indicate that they have a local radar (1) in the sense that you have a radius from
your home in which you move every day. There is a limit to the distance you want to walk to
playgrounds, sports, shopping etc. and that very radius means that that you do not meet many
other people in your neighbourhood than those you already know or have seen before. But how
are you motivated to get on out in the next radius? How do we extend our radar (2) so you meet
more different people with other life stories and cultural backgrounds as demanded by Hajer &
Reijndorp in their quest for public domains, and referred to, among other things, in a recent
Danish report from Changing communities, The think tank The City 2025 as one of the most
important challenges for the community in the future?
In the qualitative interviews the residents stress that if the network of footpaths is upgraded and
becomes more connected and knowledge of the other jewels in the area is increased they
would like to act in a greater radius.
But if you want people to do that in their everyday life you have to create occasions for that
in the shape of everyday activities that you would have to carry out anyway, e.g. shopping,
picking up children in an institution or at school and so on or through common interests like
nature, sports, music, food, leisure activities and so forth. Last, but not least, extra special
occasions would also be able to motivate people to act in a greater radius, e.g. concerts,
exhibitions, events, sports games, voluntary work etc. (3). Exhibiting a Formula 1 racing car,
a dead whale or throwing in a concert in the local centre area; that will attract people and get
them out of their houses Poul, 66. Thereby the studies indicate that a public domain in the
suburb must involve both an attraction you want to move to experience and everyday chores
you have to overcome anyway, in this way creating a realistic local offer and thereby a critical
mass or a variety of social groups as demanded by, among others, Hajer & Reijndorp.
Besides the close local communities the public spaces, where you have a particular errand to
make, were mentioned in the qualitative interviews as places where people would meet across,
e.g the supermarket, the local center area, the community center and at the sports facilities:
104

Many residents attends activities like Lget by day in the community center and the
Halloween party when we take a walk the area with torches Saleh, 17.
In addition to that particularly popular places in nature were mentioned: in this case the
beautiful river valleys enclosing the suburb on two sides. These statements came from both
residents of the different enclaves of single-family housing areas and from the residents in the
social housing area.
Hereby the fieldwork clearly indicates that the residents of the suburb want to meet across the
enclaves and that, to a certain extent, they do so. The fieldwork has provided a deep insight into
the area and a personal knowledge of many residents in the whole suburb. That has permitted a
chance to observe if the residents did meet across the different enclaves, but there is a need for
supporting that observation further with regard to method. Therefore, (in the fall of 2016) this is
explored through a series of situational interviews in the selected public spaces in the suburb.
The situational interviews are meant to explore the exchange deeper where do the residents
who meet in the public spaces live (which social groups do they belong to), is a variety of
groups present and do they have an attachment to the spaces in question?
In the beginning of section 2 we discussed the difference between city and suburb, and
precisely by the abovementioned observations we clearly experience a difference between city
and suburb. In the city we already have a density and a variety of people, and, therefore, the
public spaces have a chance of developing into public domains far more than in the suburb. And
as we shall see in the architectural analyses in the next section the placing and the design of the
public spaces means more to exchange in the suburb than in the city exactly because of the
structural challenges of the suburb and the fact that it is rather difficult to attract money for the
development of the public spaces in the suburb5.
We shall take a closer look at the use and the physical character of the public spaces in
Sndermarken in a series of architectural and urban life analyses below.
5 ANALYSES OF THE SUBURBAN PUBLIC SPACES
The suburban spaces of the project have been mapped out through architectural analyses and
registrations of urban life for the purpose of exploring the design (the planned suburb) and
everyday life (the lived life of the suburb).
The collected data present a picture of how the suburban spaces function, how the actual
patterns of use are and, not the least, an indication of the difference between suburb and city.
5.1 Method
Firstly, by way of architectural analyses a description is made of the different types of suburban
spaces that make up the physical frames and conditions of the space by way of registrations,
photos and diagrams, plans and sections as well as the main characteristics. Then urban life is
explored applying the tools for registrations of urban life devised by architect and researcher Jan
Gehl (Gehl & Svarre, 2013). Registrations of urban life are systematic registrations of human
activities in public spaces. Jan Gehl has carried out, developed and written about studies of
urban life since 1969, and in this particular study 3 of his well-known methods are applied.
Counts of pedestrians are made, mapping of stays, and patterns of movements are mapped out.
7 cases have been selected in the light of the fieldwork carried out in Sndermarken in 2015
and from qualitative interviews with 31 residents in the various housing areas in
Sndermarken6. In the interviews the suburban spaces below were mentioned as important
meeting places in the suburb, and what they have all in common is that they are described as
places in Sndermarken where the residents actually meet across the enclaves: Public spaces
where the residents are crossing borders and meet across the single-family housing areas and the
social housing area. They are places where the different worlds of the residents meet, and spaces
with positive public awareness whether they are used or not. For instance the beautiful river
valleys are mentioned as important public spaces, while the mapping shows that these spaces
are not used nearly as often as for instance the area around the supermarket (which certainly
contains a very specific everyday activity, namely shopping).
The seven selected typologies of suburban spaces are the following:

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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The center area; Lget Center.

The community house in the social housing association AAB; Kvartershuset.
The supermarket of the quarter; Rema 1000.
The sports ground; Sndre Stadion.
Section of the river valley with dense woods and banks; the Hjen River Valley.
Section of the river valley with the wide-open sceneries and a network of footpaths;
The Mlholm River Valley.
7. Section of the main road; Grnlandsvej
Figure 6. Selected suburban public spaces in Sndermarken, Vejle.
5.2 Preliminary findings from registrations of urban life

As mentioned counts of pedestrians, mapping of stays and mapping out of patterns of
movements have been made in 7 cases. In general the pedestrian counts show that where the
suburban spaces contain a specific function we meet the most people at the same time. As an
example the supermarket Rema 1000 has an average of 289 visitors per hour, the community
house, Kvartershuset, has 136, and the Lget Center has 129 whereas we encounter the least
density in the spaces in nature: the Mlholm river valley with an average of 37 people and the
Hjen river valley where 5 people are passing through. Compared with the counts from the

106
center of Vejle7 where a study of urban spaces and urban life was carried out in 2002 we find
that that in the most crowded street (Nrregade, part of the pedestrian street in the city center)
an average of 1665 people per hour have been counted. If we compare the city center with the
suburb Sndermarken numbers a considerate but not surprising difference in the pedestrian
traffic shows up. Sndermarken has about 3350 inhabitants whereas 55.000 people live in the
city of Vejle in 2016 (Statistics Denmark). That indicates that the suburban public spaces with
one or more specific functions have a quiet but fairly constant flow of people compared with the
surrounding area.
By the mapping of stays a picture is drawn showing that very few people spend time in the
studied suburban public spaces. Maybe the reason is that there is no framework for that. The
design of the spaces does not invite to a classical stay like in the squares and market places in
the city center. In the suburban public spaces this was probably never an objective in itself, but
it opens up a discussion about what the suburban public spaces should contain.
The mapping out of patterns of movements in the selected suburban spaces add to this
observation by data showing that the spaces are mainly used as transit spaces and that the
placing of the spaces in the fabric of the suburb is of great importance to the use of it. Together
the patterns of movements and the pedestrian counts show that the placing of the suburban
spaces is central to the users. The two spaces with the highest number of visitors are the
supermarket and the community house, both, actually, visible, central and accessible in the
fabric of the suburb.
5.3 Preliminary findings from architectural analyses
The architectural analyses are based on the questions of Hajer & Reijndorp rhetorically asked of
themselves in their discussion about what defines a public domain (Hajer & Reijndorp, 2001, p.
11). A duality is to be detected in Hajer & Reijndorps definition: it deals with both the physical
place and the social parameters. Therefore, in accordance with the architectural-anthropological
approach the analysis are divided into:
Table 1. Physical and social parameters.
Physical parameters:
x Where is the public space placed in the fabric of
the suburb?
x Which activities/functions belong to the space?
x What role does the spatial design play?
Social parameters:
x Does the space have a place in the public
awareness; do the residents feel attached to it?
x Are a variety of different social groups present?
x Does one particular group feel ownership of the
place so that negotiations about the unwritten
rules arise?
These questions are used to study the ability of the suburban spaces for bridge-building and
thereby the framework for exchange, and it appears that there is a great difference between the
character and the use of the public spaces.
The architectural analyses generally show that the visibility of the public spaces and their
placing in the fabric of the suburb are important to their possible development into public
domains. This is particularly evident when the registrations of urban life are seen together with
the architectural analyses, and where the community house and the supermarket actually fulfill
all the parameters apart from focus on the spatial design, the spatial design consequently playing
a decisive role. Anyway, as mentioned, the results are preliminary as we still lack the situational
interviews for the confirmation of the attachment of special groups to the spaces.
Through the architectural analyses and the analyses of urban life we also found that the
suburban spaces have another scale, another and less critical mass of users, another pace, and,
not the least, another flow of people than in the classical urban spaces as we know them from
the city centers.

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6 CONCLUSIONS
The purpose of this paper has been to study the framework for exchange in the suburb, and in
the light of the subsequent mapping we have discussed which ones of the public spaces have
potentials as public domains and which ones may have the precise opposite potentials: the open
landscape making the suburb and not a city and contain the original suburban qualities: light,
air and landscape that are still attractive and cherished values.
By way of Hajer & Reijndorp we have described the difference between a public space and a
public domain: A public space is freely accessible for all, public is the opposite of private. But a
public domain demands more than free access it is a place where cultural exchange is possible
and, in fact, also takes place. It demands a strong attachment of a group, exchange between
different social groups, and a positive appreciation of it as a place of common experience by
people from different social groups. And, not the least, that you have an experience of otherness
enabling your own view of reality to be challenged by the views and lifestyles of other people.
In the study of seven selected public areas in a typical Danish suburb we have found mostly
public spaces, but also two public places that by a few interventions may develop into public
domains. The two suburban spaces are the areas around the community house and the
supermarket. These are characterized by fulfilling most of Hajer & Reijndorps parameters: a
visible, accessible and central placing in the suburban fabric as well as a distinctive function
combined with the social parameters; attachment and diversity. What we have found as still
missing is a focus on the spatial design.
In the introduction it is argued that exchange is particularly central in relation to bridgebuilding between the suburban enclaves, but at the same time the field work gives an insight
into which of the original qualities of the suburb are important for everyday life in a suburb of
today. Both in the single-family housing areas and in the social housing areas several informants
explain that closeness to the beautiful nature is one of their most important reasons for settling
in this suburb.
The collected mapping lends to recommending a subtle balance between condensation of the
prioritized public domains and spaces for air, light and landscape qualities, so that urban
qualities do not overrule the basic values when suburban spaces are to be developed and
transformed.
The development of the suburbs must take place as a concentration of spots where public
domains can emerge so we can reduce the distance between the suburban enclaves. But the
development must not take place on the terms of the city. It has to be based on the premises of
the suburb, where, to a large extent, function, placing, and design must be taken into
consideration when the suburban public domains are to be developed.
ENDNOTES
1
Also the city wall no longer offered protection against military attacks as the improvement of weaons
had reduced importance of the walls and ramparts.
However, during the 20thcentury evidently the environmental problems were not solved by building
chimneys however tall nor by moving production further out into the periphery. Even the remotest rain
forest, the deepest sea and the most far away atmosphere was influenced. Pollution was not to be
stowed away any longer; it was all inclusive, forcing us to relate to it in different ways. That was
expressed in 1984 when the Brundtland Commission was appointed, and it was realized that the
environmental problems had changed. Action had to be taken internationally as the environmental
problems had reached international level. Likewise it was evident that we cannot solve the problems of
the cities any longer by moving its functions further out in the periphery.
3
www.forstaden.dk.
4
Notes from Arnold Reijndorps keynote on the Housing and Welfare Conference in Copenhagen
7.5.2015.
5
In the wake of the architect competition The Suburb of the Future The city of Vejle applied for a grant
for an upgrading and rethinking of the center area of Sndermarken through a national Kickstart
project, which was denied, unfortunately.
6
A summary of qualitative interviews in Lget and the Residential areas in Sndermarken 2.04.14.
2
108

Urban Space & Urban Life, Vejle 2002 Report by GEHL Architects prepared for the Municipality of
Vejle.
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Bogvrket.
Bech-Danielsen, C. 2013 b. Bredygtige bosteder. Om forstadens identitet og kulturarv og om spor
efter liv. In K. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, S. E. Ronaldsen & A. B. Thomsen (red.), Fremtidens Forstder.
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Bech-Danielsen, C. 2015. The Secret Suburb: Second Lives in Second Homes. In H. Steiner & K. Veel
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Big urban crunch, rethinking Neza

G. Multari, V. DAmbrosio & C. di Bernardo
University Federico II, Architecture Department, Naples, Italy
ABSTRACT: Nezahualcyotl is one of municipalities of the Mexico State and it has been
studied in or-der to participate to the international competition called Big urban crunch. The
second biggest city in the world, with an area of about 64 square kilometres with 17500
inhabitants to the sq. km. The proposal wants to start a process in order to obtain a more
sustainable and green urbanization. Therefore, it creates the conditions for a better life in a
dense city. Neza is a city with a rigid urban grid where buildings are organized in a massive,
serial, uncontrolled way. Buildings are considered pieces of a puzzle that needs to be recreated.
We want to break the rules of the city and follow them at the same time: we keep them thanks to
a modular grid all over the square; we break them exploding buildings and concentrating their
pieces in two high towers. Towers contain commercial, public and residential spaces mixed
together, generating a system where public and private activities are merged and shared. Pieces
are put back together shaping high buildings in order to get urban spaces at the ground level.
Private spaces are designed according to the themes of flexibility and customization. All around,
spaces for social activities: paths, green areas and bike parks. We want people walking, playing,
reading, sitting, sharing values in a buzzy atmosphere and we gave them spaces to do that. In an
immense residential town like Neza green and social spaces are limited to private gar-den or
streets. So the aim is saving the ground, designing according to the uses and values of the
traditional architecture. They have been interpreted in a new way in order to give to the city new
spaces with high social and environmental qualities. Development is recycling and evolution is
genetic.
1 INTRODUCTION
One aspect that European cities contrasts with the city centre and South America is the idea that
everything is to be completed. This tension towards a final solution often contrast the
complementarity between the various scales, between the urban fabric and the singularities,
including open space and built, among different knowledge and parts of society that show the
conflict and build the differences. Any work however small and fragmented, attempting to
define a final image. In Neza, Mexico, the time understanding and study, prolonged and endless
favours a project that exceeds the application of a single principle previously established, makes
the project shared, make the project for social housing a common asset which opens
perspectives for a whole community that will continue over time. An option that, based on a
social sustainability and inclusive of Housing, working on the scale of the whole city, measures
and redefines the intermeasures relations. All above can be achieved Through various actions
finalized to create great public spaces around which the city continues to build and satisfy its
own needs. The research project of Neza, articulated on the comparison and collaboration
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between specific disciplinary action, reflects on the theme of the city that has the need to put at
the centre of its actions the man with his needs, the needs for the care of a common good so
important and strategic for entire community. These actions introduce the theme of the
transformation asking the fundamental question that It is not to do the only important thing but
also the way. Today Sustainable building is not only a necessary response and in many
countries now disciplined, but it is also the most ancient and wise position to build the house. A
tradition found, often bringing of significant local cultures, from which we can learn the
techniques of building which today improve own performances thanks to current technologies.
The case study Neza puts in place a system which, through a sophisticated interconnection,
experiences sustainability as general and specific process, building new urban layer for the
Mexican city, densely built, and at the same time a housing defined by a system that puts at the
centre the lives of families and the community that is built as an open model, flexible and
inclusive.
2 CITY ON HUMAN SCALE
The question of a most appropriate use of the material and cultural resources is central in the
design research of Neza, where, around the man, it is proposed a "circular" vision of the
strategic process for a viable and sustainable city.
Nezahualcyotl is one of 125 municipalities of the State of Mexico. It lies east of Distracted
Federal and State of Mexico. It has an area of 63.4 square kilometres and a population of
1,109,363 inhabitants. Federal and State of Mexico.
Figure 1. Geographic location of Nezahualcyotl.
It is a fairly young city that has grown exponentially in every way, both in infrastructure and
in services. There are many schools, universities and spaces for entertainment like auditoriums,
parks, stadiums. On 23 April 1963 it became a municipality and its urban structure was
extended indefinitely, especially in residential areas. The theme is to remedy the vulnerability of

111
the contemporary city trying to assimilate changes, different contributions, a space for each
family and for the whole community, a support to urban life that goes beyond the vision of its
reality and try to re- imagine its own layer taking care of his memory. You must imagine a
process that is opposed to the linearity of the thought that uses and consumes to adopt a process
that uses, consumes and reuses, aware of the value of that complex of actions, involving in the
future of the town: houses, buildings, models consumption and use of resources, the city
landscape.
The city, in this sense, aware that the main resource is the man who lives there, the man who
runs through it, the man who lives it, must adopt an urban planning method completely free of
restrictions that aims to create a network of relations among the inhabitants. The large green
areas withdrawn from the population density, which reunites in punctual systems, represent an
open model, surprising and far removed from the harsh rules of the traditional city, putting an
idea of the city that knows how to encourage the development and cultivation of a true identity.
Working with elements that produce a certain degree of freedom implies a strong potential in
terms of "urban growth", based on the opportunities that the city offers to its inhabitants,
reinforced by the quality of the contacts that the city knows how to create, made by the
invention of new way to use that the city encourages. Only in this way the city feeds the human
desire to live, to work, to exchange and develop freely, also through the implementation of basis
for an own use of an urban reality. A city is able to renew itself, to evolve, when indicates a
strategy that is able to implement programs introduced at different times and in time, in nondesignated areas in an absolute sense, with an ability to interpret the great possibilities of
change. It is the theme of the porous city that creates an open relationship between the
inhabitants, will enable them to exploit the opportunities produced by dashed boundaries rather
than a rigid plan leading to less flexibility, to a sense of constriction.
Figure 2. City of Nezahualcyotl.
Walter Benjamin describing the city of Naples wrote: "Porous as this stone is the architecture.
Structure and life interfere constantly in courtyards, arches and stairs. Everywhere it is
preserved the living space able to accommodate new, unexpected constellations. The final, the
characterized are rejected". From these considerations, Neza is imagined as a city in which the
strategic planning process generates a system of actions negotiated in the time, by proposing
new residential facilities: imagine them as poly-centric and distributed according to a grid that
overwrites the Spanish minute grid, and how they will create a new way of living inside the
traditional city, habitable volumes against residential areas, places that can be used and no
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spaces to be filled, an 'elsewhere' to the concept of accommodation that extends its limits in
large spaces and generous with a modular and multi-purpose nature capable of covering a wide
range of daily needs, working on the flexibility of the floors and buildings increasing the ability
to respond to unforeseen needs.
An architecture capable, and therefore sustainable, of alterations and transformations,
contrary to limited an immediate readings of the city that cannot read between things, which
instead face the economic and social reasons of a reality like that of Neza, a densely populated
environment and continually modified following the traces of a big grid that took land from the
existing lake. The sunrise, the traffic, the birds, the storms, the people who walk in the Neza
density, a young city where people still play in the street, where all the children know each other
and meet in the communal areas, in lobbies including housing, an invitation to the sociality
promoting relationships that often end up in great friendships which continue even if you
change living zone.
A network of relationships at the base of the processes of socialization understood as
neighbourly relations and as a chance of meetings between permanent inhabitants, passers-by,
occasional visitors, generating an urban dimension very special and hardly comparable to our
European cities. A place full of morals, of jobs, of an everyday life that flows slow representing
the context of a multitude of people who dont aspire to change their lives but are taking more
and more awareness about the need for a measured change that gives new opportunities, new
possibilities of relationships. A sustainable city, inclusive, continuously connected for
retrospective and self-regulated actions. A city that knows its limited resources and operates
accordingly. A city where there is no distinction between the micro and the macro, between
material and immaterial, in which the plan is no longer needed, recognizable actions and
services are needed.
At these latitudes, it is not important to administer what exists but to have the governance of
what will be. In this way the city network takes a competitive value, collaborative and
innovative, producing processes of development in social dynamics, metabolizing collective
knowledge and creativity. It is a city of regeneration and redevelopment through cultural
promotion and active participation, networks building and territorial partnerships, the launch of
social enterprises for innovation and the promotion of fundraising finalized to the city
afterthought. A learning laboratory that not only, as in this offers actions on the existing, but
promotes innovative solutions for managing processes, a real paradigm shift. A strategic city
launched towards a circular economy that does not try to do but decides whether to do or not do,
which no longer uses the categories of urban sprawl and planning, it is a city that manages,
recognizing that what we design. It is the place of sharing.
3 SUSTAINABLE HOUSING
Like all the sector areas in which you use materials and energy resources, the architecture is
given of responsibility for the fact that it operates on the modification of the environment.
Pollution and degradation, resource depletion, threats to the health, social disintegration, are just
some of the tangible threats that lead to review the role played by the architecture for
transformations compatible with the needs of individuals and the protection of the environment
through its appropriate transformations. The matter of the relationship between use of resources
and direct and induced effects on the environment have entered a phase of greater awareness
and dissemination among professionals and in the most sensitive layers of society. The state of
health of the ecosystem in which we live is beginning to show warning alarm: progressive
depletion of some resources, greenhouse, high levels of pollution, high production of waste and
waste with more intense impacts in urbanized environments, which have developed without
proper planning, in a fast way.
The socio-economic difficulties and environmental critical issue acquire specific connotations
when considering the context of the countries where numerous and glaring contradictions, as
those in the south east of the world and the nations of Central America, coexist. Social
differences and housing needs, now extended to significant bands of a constantly growing
population, require, as noted by Yona Friedman in his famous "The survival architecture", to
rediscover the natural values and compatible technical with a way of life soberer. Friedman

113
reminds us that in contexts "developing" It is needed necessary transformations aimed to

improve and make habitable existing ecosystems, by implementing changes in the way in which
people make use of things.
In the case of Neza It is found numerous elements that recall common problems and the
actions needed to return a liveability that coincide with sustainable development and social
cohesion.
The urban poor conditions alongside difficult quality of life conditions is an expression of a
symptom of the absence of a balanced relationship between the building and living. If the living
is in fact a purpose - according to Heidegger, the way people live - the building is the artificial
act by which they operate within the natural environment, transforming it in relation to the
needs of life. In contexts such as that of Neza more and more there is a technological dimension
that requires to be managed for the compatible of the urban environment.
The building requires a technical system acts taking coherence and adapt to the environment
only if there is a real capacity to live, that is to bind to a place and to a community, expressing a
sense of care and in this way rising from no roots to be rooted in a place, conscious and aware
of living there.
In a sustainable way, the realization of the interventions on the built environment should be
seen as a social responsibility phenomenon since it must provide real answers to finding
satisficing conditions of comfort and health, identity between people and the places where they
live, as well as savings and resource efficiency. These requirements are actually the kind that
denote the demand for sustainability of architectural choices. If empowered, any architecture
should thus be intrinsically sustainable in relation to its context: that is, should make their own,
consciously, the requirements linked to lower consumption and more attention to environmental
impacts and the needs of individuals. In the proposed project for Neza to re- qualify it in
sustainable terms, residential buildings have been designed in an advanced concept in order to
achieve a positive ecological balance.
The sustainability of technologies requires a complex management, as well as the
clarification of architectural solutions suitable for a balanced innovation through research of
compatibility, size of operations, choice and development of solutions that will allow the
reduction of waste, the protection and recovery of the natural and man-made environment. The
project for Neza proposes an ecologically sustainable model, and at the same time
technologically advanced, able to reconcile an efficient use of resources without adding the
weight of production and not compatible consumption, own of mass production techniques and
hardly absorbable from the environment.
The project is characterized not only as an act of predetermination of the form or of the
exaltation of the technique, which in turn is not a neutral instrument but reveals progressively
and translates in tangible terms what is contained in the idea of design. In the face of the current
problems of impoverishment of communities and resource depletion, the project for Neza
involved the selection of technical solutions that are compatible with the local context and able
to meet the requirements of flexibility, maintainability and adaptability, favouring functional
additions in the elements building.
In the design concept they methodologies and tools for assessing the degree of sustainability
of interventions (certification protocol US Green Building Council LEED Certification) have
finally assumed a prominent role, allowing not only to design the individual building elements,
but to calibrate the integration with the various parts of the building and the urban context.
4 RETHINKING NEZA
Like most of the South American urban reality, Neza is developed along a tissue apparently
regular hosting the portion closer to the edge society which, due to lack of resources, settles
spontaneously defining one of those we now call "informal city" .The definition "apparently
regular" is used deliberately because associated with urban planning which is based on a rigid
urban scale grid within which, however, quickly, self-building defines the existing urban layer
in which the buildings are organized in a massive logic, serial and uncontrolled. Self-building
means diversity in built form that reflects the multiple needs of the inhabitants and their ability
to model buildings to meet those needs.
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Figure 3. Urban scale grid.
"Rethinking Neza" is the ambitious proposal of a process of rehabilitation against the sprawl
phenomenon of the years '60, the city spread phenomenon characterized by low population
density, excessive consumption of soil and uncontrolled expansion that saturates the urban
context. It is proposed a set of transformations that allow the people of different social class and
ethnicity, during the time, to live in a more sustainable and green urban environment.
Random residential construction creates immense city without identity and serial logic and
massive of buildings makes the spaces suburban monotonous, lifeless or sociability.
This is what happened in the city of Neza in which the horizon is almost never seen because
densely built and green spaces are limited to roads and private gardens and, in the absence of
space for socializing, the city becomes a set of elements connection where people run, walk and
do not stop and what matters are only the beginning and the end and not the path.
The proposal is, therefore, moved from reflection on the need for a new city, more liveable
and dense, which lays its foundation on conscious soil using, on urban sustainability and variety
of uses.
It is a method of progressive organization during the time which guarantees to have the
appropriate open spaces to socialize and live, parks, connections, squares, trade obtained by
means of subtraction operations rather than addition, of improvement of the comfort conditions
and roominess so far valid, without, however, upsetting the morals and habits of people who
live these places daily.
The dense grid of Neza urban layer gives rise to a series of islets of the size of 35 x 210m, 50
lots for each of them, in which there are single-floor buildings, or at least more than 2 levels
(excluding the ground level), each of which compositionally in its own right and in its original
way.
The overall image is that of a heterogeneous city, coloured and unique
Rethinking the project Neza refers to more the islets distributed around the city so that It does
not remain a single episode, but in several places recognizable.
The objective is to obtain a perfect square we will see repeated randomly within the grid and,
therefore, a network of connections clearly identifiable thanks to some recognition elements.

115
The grid is preserved as a sign, memory and history of the city but the massive organization
and serial of some buildings in it contained is turned upside down to give rise to "urban empty
space not-empty spaces" or areas of conviviality and socialization; the buildings are considered
as many pieces of a big puzzle needing to be re-routed and re-organized (EXPLOSION).
The pieces of the puzzle, once exploded, back together finding a new location, they are
arranged in tall buildings (relative to the context), in order to redeem urban spaces on the
ground level returning them to the citizens as green spaces, spaces of collective interest and,
therefore, sociability (CONCENTRATION).
Tall buildings obtained from the vertical juxtaposition of individual homes pass from 2/3
floors above ground to 6/8/10/12 floors and they contain not only residential areas but,
according to the logic of the MIXED USE, they see the co-existence of commercial space,
public and collective interest creating a system where public and private are combined and joint.
New observation points, placed at greater heights from 19 to 37 meters allow, therefore, to
have different views of the new green public areas and, in general, the entire city (VIEWS).
Green spaces are obtained, moreover, not only on ground level but, given the diversity of the
roofs level of the new buildings, even above them. Garden roofs from which you can admire the
portion of the city to the surrounding air (GREEN SPACES).
"Releasing parts of the city" means return to large city spaces to be shared in which to spend
their free time, walk around and find each other. A sustainable city in which not necessarily
need to travel by car but also on foot or by bicycle and in which the high building density allows
for a large urban lung.
The city was built entirely on the basis of a rigid urban grid. The main roads and those of
lesser importance, perpendicular to each other, delimit the densely built-up areas. An entire city
that follows rigid geometric patterns. The same patterns were re-interpreted here and used to
redesign a space that is any more densely built but "emptied" in intersection points of this grid
functions of public interest and attractions are placed.
Figure 4. Neza, process of rehabilitation.
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Figure 5. New density model for Neza.
The same grid is used for the placement and sizing of the housing units.
As regards the latter, even in this case, the objective is to provide a flexible house that allows
families residents of being able to modify and customize them according to their needs and
according to the local tradition.
In order to achieve this target a guide is the approach "Elemental" that achieves, with high
quality standards, the essential home: the supporting structure, the housing, the coverage and
plants, leaving a vacuum of a non-built space likely to be "filled" then according to the
possibilities and the desire of everybody. the flexibility of the housing structure and its
reversibility are the keys to ensure sustainability, but also to oppose the gentrification
phenomenon, the new soil consumption and the phenomenon of 'social exclusion.
Figure 6. Elemental approach.
There are 4 types of housing that can be summarized in

Type A: 50 sqm of living space (1 bedroom) and 25 square meters of "surface
potential expansion";
Type B: 62.5 sqm of living area (2 bedrooms) and 12.5 square meters of "possible
extension";
Type C duplex Type: 50 square meters of living space and 25 square meters of
"possible extension";
Type D duplex type: 62.5 square meters of living area and 12.5 square meters of
"possible extension".
The project does not make finger point or interfere with the circulation and the current
mobility but integrates it offering citizens, as well as ample meeting spaces in which to spend
leisure time, also new pedestrian routes that allow to nicely walk in the city. In addition, they
are integrated in a forecast of more sustainable cities, cycling routes as an alternative to those
driveways, together with integration of the bike-sharing services to offer everyone this privilege
(Fig. 7).
Rethinking Neza wants to be project for the Mexican city that does not interfere with the
culture, traditions and local building traditions; but It wants to offer to this young city a new
proposal and more sustainable city model, localized in certain selected portions of territory, in
which the interconnections and social relations, the benefits of a "green city" are fundamental
characteristics of living of everyone, against gentrification.

117
Figure 7. Project for Neza.
Figure 8. Architecture plants.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The city of Neza is similar to many other Mexican and Latin American cities in general,
gigantic peripheries of the world, where, however, "the world does not end, but rather begins to
118

unwind", as Joseph Brodsky wrote. The soul of the project for Neza, lies precisely in these
meanings, a space which expands up to represent and contain the passage of a lifetime, an area
whose narrative power architecture assigns a meaning and a resistance action. Concepts and
reasoning that led to a process that is opposed to the linearity of the thought that uses and
consumes, to adopt a process that uses, re-uses and consumes, which involves in the future of
the town houses, buildings, consumption patterns and the resources spending, the city
landscape.
Building this process requires a technical system acts taking coherence and adapt themselves
to the environment only if there is a real capacity to live, that is to bind to a place and to a
community, expressing a sense of care and in this way passing from no rooting to being rooted
in a place, conscious and aware of living in it. the realization actions on the built environment
should be seen as a social responsibility phenomenon since it must provide real answers to
finding satisfactory conditions of comfort and health, identity between individuals and the
places where they live, as well as savings and resource efficiency.
"Rethinking Neza" is the ambitious proposal to present, through the re-design of one of the
lots constituting the dense grid of urban layer, a possible "model" for the regeneration of the city
and living.
REFERENCES
Aravena, A. 2005. Alejandro Aravena. Pamplona: T6 Ediciones.
Aravena, A. 2007. Alejandro Aravena: progettare e costruire. Milano: Electa.
Benjamin, W. & Lacis A. 1925. Neapel. Frankfurter Zeitung.
Curtis, W. J. R. 1994. A conversation with lvaro Siza Veira. El Croquis, n. 68-69.
Friedman, Y. 2009. Larchitettura di sopravvivenza. Una filosofia della povert. Torino: Bollati
Boringhieri.
Heidegger, M. 1991. Saggi e discorsi. Milano: Mursia.
Ward, P. M. 1990. Mexico City: the production and reproduction of an urban environment. London:
Belhaven Press.

119
Indias Smart Cities can only work against its true aspirations
K. Sha
Faculty of Architecture & Built Environment, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT: India has recently embarked on an ambitious scheme of developing 100 smart
cities, aiming to support its ever growing urbanisation. These cities are to become the image of
development, which the government wants to present to the world. Although, the intent behind
the need for such an ambitious project is justified, several questions have been raised about its
planning process. One of its main criticisms is that the program will increase the existing
crevasse between different strata of a very complex social structure. This is based on several
aspects of the program - its over-reliance on smart infrastructure, not considering the sociocultural backdrop and ignoring the strong economic reliance on informality. The project in its
current form, serving a limited clientele cannot serve the aspirations of the people as a whole,
which means that it should be overhauled to include rather than exclude the people of India.
This program will have large social repercussions, which need to explored and debated, before
embarking upon it.
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The premise
Urbanisation has rapidly increased over the last century, at a rate which was beyond
anticipation. The population in cities has boomed in the world, where in 1950, only 86 cities had
a population of over 1 million, to in 2002 where this number is over 400 (World Urbanisation
Prospects, 2002), and is increasing at an exponential rate. The 2014 revision of the World
Urbanization Prospects by UN DESAs Population Division notes that the largest urban growth
will take place in India, China and Nigeria. These three countries will account for 37% of the
projected growth of the worlds urban population between 2014 and 2050 (United Nations,
2014).
Part of Indias response to cope with this urbanisation is a massive national-level program
proposing 100 smart cities, which was presented by the newly elected government in 2014.
This mega-project is also marketed as an opportunity for image improvement, and is often
seen as a method to catch up with the free-world in terms of technology, resources and
sophistication. The intended purpose of this project is often imagined to usher India into a
model of sustainable and inclusive development.
This paper aims to debate upon the current approach in the smart-city program, highlighting
in particular how it fails to incorporate the complex socio-cultural issues present in India, within
its planning processes. This could lead to an increase of the existing crevasse between different

120
strata of its very complex society. I will present this argument based on the key policy
documents of the program which outlines its direction and media reports on its current status,
thus helping me understand the implications of this program in its present form.
2 UNDERSTANDING THE PROJECT
2.1 Defining the smart city
Accepting that there cannot be a single definition for smart cities, the policy documents broadly
defines a wish list and definitional boundaries to guide 100 selected cities into one mission. It
specifies:
In the imagination of any city dweller in India, the picture of a smart city
contains a wish list of infrastructure and services that describes his or her level of
aspiration. To provide for the aspirations and needs of the citizens, urban planners
ideally aim at developing the entire urban eco-system, which is represented by the
four pillars of comprehensive development-institutional, physical, social and
economic infrastructure (Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India,
2015).
2.2 The lack of coherence in approach
These pillars, as stated are essential to the well-rounded development of any city. The approach
by the government, in reality, however, has been predominantly focused on a smart
infrastructure (Fig. 1) based development (Ministry of Urban Development, Government of
India, 2015). This has been partially based on other international models of Masdar city, UAE
and Songdo, South Korea in content, to other cities like Dubai, London, etc.in image, and is
being marketed quite intensively. This is not new as similar instances have taken place by
various state governments promising the transformation of Indian cities into the image of
western global cities like London (The Deccan Herald, 2011). This plan of making Indian cities
in the image of a utopian version of western and middle-eastern cities can have serious
repercussions in its social strata, which the smart city program has not anticipated. There is a
stark difference in what is marketed and what is perceived of the project by the various parties
involved. This is more evident in the people who are responsible for the execution of this
project - Bureaucrats, city planners, politicians, who are not on the same page or understanding,
leading to an uncoordinated approach towards different perceived visions. The local citizens and
bodies that have been included in the planning process represent a wider range of desires and a
certain amount of distrust in the process and scale of implementation. These citizen bodies,
unfortunately, only represent a privileged fraction of the population. For a new, smart city to
fulfil its ambition of comprehensive development (Ministry of Urban Development,
Government of India, 2015), a wider spectrum must be considered. This would lead to a more
nuanced project, incorporating the needs and voices of all and not just a select few.
Therefore, a coherent vision, understood and comprehended by all in the same vein, is
necessary for a project of this magnitude, as a misinterpretation has repercussions not only in
the physical environment, but also on the social environment. This one vision, currently absent
from the program, has led to confusion at an early stage, which would only be compounded as it
progresses in a country of over a billion voices.

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Figure 1. Indias focus on smart infrastructure in the new cities.
3 CONTENT BEFORE CONTEXT

3.1 The problems with smart infrastructure
A major part of the smart city paradigm derives from the concept of smart infrastructure,
where the goal is to make existing infrastructure work in a more integrated way, whether it is
waste, habitation or transport connectivity, with a heavy reliance on ICT services.
Many European and middle-eastern cities are fore-runners in the inevitable energy transition
and smart techology. They see the linking up of infrastructures, technologies and services in key
urban sectors (transport, buildings, energy, ICT) as a smart way to improve the competitiveness
and sustainability in the built environment along with the quality of life. This has translated to a
varied degree of success in promoting the successful use of technology to solve issues
pertaining to essential services. Several companies, such as JICA, Japan have already invested
in several ventures related to developing smart infrastruc6ture and logistics in urban
environments in proposed smart cites of Ponneri, Krishnapatnam and Tumkur (Make in India,
2015).
A project of this nature requires a comprehensive scaling-up of concepts and design models
that may not be suitable for developing countries such as India. A reliance on western planning
models has seen developing countries struggle to cope with the expansion of their cities. The
proposed high-scale models would be a struggle for most cities to implement. For example in a
mid-sized city of Bilaspur - population 453,946 in 2011 (National Census, Govt. of India,
2011), the smart city project calls for a city-wide digital operating system, which will have
electricity, water, healthcare, birth-death, credit card data, traffic licensing, penalties, etc.
embedded in one system. This requires a large investment from technological companies, which
has drawn criticism from the locals (The Guardian, 2016). The majority of the criticism stems
from distrust in the actual realisation of the project in a system, which has failed to provide
basic services of running water, electricity etc., to a large section of the population (World Bank
Group, 2016). This leads to disbelief in a system which promises a perfect city, but has
consistently failed to provide even the basic services to the poorest of its citizens.
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3.2 The small-scale model

The over-reliance on these models of development has already resulted in the failure to manage
the growth of cities in low and middle income countries, which are now combatting unplanned
informal expansion. However, there are several examples of projects that offer a combination of
innovation and ingenuity, while keeping in mind the backdrop and context. Projects such as the
destratifying cable cars of Caracas - which successfully illustrated that a community-aimed,
bottom up approach can go a long way in unifying the favelas with the city (Urban Think-Tank,
2015) and Nairobis digital matatus- using mobile routing applications to create a new transit
map to help the citizens navigate the informal public transport sector (Digital Matatus, 2015)
prove that developing countries are now responsible for a long list of both technical and social
processes that rival anything the developed world has to offer for ingenuity and practical utility
(Figs. 2 & 3). Although, the planning processes of these projects were not simple to execute and
had their share of challenges, the successful and inclusive nature of their result is undeniable.
Figure 2. The destratifying cable cars in Caracas, Venezuela.
Figure 3. Digital Matatus a new transit map, Nairobi, Kenya.

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3.3 The current approach

But, this is not the face of urban innovation that India wants to share with the world as it could
be possible that small-scale projects or the simple methods of the poor simply are not grand
enough to convey the magnitude of increasing national ambition. We hear, instead, of schemes
like Palava City, a futuristic vision of digital technology intertwined into everyday urban life
(The Lodha Group, 2016) and Lavasa City - embodying an image of the European city (Lavasa
Corporation, 2014). The overwhelming evidence is that this aped urban policy has failed to
secure social, or spatial, justice. Cities such as Lavasa (Indias first city built from scratch by a
private enterprise with state support) have become ghost towns, with very few people choosing
to settle there. Invoking the imagery of a classical Italian Riviera interspersed with the odd
American diner, it is clear that the planners are trying to create Lavasa as far as possible from
the current model of Indian Cities. The marketing tagline for such cities could easily be Escape
India (The Guardian, 2015). Lavasa has been widely reported as an unsuccessful venture,
mainly because the planners failed to incorporate the aspirations of their clientele, i.e., the local
population (Fig. 4).
Figure 4. Lavasa city, India made as different as possible from typical Indian city.
3.4 The current approach

On the other hand, India boasts of a unique ingenuity and an impressive informal economy (Fig.
5). Its self-grown cities are uniquely culturally diverse which forms the base of several
successful ventures, rising from adapting and embracing informality. Informal markets (Fig. 5),
informal industries amongst others often form the base for growth and development of large
section of the society. Scholars such has De Soto (1990) often laud the need for informality in
developing nations from Latin America to Asia, as they form a crucial part of the countrys
economy (De Soto, H., 1990). Instead of India turning its back it, the smart city program should
be a tool to incorporate this informality into its future, bringing it out from the fringes. Currently
being formed in the mould of cities like Lavasa and Palava, which have proven to be
unsuccessful in India, the new smart city program instead provides a platform to embrace the
socio-cultural diversity of the country in a more integrated manner. Perhaps instead of the
ambitious scheme of complete transformation, smaller and locally oriented projects (Illustrated
by the success in Caracas and Nairobi) should form the base of the smart city program.
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Including local informality in the smaller schemes would ensure the participation of the poorest
section of the society, ensuring a more resilient and inclusive urban transformation.
Figure 5. Informality in a typical Indian city: an essential part of urban areas, now excluded in the new
vision.
4 THE EXCLUSIVE NATURE OF THE PROJECT

A very important point which needs to be addressed is the impact of such a massive project on
the social structure of both existing as well as new towns. As per the official mission statement:
The smart city project aims to improve the quality of life of the people by enabling local area
development and harnessing technology, especially technology that leads to smart outcomes
(Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, 2015). It also talks about improving the
liveability of the whole city and creating inclusive living areas.
This ambitious project, does have its intensions in the right place. It does strive for a better
future for its citizens by providing them infrastructure, better homes, etc. However, it largely
ignores the social behaviour of the biggest component of these cities: the people. It instead
focuses on technology to improve the quality of life. It is important to note that technology can
only improve upon the standard of life, whereas improving the quality of life cannot be
achieved through technological innovations only. For Indias true progress, both the standard
of life and quality of life should be given equal importance. Only improving the standard of
life will be a hollow version of the success that India desires, excluding the people who cannot
afford a share in this new technologically dependant world.
The project describes a world where all the citys residents, from the homeless to the slum
residents to the occupants of penthouses, could use services online where service connections
such as water and electric power were easy to get, and all kinds of payments could be made by a
smart phone or tablet (The Guardian, 2016). A world of blissful information technology, starkly
devoid of human involvement. The smart city program is, therefore, nudging India towards
information technology, instead of furthering local government and utilizing the power of its
over 1 billion people.

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To most, the project does sound like the answer to most of the problems that India is facing.
However, the countrys problems run deeper, and would not be solved by a superficial at-tempt.
Proposals for developing city wide technological grids (ISGF, 2016), controlled by a digital
operating system should not be implemented in in a country where 300 million people live
without electricity and almost double without access to toilets. These new proposed cities are
relying heavily on automated systems like intelligent traffic management, automated garbage
disposal systems and transport connected to smartphones (The Guardian, 2015), to keep them
running. This would surely turn the cities into isolated islands for the privileged people. This
emphasis on high-end infrastructure and superlative quality of life in this project hints at a
discomfiting answer to the question: who the intended inhabitants of smart cities are likely to
be?
The harsh truthful answer to this question is that it would only serve the upper-middle class
and the wealthy, turning a blind eye to a majority of the population. Cities built on this model,
like Lavasa (Fig. 4) are clearly gated communities, serving to a privileged few. Such an intricate
system of infrastructure would require a huge investment to maintain and run smoothly. In
sequence, these spaces can only be occupied with people able to afford them. Therefore, these
spaces would mostly use prohibitive prices and harsh policing, to stop people from using the
privilege of such infrastructure, so as not to override the governments ability to maintain them.
This is not in line with the governments ambition of an inclusive city. A total separation
between the different strata of society in terms of money is inevitable in these smart cities.
These will become cities highlighting borders and divisions, instead of the blurring them. In a
country where a large portion of the population still struggles to receive basic necessities,
providing such an elaborate establishment to a chosen few can only remind the rest of what they
cant have. Although, there is a large disparity already existing in Indian cities, this new
program would only encourage it, rather than reduce it. This new form of increased division is
fragile and cannot last forever, leading one to wonder when the inevitable collapse would occur.
For a truly inclusive smart city, the focus needs to move away from implementing high-end
technology which would alienate a large section of the society. Instead, it needs to focus on an
approach which can make basic services available to the majority of the population. Unless this
gap in the quality of life between different sections of society is bridged, any implementation
of high maintenance ICT will only serve to increase this gap. The program in its current form
would work best, if all sections of the population were at a median level of development.
However, this basic prerequisite is not met in India and the architects of the program needs to
therefore need to take it into consideration. A headstrong approach of matching developed
nations as soon as possible should be therefore, re-paced.
5 IGNORING CIRCULAR URBANISM
As mentioned earlier, the smart city program in part a response the rapid urbanisation of Indian
cities. This is based on the need to upgrade existing cities to accommodate the increasing
pressure of people migrating from the hinterlands. This phenomenon is not exclusive to India,
however, Indias model of urbanisation and migration is different from other developing
economies, which needs a different response than just simply upgrading cities.
The western model of planning is radically different from Indias with its strong focus of
urbanization, as almost 85% of EUs GDP is generated in cities, and they are central to
delivering on key challenges for Europes society and economy (European Commission, 2015).
Indias base is in the hinterlands, with 70% of the population living outside the cities and
agriculture being a large source of its GDP (IBEF, 2016). The current government feels that it is
time for India to take a bigger role in the worlds economy. Therefore a long-standing argument
is being presented in India that no economy can grow on the basis of agriculture, and so it is
inevitable that people would move to cities. This further extends to the belief that innovations
with new technology emerge and belong only in cities. This leads to a lopsided development
concentrated only in high-density clusters (already be-coming apparent in China), which can
become detrimental. In their present form, several smart cities can essentially be relabelled as
Special Economic Zones (SEZs). They are characterized as neo-liberal business-friendly zones,
which receive big tax exemptions, with lax labour laws. They are also influenced by privatized
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governance, which renders local provincial government powerless against the larger
corporations. The cracks have already begun to show. China is now struggling to cope with its
overloaded cities, especially in the metropolitan region of Beijing, with cities such as Tianjin,
Tangshan and Suzhou expanding beyond their origins as Special Economic Zones. Till now
China has been able to strictly regulate its workers between district boundaries so that migration
to cities is kept in check (Migration Policy Institute, 2015). India, on the other hand, has a more
fluid network and connection between urban and rural area, with workers regularly going back
seasonally to till their farmlands. Indias process of circular urbanism differs from the
standard model of dominating megacities and an empty hinterland. Its networked lifestyles are
not quite suburban or simple rural either, as dual households remain profitable and socially
important (Gidwani, V. & Sivaramakrishnan, K., 2003). One worker keeps shifting from being a
farmer to a security guard, grocery shop owner to labourer, blurring boundaries between cities
and their surrounding area (Fig. 6). Even then, cities remain key nodes in ever expanding
economy of India. Neglecting either will not work. Therefore there is a pressing need to define
the level of connectivity between these rural and urban areas and celebrate the existing contrast.
The smart city program current focusses solely on the development of urban areas, neglecting
the crucial hinterland, without which the unique circular economy system collapses. In fact, it
would make better sense for policies to forsake the rural and urban lines of directing investment,
and recognize that Indias potential lies with the network of connections between these
polarized areas. India is more networked than we care to acknowledge. A shift in perspective
will help evolve a set of categories and suitable projects that do greater justice to the emerging
urban landscape in India.
Figure 6. Migrating farmers at Jhansi, India as a part of circulatory urbanism.
6 CONCLUSION
India now stands at a crucial junction, where its actions would determine its future for the next
century. The 100 Smart Cities program may work well on paper and propaganda, but the
countrys harsh realities should not be swept under a rug. Indias complex and layered society
should be perceived as a strength and not be discarded if it does not fit into a preconceived

127
program. Sacrificing social stability for the utopian vision of development, can only lead to
fragmented future in Indias path to development.
As illustrated, the exclusive nature of the smart city program, neglects the crucial social
element at several levels. It offers hope of a developed India, but only to a select fraction of its
population. The project, in its current form and serving a limited clientele cannot serve the
aspirations of the people as a whole, which means that it should be overhauled to include
rather than exclude the people of India.
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Social bricks? Integrating social sustainability in housing and

neighbourhoods
M. Stender
Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University, Denmark
ABSTRACT: Can social sustainability be built? In this paper the potentialities and challenges of
the concept of social sustainability are explored based on a collaboration project between the
Danish Building Research Institute, a Danish social housing association and the Green Building
Council Denmark, aiming to better integrate standards of social sustainability in the application
of certification systems like DGNB. The paper relates theory on social sustainability to the ways
it is used in practice, and discusses whether and how social sustainability can be measured and
certified in renewal and construction of housing and neighbourhoods. It is put forward that a
certification has to take into account the housing complex or neighbourhoods relation to the
surrounding city, its development over time, its flexibility towards future needs and its social
organisation and operation. Further, the interplay between environmental, economic and social
sustainability needs to be considered.
1 INTRODUCTION
Sustainability is increasingly on the agenda in refurbishment and construction of the built
environment, but the focus tends to be on environmental and economic aspects rather than on
social sustainability. When regenerating social housing estates or developing new urban
neighbourhoods, social sustainability appears to be highly relevant as a framework to improve
peoples quality of life and their opportunities to get involved as well as to promote local
communities and their relation to the surrounding city. Yet there is no commonly agreed upon
definition of social sustainability, and in spite of various tools and indicators, stakeholders tend
to use the concept in different ways and according to their own agendas. Often these do not
regard social sustainability as end in itself, but rather use the concept to legitimate other e.g.
economic aims, which in this paper are referred to as social washing.
The paper relates theory on social sustainability to the ways it is used in practice, and
discusses whether and how social sustainability can be measured and certified in renewal and
construction of housing and neighbourhoods. First, a brief theoretical overview outlines
different positions in recent literature on social sustainability, then follows a few examples of
how the concept is used in practice when planning and constructing a new urban neighbourhood
as well as a listing of attempts to specify indicators of social sustainability. Next follows a brief
description of the case, where the Danish Building Research Institute collaborates with other
partners in a project aiming to integrate social sustainability better in the DGNB assessmenttool. The project has occurred a number of considerations on the challenges in specifying and

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measuring social sustainability and these are consequently addressed in the final discussion. A
key challenge is thus to quantify what is basically qualitative, normative and changeable over
time and place. Also, social sustainability is always dependent on scale: What appears to be
socially sustainable in a specific housing estate is not necessarily sustainable for the overall
urban neighbourhood or the city as such. Further, the discussion reflects on the notion of social
bricks that is, whether and how the built environment can in itself be conceived as being social
sustainable or will only become so over time and with use. Finally the ambivalences inherent in
certification systems are discussed before the concluding remarks.
2 IN THEORY: A DYNAMIC CONCEPT
The most widespread concept of sustainability originates from the 1987 UN-report Our
Common Future (Pareja-Eastway, 2012; Hgberg, 2015; Colantonio & Dixon, 2011), where
sustainable development is defined as development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (UN World
Commission on Environment and Development 1987). Since this report, also known as the
Brundtland-report, sustainability has generally been held to consist of three dimensions:
environmental, economic and social sustainability (Hgberg, 2015; Colantonio & Dixon, 2011).
Social sustainability is however in itself a rather broad and multidimensional concept, and there
is no commonly agreed upon definition in the scientific literature (Dempsey et al., 2009;
Hgberg, 2015). Neither is there any consensus as to what criteria a residential building or
urban area should fulfil in order to be socially sustainable (Colantonio & Dixon, 2011). As
several authors have stressed, social sustainability has to be considered a dynamic concept,
which will change over time (Dempsey el al. 2009, 292) just like it is not an a-politicial
discourse or a neutral practice (Woodcraft, 2012).
Researchers from various disciplines have however sought to pin down social sustainability
in relation to the built environment. Hgberg for instance argues that social sustainability is
about meeting human needs through various conditions, properties, institutions, systems,
relations, activities, goods and services (Hgberg 2015). Dempsey et al also stresses both the
planning, construction and operation of the built environment, when defining sustainable places
as
places where people want to live now and in the future. They meet the diverse
needs of existing and future residents, are sensitive to their environment and
contribute to a high quality of life. They are safe and inclusive, well planned, built
and run and offer quality of opportunity and good services for all (Dempsey et al.,
2009, pp. 290). General in the literature is thus the meeting of human needs and
quality of life both for individuals and communities: Social sustainability refers
to the capacity inherent in individuals and communities to meet their own needs
and achieve a balanced quality of life.() (It) usually includes aspects related to
the inner self () understood as the capacity of individuals to develop themselves
on the basis of their human capital, that is, health, education, culture, skills, and
knowledge (Pareja-Eastaway, 2012, 502).
Where some authors emphasise inherent capacities to develop, others put more weight on the
physical environment and opportunities to get involved:
Social sustainability is about peoples quality of life, now and in the future. It
describes the extent to which a neighbourhood supports individual and collective
wellbeing. (It) combines design of the physical environment with a focus on how
the people who live in and use a space relate to each other and function as a
community. It is enhanced by development which provides the right infrastructure
to support a strong social and cultural life, opportunities for people to get
involved, and scope for the place and the community to involve (Woodcraft et al,
2012, 35).

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Rather than explicitly defining social sustainability, several authors seek to provide criteria or
key elements that are seen as fundamental conditions (Neamtu, 2012; Hgberg, 2015). The
traditional and basic elements are access to housing, education, jobs, income, equity and human
rights. Newer elements are more abstract needs like empowerment, social capital and social
cohesion, social mix, identity and place attachment, safety, health, well-being, happiness and
quality of life (Neamtu, 2012; Hgberg, 2015; Colantonio & Dixon, 2011).
The most common conception which the above approaches also represent regards social
sustainability as the meeting of human needs and quality of life (Chiu, 2003). Yet there is also
another position that regards social sustainability as a tool to improve environmental
sustainability in for instance the built environment. According to this position, environmental
sustainability depends on social conditions, because people will not be able to meet
environmental needs, until there own needs are met to a certain extend and they have obtained a
certain quality of life (Chiu, 2003; Vallance et al., 2011). Based on an analysis of Danish
sustainable buildings Jensen et al (2012) thus argues that the absence of social sustainability
initiatives has negative consequences for the energy performance in buildings and residential
areas. Chiu (2003) also focuses on housing and argues that social sustainability in relation to
housing has to address both the environment and human well-being and comfort. She points out
four criteria: There has to be social circumstances that lead to the producing and consumption of
environmentally sustainable buildings, there has to be equitable distribution of housing values
and resources, there must be harmonic social relations in the neighbourhood, and the housing
and surroundings have to be of an acceptable quality. This way of regarding social sustainability
as a tool to accomplish environmental sustainability raises fundamental questions as to the
relationship and but also possible tension between the three dimensions. Whereas some argue
that sustainability in one dimension cannot be achieved without sustainability in the other
dimensions, others have pointed out that they are in basically conflicting, because more
sustainability in one dimension will give less sustainability in the other dimensions (Hgberg,
2015).
3 IN PRACTICE: SOCIAL WASHING AND ATTEMPTS TO COUNTERACT IT
The relationship between the different dimensions of sustainability is also a key factor in the
way the concept is applied in practice. The concept of social sustainability is used in numerous
ways, and according to the different agendas of various stakeholders. Sometimes it may be used
to blur the environmental aspects of sustainability or to legitimate specific profit-making
strategies. A recent example is the urban development project Carlsberg Byen in Copenhagen,
where the brownfield area that formerly housed the Carlsberg brewery, is currently being
transformed into a new and for Danish standards very dense urban neighbourhood. The project
was promoted as sustainable from the outset, and the notion of social sustainability was
particularly emphasised (Harders, 2015). The way social sustainability was understood and
implemented in practice is however rather dubious, as the developer for instance argued that
increasing the amount of parking space per living unit was a question of social sustainability,
hence not excluding residents with two cars. Furthermore, social sustainability was used as an
argument for attempts of attracting the so-called creative class, that were held to be a part of
the economy, rendering the area more interesting and create innovation (Director of Carlsberg
cited in ibid. 157 (my translation)). The line of reasoning was thus that bohemians, artists and
students would make the area more attractive for the broader creative class that would then
attract strong enterprises and make housing prices rise (ibid.). In the winning proposal of the
initial architectural competition, the architects argue that an 8-10 % share of affordable housing
will in itself ensure social sustainability and promote social rise through homeownership:
Within a few years the tenants will be able to strengthen their economy through social
integration and networking in the city. Homeownership can be achieved and new residents can
move into the affordable tenancies (cited in ibid. 157 (my translation)).
As illustrated by these examples from Carlsberg Byen, the concept of social sustainability is
apparently flexible enough to be stretched rather widely. The lines of reasoning at play may
draw indirectly on Richard Floridas theories of the creative class (Florida, 2002), or show more
vague inspirations from other theories of urban social dynamics, gentrification processes and
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neighbourhood effects. Yet, these theories do not necessarily address social sustainability, and
in the examples above social sustainability turns out to be a means to an economic end, rather
than an end in itself. Parallel to what has been called green washing, (when products, policies
etc. are promoted as green, though they are actually damaging or at least not beneficial to the
environment), we might talk of social washing. In order to counteract such social washing and
encourage more sound use of the concept and its practical implementation, various stakeholders
have therefore sought to define standards and indicators of social sustainability.
Specifically oriented towards the built environment, is the CEN/TC350 horizontal
standardized methods for the assessment of the sustainability aspects of new and existing
construction works. Here social sustainability includes accessibility and flexibility, health and
indoor climate, acoustics, views, air quality, thermic comfort, protection of the near
environment against noise, emissions, shadow, vibrations and wind, maintenance of the
building, safety, traceability of products and services as well as involvement of stakeholders,
ensuring possibilities of participation in decision processes. Less technical and more directed
towards communities than construction, is EUs Bristol Accord from 2005. Here sustainable
communities are defined by 8 characteristics. They are: 1) Active, inclusive and safe. 2) Well
run, 3) Well connected, 4) Well served, 5) Environmentally sensitive, 6) Thriving, 7) Well
designed and built, 8) Fair for everyone. These rather broad characteristics can of course be
understood in many different ways, and other actors have tried to specify and thereby make
social sustainability more measurable. The UK -based the social enterprise Social Life has thus
developed a set of indicators of social sustainability in new communities organised under three
themes: Amenities and social infrastructure, social and cultural life and voice and influence (see
Fig. 1). These indicators appear to be useful in the development of new areas and may also be
relevant in the regeneration projects. Still, what remain are specific tools of how to assess
whether housing complexes and urban neighbourhoods then live up to such standards. This is
basically the aim of the case-project of integrating social sustainability in DGNB, which will be
described in the following.
Figure 1. Design for Social Sustainability Framework, Social Life, 2011.
4 CASE: INTEGRATING SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY IN DGNB

DGNB (Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Nachhaltiges Bauen) is a non-profit organisation founded in
2007 in Germany to promote sustainable and economically efficient building. Sustainability is

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promoted through events, media and education of professionals, as well as certification of

buildings. The Danish Green Building Council (DK-GBC) was established in 2010 as a
common council for sustainability in the Danish building industry and has adjusted the DGNBcertification system to a Danish context. The DK-GBC has thus been responsible for
sustainability certifications in Denmark since 2012, and so far 30 buildings and 4 urban areas
have been certified (http://www.dk-gbc.dk/dgnb/certificerede-projekter/).
In 2015 the Danish housing association Lejerbo initiated a collaboration project aiming to
better integrate social sustainability in buildings by way of DGNB. Lejerbos vision is to lead
the way in promoting sustainability, when refurbishing and constructing new social housing
estates. The project is financially supported by the Danish Ministry of Immigration, Integration
and Housing and apart from Lejerbo, the projects partners include representatives from DKGBC, the Danish Building Research Institute, the architectural firm Vandkunsten, and the
British social enterprise Social Life. The main hypothesis of the project is that a clearer
definition of social sustainability as well as the development of a more specific set of
evaluation-criteria of how it can be incorporated in buildings can pave the way for more well
functioning neighbourhoods in the future. The DGNB certification tool already includes a social
dimension, as sociocultural and functional qualities weight 22,5% in the overall assessment
(see Fig. 2). In the certification of buildings, the focus of these criteria has until now been
mainly on functional aspects like thermal, acoustic and visual comfort, indoor air quality,
accessibility, safety, quality of architecture and outdoor areas, art integrated in the building as
well as disposition of plan. For urban areas social sustainability is specified through indicators
of sociocultural and functional quality, and here the criteria include social and functional
diversity, social and commercial infrastructure, safety, urban life, noise reduction, supply of
recreational areas, accessibility, flexibility, urban integration, urban form, usage of existing
structure and art in public space.
Figure 2. Green Building Council Denmark.

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The purpose of the project is to expand and develop the DGNB criteria of social
sustainability in ways that promote collaboration across professional boundaries between those
involved in physical refurbishment and construction, and those involved in social activities and
services. Initial suggestions have been to include a focus on the construction process and the life
post-occupancy. The project will, according to the project description, address
elements as specific as job-creation in the construction process, and how
residents use the areas. But also what infrastructure can support a strong social
and cultural life, peoples possibility of involving themselves, and the possibility
for the place and community to develop. It will be about bricks, but also about
operation, organisation and administration (Project description (my translation)).
The key question is thus whether and how, social and organisational aspects can be added to
or integrated with the criteria oriented towards physical and functional layout. The project is
still in its development-phase, and various stake-holders and professionals will be involved
through a series of workshops. The following discussion will address three key challenges that
have so far come up as part of the considerations on how more specific criteria for social
sustainability can be integrated in the DGNB.
5 DISCUSSION
5.1 How to measure something qualitative and dependent on scale?
As stated in this papers theoretical overview, the literature on social sustainability has turned
from initially focussing mainly on basic needs like access to housing, jobs and income, to also
including more abstract elements like identity, place attachment and social capital. This shift
implies a methodological turn from an exclusively quantitative to including a more qualitative
approach, as a communitys employment rates and income distribution is easier to measure than
its social cohesion, sense of place and positive identification. The integration of such qualitative
aspects in the assessment of an areas social sustainability thus constitutes a considerable
challenge. Sociological literature has long discussed how social capital and social cohesion can
be investigated and measured and various systems have also been implemented in practice. In
the Danish social housing sector a tool called Naboskabet (Neighbourliness) was applied a few
years ago, rating the mutual relations and confidence among tenants through surveys asking for
instance whether they would agree to lend sugar or money to a neighbour. Inherent in the tool
naboskabet, but also in other ways of measuring local social cohesion is thus an assumption
that it is important for people to be part of a local community. Though social scientists are
typically in favour of local communities, where neighbours become friends and help each other
on a daily basis, we cannot neglect that people may live good and sustainable lives, while
having their social relations many other places than where they live, and not ever exchanging a
word with their neighbours. As it is easier for us to approach social relations within a given
geographical territory, we may fall into the trap of only looking for territorial communities, and
thereby reproducing what Passaro has termed epistemological villages (Passaro, 1997, 61).
There is a risk then of approaching social life in the way that is easiest for us to grasp and
measure, rather than in the way it is lived in practice.
Other possible indicators appear to be more objective, neutral and descriptive than social
capital and coherence, for instance social mix. Here however, a problem of scale and context
occurs. Segregation is an increasing problem in many cities, and in order to counteract it, it
appears reasonable to include social mix for instance by way of mixed tenure or a certain
percentage of affordable housing as a criteria of social sustainability. Yet, when the social
housing sector is refurbishing estates in disadvantaged areas, social mix strategies may be about
raising rents and attracting tenants with a higher income. Already without the social
sustainability headline, refurbishment is often also used strategically as a way to change the
composition of tenants and push out particularly marginalized tenants by merging small flats
etc. (Stender & Bech-Danielsen, 2016). Rather than solving social problems there is thus a risk
of just pushing problems from one neighbourhood to the next. Even marginalized people need

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to live somewhere, and what may seem socially sustainable for a specific area, is not necessarily
socially sustainable for the city or its people as such. The challenge comes down to the how
to delimit social sustainability geographically. In order to better integrate social sustainability in
the DGNB-tool, it should therefor be considered, not just sustainable a particular housing
complex or neighbourhood is in itself, but also how it relates to and supplement the surrounding
city and social fabric. Another challenge as will be shown in the following, is the delimitation
in time.
5.2 To what extend can social sustainability be built?
A second challenge is how to assess the social sustainability in a building or neighbourhood
before it is even taken into use. In UK, Social Life has used survey-data to compare the
characteristics of particular communities to the same types of survey data from broader groups
as a way of assessing a neighbourhoods social sustainability (Woodcraft et al., 2012). The main
obstacle for applying such an approach within a framework like the DGNB-assessment tool is
that assessments here are typically done before people move in or in the case of a
refurbishment project before it has been completed. In the process of DGNB-certification a
building project is pre-certified based on an assessment of the plan, and the final certification is
then accomplished, once the building is erected. One could however argue that this is exactly
when the social really begins: Once developers, architects and construction workers leave the
building site, and residents move in. This is of course especially the case, if the building or
neighbourhood in question is brand new, but even in the case of a refurbishment or regeneration
project, it hardly makes sense to talk about the social impact of a given transformation, or about
identity, place attachment and social capital, before an everyday life is taking place.
One option is thus to include a form of post-occupancy evaluations as part of the DGNBcertification and other assessment tools. Yet, it may take long for the social life in a new area to
develop, and even in places where there is a broad range of social activities, social mix and
positive neighbourliness to start out with, it may die out after a while, just like the composition
of residents and tenants in social housing estates often change radically over the years (BechDanielsen & Stender, 2016). One of the reasons for this is, that ideals and preferences to the
layout of houses and built environments change over time, but also that many other factors than
the design of an estate influences what life is led here. The great modern housing estates were
not lacking ideals about social sustainability though it was not called so at the time. The
modernistic architects and planners were often very concerned with equality, and sought to
provide decent housing, and life quality for all, and the estate would often include institutions
and services, retail, and community facilities. However, society changed and the people who
could, in many cases moved away from these estates. To become homeowners, but also to live
in houses that could express their individuality and social status. One could argue, that these are
human needs that we then also need to incorporate in new areas, but another conclusion would
be, that no matter how much we try to integrate social visions in the built environment, we
know for certain, that our ideals will change over time. This emphasise the need of flexibility of
built structures and what Social Life calls Space to Grow. What is needed is both flexibility to
adapt to the changing needs of existing residents, as they move through life, but also to think in
terms of a flexibility to the needs of future society and avoid what Sennett has called overdetermination, where complex design and infrastructures of lighting, heating, plumbing and
electricity make it hard to adapt to new purposes (Sennett, 2006, 11).
What is at stake in this discussion is what could be coined as social bricks that is: the
fundamental idea of the built environment as in itself possessing social agency. This is a large
discussion in architecture and the social sciences, where the former not surprisingly tend to
ascribe considerable agency to the physical environment, whereas the latter has traditionally
been more reluctant in giving the shape of physical surrounding too much weight. Though
recent theoretical approaches in the social sciences have taken renewed interest in the role of
materiality and built environments in shaping social life, most social scientists at lest
anthropologists would probably still agree that any attempt to analyse what a building does
would have to be approached through the social life that takes place in and around it (Stender,
2016). This calls for including other aspects than the layout of the built environment in the
assessment of social sustainability in housing and neighbourhoods. The DGNB-tool for urban
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areas already includes criteria for infrastructure and functional diversity, but the process,
organisation and social infrastructure in building places could possibly be further developed.
This could be through criteria addressing job creation, possibilities of involvement and facilities
for contact and interaction among residents e.g. by way of social media platforms. Also social
aspects of the daily running and operation of the complex or area could be considered, though
this is mainly applicable within the social housing sector, whereas other solutions must be
applied in the private sector.
5.3 Is certification basically false security?
The last main challenge that will be raised here is the idea of certification as a useful tool in
itself. One can argue that it has an inherent political correctness may take away focus from
actual conflicts of interest: Though social diversity sounds sympathetic no one actually wants to
have a hassling neighbour and what one person considers good life quality may affect the life
quality of others in a negative way. Furthermore, even if we approve of a set of more specific
characteristics as indicators of social sustainability, an adjective like safe can have quite
different meanings for different people. The clean and well-kept, illuminated and transparent
urban spaces that middle class families perceive as safe, may not be perceived as such by
teenagers, lovers, homeless or graffiti-painters. By using broad, positive adjectives, we tend to
reproduce standard middle class norms, rather than understand and address the actual and
perhaps conflicting perspectives at stake in a particular neighbourhood. Also, in the case of
DGNB it is partners of the building industry that claims and to a certain extend operates the
agenda of sustainability, and one could ask if the system therefore primarily serves as a case of
CSR-branding. Just like apples that carry the organic brand but are flown into Europe from
Argentina, are not necessarily the most environmentally friendly choice, neighbourhoods and
housing complexes certified as being sustainable also socially may in fact reinforce the
gentrification processes, that push disadvantaged groups to the fringes of the city. Part of this
problem has to do with the fact that systems of certification in themselves may serve as a pretext
for doing nothing, which stresses the need of an on-going critical dialogue of the role and
functioning of certification-systems not as an alternative to but a supplement to policy and
legislation.
The challenges around certification however become even more urgent, when the
certification involves as elastic a concept as sustainability. Sustainability can thus be understood
as an example of what has been termed magic concepts (Pollitt & Hupe, 2011) characterised
by A high degree of abstraction, a strongly positive normative charge, a seeming ability to
dissolve previous dilemmas and binary oppositions and a mobility across domains (ibid., 641).
When actors use social sustainability to promote various agendas, as earlier illustrated through
the Carlsberg Byen examples, it is exactly due to its strong positive connotations. It is hard to be
against social sustainability, just like it is hard to be against good quality of life. The important
question to ask is of course: good according to whom and at what expense? The problem with
magic words is that they may depoliticize social issues and give the impression that particular
decisions are beyond discussion. As also Woodcraft notes, planning for sustainability is not
an a-politicial discourse or a neutral practice (). Arguably the language of planning policy depoliticizes the inevitable conflicts and trade-offs that will arise as decisions are made about
investments in different places (Woodcraft, 2012, 33). In connection with the case-project of
integrating social sustainability in the DGNB-tool this particularly emphasizes the importance
of considering the relationship between the three dimensions of the sustainability concept.
Rather than just expand and further develop criteria defined as social, it may be very relevant
to revisit also economic and environmental criteria, in order to consider their possible social
impact. This being said, it of course also important to keep in mind, that if certification systems
are to have any effect, they should not be so long and complicated that no one will have the
hassle engaging with them.

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6 CONCLUSION
The paper has analysed and discussed potentials and challenges of the concept of social
sustainability, drawing on literature, practical examples and the case-project of integrating
social sustainability in the DGNB-tool. As shown in the brief review of the literature on social
sustainability, the concept has evolved from focussing on mere quantitative aspects to including
more abstract and qualitative aspects like social coherence and sense of place. This has
together with the ambiguous interplay between three aspects of sustainability contributed to its
rather elastic nature, and in practice it is thus used in various ways, sometimes even legitimating
other ends, hence the notion of social washing. This stresses the need for specifying indicators
and tools to measure social sustainability, however as discussed based on the DGNB-project,
there is a number of challenges in such an endeavour. It may thus be counterproductive to
delimit social sustainability in space and time, just like it can be problematic to quantify and set
standards for something that is basically qualitative, normative and context-dependent.
Certifications can possibly pave the way for social sustainability in building housing and
neighbourhoods, but the relationship between a given housing estate or neighbourhood and its
surroundings has to be taken into account, just like its organisation and development over time.
Bricks are only social to a certain extent. Last but not least the mutual relationship between the
three dimensions of sustainability has to be considered not only as mutually depended but as
possibly also conflicting.
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Top-down and grassroots approaches to sustainable housing

P. Wilkin
Brunel University, Uxbridge, London, England, UK
ABSTRACT: This paper will bring a sociological perspective to bear on the process of building
and renovating sustainable housing in European cities. It views sustainability as a broad concept
that refers to the quality of life as a whole rather than abstracting housing from its wider social
context. The empirical work is based on two case studies, one in Lyon, France, one in Bristol,
UK. The paper will examine the ways in which everyday social practices can help to achieve the
success of sustainable housing projects or alternately can create unanticipated problems that
undermine their success. Thus the paper presents an argument that says that major problem in
the dominant conceptualisation of sustainability and of the design processes that underpin
housing innovation and renovation are rooted in two things: first, a limited and inadequate
conception of social life; second, theoretical and methodological problems in the way in which
the design process is carried out. The two case studies offer contrasting approaches to this issue.
Whilst the projects in Lyon emphasised the importance of a participatory approach to design it
swiftly ran into unforeseen problems which, the author argues, can be explained by examining
the design process and method, which failed to pay heed to the complexity of everyday social
life. This project is ultimately an example of a top-down housing initiatives. By contrast the
second case study examines the activities of the Acorn grassroots community housing
association which has developed in Bristol, UK, and which emphasises the idea of communities
taking control of housing and its sustainable development. This paper will propose ideas as to
how the complexity of social life can best be incorporated into plans for sustainable housing.
1 INTRODUCTION
The aim of this paper is three-fold: first it will illustrate the ways in which approaches to the
design of sustainable housing would benefit from a deeper engagement with the complexities of
social life and the social causes of climate change (Lee, 2006; 2010). It is not realistic to address
the issue of sustainable housing unless one is able to at least acknowledge its relationship to
these broader and complex social relations. Dominant approaches to design and modelling, as
for the organisation of social life more generally, work on overly simple assumptions about
social life that embrace (implicitly) a behavioural model of social change, which can lead to
viewing climate change as primarily a technical problem (Dekker, Hancock and Wilkin, 2013;
Taylor, 1966; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005: 465; Weinstein, 2005). This has profound
implications for how we conceptualise the means for building sustainable futures, for social
policy and debates over what is meant by the idea of a good society (Worpole, 2013). Second,
the paper argues that there can be no pure technique that stands outside existing social relations
and that as a consequence the struggle over sustainability and climate change is inevitably a
struggle over the kind of sustainable society, a good society, that will emerge (Wilkin, 2009,
2010; Boudeau, Dekker and Wilkin, 2014). To this end the paper argues that a grassroots
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approach to sustainability is a necessary corrective to some for the failings of top-down models
for sustainable housing. This, the paper presents two case studies which illustrate the contrast
between what I have described as top-down and grassroots approaches to sustainable housing.
The case studies are micro accounts that draw out the implicit assumptions about a good society
that the issue of sustainable housing raises. On a more abstract level, a sustainable future can be
generated through approaches that tend towards being authoritarian or libertarian; that is,
solutions that are in some sense either imposed upon people or solutions that are under the
control of communities and individuals. As Ward notes this is a choice between continuously
seeking to enlarge the area of human freedom and responsibility, or alternatively to seek ways to
constrain it (Ward, 1976: 44). In a bold thesis Tony Fry, a well-known writer and practitioner in
the field of design and sustainability, has set out the case for something like a world state to
address the problem (Fry, 2010). I would suggest that this is an idea that lends itself towards the
authoritarian end of the spectrum of approaches to sustainability. This is not to say that such a
project cannot work, merely to note that it runs counters to the themes of the libertarian social
thought at the heart of this papers approach to sustainability: community self-organisation,
mutual aid, voluntary activity, direct action and self-help, social solidarity and cooperation
(Kropotkin, 2012; Krznaric, 2012; Ward, 1976, 1985). To this end former head of the Royal
Institute of British Architects, Sir Peter Hall, has argued that the roots or urban planning lay
specifically in the anarchist movement who were arguing for self-governed, autonomous
communities to control their own lived environment, a process he notes that shaped the early
planning movements in both the USA and the UK (Hall, 20914: 2-12). Thus we can see how
ideas about design, housing and society rest upon contrasting conceptions of the good society
and human nature, unavoidably so.
In so doing I can examine and address the key research questions that structure this project.
These research questions are as follows:
1. What are the weaknesses of dominant design approaches to conceptualising
sustainability, sustainable housing and social life?
2. In what ways do the complexities of every day social life help or hinder projects of
sustainable housing?
3. Given the global nature of the concept of a sustainable future, what practical options
are open to us in addressing the question of sustainable housing and the idea of a
good society?
Building upon insights from world-systems analysis and libertarian social theory the paper
argues that the dominant top-down approaches to sustainable housing (often described as green
capitalism) have major problems in addressing the social causes of an unsustainable world. If
the social causes of an unsustainable world are not addressed then the theories of design and
social policies adopted will reflect this limitation. Instead governing agencies must be pressured
to work in ways which are genuinely participatory with communities and workplaces, and
address the problems of inequality and poverty that have shaped the modern world-system
(Bartley and Bergeson, 2015; Hall and Ward, 2014: 144-216; Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2009;
Piketty, 2014; Dorling, 2015). The USA and Western Europe, for example, with 12% of the
worlds population currently consume 60% of the worlds natural resources, a model of
development that is manifestly unsustainable but apparently off the political agenda (York, Rosa
and Dietz, 2015; World watch Institute, 20-16). As President Bush II said, the American way
of life is not up for negotiations. Period (Deen, 2016). It needs to be stressed that the American
way of life, rhetoric notwithstanding, is one of major social inequality rather than generalised
prosperity, as the emergence of the Occupy movement in the USA illustrated (Dorling, 2014a
and b; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010). The key questions then are who owns the wealth, land and
property that President Bush refers to and how do their rights stand up in relationship to the
environmental crisis that threatens life on earth (Wood, 2012; Ward, 2012: 87-94)? Top-down
approaches, as we readily concede, can work but they also generate difficulties and resistance to
the way in which they are implemented regardless of the complexities of social life. Grassroots
approaches to the issue can serve, minimally, as a way of correcting these problems. The extent
to which they are commentary is best determined at the level of specific cases.
These are obviously profoundly important questions and should be at the heart of work on
sustainability and housing. As this paper argues, it is the limited conceptualisation of social life
in a global capitalist economy in approaches to the design and modelling of sustainable housing

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that largely ignores these stark social realities. Top-down approaches to questions of
sustainability tend to reinforce these social realities, treating sustainability as a technical issue,
whilst grassroots approaches, as we will see, by their necessity have to confront and try to
change the social and natural world. The main premise of the paper on this issue is to argue that
a top-down approach of the kind articulated by Tony Fry, for example, in his book The Politics
of Design, which effectively calls for a world state to address the climate change crisis, is
politically and morally problematic. An alternative that minimally draws upon the contribution
of grassroots and democratic groups such as the Acorn community housing is essential if
sustainability is not to become the preserve of political and technical experts at the expense of
public participation.
The paper is organised in two sections. It begins by focussing upon what it sees as the
problematic nature of theorising sustainability in the design professions, even in those
articulating a participatory approach to design. It does this by drawing out the implicit
assumptions about social life that underpin dominant approaches to design before explaining
why the very meaning of sustainability must be understood in the context of the ongoing social
crises of the modern world-system itself. Piecemeal adjustments to the organising of social life
will not be enough to deal with the structural obstacles confronting the possibility of a
sustainable future. Further, an understanding of sustainable (and unsustainable) housing cannot
be abstracted from the broader social, economic and political structures which constrain and
enable social life (Roberts, Grimes and Manale, 2003). The paper then develops these points in
its discussion of two contrasting case studies (one top-down and one grassroots) before offering
initial conclusions about the possibility for producing sustainable housing. The key issue which
emerges from the case studies and from interviews with designers, architects and dwellers alike
is around the issue of control of the housing process and environment (Turner, 1972, 1977). And
this, in turn, goes to the heart of the importance that an adequate conception of social life must
play in serious analyses of sustainability, as it relates directly to issues of ownership,
bureaucracy, wealth and inequality.
2 THEORISING SUSTAINABILITY AND DESIGN: A SOCIOLOGICAL ACCOUNT
2.1 Modernity and the Modern World-System
This sections draws out the issue of sustainable housing, design and social life as global or
world-systemic issues. How should we conceptualise them on this scale and why must we do
so? The dominant narrative explaining the concept of sustainability/unsustainability is one that
situates it in the emergence of modernity itself. Modernity describes a period of history which
has its roots in the development of modern Europe from the C18 onwards when a number of
profound changes were taking place in economy, politics and society: the growth of rational,
scientific knowledge; the spread of large urban areas; the increasingly complex nature of social
life; the emergence of consumer societies; the idea that nature is a resource for humanity to
exploit; forms of mass bureaucratic organisation of work and society through the state or
corporations; the development of new forms of technology and industry largely based on fossilfuel industries as the energy source, and so on (Bauman, 2013). It is out of this nexus of
developments that the idea of modernity emerges to convey the transformation of the modern
world into forms of social organisation that see humanity taking control of and exploiting its
natural environment in unprecedented ways (Freud, 2015; Bookchin, 1982; Prew, 2003).
Indeed, for many key thinkers in this period the exploitation of the planets resources was seen as
a primary goal for humanity as it sought to generate wealth and resources in abundance. This
model of modernity spread around the world from the C17 largely driven by the expansion of
European power through colonial and imperialist activities. In so doing it became a norm to be
aspired to with its ideas embedded in the rules, practices, norms and institutions that came to
structure the worlds increasingly complex trade and political interactions.
However, it is now commonly accepted that the path to development taken by the major
capitalist states (the core) is no longer a viable option for the peoples in the periphery and semiperiphery of the modern world-system precisely because of the environmental damage wrought
by this process. It is crucial to world-systems analysis to consider the nature of the structural
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relationship between the core, periphery and semi-peripheral zones of the world-system which
emerged with the expansion of European power, colonialism and imperialism form the C16
onwards. It is this relationship of inequality, uneven development and the exploitation of the
natural resources and populations of the periphery and semi-periphery in particular that have
been the social processes that have helped generate the problems of climate change and
environmental degradation. The modern world-system has never been a linear path to modernity
but one shaped by massive inequalities of power over the distribution of wealth, access to and
control of resources and the use of force that has led to radically uneven forms of social and
economic development. This has, in turn, been legitimised by frameworks of knowledge that
have helped to legitimise the system and its inequalities (El-Ojeili, 201). These are ongoing
processes that enable and constrain policy-making at global, regional, national and local levels
of government) and serve to continue to exploit much of the worlds population, resources and
territories by the core states as part of this process (Reinert, 2007, Wallerstein, 2011a, b, and c).
Since the Rio summit of 1992 attempts have been made to find ways to modify paths to
modernity, of which the dominant idea has tended to be various forms of green capitalism that
will place the environment and sustainable development together in a single context as a global
path to modernisation (Khor, 2011: 1). This approach assumes that the market, in some form,
will find ways to address the environmental crisis by attaching a price to natural resources that
will allow for their optimal use and where possible, their reproduction (Clapp, 2001; Cock,
2011; Brand, 2012; Tienhaara, 2014). For example, the idea that there can be a trade-off
between core and periphery countries over the disposal of waste; that permits for producing
carbon can be traded between them, and so on.
From the perspective of world-systems analysis this type of narrative is problematic for a
number of reasons. First, we need to stress that the problem of environmental destruction is not
one of modernity per se but the structural properties of the modern world-system that have
tended to dominate modernity. Rather than blaming modernity in toto it is important to focus on
those aspects of modernity that have been at fault: the idea that natural resources are simply a
limitless resource to be exploited by humanity; the production of economic models (statist and
capitalist) that do not realistically account for the cost of environmental destruction (Jorgenson
and Givens, 2003; Moore, 2003); the development of a modern world-system that is shaped by
massive inequality and poverty and which thereby places the control and exploitation of natural
resources in the hands of institutions (states and private corporations) that exploit them for
private ends rather than public need. These factors are embedded in the structure of the modern
world-system and to transform them will transform the nature of the system itself. And there, of
course, is the dilemma. If world-systems analysis is correct then solutions to issues of
sustainability are rooted in the structural properties of an unsustainable world-system rather than
simply being internal to particular nation-states. Any policies that do not ultimately seek to
address the nature of the system itself will fail. So the goal of sustainability raises fundamental
questions of political, economic and military power and conflict that cannot simply be ignored if
adequate solutions are to be realised. A minor example to illustrate this can be seen in the
irrational nature of market relations with regard to environmental crisis itself. As Sharon Beder,
amongst many others, has shown, the worlds major fossil fuel corporations have been
instrumental in sponsoring public relations companies to deny the reality of climate change that
threatens the future of humanity, including the corporations themselves (Beder, 2000; 2002).
Such a deeply-rooted irrationality speaks clearly to the nature of the problems facing the
possibility of a sustainable future. Sustainability faces systemic obstacles and therefore requires
more than a piecemeal transformation of current practices (Jorgenson and Kick, 2003; Prew,
2003). Designers, too, ruefully reflect on the limits placed on the design process by the realities
of market constraints, despite often espousing anti-market principles that value aesthetics over
profit (Cuff, 1992: 35; Duffy, 2004). In interview Dick Powell and Richard Seymour responded
to the following question with obvious honesty:
Q. To what level will you compromise to satisfy your client?
A. DP: What it takes or we dont get paid!
(Conran and Fraser, 2005: 218).

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2.2 Theories of design and sustainable housing how to understand social life
This section of the paper draws out the philosophical assumption underpinning top-down
approaches to sustainable housing policy, design theory and indeed many models of social
organisation. In particular it highlights the behaviourist ideas that are often implicit in such
approaches. It then considers how these assumptions manifest themselves by way of response to
the global social crisis presented by climate change. The argument of the paper on this issue is
that even case studies at a micro level need to be situated in the broader world-systemic context.
As the sociologist C. Wright Mills noted, description and explanation is always a question of the
relationship between historical and structural factors and the particular biography of individuals,
institutions and communities. Some social sciences and design theories share many things in
common of which the most important is a form of abstraction that rests upon empiricist
assumptions about human nature. Any social theory or social policy, as Roger Trigg writes,
contains assumptions about the nature of human beings (Trigg, 1985, 1999; Stevenson, L. and
Haberman, D.L., 1998). Undoubtedly empiricist models of human nature dominate social
thought and social policy just as they do design policy. By this I mean they rest upon often
implicit assumptions that suggest human beings are, as Locke noted, a form of tabula rasa upon
which experience inscribes itself. In short, human beings have no fixed properties and are akin
to empty vessels that are shaped by experience. Why does this matter? For a number of reasons.
Most important, it suggests that if you want to change human behaviour the most effective way
of doing this is by changing their environment, as recent work by the Design Council in the UK
for reducing aggressive behaviour by NHS patients and visitors towards staff illustrates (Design
Council, 2016). Human beings can be controlled, directed, shaped and remoulded through forms
of state-led social engineering in order to produce a different kind of humanity. This is akin to
what the anthropologist James Scott has called seeing like a state, a top down view of social
life that sees people in terms of statistics, social categories and other abstractions, to be
calculate and manipulated accordingly (Scott, 1998). As Colin Ward notes, empiricist
assumptions are embedded in educational theories and approaches to social policy, there are at
least three different notions of education: the child is jug to be filled, clay to be moulded, or a
flower to be nurtured... in each the child is a novice to be taken by the hand and led through the
gates of wisdom (Ward, 1976: 120).
The philosophy of behaviourism is perhaps the most well-known expression of this sentiment
and I would argue is implicit in many approaches to environmental policy, often described
colloquially as carrot and stick approaches to changing human behaviour. Thus in design
theory and various branches of social theory one is often confronted with very thin accounts of
social life. In economics, for example, Gul and Pesendorfer argue that populating economic
models with flesh-and-blood human beings was never the objective of economics (2005, 43).
Similarly in comparative ergonomics whole nations are reduced to the most simplistic models
for understanding, for example, as being either feminine or masculine. Real people and social
relations do not feature in such models at all; rather, and again in instrumental fashion, social
reality has to bend to the assumptions of the models if they are to be effective, not the other way
around (Nyaw and Ng, 1994; Callahan, 2005). In interview with two UK specialists in
sustainable housing, one a CEO of a regional energy agency, both conceded that notions of
complexity of social life were absent from design theory (Anonymous, 1 and 4). Further, they
argued that most models for designing sustainable housing in countries like the UK and the
USA were driven by implicit behaviourist assumptions that argue that the key to success is to
transform the lived environment, and that occupants will then follow suit.
These assumptions, I argue, presents major problems precisely because they do not seriously
engage with the complexities of everyday social life and human nature. If an account of human
nature is unavoidable in any social theory or policy then it is equally the case that it is often
implicit rather than explicitly stated. There is, in fact, little scientific basis to claims about
human nature but what little there is of any substance tends to reject empiricist ideas in favour
of rationalist assumptions that argue that rather than being a blank slate from birth and shaped
by experience human beings are born with a rich and universal cognitive structure that grows
and organises our experiences and understanding of the world (Gardner, 2008: Mikhail, 2011).
The implications of this are important for how we think about social policy as it recognises that
all human beings are complex, rational agents who will bring a diverse array of experiences to
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bear in shaping and creating their environment. Assumptions about human nature are
unavoidable; any social theory, design theory, social policy rests upon them. To treat people as
blank slates that can be moulded by social policy and their designed environment lends itself
towards top-down approaches to sustainable housing as it posits the idea that people can be
viewed instrumentally as merely objects (not subjects) to be manipulated and directed by an
external agent. This point was made forcefully in 1948 by the Italian Architect Giancarlo De
Carlo who wrote the state is the principle of authority an abstraction masquerading as
something real, and can have no real contact with the one concrete reality man himself
whom it treats and manipulates as though he were just an abstraction (quoted in Ward, 1976: 89; 1996a). This is not to say that such an approach cannot work, in some sense, but it is to note
that it lends itself towards authoritarian social and environmental policies that view people as
objects to be manipulated by the market or the state in order to change their behaviour. This, I
suggest, is deeply problematic on environmental, political and moral grounds precisely because
of the idea of a good society that it contains. Such approaches pay little heed to what people
actually want, desire or need. Further, such approaches will generate as many problems as they
resolve. As the Uruguayan writer Raul Zibechi notes, when communities in Rio were forced to
move from their self-organised vernacular housing to purpose built tower blocks on the edge of
the city the new buildings rapidly fell into disarray and the vibrant communities that had been
established in the poor favelas fell apart in the alienating conditions people experienced in the
new dwellings. This relationship between top-down approaches to urban development, housing
and social alienation has been observed in the UK as well by a number of sociologists (Davis,
2009; Ward, 1973; Zibechi, 2010; 2012).
If social policy and approaches to design allowed for the rationalist account of human nature
as opposed to the empiricist one it would do two things: first it would accept that people have to
be directly involved in the production of sustainable houses, communities and workplaces if
sustainable housing is to be successful and democratic. The design process must be under
democratic control of the communities and workplaces in which it is embedded if it is to avoid
the authoritarian and instrumental approach to environmental policy that is the current
orthodoxy. Second, it would have to accept that rational human beings are endlessly creative
and that approaches to sustainable housing and communities have to allow for and accept this.
In short, sustainable housing and sustainable futures must, as Ward argues, be flexible, under
control of dwellers, adaptable to experience and their changing needs (age, family size, health)
(Ward, 1076). This has echoes with what Manzini describes as social design, design which
takes place outside the market and the state (Manzini, 2015: 65). Having presented a brief
account of the concept of sustainability and the issues confronting models of design I want to
briefly summarise my two case studies as they illustrate the issues that I have raised.
3 CASE STUDY 1: LYON TOP DOWN PARTICIPATION?
The first case-study is of a type of top-down approach to sustainable housing that embrace, at
least in part, the idea of participatory design. They, then, does it generate quite simple failings?
The Lyon case study is of a purpose built eco-apartment bloc developed in conjunction with the
French company Leroy Merlin. The aim of the bloc was to build an environmentally friendly,
zero-carbon and energy efficient building that would serve multiple dwellers. It was constructed
over a two year period and involved architects committed to participatory models of design. The
importance of this particular case is that it shows that despite the use of participatory practices
the eco-apartment that finally emerged swiftly ran into major problems because of an
inadequate conception of social life. Vast sums are being spent by states across Europe to fund
sustainable housing initiatives that serve as a subsidy to much of the building industry and
related corporations (Chakrabortty, 2015). Major landlords and landowners, too, receive huge
tax breaks from states while controlling the very land and property that are essential for people
to live (Cahill, 2001, 2015; Dorling, 2014a and b). This particular project is illustrative of many
such developments in that it is primarily aimed at a consumer market with significant disposable
income. Immediately we confront one of the anomalies of sustainable housing, that a great deal
of the money being spent is targeting the relatively affluent when in fact it is the poorest that
tend to live in the least environmentally sustainable housing (Dorling, 2014). The problem that

145
the poor face, of course, is that they do not have the money needed to attract private companies
looking to design profitable eco-apartments. Across the EU those currently defined as being at
risk of poverty or social exclusion number 120 million people (EU, 2016). These people are
only participating in market relations in a very limited sense and when extrapolated globally we
find that around 50% of the worlds population exist on less than $2 per day (Global issues,
2013; Collins, et al, 2009). Thus market initiatives mean little to the majority of the worlds
population whose housing needs, sustainable or otherwise, remain vernacular, temporary and
often highly vulnerable to state and private actors who control land and rents, creating in many
countries a militarized urban periphery where the dispossessed working and non-working
classes can be contained (Zibechi, 2007; Meek, 2014; Cahill, 2001; 2015).
Sustainable housing initiatives, as we will see in the second case study, often do not really
connect with the day to day problems of survival that the poorest communities face where
simply being able to pay the rent and resist landlords and the state is the primary challenge
(Scott, 2012). Perversely even for middle class consumers transforming their dwelling into
energy efficient and eco-friendly properties remains more expensive than not doing it. PVC
windows, well-recognised for their poor environmental impact, remain far cheaper than the
wooden windows generally viewed as being the most environmentally friendly. Why is this the
case? Largely, it seems, because it is driven by economic models of the market that place profit
at the centre of efficient economic activity and relegate environmental costs to the realm of
externalities which can be ignored (Khor, 2011; Biel, 2006; Derber and MaGrass, 2016: 185199). This economic model dominates orthodox thinking underpinning green capitalism and
does nothing to promote the shift in consciousness required to build a sustainable future. It
remains cost-effective, on such calculations, for states to subsidise the building industry and
green capitalism, for land owners to inflate rents by control of land and housing, but not costeffective for the state to subsidise affordable energy-efficient renovation of existing, often
vernacular, dwellings or the mass expansion of new eco-homes for the least well off and poor
(Ward, 1996, 1997; Scott, 2012). Against such a backdrop and with the pressing demands of
climate change this reality is clearly unacceptable.
The Lyons eco-apartment was completed in 2013 having been constructed with the aid of a
firm of architects committed to participatory design principles. So why did the project run into
problems and how does this relate to our earlier concerns about design and its conceptions of
social life? The project almost immediately ran into problems on two levels. Its equilibrium
heating system designed to keep a permanent temperature of 20 degrees was contingent on two
factors. First that windows were kept shut. Second that no additional forms of heating were used
by individual dwellers. Unfortunately this proved to be impossible. Most dwellers found it
intolerable to live in a building where they could not open their windows. This may seem a
common-sense issue but it nonetheless escaped the participatory design approach adopted by the
architects who were unable to make sense of this. As a consequence two architects moved into
the building to test this point and found that they, too, could not live in a building without
opening windows (Anonymous, 2). An idealised model was rendered flawed by the realities of
social experience. The second issue was undermined by the needs of the elderly. Those over 60
begin to feel the cold more and even with an equilibrium temperature of 20 degrees require
additional heating to remain comfortable on a daily abuses (Wright, 2004). Unfortunately
turning on portable heaters disrupts the homeostasis of the building and renders the eco-goals of
the apartment bloc unattainable.
We can see, then, how everyday social life disrupted the ambition of the designers. Could this
have been avoided? Returning to Ward we can see that a design that was flexible and open to
adjustment on the basis of experience would have been a distinct advantage here. Despite the
participatory ambitions of the designers the plans overlooked some basic social facts. The needs
of the elderly, for example, are not the same as those of the young or middle-aged. A
hermetically sealed building even with an excellent ventilation system does not compensate for
peoples natural desire to enjoy fresh air through an open window, as was made clear in
discussion with a focus group of dwellers (Focus Group, 2). The model could have worked
following an empiricist approach to human nature by trying to change peoples behaviour to fit
the design, but this is the opposite of what one would take participatory design to mean. Its
problems ultimately reflect the fact that dwellers do not control the design of their dwelling
space (a common observation made in interview) but also the ways in which
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designers/architects do not control what is built, finding their own roles reduced in importance
(Turner, 1972, 1977). As we can see, top-down approaches can fail not because of a lack of
resources, skill, expertise or political will. On the contrary, they can fail because they face
ideological and material constraints that prevent them from moving beyond their behaviourist
view of how to change the way of life of the community.
4 CASE STUDY 2: BRISTOL GRASSROOTS DWELLER CONTROL?
This section for the paper addresses one example of a grassroots approach to sustainable
housing. It does so because it helps to draw out and contrast the main differences from the
dominant top-down approaches which thus far have largely shaped the global policy response to
climate change and sustainability. In so doing this section will illustrate the advantages and
disadvantages of grassroots approaches. Acorn UK was founded in May 2014 as a part of the relaunched Acorn international (Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now).
Originally Acorn was a US-based community organising group that was set up in 1970. At its
peak it had over 500000 members across the USA. The focus was on organising the poorest
sectors of US society and in the tradition established by Saul Alinskys Industrial Areas
Foundation in Chicago in the 1950s the ethos was pragmatic rather than ideological (Ellerman,
2015). Although Acorn was linked by its critics with the Democratic Party it has always
eschewed any party political affiliation, preferring to work with political parties that will
support its goals. In practice its goals have expanded from organising communities around
issues related to housing (bad landlords, rent control, repairs) to workplace organising and voter
registration drives amongst the poorest and amongst ethnic minority groups.
The original Acorn was forced to close in 2010 after a corruption scandal was used by its
major political critics to discredit the entire organisation. It has subsequently relaunched and
gone global, establishing groups across the world from India to England and other European
countries including France, Italy and Scotland. The UK branch has 15000 members, with 6.5k
in Bristol, the first branch established in the country. Paying dues is not compulsory and thus far
only around 400 members nationwide pay monthly. Its initial aim has been to organise lowincome private sector tenants but it also has tenants in social housing and home-owners who are
struggling with mortgage payments, and repairs and maintenance. Its success in Bristol has been
immense considering the fact that it was only established in 2014. The group are now invited by
all major political parties and the city Mayor for discussions on housing issues in the city and at
the recent mayoral elections (May 2016) all major parties embraced Acorns housing charter
with the winning candidate taking it as his housing policy for the city (Marvin, 2016).
Acorns experience and role is important as an example of a grassroots approach to housing
issues and the question of sustainability for its members is implicit in their everyday lives. As
Acorn tends to attract the most marginal and precarious financial groups they are also the people
least able to take part in green capitalism in order to improve their properties (the same applies
to many landlords who own a few properties but have little resources to maintain or upgrade
them, hence they, too, are in consultation with Acorn to see what mutual advantage they can
secure from funding sources). The ultimate goal for Acorn, perhaps, is to create the situation
where tenants, as Ward described it, take over the control of their dwellings (Ward, 1073).
Looking at the question of sustainable housing through the perspective of Acorn members it
is clear that issues of class, gender, ethnicity, inequality and poverty are central to how they
view the concept. In interview one of the groups key organisers conceded that they dont have
the money to save the planet but we are prepared to fight for what we need (Focus Group, 1).
They are, for example, in consultation with Bristol Energy Trust with a view to finding ways to
reduce energy bills for members. The 2008 global financial crisis has impacted dramatically on
those with the lowest incomes across the UK but particularly so in the South where the
unbalanced nature of the UK economy has forced an escalation in property and rental prices.
Bristol is edging up towards London style rents but without the same employment market.
In interview members of the group have conceded that whilst they are fully aware of the
problems of climate change and how it impacts upon their daily life and housing they lack the
resources to address it substantively in their daily lives. Hence this is a primary reason for
joining Acorn: it represents a form of solidarity that enables the poorest sectors of society to

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bring meaningful pressure to bear on political elites and private institutions to assist them (Tait,
2015; Dencik and Wilkin, 2015). This is a classic example of what Stan Cohen has described as
the proper focus of sociology, the everyday and ordinary actions of individuals and communities
attempting to solve problems through their own initiatives and in a voluntary manner (Cohen,
1985). As Ward also notes, the natural creativity and design impulse of people is reflected in the
fact that the majority of the worlds housing and communities remain largely self-built and
maintained, without the aid of design professionals, and often generating complex structures
(Ward, 1986, 1990). The separation of design as a profession from the communities that they
nominally serve is a modern phenomenon made clear by figures both within and outside the
industries, often with deleterious effects for tenants and home-owners alike (Illich, 2005; Ward,
1993, 1996b).
Acorn co-founder Wade Rathke has a bold, global vision for the group which connects its
sectors in India, Mexico, South Korea, South Arica and Ecuador (Rathke, 2009, 2011). The
success of Acorn rests in part on the fact that it recognises that people have the ability to help
themselves by taking direct action to rebuild their housing and communities. If solidarity and
mutual aid are at the heart of this vision then it is an everyday practical common sense
understanding of how power operates that guides its activities. Rather than viewing members as
blank slates or objects to be manipulated and controlled Acorn wants an active, grassroots
membership built around solidarity, self-help, direct action and mutual aid to lead it. These
latter principles are examples of what James Scott terms the weapons of the weak (Scott,
2005; Kropotkin, 2012; Ellerman, 2015; Shantz, 2013). The importance of Acorn as a global
force is precisely that it confronts what world-systems analysts would see as the global
structural factors that have led to the creation of an unsustainable world. The local, the national,
the regional and the global are intertwined in Acorn Internationals global vision. The majority
of the worlds population still reside in vernacular housing and precarious communities. The
importance of grassroots housing organisations such as Acorn is that they help and are an
expression of these communities and how they can organise themselves. Its activities rest upon
a universal ethical assumption that every person and every community is entitled to a decent
quality of life, an assumption about what constitutes a good society. This is not something
always apparent in many of the top-down inter-governmental debates on sustainability where
the lives of those outside the core of the world-system are viewed as of less value. This is a
point illustrated by the well-known memo issued by former head of the World Bank and
Treasury Secretary to President Clinton, Larry Summers, which made the case for the peoples of
the periphery and semi-periphery accepting more pollution in return for economic benefits
(Clapp, 2001). Without a sustained commitment to universal quality of life it is difficult to see
how climate change can be averted or how sustainable housing will ever be cost-effective for
profit-seeking building firms.
Nonetheless grassroots approaches face major obstacles in their activities and fail for a
variety of reasons including: a lack of money and other resources; a lack of political power to
influence public policy; a vulnerability generated by dependence upon what is often a relatively
small cadre of activists whose voluntary or low-paid efforts tends to be unsuitable over the longterm; and the problem of key individual and groups being co-opted by state or corporate actors
in ways which undermine their grassroots outlook (Lamphere, 2015).
5 CONCLUSIONS
There are two main approaches to the issue of sustainable housing and sustainable futures that I
have identified in this paper. The first is a top-down approach that views the challenge of
climate change in terms of changing peoples behaviour. This manifests itself in theoretical
approaches to design and social policy that tend to employ carrot and stick tactics to change
peoples behaviour. This approach can work but it does lend itself towards authoritarian
conceptions of social life and the good society, viewing people as objects to be manipulated
rather than subjects making their own history.
The second, as I have argued, is a grassroots approach that seeks to organise people to take
control of their own affairs. This is crucial as the majority of the worlds population remain in
low-income or poor households and are certainly not in a position to take advantage of the
148

opportunities that green capitalism offers affluent consumers in the core (G7) countries (Biel,
2015). One possible answer here concerns the relationship between top-down and grassroots
approaches. Are they necessarily antithetical or in fact might they be necessary correctives to
each other? The answer to this will lie on developing further research in this area as the case
studies presented here are necessarily limited and hardly the basis for generating an overly
plausible answer to such a question.
The key issue is the nature of what constitutes sustainable and unsustainable ways of life and
this return us to questions as old as human societies: what is a good society? A modern worldsystem riven by the kinds of environmentally damaging practices that have shaped its history is
clearly unsustainable. A good society will be one that aims to guarantee a decent quality of life
for all people, not just those that the Occupy movement christened as the 1% (Sayer, 2015). To
achieve such a goal requires the kind of democratic grassroots organisations such as Acorn who
can enable communities and workers to take control of their social and natural environment and
prioritise environmental and social well-being. But given the balance of social forces at play in
the current world-system this seems to be hardy enough and a more likely solution will emerge
from the interlay of forces in both top-down and grassroots approaches.
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INTERVIEWS
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152


153
Womens safety in urban spaces: case study of a low-income

urban neighbourhood in Ghana
C. Wrigley-Asante & J. A. Tornuxi
Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana, Ghana
G. Owusu
Institute of Social, Statistical and Economic Research, University of Ghana, Ghana
ABSTRACT: Using household survey and in-depth interviews, this study explored the
relationship between crime and womens safety in urban spaces and its contributory factors, in a
low-income urban neighbourhood in Ghana. Womens perception of crime and safety was based
on their past experiences of crime incidents, causes, as well as the effects on their mobility. The
lack of basic infrastructure in the public spaces such as functional lighting systems, the
congestion in public spaces, narrow alleys, absence of security personnel and the presence of
gangsters are major contributory factors to feelings of insecurity amongst women. We
recommend that crime prevention methods should focus on housing upgrading and
improvement in infrastructure in such low income neighbourhoods.
1 INTRODUCTION
With increasing urbanization, there has been a noticeable upsurge in the incidences of crime in
most cities in the developing countries. As a result, there has been increasing concern about
personal security and safety in many urban public spaces in cities: transport infrastructure,
market and public toilets (Ajayi and Ajayi, 2013). The relations between fear of crime and
victimization reveal that there might not be essentially a direct relationship between
victimization and fear of crime but there is consensus that vulnerability to various forms of
crime within cities is gendered with women bearing the brunt (McCrea et al 2005; Marzbali et
al., 2012). Thus the complexity between crime, urban space and safety, has been identified as
one of the critical problems confronting womens safety in urban communities worldwide.
Therefore within the urban crime and gender discourse, womens safety in urban spaces has
emerged as a key concern globally with studies conducted mostly in the western cultural context
and a few developing countries. For instance, some studies in India have shown that inadequate
public transport facilities, market centers and public toilets, has an impact on the safety
situation, due to congestion, overcrowding, and jostling to access to public services, among
other factors (Tahir & Tahir, 2013).
There have, however, been limited studies in the Ghanaian context to show the nature of
crime and violence in urban public spaces and the implications for womens safety. This study
fills the gap by using the experiences of women in an urban low income community in Accra,
Ghana. The key objective of this paper is to ascertain womens perception of safety in the
154

community and the contributory factors. Specifically, it assesses womens individual level
characteristics as well as housing characteristics and perceived neighbourhood safety. The paper
is divided into five sections. After the introduction, the next section presents a literature review
focusing on issues highlighted in the gender, crime and safety discourse. This is followed by the
study methodology. Subsequently, data analyses have been presented and finally the study
provides some recommendations.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW: WOMENS VULNERABILITY TO CRIME AND FEAR OF
CRIME
The vulnerability of women to urban life has assumed special significance in the context of
reported unsafe situations that they are exposed to in every day urban life, having far reaching
consequences on the growth and development of the city and the country (Tahir & Tahir, 2013).
Urban settings and the way they are designed affect levels of fear which are higher amongst
women and which vary by location, space and time of day (Reid and Konrad, 2004).). The
vulnerability perspective of crime highlights the fact that females are much more fearful of
crime than males and that they feel more vulnerable than males because they are less able to
physically defend themselves and feel less in control over crime occurrence. Therefore, females
are more sensitive to the consequences of victimization (McCrea et al., 2005:9; Jackson,
2009:368). A number of explanations have been given for this phenomenon which include the
parental and societal admonitions and warnings and its effect on women (Loukaitou-Sideris,
2005), and womens greater propensity to transfer past experiences and memories of
victimization to present situations (Warr, 1984).
Some feminists also argue that the fear is caused by an existing continuity of violence
against women, which includes intimidation, sexual harassment, threats, and other nuisance
crimes with sexual undertones, which some women may encounter in public settings, including
buses and trains (Stanko, 1995). There are overwhelming evidences showing that women are
fearful and feel unsafe at particular locations and situations. These locations and situations
include: mode of transport; going out at night; walking to the nearest shops; use of public
transport, in particular train travel at night; the use of a public toilet; walking to a friends house
among others (Bell, 1999).
In addition to a person's gender, age has also been highlighted as a physical vulnerability that
is likely to influence ones fear of victimization. In effect, elderly people and children have
often been cited as having an increased fear of crime because they think that being an older
individual or a minor would stifle their ability to protect themselves during a physical attack
(Warr, 1984; Killias & Clerici, 2000). It is worth mentioning here that there are also social
vulnerabilities to crime which argues that individuals from lower socio-economic status may be
more vulnerable to crimes as they may not have many target hardening devices (Pantazis, 2000;
Owusu et al., 2015). Using the experiences of women in a low income urban neighbourhood in
Ghana, this paper discusses womens individual level characteristics (including housing
characteristics) and perceived neighbourhood safety. The contributory factors have also been
discussed as well.
3 STUDY SITE AND METHODS
This study is part of a larger project titled Exploring Crime and Poverty Nexus in Urban
Ghana. This is jointly funded by Canadas International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
and the United Kingdoms Department For International Development (DFID) as part of a
global research programme titled Safe and Inclusive Cities. The research project was jointly
carried out by the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research and the Department of
Geography and Resource Development, both of the University of Ghana. Nima was selected as
one of the low income communities in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana (Owusu et al., 2015)
because just like many other low-income urban communities, it is beset with many social and
environmental problems such as poor sanitation with unattractive scenes of heaps of
overflowing rubbish stored in open containers. Drains, which are very essential in residential

155
areas, are lacking in the area. The very well-constructed ones along roads are in a deplorable
state with most of them caving in thus has very poor drainage system (GSS, 2012).
There is also evidence of uncontrolled development that has made the community exposed to
numerous hazards and risks increasing residents vulnerability. According to the Ghana
Statistical Service (2010), the area has 19,196 occupied housing units. Majority (90%) of the
dwellers in this community live in compound houses, followed by 3.8% in separate houses and
2.2% in flats/apartments. Almost 61.2% of the households have public toilet as their main toilet
type. About 50% of the households have their liquid waste thrown into the gutter resulting in
choked gutters all over the community while 68% of household solid waste disposal is through
the public dump (container).
Figure 1. Map of Study Site. Source: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Lab, University of Ghana,
2016.
3.1 Data collection methods and the sample

Since the study concerned human subjects, ethical clearance was received from the University
of Ghanas Ethics Committee. Both quantitative and qualitative data from household survey,
key informant interviews and focus group discussions were used. The initial consultation with
156

key stakeholders facilitated easy access to community members and was guided by the projects
security and ethical protocols, which contain details regarding the procedures for making
contact with, meeting with and interviewing respondents, among others.
The sample design was a clustered, multi-stage probability sample based on a list of
enumeration areas (EAs) that were used for Ghanas 2010 Housing and Population census.
Based on this, a total of 282 females with varied socio-economic backgrounds were sampled
from the household questionnaire survey in Nima. In addition, in-depth interviews and focus
group discussions were conducted with some women from specific public spaces in the
community (such as the markets, transport terminals and public toilet facilities) to have a deeper
understanding of the issues under study. More than half of the female respondents (62.3%) were
40 years and below, implying the majority were relatively younger females. With respect to the
marital status, more than half of them (58.2%) were married. Many of the women also had very
basic education (43.5%) and there were 20.9% who did not have any form of education. The
women were of diverse ethnic backgrounds from Ghana but also a few nationals from
neigbouring West African countries. In terms of occupation, the majority (61.0%) are in the
sales and service sector mostly as petty traders. A vast majority of the women also (84.6%) live
in compound houses and a few (3.7%) occupy kiosk, containers or improvised homes.
In order to address the papers objectives, the chi-square test of independence was used to
assess whether there is a link between ones individual level characteristics and perceived
neighbourhood safety on the one hand, and ones housing characteristics and perceived
neighbourhood safety. Individual level characteristics such as their age, educational level,
marital status, prior victimization and type of housing were used. These have been supported
with the qualitative quotes from the respondents.
4 DATA ANALYSIS
The results, as shown in Table 1 reveals that for the 65 women who indicated that they felt very
safe, 24 (36.9%) were below 30 years, 28 ( 43.0%) were within the 31-40 and 41-50 age groups
and 2 (3.1%) in the group above 61. In addition to this, those out of the total of 57 women who
indicated that they did not feel safe, 27 (47.4%) were below 30, 17 (29.8%) were below 31-40
and 6 (10.5%) in the age bracket 41-50. Another 6 (10.5%) were within 51-60 whilst only 1
(1.8%) reported feeling unsafe at night. Important insight from the result is that the propensity
for one to feel unsafe rises sharply with decrease in age. This means that it is the relatively
younger groups who are likely to feel unsafe. Interestingly, we also realize that that most of
those responding that they feel very safe and safe are within similar age groups particularly the
age group below 30, albeit the pattern (i.e. increase in feeling safe as ones age fall) is not as
steady like the not safe. However, this result brings to the fore the likelihood of younger
women age cohort being exposed to various form of victimization, probably because they are
more likely to be out at night and hang around more often at these times as compared to the
aged. This is contrary to what the literature often highlights. Another plausible reason could be
the fact that these category of women are those who are within the active working age (most
often traders), who carry huge sums of monies around. They are therefore likely to be targeted
and victimized as explained subsequently.
In addition to this, the results also show significant relationship between prior victimization
and feelings of safety. In other words, differences exist among women in their levels of safety
owing to differences in their experiences with victimization. For instance, Table 1 shows that
among the 64 women who indicated that they felt very safe, 17 (26.6%) have been victimized
before, whiles 47 (73.4%) have not encountered any form of victimization. Similarly for the 122
women who indicated that they felt safe, 54 (44.3%) indicated that they have been victimized
before whiles 68 (55.7%) indicated that they have not been victimized before.

Table 1. Selected Variables and Womens Perceived Safety.

Perceived neighbourhood safety at night
Socio-demographics
Dont
Very safe
Safe
Not safe
Total
know
Age
Below 30
24 (36.9) 40 (32.0) 27 (47.4) 2 (25.0)
93 (36.5)
31-40
14 (21.5) 34 (27.2) 17 (29.8) 2 (25.0)
67 (26.3)
41-50
14 (21.5) 38 (30.4)
6 (10.5)
1 (12.5)
59 (23.1)
51-60
11 (16.9)
6 (4.8)
6 (10.5)
2 (25.0)
25 (9.8)
61 and above
2 (3.1)
7 (5.6)
1 (1.8)
1 (12.5)
11 (4.3)
65
125
57
225
Total
8 (100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
Education
None
18 (27.7) 26 (20.5) 11 (19.0) 2 (25.0)
57 (22.1)
Basic
22 (33.8) 59 (46.5) 26 (44.8) 4 (50.0) 111 (43.0)
SHS
19 (29.2) 35 (27.6) 13 (22.4) 1 (12.5)
68 (26.4)
Tertiary
6 (9.2)
7 (5.5)
8 (13.8)
1 (12.5)
22 (8.5)
65
127
58
258
Total
8 (100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
Marital Status
Single
23 (34.8) 33 (26.0) 21 (36.2) 3 (37.5)
80 (30.9)
Married/consensual
37 (56.1) 79 (62.0) 27 (46.6) 5 (62.5) 148 (57.1)
Div/sep/widow
6 (9.1)
15 (11.8) 10 (17.2)
0 (0.0)
31 (12.0)
65
127
58
258
8 (100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
Prior victimization
Yes
17 (26.6) 54 (44.3) 29 (52.7) 2 (25.0) 102 (41.0)
No
47 (73.4) 68 (55.7) 26 (47.3) 6 (75.0) 147 (59.0)
64
122
55
249
8 (100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
Source: Fieldwork, 2014.
157
Chi-square
pX2
value
22.224
.035
7.740
.551
6.494
.370
10.028
.018
Lastly, 29 (52.7%) out of the 55 women who indicated that they did not feel safe have had
victimization experiences whiles 26 (47.3%) had not. Important insight from the result is that
among women who feel very safe in the community are those who have not had victimization
experiences. This means that women who have had some form of victimization are more likely
to report feeling unsafe and these are particularly those who trade in the market spaces. Some
therefore noted that they do not feel safe as the incidence of crime (such as pick-pocketing,
purse-snatching) is high particularly during the evenings as compared to other periods of the
day.
Another public space that women reported feeling unsafe was the public toilet facility.
Indeed, about 61.2% of residents in Nima use the public toilet facilities (GSS, 2012) yet these
are places where there is limited security and women often fall prey as explained by a 29 year
old woman:
some women fear whenever they come around (the public toilet) because of
the presence of smokers (gunjar boys) who are increasing in number on daily
basis. And also, whenever the light goes off, they are scared to go to the toilet. (A
29 year old female).
Thus the presence of gangsters in an already poor infrastructure make women may feel more
vulnerable to crime (Wrigley-Asante, 2016). These findings further indicate that there are
differences among women with regards to feeling of safety on the basis of victimization
experiences. This adds on a different perspective to the gender and safety discourse in the sense
that women maybe more fearful than men but the feelings of insecurity may be contingent on
individual characteristics such as age and prior victimization.

158
Table 2. Housing Types and Womens Perceived Safety.

Perceived neighbourhood safety at night
Socio-demographics
Dont
Very safe
Safe
Not safe
Total
know
Housing type
Separate housing
2 (3.3)
12 (9.7)
2 (3.4)
1 (12.5)
17 (6.6)
4 (6.1)
1 (0.8)
0 (0.0)
0 (0.0)
5 (2.0)
Semi-detached
1 (1.5)
5 (4.0)
1 (1.7)
1 (1.7)
8 (3.1)
Flats/apartment
57 (86.4) 101 (81.5) 54 (93.1) 5 (62.5) 217 (84.8)
Compound housing
Kiosk/improvised
2 (3.0)
5 (4.0)
1 (1.7)
1 (1.7)
9 (3.5)
home
66
124
58
256
8 (100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
(100.0)
Source: Fieldwork, 2014.
Chi-square
pX2
value
19.263
.082
Apart from age and prior victimization which had significant relationship between perceived
neighbourhood safety, all the other variables (including housing types as presented in Table 2)
did not show significant relationship. However, it is also important to caution that these results,
particularly those showing significant relationship is not to be seen as causation or as the only
factors that may be influencing perceived safety among women. Indeed, some findings in the
community revealed that the absence of proper lighting system coupled with the presence of
gangsters, drug addicts and peddlers as well as the absence of the police contributed to a sense
of fear amongst women (Wrigley-Asante 2016). The concerns about the absence of street
lighting and non-functional lighting systems create a sense of insecurity among residents
particularly women (ibid). This coupled with lack of planning in the community generally
exacerbates the problem as explained 57 year old woman:
All the routes in this area are dangerous and women are very much afraid.
So me in the night I dont even go to the toilet especially at night. Am afraid
because when you have your phone or money on you, these criminals can snatch it
and even hurt you in the process. There are no proper roads, the houses are also so
close to the alleys so one can easily snatch your bag or phone and run to hide and
it will be difficult to tell who did that and most especially at night (57 year old
woman).
Thus the layout and lack of proper infrastructure are all contributory factors to feelings of
insecurity amongst women.
5 CONCLUDING COMMENTS
This study shows that assessment of the level of safety amongst women does not
depend on ones education, marital status and / housing type one lives in but rather level
of safety is likely to vary due to individual characteristics especially age and particularly
prior victimization. However, low class neighbourhoods with poorly built environment and
limited infrastructural services are also contributory factors to crime in such neighbourhoods.
Efforts must therefore be made to improve womens safety in such neighbourhoods through
housing upgrading and improvement in infrastructure in such low income neighbourhoods.
Womens safety audit should also be conducted to identify specific needs of women so as to
assist them to move freely in the community. Specific measures such as regular presence and
patrol of police officials at strategic points especially at congested and crowded spaces such as
market areas and provision of infrastructure including proper lighting and housing must be
improved in the community.

159
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was carried out with the financial support of the UK Governments Department for
International Development (DFID) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa,
Canada. However, the views expressed in this presentation are solely those of the authors.
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Crime and Disorder Bill. 1998. In B. Goldson (ed.), Youth justice contemporary policy and
practice. pp. 191-210. Aldershot, Ashgate.
Ghana Statistical Service. 2012. 2010 Population and Housing Census Report. Ghana
Statistical Service. Accra.
Jackson, J. 2009. A Psychological Perspective on Vulnerability in the Fear of Crime.
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Killias, M. & Clerici, C. 2000. Different measures of vulnerability in their relation to different
dimensions of fear of crime. British Journal of Criminology, 40(3), 437-450.
Loukaitou-Sideris, A. 2012, Safe on the move: The importance of the built environment. In V.
Ceccato (ed.), The urban fabric of crime and fear, London, pp. 85110, Springer.
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Individual, social and neighbourhood factors in perspective. Journal of Sociology, 41(1), 727.
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socio-economic urban neighbourhoods in Ghana. Ghana Journal of Geography, 8 (1), 103123.
160


161
ASHA- Affordable and Socially sustainable Housing Application.

A user-friendly tool that enables community building and social
sustainability in Housing
M. Yu & A. Zaveri
International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group, Washington DC, USA
ABSTRACT: Affordable, urban housing development projects are currently the center of much
debate and governments are struggling to provide decent adequate housing for all in our rapidly
growing cities. In the last few years, there has been growing recognition of the role of the
private sector in meeting the need for more affordable housing both in terms of quantity and
quality. The overarching concern now is to ensure that the social and environmental impact of
these developments, which often tend to be large, homogeneous and unsustainable, at least
neutral if not positive. In this context, the International Finance Corporation has recently
completed a research project to promote sustainable solutions in affordable housing. The main
output is an action guide (ASHA- Affordable and Socially sustainable Housing Application
www.ifc.org/ASHA) which provides guidelines for building owners and developers on how to
plan and build affordable housing that is socially sustainable. The guidelines are arrived at
through a meta-analysis of existing research and review of evidence of what makes
communities thrive, with case studies and approaches from housing projects from around the
world. The guidelines are categorized into the three phases of a project lifecycle i.e.,
Predevelopment, Planning & Design and Post Occupancy. The action guide (ASHA) also filters
suggestions based on the size of development, how deep is the desired social impact and the
amount of resources a developer is willing to invest.
1 BACKGROUND
One of the most prevalent issues in development is that of urbanization with an exodus of rural
populations flowing into already burgeoning and unsustainable cities. By 2030, about 3 billion
people, or about 40 per cent of the worlds population, will need proper housing and access to
basic infrastructure and services such as water and sanitation systems in the megacities of the
developing world. This translates into the need to complete 96,150 housing units per day with
serviced and documented land from now till 2030 (UNHabitat, 2005).
Access to adequate housing determines quality of life and welfare of people and place. Where
homes are located, how well designed and built, and how well they are woven into the
environmental, social, cultural and economic fabric of communities are factors that influence
the daily lives of people, their health, security and well-being. These, in turn, improve overall
human development (Woodcraft, S. 2011) and substantially reduce poverty (Zamorano, L.
2014).
Formal lending mechanisms and the private sector are addressing some of this need for
housing at the higher income level but it is at the lower end where demand and need is the
greatest (Woetzel, J. 2014). While many projects are being implemented, it has been difficult for
the private sector to participate in this affordable housing opportunity successfully. In addition
to traditional hurdles such as extensive regulatory mechanisms, lack of access to capital, little
162

access to acceptable land and very little infrastructure provision, private developers also have to
contend with the socio-economic aspects of building large housing developments that are
resilient and sustainable.
Creating cities, towns and communities that are economically, environmentally and socially
sustainable, and which meet the challenges of population growth, migration and climate change
will be one of the biggest tasks of this century. Social sustenance requires the ability to
understand and plan for complex issues, which are normally not addressed at the
conceptualization of an affordable housing project. This gap manifests itself in a reduced sense
of ownership and community among home-buyers, which in turn, can lead to vacant homes and
abandonment, defaults on home loan payments, unsafe and unhealthy neighborhoods and an
insecure, reduced quality of life.
Currently, sustainable housing is often considered from a resource-saving (green) perspective
(Drury, A. 2008). ASHA is the first of its kind: a community enhancing and socially sustainable
tool which enables sustainable housing to be approached not simply as clusters of
environmentally friendly green buildings. Social sustainability in housing is about creating
affordable, good-quality, inclusive, secure and healthy residential communities which are wellintegrated into the wider urban systems, taking into consideration cultural values, norms and
traditions, as well as lifestyles and behaviors of occupants.
The social and financial costs of failure to address sustainable and affordable housing
challenges are high. Lessons need to be learnt from affordable housing development projects
that have become high profile failures. It is now critical to understand the social dimensions of
new settlements for their long-term success and sustainability.
Towards this end, IFC has developed the ASHA tool which aims to provide guidelines
through good practice collected from around the world (from both developed and emerging
markets) that will support the development of socially sustainable residential projects. It is an
evidence based, global framework which can be adapted and contextualized for specific, local
use.
2 STRUCTURE OF THE ASHA TOOL
ASHA is first and foremost a set of comprehensive guidelines that informs the social
sustainability of a housing development. Another aspect of ASHA is that it is interactive and
enables users to implement guidelines that are most relevant for them without the need to sieve
through large amounts of data that is both time consuming and often demotivating. It has been
conceived as a tool that is inherently user-friendly and easily accessible.
A developer planning an affordable housing development will be required to undertake a
predevelopment feasibility study which will include acquisition of land, cost and economic
feasibility as well as determine need and appropriateness of the housing to be developed. Once
the parcel of land has been identified, the next phase is that of planning and design of the
project. This is also done at a less detailed level at the predevelopment level. Finally, the
developer also needs to consider aspects such as post occupation management and maintenance
of the project to ensure sustainability. The ASHA tool has been classified on the basis of these
project phases to enable developers to address social aspects of affordable housing development
at every stage.
The tool also has the ability to be filtered based on how big the project is (number of housing
units), whether the developer would like to look at only the most critical guidelines or whether
they would like to incorporate all possible social sustainability measures. It also allows filtering
based on how many resources a developer would like to put into ensuring social sustainability
such as money, time or just through informed decision making. The filtering, which runs on a
background algorithm within Excel, has specifically been developed to allow developers and
designers to focus on which of the 101 guidelines are most relevant for their specific situation.
Each of the phases of development have guidelines that have been detailed and explained and
in most cases evidenced by a case study.

163
3 ASHAS PHASED GUIDELINES

3.1 Phase A: Predevelopment
3.1.1 Location
To ensure that there is a reasonable and efficient means of transport to key employment hubs
and facilities. This will also increase environmental sustainability and reduce commuting costs.
Example guideline: When selecting a site, give priority to one that is closer to existing
housing and retail properties as well as employment hubs
3.1.2 Mixed use development
To develop mixed use communities that are vibrant and enable residents to partake in daily
activities within walking distance.
Example guideline: Develop mixed-use residential and commercial communities where the
commercial units could also subsidize elements of the affordable housing development.
3.1.3 Mixed income and diverse communities
To increase potential for social mobility and prevent the formation of ghettoes, plan mixed
income communities that are diverse and do not stigmatize a particular group.
Example guideline: Provide a variety of housing typology options including unit sizes, to
accommodate people of different ages and differing family structures. Consider single-family
houses, row houses and flats within a single development.
3.1.4 Densities
Make housing developments compact and adequately dense to ensure that they are affordable to
build, energy efficient and increase the sense of community.
Example guideline: Create 'defined neighborhoods or clusters' of not greater than 200-250
units per hectare. This size is optimum to achieve economies of scale and to form a cohesive
community.
3.1.5 Resident services
A developer of affordable housing, will need to provide services that are different from the ones
provided for market-rate developments. These services could be provided through subsidiaries
or appropriate partners.
Example guideline: Consider partnering with an NGO specialized in micro-enterprise and
employment support. This is a key to ensuring low vacancy and default rates.
3.1.6 Design and planning strategy
Designers of affordable housing need to be able to think beyond space efficiencies and function.
A 'good design' that is sympathetic to the cultural needs of the users and understands the social
consequences of design interventions, can greatly enhance the social success of a housing
project and also has the potential to reduce cost.
Example guideline: Establishing a strong vision/ image/ shared value for the development
throughout its planning, design and construction is important in attracting new residents who
share values around a particular element of their lifestyles.
3.1.7 Targeted marketing and allocation
To ensure that the target population is aware of the project and comprehends the development's
appropriateness for their particular needs.
Example guideline: Market to the targeted demographic by developing strategies that speak to
and are accessed by the group. E.g. Use local television channels, vernacular languages, set up
temporary/mobile stalls in or near markets etc.
3.1.8 Labor
Building capacity among residents to undertake construction work will not only improve
employment prospects but will also enhance maintenance.
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Example guideline: Where possible use or train local residents to work on the project. This
will build capacity and enhance employment prospects.
3.2 Phase B: Planning and design
3.2.1 Site planning
To provide a sense of place to residents that is distinct, recognizable, and memorable. A space
has a 'sense of place' when specific physical elements and their arrangement capture attention,
evoke feelings, and create a lasting impression.
Example guideline: Avoid superblocks (grid between roads) which are more than 400-500 m
wide. A greater variety of streets and blocks can convey character, increase connectivity and
enhance walkability.
3.2.2 Open spaces & streets
Clean, green and well defined open spaces are the key to good imageability and a healthy
environment. Vibrant and well connected streets and clusters will ensure a sense of
neighborhood and will increase the sense of security.
Example guideline: Provide inconspicuous and convenient (easily accessible) refuse
collection areas that have a drain and/or water supply for cleaning the area. Space/s for larger
waste disposal as well as construction waste should also be provided.
3.2.3 Building design
To provide a built environment that is inclusive, promotes a sense of community and improves
resident perceptions of security and belonging.
Example guideline: Plan for incremental building, when the bare minimum of space is
afforded to a family. Assume that the household will be able to save to increase their living
space and ensure that the structure has the potential to support incrementality.
3.2.4 Internal space design
Efficiently designed internal spaces that cater to the needs of the target clientele will ensure that
there is little angst in the day to day functioning of the household and will increase resilience
and improve mental health.
Example guideline: Ensure that each habitable room receives enough light and is adequately
ventilated, depending on climatic needs. It is better to provide larger windows which have
adequate shading (where required) but give access to views of the outside. Window sills in
living/ dining/ bedrooms should be no higher than 80 cm from finished floor level. Ensure that
there is a safety barrier for windows that have sills lower than 80 cm from the floor.
3.3 Phase C: post occupancy
3.3.1 Resident capacity
To improve the capacity of new residents to participate and manage their new homes and build a
community. To increase the level of social capital that will prevent crime, support enterprise and
education, keep people healthy and make things happen locally.
Example guideline: Create financial awareness. New home owners have not had much
experience with home-ownership and would benefit from basic training to get an understanding
of financial obligations, including property taxes, homeowners insurance, appropriate loan
products, and replacement reserves. Hold financial literacy workshops to enable residents to
manage their own household budgets.
3.3.2 Property management
To establish an efficient and effective property management strategy that will ensure the
resilience of the community and the development.
Example guideline: Provide maintenance training to residents. Create a generic building
maintenance manual which can be referred to when anyone requires it which includes all
building plans.

165
3.3.3 Community building

Socially successful communities will have residents that have a strong sense of belonging and
are invested in their built environment. New housing residents will need to be supported to
enable the sense of community.
Example guideline: Avoid one off community building activities. Events and activities that
are planned regularly for festivals, religious events, holidays or a regular farmers market will
help jump start a new community and increase participation.
3.3.4 Grievance process and monitoring mechanism
Remain invested in past projects as a strategy for learning and to ensure goodwill among clients.
Example guideline: Ensure honest and transparent communication channels are open between
main stakeholders. A committee comprising of representatives from the community and
developer should be formed to arbitrate and resolve any building quality or maintenance related
issues.
4 RESEARCH METHOD: EVIDENCE, GOOD PRACTICE AND CASE STUDIES
All guidelines in the ASHA tool have been developed by researching well established sources in
the field of affordable housing and community housing. Where possible the guidelines have
been further supported through a study of case examples exhibiting good practice as well as live
case studies including interviews with housing developers, professionals and users.
Figure 1.
Most guidelines have a link showing which case example it has been drawn from and users of
the ASHA tool can also choose to access descriptive case studies that provide more information
about the particular housing project.
Examples of case study descriptions (IFC clients) can be seen below.
4.1 Predevelopment
4.1.1 Manhattan Mews, Umhlanga, South Africa
Built by/ Developer/ Financed by: Avoca Developments; International Housing Solutions (IHS),
South Africa.
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Description:
o The Mews, comprising of 477 housing units is divided into individual units,
townhouses or flats, which are sold separately. Thus, tenure is held by the property
owner over a section of the property, not the whole property. The sectional title
property has common areas, such as stairways and lifts that belong collectively to all
the owners of the units. The sectional title complex is managed by a corporate body,
who takes care of the day-to-day management of the complex e.g. employment of
maintenance staff, upkeep and collection of levies. All the owners of the individual
units are members of the corporate body and pay monthly levies to contribute to the
day-to-day running expenses. These units are the first development in the province of
KwaZulu-Natal financed by International Housing Solutions, a global private equity
firm.
o The Mews will have similar amenities to other, more expensive housing
developments in the area, including pool areas. This is set to make the units an
attractive investment.
o The housing development, constructed by Avoca Developments, will consist of multistorey blocks with a focus on a lifestyle living environment. Units will vary in size
from units of 37m2 up to units of 55m2. It will also include 61 inclusionary units to
incorporate a social housing aspect.
o The development is part of the on an existing development called the Gateway
precinct in Umhlanga and it provides an opportunity to people who would not have
been able to afford living in the area.
Socially successful attributes: Located near existing development, well established housing
management strategy, variation in housing typology, aspirational amenities
4.2 Planning & design
4.2.1 VBHC Vaibhav, Bangalore, India
Built by/ Developer: Value Budget Housing Corporation.
Description:
o Value & Budget Housing Corporation Pvt. Ltd. (VBHC) is a professionally managed
real estate company which believes that good quality living should be within
everyones reach. VBHC homes are meticulously planned and designed to give ones
family the true experience of modern living and as the name suggests, every home
will be high on value and lower on budget. VBHCs objective is to provide
housing that meets high quality standards, ensure speedy completion and deliver at
low cost. These objectives are best met through the application of contemporary
building technology and the adoption of ingenious industrial engineering processes.
The company commissioned a detailed research to evaluate various Form Systems,
their comparison with traditional brick-and-mortar building methods and then chose
the optimum solution in the Indian context which delivers tremendous time and cost
savings.
o VBHC has been able to transform real estate development into a lean industrial
process with the use of 'form' technology for construction. At present, VBHC has
projects in Bangalore, Chennai, NCR & Mumbai.
o Vaibhava Bangalore is a flagship project and they are redefining the rules of
affordable housing. Vaibhava Bangalore combines the dual benefits of quality
construction with affordable price. This project is easily accessible to schools,
commercial areas, restaurants, health centers, etc.
o Upon completion, Vaibhava encompasses development of 1.1 million sq ft of real
estate that will include 1,854 apartments, a primary health centre, a commercial
complex tower and other amenities, including landscape gardens, security, childrens
play area, clubhouses and volleyball courts.
o The apartments that are on offer range from studio, 2 BHK and 3 BHK which vary in
size from 614 sq ft to 989 sq ft. The apartments are compact and have been
meticulously planned such that the space usage does not compromise functionality.

167
The space planning ensures allocation for every essential home need- a kitchen
counter, refrigerator, washing machine, loft storage, wardrobe niche, besides
ensuring zones for living, sleeping and wash activities. Provision of a separate WC,
bath and wash basin allows simultaneous use of these by three people, so that the unit
occupation can be higher without any inconvenience. 6th and 7th floors come with
built in solar geysers. The balcony serves as a multi-purpose break out space.
Socially successful attributes: Amenities, open spaces, energy efficiency, healthy living and
community building, location efficiency.
4.3 Post occupancy
4.3.1 Real Paraiso, Central Mexico
Built by/ Developer: Corporativo Vinte, Mexico.
Description:
o Vinte focuses on middle income housing. The companys focus is on economic and
middle income housing with an average price of MXN600k (range of MXN300k
MXN2 million). It serves the D+, C and C- demographics. Customers are young
working adults, schoolteachers, bus drivers, factory workers, and office workers, with
annual household incomes ranging from US$8,000 to $30,000. About 75 percent of
them rely on integral government-sponsored programs to finance their purchase.
Many are first-time homebuyers, and many come from Mexico Citys informal
housing settlements, where they had limited access to clean water, electricity,
sanitation, roads, schools, and parks.
o The company offers eight types of houses, from entry-level to middle-income. A
typical entry-level home is about 450 square feet and consists of a kitchen, a livingdining area, two bedrooms, and one bathroom. A middle-income home consists of a
kitchen, a dining room, a living room, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms.
o Its model relies on homebuyers being able to access third party mortgages. Vinte
facilitates the process and helps to educate the customers.
o Vinte seeks to differentiate itself from competitors by building attractive good quality
homes in convenient locations within or close to urban centers with infrastructure
such as schools in the vicinity.
o Vinte believes in building communities not just homes. It creates small clusters of
houses and puts in place community infrastructure such as a community portal,
broadband, parks and play areas and security systems. The higher middle income
schemes have sports centers. Many of the schemes include pools. Residents pay
community fees toward the maintenance of these communal facilities, and VINTE
trains new homeowners in how to jointly manage the development.
o Vintes interest in sustainability extends to green buildings they are the first housing
company worldwide to have been awarded (in 2012) the IFC Edge certificate. They
place an emphasis on efficient use of water and energy. The company uses modern
infrastructure services and innovative technologies such as rooftop solar cells to help
homebuyers save money on electricity bills and other maintenance costs. VINTE also
encourages homeowners to use water, gas, and lighting efficiently, enabling them to
save money on utility bills. The company has won six national housing awards, most
recently for building environmentally-friendly communities.
o Good estate management is important to Vinte. It creates rules for the community to
ensure the ongoing quality of the schemes and will run the resident committee from
the sale of the first home to a year after the sale of the final home. By handover it
will ensure that local residents have been supported to develop the skills needed to
take over the management of the community.
o Vintes homes are very well designed. They make very efficient use of space and
design in such a way that many of the properties can be extended. All properties have
some outside space, even if it is just a small balcony of yard.
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o Given the well designed and well located homes, VINTEs houses increase in value
over time, appreciating up to 10 percent per year, owning these houses is an important
way for low and middle income families to build equity over time.
Socially successful attributes: Innovation, technology, leisure amenities, green, property
management, mixed income community, partnership.
5 LIMITATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH
The ASHA tool will benefit from a quantitative data set which will enable developers to
quantify the value of following the guidelines both economically for themselves as well as for
the end users. A dollar value associated with each guideline will make the tool more appealing
to investors, private developers as well as the users themselves.
The ASHA tool provides a broad and global framework for socially sustainable housing. In
order to use it in specific locations or sites, each of the guidelines will need to be contextualized.
The IFC plans to undertake this in a few countries with ongoing projects.
6 CONCLUSIONS
This paper provides a background and details of a research project undertaken by the
International Finance Corporation to provide relevant guidelines to private developers to plan
and build affordable housing which is socially sustainable.
Our research finds that certain key principles should be part of any discussion or project that
involves affordable housing provision not only through developer led projects but also for
projects that are public-private partnerships or for that matter purely government led. These are:
x Housing should be a platform for improving quality of life and creating
neighborhoods of opportunity.
x Housing projects should enable strong partnerships with residents to create inclusive
and equitable planning and development.
x The development of housing projects should not be considered in isolation but must
take a place based and regional approach all the while addressing the needs of
individuals and families.
x The long term social sustainability of the community should be given a priority by
building a strong infrastructure both physically and socially and ensuring green
development.
x A development should encourage collaboration across organizations and other stake
holders and partners to address the complex needs of the community such as
employment, health care, education and transportation.
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Construction. USA: Oxford University Press.
Bernstein, L. & PRP Architects. 2009. East Thames Design Guide. London: East Thames Group.
Bredenoord, J., Van Lindert, P. & Smets, P. 2014. Affordable Housing in the Urban Global South:
Seeking Sustainable Solutions. London: Earthscan.
Calavita, N. & Mallach, A. (eds.). 2010. Inclusionary Housing in International Perspective: Affordable
Housing, Social Inclusion, and Land Value Recapture. United States: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
City of Virginia Beach Municipal Center. 2000. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.
Virginia Beach: City of Virginia Beach Municipal Center.
Davis, S. 1997. The architecture of affordable housing. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Drury, A. 2008. Standards and Quality in Development: A Good Practice Guide. London: RIBA and
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Dunmore, K. 1992. Planning for Affordable Housing. USA: Chartered Institute of Housing.

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Feldman, R. M. & Chowdhury, T. 2002. Livable and Affordable, Good design is an essential component
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Goody, J., Chandler, R., Clancy, J., Dixon, D. & Wooding, G. 2005. Building type basics for housing.
New Jersey: J. Wiley & Sons.
Hecht, B. L. 2006. Developing Affordable Housing: A Practical Guide for Nonprofit Organizations. New
Jersey: John Wiley & sons.
Housing Corporation. 2007. Housing Quality indicators. London: Housing Corporation.
Jacobs, J. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
Katz, P. & Bressi, V. T. 1993. The new urbanism: towards an architecture of community. New York:
McGraw-Hill Companies.
Monk, S. & Whitehead, C. 2010. Making Housing more Affordable: The role of intermediate tenures.
UK: Wiley-Blackwell and RICS research.
Myerson, D. L. 2007. The Business of Affordable Housing: Ten Developers' Perspectives Washington
DC: Fannie Mae Foundation.
Rohe, W. M. 2007. Chasing the American Dream: New Perspectives on Affordable Homeownership.
USA: Cornell University Press.
Sandra Abramson, S. 2011. Best Practices in Property and Asset Management: A Study of Affordable
Housing in New York City. New York: Tem-Pro-Tech, Inc. Available at:
http://www.enterprisecommunity.com/resources/ResourceDetails?ID=67498.pdf.
Schlyter, A. 1992. A Place to Live: Gender Research on Housing in Africa. Uppasala: Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet.Tighe, J. R. & Mueller, E. J. (eds.). 2012. The Affordable Housing Reader New York:
Routledge.
Turner, J. F. C. 1976. Housing By People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments.
London: Marion Boyars Publishers.
UNHabitat. 2005. Facts and Figures about financing urban shelter. Nairobi: UNHABITAT.
Woetzel, J., Ram, S., Mischke, J., Garemo, N. & Sankhe, S. 2014. A blueprint for addressing the global
affordable housing challenge. USA: McKinsey Global Institute.
Woodcraft, S., Hackett, T. & Caistor-Arendar, L. 2011. Design for Social Sustainability: A framework for
creating thriving new communities. London: Future Communities. Available at:
http://www.futurecommunities.net/files/images/Design_for_Social_Sustainability_0.pdf.
Zamorano, L. & Kulpa, E. 2014. People-Oriented Cities: Mixed-Use Development Creates Social and
Economic Benefits. Washington DC: WRI. Available at: http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/07/peopleoriented-cities-mixed-use-development-creates-social-and-economic-benefits.
170

Chapter 2
Financing and management of social housing

Chapter 2: Financing and management of social housing
173
Social housing finance in Australia as a missing or incomplete

market: a review of the literature
G. Earl & J. Kraatz
Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia
B. Liu
Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, Griffith Business School, Griffith University,
Nathan, Queensland, Australia
S. Mohamed, E. Roca & N. Jayawardena

Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia
ABSTRACT: Currently, there is a severe shortage of social housing in Australia. In order to

address this pressing problem, there is an urgent need for huge investment into this sector,
which would require the participation of private institutional investors. This paper analyses this
issue from a new perspective or a new lens. It applies the missing market or incomplete
market theory to review the existing literature relating to social housing finance. The existing
studies on social finance, while very useful and having important practical outcomes, are often
not solidly guided by scientific theory. This paper therefore fills this gap. It attempts to identify
the plausible reasons which cause missing/incomplete markets, in general, and in relation to the
social housing finance area, in particular. The review also pinpoints potential solutions to the
missing or incomplete social housing finance market and recommends potential areas for future
research.
1 INTRODUCTION
Markets are the central institutions of economies, allowing people to buy and sell goods and
services in a manner that potentially makes everyone better off. However, markets can only be
formed under certain conditions, and when these conditions are absent, markets may struggle to
exist or the conditions may lead to market failures. This is the basic underlying principle of
missing or incomplete markets; that is, failure to produce some goods and services despite being
needed or wanted. It is well known that microeconomic equilibrium occurs when the demand
for goods is equal to the supply. A missing market, therefore, is a sign that the market is out of
equilibrium; a situation where markets do not exist or where the equilibrium price is not related
to either marginal social benefits or marginal social costs.
For decades, Australia has been failing to meet the housing needs of its lowest income
residents, and the situation is getting steadily worse. The most recent statistics show that
240,000 households across the country are on waiting lists for public and community housing
(Milligan et al., 2015)1. Nevertheless, around 6% of these people needing long-term
accommodation who seek help from homelessness services actually receive it2. Social housing
is something which is typically provided by local councils and by bodies such as housing
associations for a subsidised3 value. Many people on low incomes cannot afford to buy their
own homes, and housing rents have also become increasingly unaffordable in recent years.
Therefore, by definition, sustainable housing means that everyone should have the opportunity
to live in a decent home at a price they can afford, in a place in which they want to live and
174

work. However, the current social housing situation suggests that this issue is only partially
addressing the growing demand for social housing. Social housing evolves through various
channels in Australia. In 2003 the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA)
established an agreement to meet the housing needs of people for the duration of their needs.
This arrangement provided access to safe and affordable accommodation as an alternative to
private rental. The CSHA lasted for five years, providing 400,000 dwellings on a yearly basis to
households in need (Australia Institute of Housing and Welfare, 2010). During this five-year
period, over 170,000 households were on a waiting list for social housing. However, over time,
funding for the management of CSHA was depleted and was exacerbated by the property price
hike, which tightened supply and created the potential for an increase in homelessness across
Australia.
In order to address this acute shortage of social housing in Australia, there is a need to boost
social housing supply and it is estimated that this would require around A$7 billion of
investment annually. However, government subsidies for social housing are declining in
financial terms (Financing affordable housing: a critical comparative review of the United
Kingdom and Australia, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), 2014).
Private sector institutional investment has also been insignificant (Earl, 2014). Hence, the social
housing finance market in Australia is a clear case of a missing or an incomplete market. There
is an urgent need for innovative financing mechanisms to be created in order to address this
missing or incomplete market phenomenon in social housing finance.
Our paper reviews the existing literature in the context of social housing finance and analyses
the present situation using a new lens, eventually suggesting the need for innovative financing
models, which can be used to bridge the gap in financing. In Section 2 of this paper, we
examine the factors that limit/cause missing markets and provide a discussion of the modelling
approaches to incomplete/missing markets. In Section 3, we review the literature related to
social housing finance as a missing market, and propose a model which can be used to solve the
financing constraints of the social housing market. Section 4 concludes the paper.
2 THEORY OF A MISSING OR INCOMPLETE MARKET
2.1 Factors that limit formation and completion of markets
Market failure occurs when some costs and/or benefits are not fully reflected in the market
price. For environmental assets, markets can fail if prices do not communicate societys desires
and constraints accurately. Prices often understate the full range of services provided by an
asset, or do not exist to send a signal to the market place about the value of an asset. That is,
market failure is any feature of the market that reduces allocative efficiency4. This is the basic
underlying principle of market failure. Theoretically, government intervention can increase
these benefits (economic welfare). However, in practice and in some cases, this is debatable. In
such cases, incentives become distorted and buyers and sellers exchange quantities that end up
making them collectively worse off. The entrepreneur who can both identify a missing market
and supply it stands to make a fortune. Sometimes reaching that market is a race. Any
entrepreneur who can first supply the required product at a desirable price will have a leg up on
the competition. The real money is to be made in developing a new product after identifying a
missing market for it.
Many scholars state that the most extreme case of a missing market is in the case of pure
public goods. Pure public goods clearly provide a benefit to the consumer, but, for several
reasons, they are unlikely to exist in the market economy. It is a special case where there is a
demand but no supply. The market mechanism is likely to fail to supply pure public goods
because entrepreneurs are unlikely to enter the market, given the impossibility of charging
consumers at the point of consumption. Because suppliers are not able to generate any revenue,
or make a profit, a necessary condition for the formation of a market is absent, namely the
absence of a profit incentive. With no incentive, entry into the market is deterred, resulting in a
missing market.
Bromley (1989) argues for intertemporal externalities as missing markets in which future
generations are unable to enter bids to have their interests protected. Consider a situation where

175
the present generation takes an action on certain costs - such action precluding, ten years hence,
accounting certain damages to those living at that time. While the assumption of certainty here
is unrealistic, it will simplify the story and help to focus attention on the pertinent analytical
issue. The interests of the future are only protected by an entitlement structure that gives the
present generation a duty to consider the interests of the future. Future generations thus obtain a
correlated right. Thus, Bromley (1989) classifies two aspects of missing markets. The first is
asymmetrical externalities - in which only the present generation is able to act so as to relieve
the future of unwanted costs. The second aspect is when the present generation is faced with the
choice of spending funds today that will have the effect of reducing (or eliminating) future
damage. Because the future generation is not able to have its interests represented in this matter,
Bromley (1989) suggest that in this instance, a missing market exists.
Note. The shaded area in blue represents the welfare loss.

and
are the equilibrium price and
quantity respectively and ( in blue) are the price and quantity after adjusting the negative
externalities respectively. and ( in red) are the price and quantity after adjusting the positive
externalities respectively.
Figure 1. The case of goods with positive consumption externalities.
Externalities and public goods are related because externalities tend to occur in public good
media. (e.g., air or noise pollution, CO2 buildup (negative externality) and education/training
(positive externality)). This scenario is depicted in Figure 1-[I] shaded in blue, where beginning
at fairly low output levels, others begin to be harmed by increasing consumption of the goods
generating negative externalities. Hence, the true social benefit of consuming goods with
negative externalities lies below the private benefits, as shown in the blue dashed line in Figure
I-[I]. The equilibrium quantities of activities giving rise to negative externalities is too large at
, relative to the socially optimal quantities, as shown as . The welfare loss from
too much of the offending activity, which causes negative externalities, is represented in the
area shaded in blue. The missing market here stems from the fact that negative impacts on those
harmed do not register with those engaging in activities giving rise to those negative impacts.
Thus, one way to correct this situation, first advanced by Pigou (1920) is to increase the price
(by a tax or fine) on those consuming the goods in an amount equal to the marginal
damages they impose on those harmed. If a tax is charged in an amount equal to the vertical
distance between
and
, those consuming the
damaging goods will face a full price of , which will result in of the
offending activity being chosen. Therefore, the tax will replace the missing market, returning
society to the desirable efficiency results of the perfect market case. That is, the goods will be
valued by society at an amount that includes any remaining environmental damage. Similarly,
the case of positive externality is represented in red in Figure 1-[II]. Pigous (1920) policy
implication is that the positive implication will subsidise the buyer of the goods, providing an
incentive to purchase more goods.

176
Coase (1960) first proposes a theory to solve problems of externalities and the provision of
public goods. He states,
It is always possible to modify by transactions on the market the initial legal
delimitation of rights. And, of course, if such market transactions are costless, such
a rearrangement of rights will always take place if it would lead to an increase in
the value of production (Coase, 1960, p.15).
Essentially, the Coase theorem asserts that in the absence of transactions costs, the capacity to
offer other agents inducements to change their behaviour provides the functional equivalent of
the missing market(s) in external effects. Thus, the circumstances under which Coases theorem
is operable is somewhat limited.
Coase's (1960) analysis is illustrated in Table 1, a resort and a paper mill, which may operate
on a certain lake or which may relocate. The resort would be willing to pay the paper mill up to
, to operate elsewhere, and the paper mill would be willing to do so for any payment of
at least . Therefore, the resort can profitably (for both firms) induce the paper mill to
relocate if and only if , which is the necessary and sufficient condition for
relocation of the paper mill to be efficient. In Table 1, the actions of the paper mill operator
affect the payoffs of the resort owner but not vice versa, so only one market is missing, the
market for control of the paper mill's pollution.
Table 1. The paper mill and resort problem.

The resort
(R)

On the lake

Elsewhere

Source: Bigelow (1993) p. 2.

The paper mill (PM)

On the lake
Elsewhere

The Coase theorem is only derived when only one market is missing. Bigelow (1993)
modifies the Coase theorem to a scenario where more than one market is missing. He introduces
side payments using a bimatrix game involving externalities, and the resulting equilibrium is
called an induced equilibrium. When induced equilibria exist, they weakly Pareto-dominate the
Nash equilibrium of the original game without side payments. When, because of externalities,
one market is missing, an induced equilibrium always exists, is uniquely valued, and is Paretoefficient. When more than one market is missing, induced equilibrium may not exist, may be
Pareto-inefficient, and may be Pareto ranked. Bigelow (1993) suggests that it is the possibility
that one agent could "buy out" the other. The buying agent would then internalize all the costs
and benefits and she (he) would have an incentive to bring about an efficient outcome.
Missing market phenomenon can be caused by simple demand shifts, or the effects of timing
on the market. Similarly, missing markets can be attributed to much more complex factors. One
example is the electric car. Customers may wish to purchase these cars, but are hesitant to do so
because of a lack of information about their long-term performance, as well as the availability of
charging stations. Suppliers, on the other hand, are hesitant to produce these cars because
customers are still unsure about the future of these vehicles. This lack of coordination and
communication has created a missing market in the car industry. A missing market can also be
caused by lack of technology to produce a good, or by a lack of information. Moreover, people
impacted by air and water pollution (negative externalities) may demand the service of
remediation of the current pollution levels. A missing market exists in this example because of
the difficulty in identifying who is responsible for the pollution. Stiglitz et al. (2000) categorize
market failures into six groups failure of competition, public goods, externalities, incomplete
markets, information asymmetries and unemployment and other macros economic disturbance.

177
Morey (2015) identifies six categories of market failure common property, externalities,
public commodities, excess market power, lack of markets, and distortions in capital markets.
Using a health insurance market as an example, Frakt (2011) categorizes the reasons for
market failures into three groupsfailure of competition, incomplete markets and information
asymmetries. According to Frakt (2011), in the sphere of health insurance, the competition can
never be perfect. Insurance policies are not identical. Thus, one can think of each policy as a
unique product with its own degree of monopoly power. However, there are lots of proposed
solutions to this, such as: antitrust enforcement, competition across state lines, deregulation at
various levels, including elimination of minimum benefits standards, and so on. Frakt (2011)
defines an incomplete market as being one where the consumers would be willing to pay more
than the cost of a good or service, but it is not provided. In the US, the market for prescription
drug insurance for Medicare beneficiaries was glaringly incomplete until 2006. The market for
hospital and physician services insurance for the elderly was also incomplete until 1996.
Government responses in all these cases (banning medical underwriting, encouraging
exchanges, offering Medicare) are designed to address the incompleteness of health insurance
markets. The third reason Frakt (2011) identifies as a cause of market failure is information
asymmetry. Information asymmetry exists when one participant in a market transaction knows
more than another in ways that pertain to cost or price. Such asymmetries abound in health
insurance. Individuals have private knowledge about expected utilization that insurers lack,
leading to adverse selection. Individuals also may know more about their personal value of the
insured services than do insurers, leading to moral hazard. Providers know more than insurers
about cost and quality, leading to inefficient levels of reimbursement. Private entities are likely
to be just as capable of limiting moral hazard (e.g., by cost sharing or care management) and
discovering cost and quality information (e.g., combating fraud) as government. Private entities
can also address the degree of selection into their products, but not without exacerbating the
problem of incomplete markets (e.g., not offering services that attract high risk enrollees or
attempting to shed high risks).
Furman (2008) highlights three specific reasons for market failures5. He states that
laws/regulations can impact upon the formation of markets. Laws or regulations, either
deliberately or inadvertently, can favour certain products or financial instruments, making it
harder for alternative and potentially more attractive markets to develop. One example,
according to a 2008 Hamilton Project paper by Caplin, Cunningham, Engler, and Pollock (2008)
is the way that householders finance their house purchases. Caplin et al. (2008) argue that an
attractive way to finance a house is through shared-equity mortgages, a product that would
allow families to mitigate some of the financial risk associated with buying a home by having to
repay the bank less money in the event that the house falls in value. But shared-equity
mortgages are virtually nonexistent today, in part because they have a hard time competing
against the tax benefits that are reserved exclusively for traditional, pure-debt mortgages. Caplin
et al. (2008) propose levelling the playing field in the mortgage market by allowing tax
deductions for shared-equity mortgages, and other regulatory reforms that they believe would
allow the private market to alleviate some of the risks of home ownership.
Second, Furman (2008) states that market failures could impede the creation of a market. One
classic example of this scenario in insurance markets is adverse selection, a phenomenon that
occurs when individuals know more about their own risks than the insurer does. Those
individuals with the lowest level of risk may decide it is not worth buying insurance. When they
drop out, people with higher levels of risk remain in the pool and drive up insurance prices,
leading even more people to drop out and driving prices still higher. The result can be to
eliminate potentially valuable markets. Adverse selection is a major issue in health insurance,
but it is one that can potentially be overcome with the right government policies. For example,
another Hamilton Project discussion paper by Emanuel and Fuchs (2007) proposes giving
individuals risk-adjusted vouchers to buy health insurance from private firms, a process that
would enable private market competition to focus on improving quality rather than just
attracting the healthiest workers.
Third, behavioural obstacles might impede the creation of valuable markets. This problem
may particularly afflict markets designed to reduce risks and provide financial services, since
people may have predictable biases that lead them to avoid purchasing particular products. Gale
et al. (2006) identify behavioural biases as being another impediment to the development of the
178

market for lifetime income products. Individuals may be reluctant to turn a large sum of money
into a series of smaller monthly payouts, despite the many benefits of this system. One way to
help overcome these behavioural obstacles is through institutional mechanisms that default
people into trial lifetime income payments, and through inertial decision-making, encouraging
them to stay with the product. In conclusion, market-based or market-like solutions can be an
attractive way to help solve a number of social problems and reduce the risks faced by
individuals and communities. In some cases, this is just a matter of eliminating the obstacles to
these markets. But in many other cases, market failures and behavioural obstacles make a freemarket solution untenable, leaving a critical role for an effective government to help create the
conditions for sound markets to flourish. Market-based solutions are a useful complement to the
traditional, critical role of an effective government in fostering broad-based economic growth
and economic security.
Many economists consider that information asymmetry is a major source of market failures
as it affects how individual assess the quality of goods and services available in the market place
(Akerlof, 1970; Spence, 1976; Stigliz, 2000). However, it is observed that asymmetric
information also creates the conditions for entrepreneurs to search for new business
opportunities, leading them to find ways to acquire more and more accurate and complete
mutual knowledge of potential demand and supply attitudes (Kirzner, 1997). Therefore,
Barbaroux (2014) claims that information asymmetry plays a dual role as it raises transaction
costs and generates market failures but at the same time, creates market opportunities, providing
incentives to develop innovations through the creation of new ventures. Figure 2 depicts the
factors affecting the missing market concept in generic form.
Figure 2. Summary of factors affecting missing markets (generic case).
3 SOCIAL HOUSING FINANCE AS A MISSING OR INCOMPLETE MARKET

As mentioned, it is estimated that around AUD7 billion of investment is needed annually to
address the social housing shortage. The national and state governments, given their budgetary
challenges, will not be in a position to meet this funding need by themselves. Hence, there is an
urgent need for private sector institutional investment. As also mentioned, unfortunately at this
stage, just a pittance is provided by the institutional investor sector (Earl, 2014).
Hence, the social housing finance market itself is missing or incomplete. There is a huge
imbalance between the supply of and demand for social housing funds which can be represented
by Figure 3 below. However, the estimated amount of AUD 7 billion could be even more if we
account for the social demand. It is unclear whether the models and funding solutions discussed
in the literature account for both private and social demand (accounting for possible
externalities) or just for private demand only.

179
Figure 3. Supply of and demand for funds.
A long-standing challenge in enabling affordable housing is to establish a sufficiently large

and continuous stream of funding; which would ideally be predictable, sustainable and
responsive in catering for the rising demand. It is well understood that government alone cannot
cope up with the increasing demand for social housing financing. Hence, there is an urgent need
to look at innovative ways to fund this need with the collaboration of private institutional
investors. The AHURI research paper Financing rental housing through institutional
investment outlines some key barriers to slowing down the private institutional investment in
affordable housing in Australia (see Table 2 below).
Table 2. Key barriers to entry for the private institutional investors.
Scale
Institutional investors require scale to justify the costs associated with new
investment, as well as their need to diversify the portfolio risk.
Return
Investors require secure and predictable returns corresponding with similar
investment classes and risk profiles.
Liquidity
While both retail investors and institutional investors are likely to hold
investments for a long time span, regulation of many of these funds requires
that only a certain proportion of the total portfolio be invested in assets that
are illiquid, as institutional investors require the ability to disinvest quickly.
Investor awareness
As property exposure can be gained through other investment assets such as
bank shares, investors should be convinced of and alerted to opportunities in
affordable housing investment.
Stable, robust and consistent government commitment in order to manage
Long-term consistent
policy settings
and assess risks and returns.
Project pipelines
It may be necessary for affordable housing investment to be pre-planned
and long-term, to ensure that it is worthwhile for the private sector to invest
in expertise and capability in this asset class.
Governance
Institutional investors may be keen to see independent governance
structures and improved transparency and reporting, to ensure decisions are
made in the interests of maximizing the value of the property portfolio and
the associated income streams.
Capacity
While the community housing sector has expanded significantly, it still
remains only one quarter the size of the public housing system.
Source: AHURI March 2013, Financing rental housing through institutional investment cited in
Affordable Housing Working Group: Issues Paper by Council on Federal Financial Relations.
180

Opportunely, compared with overseas jurisdictions including the United Kingdom and the
United States, the scale and sophistication of social and affordable housing finance in Australia
is limited. Australias largest non-profit community housing providers (CHPs) each typically
own or manage around 2,000-3,000 dwellings. On the supply side of the social housing finance
market in Australia, Table 2 below provides a summary of the involvement of some institutional
investors.
Table 3. Social housing fund supply in Australia.
Potential social housing investment
Institutional Investor
Westpac Institutional Bank
x Announced a $61 million loan facility to NSW community
housing provider in 2013, St George Community Housing Ltd, for
the development of 275 new dwellings.
x Further, they announced in 2013, that it would commit $2 billion
in lending to social and affordable housing by 2017.
Australian super funds
x $200 billion in investment in social housing in total.
(Total of $1.5 trillion in capital) x The $32 billion superannuation fund Health Employees
Superannuation Trust Australia (HESTA) has made a $30 million
investment in Horizon Housing, a community housing provider in
Queensland, which is managed by Social Ventures Australia.
x AustralianSuper plans to invest $1 billion in residential masterplanned community projects.
x Industry superannuation fund Hostplus is investing in a $400
million joint venture with Villawood on the Gold Coast.
The
Ashwood
Chadstone x The largest non-profit housing development in Victoria, valued at
Gateway project in Victoria
around $140 million. The project is a mix of 210 social housing
units, 72 private dwellings, and a multi-function space which is
now used for a social enterprise to provide employment training to
local youth.
Victoria, 20-unit building, x To reduce costs on the development, Breathe are cutting out any
marketing, sales, and real estate agent costs. The units will also not
Nightingale, in Brunswick by
have individual laundries, or any basement car parking.
Breathe Architects
Source: Compiled through the use of various online newspapers.
In an attempt to provide finance for social housing, there have been a number of models
which have been tried or proposed. These models have often involved collaborations between
the private sector and governments, given that institutional investment in Australias social
housing is reported at less than 1% (Earl, 2014, in Kraatz, 2015). Yates (1999) states that, in the
extant literature, the role of government in social housing financing is emphasized by two
factors; efficiency and equity. Markets are subjected to fail due to imperfections such as
asymmetric information between buyers and sellers, and to correct these inefficiencies,
governments can interfere and ensure transparency. While restricted funding is not the only
contributor to the chronic shortfall in social and affordable housing stock, improved access to
capital is an important piece of the puzzle in addressing the challenge. There is tremendous
potential to use private sector financing, including institutional capital, to help bridge the gap in
supply. There are several challenges in attracting private capital; 1) less economies of scale for
providers and a perception of increased credit risk from institutional investors, limiting the
ability for community housing providers to access low cost capital over longer terms.
Institutional investors are seeking large-scale (greater than $100m) transactions lending (or
investing) to organisations with a recognised credit rating. 2) Rental yields are significantly
below market returns, making it a less attractive investment. 3) Institutional investors are
attracted to markets and assets with stable regulatory environments and reliable cash flows.
Short term measures and inconsistent policy direction create uncertainty, making investors
nervous and unlikely to invest in such a market.
These financing models are briefly discussed below.

181
3.1 Housing loan/bond aggregators

The housing bonds aggregator is a popular way of attracting greater private sector investment in
affordable housing in Australia. Individual housing providers often find it difficult to attract
finance for expansion as the loans they are seeking are either too small for institutional
investors, or are not worthwhile for the housing provider.
In the U.K., in 1987 the Housing Finance Corporation (THFC) established an independent,
specialist, not-for-profit organization that makes loans to regulated housing associations which
provide affordable housing throughout the country. THFC funds itself through the issue of
bonds to private investors and by borrowing from banks.
Moreover, two Australia superannuation funds, Cbus and Industry Super Australia (ISA),
favour debt financing in the form of this method. They propose a bond aggregator model. This
model is effective at bringing greater institutional investment into affordable housing. The
Affordable Housing Corporation in Australia helps to overcome collective action problems by
assessing and aggregating funding proposals from affordable housing providers. Government
credit support for bonds issued by the Corporation helps to address the risk/return challenge of
affordable housing investment.
3.2 Australian housing finance aggregator (AHFA)
Similar to the housing bond aggregator, Social Ventures Australia (SVA) and the Macquarie
Group propose a housing finance aggregator that would enable social and affordable housing
providers to access lower cost debt for longer terms, unlocking desperately needed fit-forpurpose funding into the sector. They state that this model is a viable solution that, with limited
government support, could greatly contribute to increasing the stock of social and affordable
housing across the country. A housing finance aggregator has been successfully implemented in
the U.K. and has been described as an effective and practical financing solution. The model
would allow housing providers to access funding at lower interest rates and for longer terms.
It is clear that there is strong interest in the private sector investing in social and affordable
housing if the right conditions and regulatory environment are in place. Informed by the
experience internationally, notably in the U.K., the model proposed by SVA and the Macquarie
Group addresses two cost types (financing costs and financing terms) that could contribute to a
better flow of capital into the sector. A not for profit entity, the Australian Housing Finance
Aggregator (AHFA) would coordinate with social and affordable housing providers (including
community housing providers), and others to determine the amount of debt they seek to raise6.
This model would aggregate these funding needs and source from superannuation funds and
other institutional investors. The funds would be loaned to the relevant social and affordable
housing providers in return for ongoing interest payments and the return of capital at the end of
the loan life.
3.3 Housing trusts
Housing trusts are proposed to overcome the current difficulties with scale, and the geographical
diversity of assets required to attract large-scale investors into the provision of affordable
housing. The establishment of a housing trust would allow for housing assets to be aggregated
at an individual state or territory level, across several states and territories or even nationally by
community, private sector or government providers of affordable housing. The trust structure
also provides a vehicle for the aggregation of equity investment and allows investors to either
purchase units in the income stream from the trust, or the capital assets of the trust, or both,
depending on their investment profile. A housing trust structure would also allow the recycling
of capital by governments, as well as being a means to access additional capital through the
gearing of the assets held by the trust. Further, it facilitates the flexibility of having the housing
assets of the trust managed by government, the community sector or the private sector. Once
established, housing providers potentially transfer stock into the trust in return for the units of
equivalent value to the transferred housing stock.
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3.4 Impact investing models including social impact bonds

Impact investing has recently gained prominence as a tool for governments and service
providers to creatively explore improving both social outcomes and the economic efficiency of
the investment. Impact investing models allow investors to pursue opportunities that provide
both social and financing returns through either direct investment in not-for-profit or social
enterprises, or through alternative intermediaries and social impact bonds. Social impact
investment offers an opportunity to bring together capital and expertise from the public, private
and not-for-profit sectors to deliver better outcomes for the community. It is an investment with
the expectation of a social and financing return by attaching a value to defined outcomes and
measuring both the outcomes and financing returns achieved. The key features for a viable
social impact investment include robust measurement, value for money, a service likely to
achieve social outcomes and appropriate sharing of risk and returns. Social impact bonds
involve the public sector issuing a contract with non-government providers, in which a
commitment is made to pay for improved social outcomes that result in public sector savings.
The homelessness social impact bond project was launched in London in November 2012. It
was designed to improve outcomes for persistent rough sleepers, a sample population of 830.
This social impact bond helps the cohort access appropriate services via personalised recovery
pathways to sustainable outcomes. Two participating organizations each target half of the
cohort, both utilizing a different financing structure. The first organization established a special
purpose vehicle which holds the risk, while the second organization funds interventions through
social investors unsecured loans, whereby the risk is shared across parties. Both participating
organizations invested their own funds. There are five outcomes for the two organizations to
achieve, which include reducing rough sleeping, stable accommodation, reconnection,
employment and health. Each of the five outcomes is allocated a different proportion of the
overall funding available, and evidence must be provided before payment can occur across the
individual outcomes.
3.5 Infrastructure bonds to finance social housing
Bonds are a straightforward, long-term financial instrument. Affordable housing supply bonds
are designed to reduce the cost of funding available for community housing providers, which
enhances their capacity to increase the supply of affordable rental housing. The bonds would be
attractive to retail and institutional investors through a mix of tax incentives and government
guarantees. The Affordable Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) issues three types of housing
supply bonds; 1) zero interest loan bonds worth $200m per year called social housing growth
bonds providing zero interest long term loans to non-profit housing organisations, public
housing authorities, and affordable housing developers (10% of bonds issued); 2) tax smart
housing supply bonds long term, fixed term, fixed interest bonds (6% return) with a tax
incentive (no tax is paid on the return) to appeal to retail investors (20% of bonds); 3) AAA
housing supply bonds fixed interest (5% return), long term, AAA rated (government
guaranteed) bonds to appeal to institutional investors such as superannuation funds (70% of
bonds issued).
3.6 The consortium model
This model is proposed by the Affordable Housing National Research Consortium, to entail a
capped Commonwealth outlay subsidy to the states and territories, enabling the latter to borrow
and acquire dwellings for rent to low to moderate income households at income related (i.e.,
below market) rents. Along this line, Macquarie Bank has proposed that it will pool retail equity
investment for the acquisition of rental dwellings managed by a community housing
organization. However, this method requires substantial government subsidy to deliver the
required return to investors.

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3.7 Various forms of tax benefits

This incentive scheme entails special tax benefits directed at private landlord-investors who
rented their dwellings on long leases to community housing organizations or other non-profit
providers for a minimum period of time, with the benefits to be split between the investor and
provider in the form of lower than market rents. Similar to the US scheme, this would
(according to initial microsimulation modelling) target most of the benefit to landlords,
providing lower cost rental dwellings, encouraging private investment to flow into that submarket. It would tend to deliver most benefit to investors providing lower rent stock,
encouraging private investment to flow into that sub-market.
3.8 Shared equity model
This method enables institutional investors to buy an equity share in a mixed-value pool of
dwellings spread widely across the states and territories. In this model, the private equity
investors receive their return in the form of a share in the growing capital value of the dwellings.
Joint Property Australia recently formed a unique model addressing Australias growing
housing affordability needs by enabling the purchase of a property via a structure of shared
ownership. Ownership is shared with second tier investors made up of either family, friends,
work colleagues or investors.
3.9 Superannuation funds
Australias not-for-profit superannuation sector has $2.5 trillion funds that could be used as a
potential investment in affordable housing nation wide with the establishment of government
backed investment products. Industry Super Australia (ISA) said that tapping into Australias
huge retirement savings pool could provide a reliable long-term funding source for the supply of
social and affordable housing. They suggest the creation of government supported investment
bonds that potential institutional investors such as superannuation funds would be interested in
buying. These funds would receive a market rate of return, most likely through fixed interest
payments, and the capital invested would be directed to third-party housing providers.
Moreover, ISA proposes a direct equity investment model that could facilitate a pipeline of
mixed housing developments using superannuation funds. They claim that this model focuses
on increasing returns and creating a project pipeline by the density recycling model (DRuM)
of existing development and recycling the proceeds. Another superannuation fund in Australia,
Cbus, together with ISA proposes a debt financing of social housing in the form of a bond
aggregator model (BAM). Furthermore, First State Super sees a role for a new innovative
clearinghouse, and Christian Super suggests a pathway to ownership model that attempts to
address the structure of the underlying investment and social program.
In Australia, most housing associations have bank financing at three to five years and as a
result are constantly refinancing, which can make pricing unattractive. Thus, financing via
superannuation funds can be seen as a promising alternative, as it has the ability to take a longterm view compared to the banks, but also earn an appropriate return. However, these models
need to be supported by some degree of government support (e.g., potential land grants), at least
in the initial stages as the market builds up scale and credibility.
4 CONCLUSION
We have shown in our review of the literature that there is a huge funding gap for social
housing, and hence, there is an incomplete or missing market in social finance in Australia.
Within the context of our demand and supply model, as shown in Figure 4, this is a situation
where the return on funds is below the equilibrium, and therefore the demand for funds is far
more than the supply of funds. If the shortage of funds is to be eliminated, there should be a
movement towards equilibrium, which would require the return on funds invested in social
housing to go up, as illustrated in Diagrams [I] and [II] as this creates an increase in the quantity
of funds supplied while also decreasing the quantity of funds demanded. However, it is not clear

184
whether the decrease in quantity of funds can actually happen since society considers social
housing to be a necessity. If this is the case, this implies that the demand for social housing
funds is actually more inelastic (a more vertical demand curve), as illustrated in Diagram [III].
In this scenario, as returns are increased towards equilibrium, the shortage is eliminated through
the increase in quantity of funds supplied, but not by a simultaneous decrease in quantity of
funds demanded. This would mean that suppliers of funds, i.e. institutional investors, would
need to provide much higher funding, as indicated in Diagram [IV]. The challenge therefore is
to reveal to what extent institutional investors are willing and able to provide this additional
funding if indeed returns from social housing investments increase. At this stage, the existing
literature does not provide a clear answer to this issue.
There is the more basic issue as to whether, in fact, increased financial returns on social
housing can actually be achieved or accomplished. Again, the extant literature fails to provide
any solid empirical evidence to address this issue. Existing studies have used traditional (net
present value or internal rate of returns) models of financial evaluation and their results show
that the returns on social housing are below those required by institutional investors. There is
therefore a need for studies that would explore new models of evaluating the financial returns of
social housing in order to obtain a clear picture of returns on social housing investment. Now, if
it is not possible to obtain very high returns on social housing investment, then the challenge is
how can this funding gap be eliminated, even if returns on social housing investment are
relatively low? In the context of Figure 4, this would mean that the supply curve for social
housing finance should shift to the right (downwards) as indicated in Diagram [IV]. Does this
mean that suppliers of funds should still find it profitable to invest even if returns on social
housing are relatively low? How can this be possible? This might mean that these providers of
funds should be able to supply funding at a much lower cost (below market), which implies that
government subsidies or guarantees are needed so that the risk facing them also diminishes.
[III]
[IV]

Note:Figure[I]showsashortageoffundsof$Abillionatarateofreturn
arateofreturn
,where
and
.Figure[II]showsashortageoffundsof$Bbillionat
.Whentherateofreturnforthesupplyoffundsincreases,theshortageoffunds
decreases. Figure [III] shows a shortage of $C billion at a rate of return
accounting for the social demand and thereby
assumingthedemandisinelastic.Figure[IV]showsashortageoffundsof$Dbillionatarateofreturn
,where
and
.ComparingFigure[III]andFigure[IV]itcanbeseenthattheequilibriumissetatamuchlowerlevel,byshiftingthe
supplycurvewhichmakesthefundsaffordabletotheinvestors.
Figure 4. Supply and demand for social housing finance.

185
However, at this stage, it is very difficult to provide a clear answer as to which course of
action policymakers and other stakeholders can or should undertake. This is because there are a
number of fundamental and important questions which are still to be answered by more
systematic, scientifically and empirically grounded research within the context of the supply and
demand model that we have presented. These questions are:
RQ1: What is actually the shape (or elasticity) of the demand and supply curves for
social housing? How elastic or inelastic (how vertical or horizontal) are they?
RQ2: What factors or variables affect the demand and supply of funds/credit?
RQ3: How can externalities (negative and positive) be minimised?
ENDNOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
Refer to the Addressing Housing Affordability in Australia: A 4-point plan for the next 5-years
discussion paper.
Refer to the response to the Queensland Housing Strategy Discussion Paper Working Together for
Better Housing and Sustainable Communities from Mission Australia and Mission Australia Housing.
A subsidy can be justified on the grounds that inequality of income and wealth prevents people from
finding suitable, basic, affordable places to live. It helps to cover some of the monthly rental cost and
will provide financial relief for poorer families. Thus, subsidy is a form of government intervention
used when it is argued that the allocation of scarce resources in a free market economy is inequitable.
Efficiency is defined as Pareto optimality the impossibility of reallocating resources to make one
person better off without making anyone else worse off.
Missing markets: why markets that can reduce risks are missing and what can be done about it.
Discussion paper released by The Hamilton Project.
The proposed Australian housing finance aggregator is expected to carry out credit assessments on
appropriate housing providers, issue debt instruments of different maturities to institutional investors,
liaise with regulatory bodies to ensure improved governance and regulation of the social and
affordable housing sector and ensure compliance to guarantee that housing providers are able to meet
their debt obligations.
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Chapter 3
Development and advances in efficient housing typologies

Chapter 3: Development and advances in efficient housing typologies
189
Adaptive residential system for variable frameworks of needs

C. C. Falasca & A. Gigante
University G. Dannunzio, Chieti-Pescara, Italy
ABSTRACT: For a while now the inhabiting is experiencing a period of deep identity crisis, on
the typological, morphological and technological plan. It is because the contextual factors are
changed and they constantly change and establish ways of being. Which home today? An
answer to this question is given by a design research developed for the reconstruction of the city
of LAquila (Italy) affected by the earthquake in 2009. This event has offered to us the
opportunity to experience a radical change of perspective in the project of the housing. We shift
the focus from the abstract notion of type to the concrete way of being of the construction in
its structural and technical elements. So not more the research of housing standards preestablished for the average user undifferentiated, but "possible" ways of organizing /structuring
the building system that can allow distribution performances capable of adapting to user
requirements.
1 INTRODUCTION
The theme of the housing have had changing events in the course of the history but it had
always in the center of the scene the human being as lead actor, user and creator of the use space
in (in strict accordance) a synergic relationship with the surrounding space. This centrality of
the human being gives to the action of the construction a representative function, symbolic as
well as practice, symbolic of our culture, symbolic of the existing social order, symbolic of our
aspirations, our needs, our fears (Harvey, 1973). In this centrality is located the sense of the
space configuration. A. von Schmarsow in the end of the 800 introduced the concept of
Raumgestaltung recalling the attention on the fact that in Architecture the configuration of the
space is not a dependent variable, but it is constituted in relation with the human purpose
(Severino, 2003). It was implicit in this certainty, an evolutionary idea of the built space as
something that cant be pre- established nor generalized, but something that arise, takes shape
and develops with the man that use it in the maximum naturalness. It has been so until the
beginning of the twenty century in Europe, when make their way some deterministic logics
which exclude the man as entity and they put at the center of the action of the building
production the big number, the homogenization. The Rationalism has completely incarnate this
spirit creating rules which are the same for everyone, repressing the individual identity to
support the repetitiveness, suppressing the vitality of being different. Therefore the idea of
residential average standard was born for the categories of pre-established user,
decontextualized and timeless. The rationality, abstract and calculating, obscures the
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multiplicity and variety of the behavior patterns of the real world, deleting the past and
precluding the new in its natural continuous becoming (Kroll, 2001). The technique, motivated
by a strong housing demand between the two world wars, matures the idea of the rationalize and
the industrialization of the building process, obscures the traditional building system and
implements the idea of normalization in all the scales, from the building component to the
building type. The accommodation is determined by the assembling of the repetitive functional
units created only in relation to the physiological needs of the average user according to the
principles of the most rigorous scientific functionalism. The awareness of a world always
dominated by the machine that develops a common sense of surrender to the romantic
individualism of the late nineteenth century: the reproducibility technique shifts the focus from
the man that lives to the product-house that has to be created in short time and has to have a low
price for a concentrated and rapidly growing demand (Falasca, Carbonari, 1987). The
inhabitant becomes an abstract identity that takes shape inside some restrict groups of specialist
of the building process for purposes always more concentrated on the economic- productive and
technical- architectural aspects and the residence is reduced to be programmed as a simple
accessory, functional for the primary needs of the users (Bianchi 1986). In this way was
interrupted the natural relationship that has connected in time man to space and objects that he
has used and he has identified the way of being and the way to build. This rift has opened the
gap to the brutal and irresponsible speculation that has characterized, particularly in Italy, the
urban growth from the post Second World War to today and it has progressively fizzled out the
initial feelings of the 60s about the social policies for the house. As if everything was stopped
to this day, the buildings although drawn with attractive and colored graphics are still the same,
even now conceived and realized with the same conceptual, typological and technological
schemes coming from the rationalism.
In view of a framework of the building sector fundamentally static, due to the economic crisis
and the fact that the residential needs is saturated for many years, however recently in Italy there
is the formation, even in a sporadic way, of a corresponding real estate market that is affecting
the free residual areas of the city or the ones relating to the building replacement. This is
addressed to a medium to high- end economic bracket and it is focused to meets the needs that
the existing residence cant answer (Turchini, Grecchi, 2006). This procedure, even if it has
decisively a speculative character of pure maquillage of the existing building typologies and as
such undoubtedly it is not intended to fill the expectations, but it is the signal of a hidden
dissatisfaction between the users, of a rising demand that it is not returned, also because it is not
clearly expressed yet.
The dissatisfaction is due to the lack of relationship between what the man is today and the
houses that we build, between his behaviors and the spaces that have the task to execute them.
The appearances that this houses shows off represent a reality that doesnt match to the way of
being of the users of our time. The demand is changed, it is various and diverse and for some
decades now it is rapidly developing: under the push of various factors, endogenous and
external, it register a growing acceleration of the changing process.
First of all the cultural context, where man now have to live in, its changed: the philosophy,
corroborated with the new theories of the modern physic after Einstein, has removed the big
paradigm regarding to be which has dominated for centuries the western culture, where
everything is static and unmodifiable, and it has replaced the principle of the evolving
constantly, of the transformation where everything moves and everything changes (Formaggio,
1990). This turning over of the perspective highlights the centrality of the man as subject that
evolves, that changes with its way of thinking about its behavior, its social systems, its
inspirations, its needs. The change is radical, regarding the living it shifts from a static context
of needs to a dynamic context of needs. This means to go beyond the traditional relationship
space-function according to which every spatial unit corresponds to an activity and when this
changes or dies down the spatial unit is left unused with great discomfort from the user and
great waste of resources. The non-utilization, even for short periods, of the building space of the
accommodation has inherent in it three negative aspects: the first concerns the user because
when he modifies his needs he cant find the correspondence with the space that he has, the
second concerns the ambient because raw materials and soil are consumed only for temporary
use, the third one concerns the clients and as a result the user himself because there is a waste of
financial resources for requirements that last limited portions of the life cycle of the building.

191
The entire continuous utilization of the built space for the entire life cycle even when the needs
change could increase the sustainability gradient both environmental and economic of the
building with great benefits for the ecosystem.
About this frame of significant change emerges a series of interrogatives: What house today?
Which man is this destined to? How can the house be representative, symbolic, of something
that constantly change? How to facilitate the stability of the building with the variability of its
ways of use? Have we got the technical capabilities to do that? How much this change of
perspective is economic and environmental sustainable?
This work has raised the question concerning how we could answer to these questions
practically in the building sector investing the project. It has investigated the factors that
determines and based on these it has researched a methodology of approach which has to
consider, for the restrictions that they impose but also for the potentialities that they offer, a new
way to interpret the building. The Authors made all of this through the project in a degree
Laboratory called Project and Building of the Course of Bachelor of Science degree in
Architecture in the University of Chieti- Pescara. The input was provided by the reconstruction
of the city of LAquila (Italy) hit by the earth quake in the 2009 with a specific reference to the
reconstruction of the public residential building for which was expected the intervention of
demolition and reconstruction.
The event brings about the question concerning if could it be appropriated to reconstruct the
buildings as they were or in a new way for a user which has changed but also for a regulation
scene that is changed. The damaged existing buildings, besides the performance deficiency of
functional nature described above, also show other strong deficiency: they are of high energy
consumption type among the coldest mountain environmental of Italy and have a low capability
to resist to the earth quake in an area with the biggest risk of Italy. Even in case of a normative
adjustment, moreover very expensive, the result could be that we could have suitable buildings
from the normative point of view but anyway typologically and formally old. For this
conjunction of various reasons order the chased option was the second hypothesis which has
obtained the results proved by the pictures inserted in the paper and furnishes some significant
projects.
2 THE FACTORS OF THE HOUSING REQUEST
To be able to answer to the questions said above we need to understand the reasons that
determine them: the awareness of why the things doesnt function is the base to reflect on
how we can solve them. This cognitive path from the problem to the research of the possible
solutions compared to the means that we have constitutes the technology of the appropriated
design, which observes, understands, explores and create the new (Vittoria, 1993).
The houses we continue to build doesnt function essentially for two orders of factors which
have as cornerstone the familiar nucleus, the group or the individual subject that lives: the ones
with an endogenous nature and the ones with an external nature.
With a specific reference to the familiar nucleus the first ones are inside the biological life
cycle of the components of the same nucleus, they are factors that have always existed but they
have been silenced by the normalization. They concern the fact that inside the familiar nucleus
in a relatively short period of time, between 50 and 60 years maximum, a series of events occur
which are connected to the age and determine a continuous modification of the needs
framework drawing a curve that goes from a minimum to a maximum loaded and then goes
down again to a minimum. While this evolutionary process take place, the house is still the
same. The question change and the space both from the dimensional point of view and from the
distributive one remains unchanged, blocked in a static and pre-established boxation and
thought to be unmodifiable. All things considered compared to the life cycle of the building
prevails largely the time of underutilization. This condition of invariance constitutes the main
factor of the dissatisfaction and discomfort state of the inhabitant but also a waste of resources
due to the bigger operating cost and to the bigger environmental effect which it involves.
The second ones, the external factors, are out of the domestic space and concern the socioeconomic and cultural context in which the same space is built. They are real change inductor
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and affect in all the range from the individual to society. Among them the ones that mainly
affect on the ways of living are:
The speed of progress in the behavioral models of the man due to the continuous
technological innovations that enter in the daily use;
The variety of cultural matrix that characterize in an increasing way the society
making it more and more multiethnic and diversified (for the social class, economic
condition, level of education, etc.). It is due to the development and the mobility and
for the most part in these recent years to the great migratory flow which affect the
entire Europe;
The atomization of the traditional interpreted family which induces a housing
diversify demand for age classes and for civil state with an ascent increase of singles,
couples without sons and elderlies. Formerly in the ISTAT survey of the 2002 in
Italy, historically bound to the traditional family nucleus, these three categories of
user put together reached a sum just below 50% of the total of the resident population.
The separations between spouses in a decade, between 1997 and 2007 always in Italy,
have increased more than 25.000 cases. Essentially there is no more a unique model
of familiar nucleus that can be assumed as a reference but different ways to share or
to be alone which can change in time;
The evolution of woman role which is more and more engaged in the advancement of
her social status in work outside the home;
The evolution of the needs framework from the material- physiological needs,
objectives, to the intangible needs which have a psycho sensorial nature which are
subjective. There is an increasing demand of mass- customization of the use space
that must have the capacity to allow user subject to identify himself with the space in
which he lives in compliance with his life style. The desire to affirm our own
individuality and the capacity perception of the comfort.
The set of these factors identifies the heterogeneous and dynamic housing demand which
cant be satisfied by the offer presents today on the market and the reasons are all inside the
building, for how its conceived and realized. This means that is from this point that we need to
start again to rephrase the requisite system which the new building needs to have to satisfy the
new emerging framework of needs.
3 THE PARADIGMS OF THE NEW BUILDING WAY
The framework that stands out against the horizon, under the light of the ongoing substantial
changes described above and of a new use of soil not more sustainable is the one of a
progressive renewal of the existing building heritage, starting from the most degraded and
inefficient one. The renewal to be effective must be founded on clear paradigms that are able to
represent the new reality in which we want to create life. The more the representativeness is the
greater the reconstruction embodies the desirable of those who use it and the socio- cultural
context in which it lives. The desirable of the user that emerges from the factors of the change
above identified has a common denominator in a request of a key service: the capacity of the
built space to adapt itself to variations of the users needs with minimal and no heavy
operations. The desirable of the socio- cultural context in tie in which we live is represented by
two requests of service that are matured in recent years in the common conscience: 1) the
capability of the built space to interact with the natural ambient which changes from place to
place and with the succession of seasons, to benefits with no cost and to reduce the effects; 2)
the capability of the building product to pledge the maximum seismic security, in a period in
which in Italy the earthquakes are increasingly frequent. Essentially the common desire is that
we need to match the evolutionary and diversified behaviors to the dynamic residential systems
which have to mark the overcoming of the motionless of the existing ones.
We can identify in these three requests the basic paradigms of the new way to conceive and
achieve the building that can be summarized in three key terms: the adaptivity, the sustainability
and the safety. These terms are all three referable to situations which are unpredictable and
variable depending on man and his physical context, they express three basic requisites that
have to be satisfied by the new building. They have in common dynamic sense, evolutionary

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sense, convertible sense and reversible sense. From the light, that has to be understand not
referred to the weight but referred to the capacity of one or more building elements of the
construction that are available to assume structure and behaviors which can vary in relation to
the needs. In this respect, more general, we can understand the three request in the unique term
adaptivity which is anyway conceptually contained in the other two with a different way and
weight.
Figure 1. Housing system 1: (above) the relationship between the invariants and variables. The structural
system consists of perimeter Vierendel beams which draw the facades; (in the middle) the relationship
with the factors of the urban context, the historical walls and the monumental complex of St. Bernardino;
(below) the relationship with the natural environmental factors and (on the right) a perspective view.
This adaptability to the change in order to be used it needs to be arranged during the project
phase and it must be defined inside a field of possible variability. This involve a radical change
in the way of project, it requires a true projection forward, not limited anymore to the immediate
future and to the certain data but it has to be open to a field of probability. The project becomes
the prefiguration of the possible, which arranges the goals according to the material resources
that can be artificial, natural, technical and economic that it has available in the place of the
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intervention. The explanation of the variability field of the performance ability requires an
explorative phase of what is it possible to do and how can it be done which is on the
methodological plan the technology of the project. The last one has to be understood in the most
proper acceptation which is an inventive technology which studies the demand in an
evolutionary key, it explores the feasible with the means that it has and decides within what
terms the variability can take place (Vittoria 1993). Not a solution that is valid just one time but
several solutions that can be possible in time: it is a scenario, not a single scene, what the project
has to prepare. The built space is a field of possible solutions in which the adopted answer is
only one of the many possible. This opening of the project field is in itself the paradigm of a
new building way.
This opening of the field has in it a difficult tangle which cant be solved easily in the
building practice. The problem is the building in its nature, for the gravity it has a stability of
structure compared to place and time used and in it contained and for plan it needs to have an
instability of structure compared to time, what its called in a single term the temporariness.
The exploration of how we can overtake this gap has constituted the supporting axis of the
project research led in the Degrees Laboratory and presented here.
4 THE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO THE SUSTAINABLE HOUSING DESIGN
The research on how can we overtake the gap above identified has been focused on a basic
question which is the way to strip down in the building the factors that bind the modifications in
time. Essentially how to free the space that is enclosed to the change. For this purpose the first
thing to do is to identify what are the components of the building system that must necessarily
exist and every time they are built cant be moved to another place or deleted. In other words
what we call invariants of the system. Identified these ones, the problem is where can we
arrange them in order to constitute no more an obstacle to the change of the using space, to
satisfy a question that is unknown during the construction, or a question that can evolve in time.
The exploration of which can be the optimal position in this way is the key of the design process
in order to define the appropriate choice. To take place, the exploration needs a prefiguration of
desired possible compared to the behavioral model of the reference users. In this way to proceed
the project becomes a focused strategy which defines the invariants and places them according
to the goal to give the maximum variability to the desired use space.
The invariants of an edifice, independently of the intended use, are basically two: the
structure and the collector of the technological net. They contribute, with the factors of the
physical and environmental context of the place, to determine the structure of the building. The
strategy is to define them according to the goals and the restriction of the context.
As regards the structure, the strategy is to try to have the fewer numbers of structural points
or to have any point at all inside the use space, or anyway to associate them to the structural
components of the other invariant. This means to have light from the girders and floors that
have really big dimensions. The request of this elevated performance capability determines the
opportunity to search the typology structure, the material and the building system which are
more suitable according to the structural points which are possible in the structure of the
building. That is determines the opportunity to do attendance to the resources that are offered
continuously from the technical innovations. To know how to make the most from the new
resources is also a way to represent, with the intellectuals and technical means of our time, the
new housing request.
As regard the technological net (drainage system, water supply, electrical, etc...) the strategy
is to be successful in having the maximum concentration in the lowest number of vertical
collector that have to be positioned opportunely. Their position must be that in order to satisfy
the needs of the largest number of distributive variations possible. In case of the house this
involve the requirement of a maximum prefiguration of the distributive structure possible. In
addition their location bust be that in order to be accessible independently without interfering
with the interior of the accommodations. The distributive structures of the space, which in this
way is free, to be easily variables must be realized with the use of the partition system and with
furniture that are easy to be moved and removed. Anyway despite the use of these systems, the

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base planning criterion must be the one to pursue the maximum containment of the partition
needs through the subdivision of the available space in functional settings.
Figure 2. Housing system 2: (left) the relationship with the factors of the urban and environmental context
of the site that generates the site plan and the height of the building complex; (right) the relationship
between the invariants and variables and the scheme of interactions with the natural environment. The
distance between the buildings is determined by the relationship with the sun.
Interpreting the last ones as spatial beings in which coexist more activities that are
compatibles each others, also considering the case in which two or more activities are
incompatible but they occur in different times.
The adaptivity doesnt concern only the usability of the use space ma also the sustainability
of its condition of use. Interpreting for the last one the capability to limit the consumption of
energy and to take the maximum advantage of the natural resources (light, air, water, soil.). Like
we said above the sustainability is itself a variation that depend on the contextual factors in this
case from the natural environment in which the building is placed. The variability in the Italian
climatic context is basically determined by the thermal and luminous oscillations diurnal and
seasonal, to whom the external latches, matt and transparent, which in both cases are the
unmovable components of the building. As such, particularly the openings, must be strategically
placed and must be provided with closing system that must be able to assume variable
structures.
As we can see definitively is revolutionized the way to plan: the evolutionary approach has to
affect the entire building system in the ideational phase, upstream of the decisions not
downstream. The adaptivity in the various forms in which its made explicit cant be a
performance capability added to the building product that we have conceived until today. Its
the true impulse of the innovation which is conceptual even before material.
The innovation is fundamental in the passing of the concept of type traditionally interpreted
as a static housing model and unresponsive to the user subject, unmodifiable and the same for
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everyone. The new is in the concept of a strategically structured spatial system to be able to
adapt itself to the changes of needs of who live it.
5 THE DESIGN EXPERIMANTATION AS AN EXPLORATION OF THE PRACTIBLE
The occasion to experiment this type of approach was provided, like we said above, by the
seismic event that has hit the city of LAquila in 2009. Entire areas of the building ones that
were built in the last fifty years are destined to be demolished and rebuilt for the huge damages
received from the existing structures. Among these it was chosen an area of social housing
placed in a very interesting historic and urban position, among the walls of the city near an
access door and the sixteenth century monumental complex of the church of San Bernardino and
the annexed cloister. So an historic area, in the past it was addressed to the vegetable garden of
the cloister and it was already an object of transformation in the sixties of the past century. The
request to re-build it in our time has offered the opportunity to introduce a new transformation
which is representative of the new way to inhabit. The Degrees Laboratory led by the Authors
caught this opportunity and the area was transformed in an experimentation territory for the
evolutionary approach during the design of the sustainable housing.
The experimentation was targeted to understand how the three key paradigms of the new way
to build described above can coexist inside the same building, adaptivity, environmental
sustainability and safety. The project on how to put together these three requests was developed
trying to establish a relationship of maximum compatibility with the surrounding historic preexistence and with the maximum exchange of environmental resources of the place. All of this
was made in the effort to produce innovation, of product and appearance that is able to relate
itself with the pre-existing one but also to affirm its own expressive identity in the new housing
culture and in the new building capability of our time.
The innovation desire pushed us to explore the potentiality of the advanced techniques which
the scientific progress today offers to us and continuously develops. The adaptivity is a function
of the supporting capability of the structure that supports the building, if the structural system is
less invasive the use space has more capability to modify itself. In this sense becomes essential
the research of the structural typology that is the most suitable to the spatial system which we
want to realize and more sustainable in recyclability and ceasing to use terms. Also because
where everything is suitable to change, the structure is the only part of the building system
which persists and as such it identifies the architectural character of the building during the
evolutionary processes.
The experimental approach of the integrated Laboratory allowed us to push to the limits the
performance capabilities of the structure through the calculus tests made possible by the
collaboration with the professors of Building Technology. These tests have been oriented both
to have lights from the horizontal structures with big dimensions and to guarantee conditions of
maximum seismic security. We decided to favor steel lightweight structures, network system
and armored base with short thickness and high resistance to curve. Their placement has been
done for the most part on the edges of the building perimeters or in intermediate zones in
association with vertical connection blocks which are also invariant. As well as we favored their
external visibility with the intent to emphasize the relationship between what its going to
persist and what its going to change as a characteristic element of the new architecture.
Adaptivity is also a function of the obliging capability of the technological network cesspool
which allows the building to work, the less is invasive its presence the most capability has the
use space to modify itself and its position is less inserted. These two conditions are satisfied
through the maximum concentration of the incoming and outgoing network in strategical points
of the building structure and adequately placed in order to satisfy the largest number of
variations of the distributive structure of the accommodations. In this sense its very satisfying
the result of the match between staircase and inner court inside an only one functional block
which scans the joint of the free space.
The results, both from the functional and especially formal point of view, are supported by
the most representative images of the great planning work that has been done and they are
attached here.

197
Figure 3. Housing system 3: (above) the genesis of the plant and the height of the building complex. The
relationship between the invariants and variables and significant sections which indicate the relationship
with the natural environment; (below) views of the west facade where we see the cantilevered movable
supplementary modules (which can increase the useful area housing according to the needs) and (right)
the system of sun shields with varying trends according to the height of the wall facade.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The most important data of the methodological rank has emerged from the design
experimentation that is the planimetrical and volumetric structure of the residential building in
no longer the resultant of the typology aggregation of pre-built and fixed accommodations but
substantially its determined by the desired relationship with the artificial and natural factors of
the physical and environmental context in which its placed. This is a key step that marks in a
radical way the passing of the rationalistic logic: the built space has no longer a predetermined
functionalist matrix but its perceived in relation with the context in order to be available for
variable uses which are compatible with the invariant elements of the building. This founding
relationship with the context is a premise in the formative path of the project that expresses the
requisite of adaptivity which is completely integrated to the one of environmental sustainability.
The structure of the building, no more subordinate to the pre- established typological restriction,
can arrange itself freely in order to have the maximum capability of interaction with the natural
environmental factors (sun, air, soil) and in this way it can optimize the energetic efficiency of
the building.
Beside the positivity it has been observed that the evolutionary approach finds however at the
moment a big obstacle in the market of the building production which is not yet ready to
recognize the idea of adaptivity. The products found in the market, even though lightweight, are
still conceived to be steady or even when they are removable they request executive
interventions which are not easy and of immediate management. In this sense the new approach
can be an input to relaunch the housing sector out of the crisis but more than this to the product
innovation in the sector of the building production.
REFERENCES
Bianchi, R. 1986. Le tecniche esecutive nelledilizia residenziale degli anni 80. Dal tradizionale evoluto
al cosiddetto industrializzato. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Falasca, C. C. & Carbonari, M. 1987. Residenza e fenomenologia urbana. Firenze: Alinea.
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Formaggio, D. 1990. Estetica tempo progetto. Milano: Clup.

Harvey, D. 1973. Social Justice and the City. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kroll, L. 2001. Ecologie urbane. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Severino, E. 2003. Tecnica e architettura. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.
Turchini, G. & Grecchi, M. 2006. Nuovi modelli per labitare. Levoluzione delledilizia residenziale di
fronte alle nuove esigenze. Milano: Il Sole 24 Ore.
Vittoria, E. 1993. Contributo di Eduardo Vittoria. In DITAC. Quaderno n. 1, La cultura tecnologica nella
riqualificazione urbana, Giugno 1993. Pescara: Poman.

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Tracing a timber breakthrough the introduction of CLT to the

student housing market in Norway
O. K. Flindall & M. Nygaard
Wood/Be/Better, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
ABSTRACT: The Palisaden student housing project was completed in August 2013 and was
Norways first large-scale residential project in cross-laminated timber (CLT). The project has
been recognised as a landmark for sustainable and cost efficient building practices and initiated
a timber breakthrough in an industry dominated by conventional steel and concrete systems. By
2017 more than 4000 individual student residences will have been built using the same model of
development and production. Based on interviews with managers, contractors and the
interdisciplinary teams of consultants this paper gives an in-depth description of the process.
The paper examines the role of favourable clients and typology, improved information flow
between various actors and levels within the construction industry, modification of conventional
contractual relationships and the consolidation of an expanding network of contractors,
architects and engineers to pool expertise and broaden the knowledge base across Norways
regional markets.
1 INTRODUCTION
The interdisciplinary research project Wood Be Better (WBB) was established in 2013 with the
aim to produce and publicise knowledge that will facilitate increased use of wood in buildings
in urban areas" (WBB, 2012). The Oslo School of Architecture and Design is the leading and
coordinating partner, teamed up with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and
the Norwegian Institute of Bio-economy Research (NIBIO), as well as a number of international
research institutions. The project is funded by the Norwegian Research Councils BIONR
program.
The start of the WBB research project coincided with the completion of Norways first largescale residential project in cross-laminated timber (CLT); the Palisaden student housing project
at the NMBU campus in s, south of Oslo. The Palisaden project initiated a series of CLT
student housing projects around the country and heralded a breakthrough for CLT in an industry
dominated by conventional steel and concrete systems. By 2017 more than 4000 student
residences will have been built using the same model of development and production (iTre,
2016). The CLT expansion within the student housing market has been a central case study for
the WBB project to follow. This paper is based on a detailed case study and a series of
interviews with central actors to provide an in-depth description of the processes, actors and key
factors that facilitated the breakthrough for CLT in the student housing market.
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Figure 1. The evolution of CLT student housing. From left to right: Palisaden 2013, Remmen 2014-2015
(both photos: BAS Arkitekter) and Moholt 2016 (photo: MDH Arkitekter SA).
2 CONTEXT
2.1 The European scene
The growing evidence and awareness of man-made global warming in the late 1980s initiated a
renewed interest for the use of wood as a building material. By the early 1990s a new, timberbased construction system, Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), had started to emerge from the
technical schools in Zurich and Lausanne (Samuelsson, 1998). CLT offered a natural
substitution for reinforced concrete that required less energy in production and construction
(Dodoo et al., 2014). When produced from sustainably managed forests, CLT utilises a
renewable resource and contribute to CO2 sequestration that slows down the the carbon cycle
and helps mitigate climate change (Lehmann, 2012).
The advancement of CLT in Europe was aided by EU regulation that sought to enhance
competition and promote more sustainable energy use throughout the member states. New codes
based on functional requirements, e.g. for structural stability and fire resistance, replaced
previous codes that prescribed solutions which essentially banned the use of timber in built up
areas. (Visscher & Meijer, 2007). By 2010 large-scale production of CLT was widespread in
Central Europe (Stickhofer, 2011).
2.2 The Norwegian scene
In Norway the implementation of function-based codes in the late 1990s lifted national
restrictions on the use of timber in urban areas and opened for the use of timber in multi-story
buildings. In addition, the introduction of laws and codes for universal access led to widespread
use of sprinkler systems to improve security for disabled people during fire. This in turn made it
easier to use timber constructions in tall buildings.
The potential for increased use of timber in urban areas provided an opportunity to meet
environmental targets and stimulate the national timber industry. Consequently, the shifting
building regulations were followed by a series of public and private initiatives to stimulate
growth and innovation. Programmes such as Treprogrammet, Trebyen Trondheim, and
Norwegian Wood gathered actors from the whole building sector to realise sustainable urban
building in timber. A number of pilot projects such as the Pulpit mountain lodge (Helen&Hard
Architects) and Svartlamoen (Brendeland &Kristoffersen Architects) brought national and
international attention to the structural and architectural potentials of CLT. By 2005 both
national and international timber companies had set up CLT subsidiaries in Norway.
However, in a 2007 report Tre i by, Denizou et al. made it clear that despite the advances in
building regulations and pilot projects there were few or no residential projects of more than four
floors being built in wood. Bysheim and Nyruds (2010) study of Norwegian architects and
civil engineers attitudes pointed to the lack of experience, uncertainty of technical performance
and perceived norms in the construction industry as factors restricting the choice of timber as a
building material. In 2011, a second industry report (Nyrud et al.) confirmed this picture. The

201
conclusion was that while there were no regulatory limitations on the use of timber in urban
constructions, a breakthrough for timber in buildings of more than five storeys would not be
likely to occur for some time. The apparent advances of the early 2000s had stagnated in a
conservative construction industry that lacked competency and trained labour. In 2010 the largest
national producer of CLT, Moelven Massivtre AS, was forced to close due to reduced demand. At
a time when CLT in Europe was experiencing double-digit growth rates (Crespell & Gagnon,
2010) CLT production in Norway was slowing down.
3 METHOD
The start of the WBB research project aligned with the introduction of CLT to the student
housing market and the research team has carefully followed the adoption process, through both
site visits and teaching provided by participating architects and consultants. This paper is based
on a series of qualitative interviews with participating actors and draws on the first-hand
experience of the WBB team. A broad set of information from articles, promotional materials,
and government data have been studied to provide an in-depth description of the processes
surrounding the CLT breakthrough.
Initial interviewees were chosen by the WBB research group at the Oslo School of
Architecture based on their experience with and participation in CLT student housing projects
during the 2013-2016 period. Following a snowballing sampling scheme additional individuals
were identified through the interviews. In total ten participating actors were interviewed as part
of this study.
The interviews were semi-structured and organized around an interview protocol. They lasted
45-90 minutes, were audio-recoded and transcribed. The interviewees were asked for
information and perspectives on the following topics: the introduction of timber, prior
experience with timber systems and facilitating actions enabling timber (including CLT) to be
implemented. For this article we have focused on statements shedding light on the underlying
shifts in organisational structure and the perceived contribution of information flow.
In analysing the data, the transcripts were reviewed and coded to establish themes and
connections and contrast within and across the described processes and network of actors. In
one case a second interview was conducted to ensure the validation of initial findings and
conclusions.
The goal of this study was not to produce a prescriptive tool for repetition, but to facilitate
understanding of how a significant shift took place within an industry known for its reluctance
and resistance to new processes.
4 ACTORS: PREPARED FOR CHANGE
In a 2003 literature review of industry critique, Blayse and Manley argued that innovation in the
construction industry would benefit from a broad product system perspective. Clients,
manufacturers, regulators and technical support providers were as important to innovation as
contractors and consultants. Innovation in the construction industry evolves through a
combination of information exchange, experimentation and feedback between the various actors
(Blayse and Manley, 2004). The Palisaden project that initiated the CLT breakthrough was
largely a result of the coinciding presence of project, client and relevant actors with the
necessary know-how and willingness to develop and try new solutions.
4.1 Client prepared for innovation
Due to the high price and long life-span of buildings, the construction industry typically strives
to reduce risk and ensure reliable economic returns on investments by using standardized
approaches and previously proven models (Emtairah et al., 2008). Innovation in this context
carries an inherent element of risk and clients have been shown to have a central role in
overcoming industry risk aversion to achieve and integrate innovation in supply chains (Briscoe
et al., 2004, Vrijhoef and de Ridder, 2005, Blayse and Manley, 2004). The more experienced
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and technically competent the client the more likely they are to stimulate innovation (Winch,
1998).
Within the small, non-commercial rental housing sector in Norway the local and regional
student welfare organisations (studentsamskipnader) play an important role in offering
accommodation to affiliated students. They are the main clients, owners and managers in the
student housing market. Their deep knowledge of project typology and residential needs,
coupled with their continued ownership and management of properties make the student welfare
organisations a client group well-disposed for instigating and implementing innovation.
There is also an inherent connection between the student welfare associations and the
academic institutions they serve. In the case of the Palisaden there was a natural link between
the environmental profile and timber research at NMBU and the interests and values of Sis,
the student welfare organisation. Consequently, Sis was especially susceptible to the idea of a
CLT housing project. As the director of Sis, Einride Berg, commented: If one is going to
build student residences in timber, it must be here in s (Sis, 2013).
4.2 Project management firm in cooperation with regional "Tredriver" from timber industry
Central to the CLT breakthrough in the Palisaden project is the project management company
iTres cooperation with the regional Tredriver (Driver for wood); TreBruk. The Tredriver
initiative had been established a few years previously by the national government body
Innovation Norway. The explicit intention of the initiative was to promote industrial use of
timber and to follow up the national Treprogrammet (Wood Innovation Program).
iTre was initially established as a timber branch of the 5B Project consultancy firm to
specialize in the use of CLT in large building projects. TreBruk operated out of Vestby, close to
the NMBU university, and were actively promoting timber to the regional construction industry
and pursuing timber based project ideas and concepts. The cooperation between iTre and
Trebruk had developed from an earlier joint venture that attempted to use CLT in a residential
project in Nesodden. The CLT system had eventually been priced out of the project, but it had
given both iTre and Trebruk valuable experience in dealing with prefabricated timber
construction. Moving forward from this early project they developed a clear strategy for
introducing timber in large and multi-storey building projects. It focused on identifying
appropriate building typologies and addressing asymmetric information relationships between
the producers, contractors and the architects.
The search for a suitable typology for the CLT systems coincided with the national debate on
cost and shortage of student housing. It was in this context that Trebruk and iTre, as regional
actors, benefited from their good overview over the local market and were able to capitalise on
the upcoming student housing project at NMBU.
4.3 Associated network of consultants
The construction sector is a complex industry where the capabilities of several actors and firms
must be coordinated to secure innovation (Blayse and Manley, 2004). The lack of experience
and expertise in dealing with large and multi-storey timber buildings meant there was a
knowledge deficit that would have to be overcome in order to satisfy the specific and recently
revised Norwegian building regulations. In the absence of full scale Norwegian examples, the
network of technical advisors including the project architects and consultants on fire, acoustic
and structure, had to develop and implement new technical solutions to meet with regulatory
demands. Solutions that were vital for the development of the Palisaden project and the
subsequent expansion of CLT.
In Palisaden the architects were selected by the client Sis through a limited architectural
competition. The architectural firm was locally based and had previously worked with TreBruk
on developing a CLT solution for a large housing project in Sole, Vestby. Once again the CLT
solution had been priced out of the water, but the firms contact to TreBruk had been established.
iTre as project manager then assembled a team of technical advisors and consultants ahead of
the tendering process. The structural engineer had knowledge of CLT from close cooperation
with an Austrian producer and was able to address the issue of global, structural stiffness in a
tall, lightweight building. One of Norways leading acoustic specialists was asked to develop

203
solutions for the acoustic insulation between different functions and different floors. Fire
experts were engaged to secure that the requirements for structural integrity and occupant safety
during fire could be met in a large, timber building.
4.4 Contractors
The Nordic building sector has been characterised by a decreasing number of increasingly large
contractors, often with international operations. At the same time there has been a general trend
towards vertical integration where larger parts of the value chains are controlled by the
contractors (Ingvaldsen et al, 2004, Emtairah et al, 2008). Firms in property development,
project management, construction and element production are frequently run as separate entities
under common ownership. This creates stronger, multidisciplinary fields of expertise within the
company. It supports systematic development and transfer of knowledge to increase
productivity and risk reduction. At the same time it may limit the search for solutions to those
spheres controlled by the contractor thus affecting competition and innovation in the industry.
In Norway most of the larger national contractors operate out of regional offices that are
relatively independent and well connected to local markets. This position made it easier to
deviate from mainstream company practice in the Palisaden project. As one contractor pointed
out, in some respects we live in our own world here at s. We are not connected centrally other
than through reporting, really".
It should also be noted that the general lack of experience in multi-story timber construction
levelled out the big contractors advantage in competing for the Palisaden contracts. The
assembly of the CLT was included in the suppliers work-package and made it easier for local
firms to match big contractors on capacity.
5 STUDENT HOUSING: WELL SUITED FOR TIMBER INNOVATION
Several key features of the student housing market and student housing as a project category
made it attractive and well suited as pilot projects for application of CLT constructions:
5.1 National shortage
New student housing projects in Norway are financed by government grants and loans by the
Norwegian State Housing Bank Husbanken. This direct relationship between government
funding and the building of student housing puts the issue on the political agenda. In 2010 the
topic of affordable housing for students was a growing political concern. With an ever
increasing national shortage of student residences and proof of rising housing costs, there was a
growing call for the government to increase the building of student residences to alleviate the
situation (Afternposten, 2010, Barstad et al, 2011, Consumer agency, 2012).
5.2 Regulative leniency
In 2010, new building regulations brought stricter requirements on accessibility and acoustics.
Amid the growing debate over shortage in affordable housing for students there was a concern
that these new regulations would drive up the construction costs and in turn the living expenses
for students. In response a regulatory dispensation was given that exempted a greater number of
student housing from accessibility requirements e.g. in bathrooms. The dispensation came into
force in 2012.
Coupled with this regulatory dispensation on accessibility was a political willingness to
accept an arguably lenient interpretation of the acoustic requirements. This allowed student
housing projects to conform to slightly reduced acoustic standards, and enabled the use of
lighter construction materials such as timber (Studentsamskipnadene, 2010). With little to no
previous testing to confirm the adequacy of performance, this leniency within the regulation,
paired with the willingness of the client to experiment, were key factors that made the use of
CLT easier.
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5.3 Typology well suited to the CLT system logic

Having previously experienced that CLT had been priced out of a large housing project, iTre
and Trebruk were focused on the need ...to find constructions and structures that would make it
less complicated to build [in CLT] in order to get a cheaper construction. The small and
repetitive units that are characteristic of student housing lend themselves to prefabrication.
Supported by longitudinal external and internal walls, the large floor elements (3 x 15 meters)
could reach across a building with two outer rows of flats with common areas, lifts and stairs inbetween. The inherent planar and rectangular logic of the typical CLT construction system fit
the "gingerbread house" rationality that iTre was looking for. The continuous, external hard
mineral wool insulation simplified the envelope construction and eased upgrading to passive
house level of energy efficiency.
Figure 2. Simplicity of cell structure well suited to CLT system logic and continuous layer of insulation.
Plan layout developed by BAS architects.
5.4 Financial constraints and focus on costs

The subsidises offered to the building of student residences by the Norwegian State Housing
Bank Husbanken is conditioned by a cap on total building costs. This calls for a need to
exercise economic restraint and discipline in both project development and in the coordination
of all participants. In the Palisaden project this implied a focus on area efficiency. Arditi et al
(1997) have shown how innovation in the construction industry is stimulated by technological
advances, but primarily driven by market forces. Introducing CLT within the economic restraint
of the student housing typology, has enabled the system to establish itself as a cost-efficient
alternative to conventional steel and concrete construction.
6 TRACING THE PROCESS
6.1 Breaking the contractor dominance
Most Norwegian student residences are built under design and build or turnkey contracts,
totalenterprise. The owner (usually a student welfare association) will develop or take part in
programming and initial design but leave the contractors to commission consultants, decide on
details and structure, and carry out the construction. This limits the risk for the client, but gives
contractors greater influence over choice of construction and materials. A number of industry
reports have shown that this contractual relationship may be an obstacle to innovation and
integration of timber based solutions (Rambll, 2012, Denizou, 2007).
In the Palisaden an alternative project model was established that extended the pre-project
phase to include a detailed and integrated architectural and structural design based on CLT.
Directly commissioned by the client iTre acted as project manager and coordinated the network
of consultants, see Figure 3. In this position iTre was able to provide upgraded competence and

205
information on timber technology and counter systemic resistance posed by contractors

preferences. Only after the completion of this extended pre-project, did the project get offered
up for tender and moved into a more traditional design and build contract model.
client
client
PHASE 1:
PRIOR TO DESIGN AND
BUILD TENDER
project manager
contractor
consultant
consultant
consultant
architect
contractor
subcontractor
subcontractor
architects
producer
subcontractor
INFORMATION
consultant
PHASE 2:
DESIGN AND BUILD
CONTRACT
subcontractor
CLT
Figure 3.Traditional design and build organization (left) compared to model applied at Palisaden (right).
6.2 Upgrading information, preparing bidding process

Rambll concluded, in their 2012 analysis of public construction, that the projects which opted
out of timber solutions largely did so due to the lack of expertise and the dominance of steel and
concrete experience. In cases where clients had asked for timber solutions, contractors would be
known to present cheaper conventional alternatives. Ramblls findings are supported by the
informants in this study who emphasize how uncertainty and inexperience would lead to
inflated pricing. The contractors and consultants lack of experience and available expertise,
combined with an absence of pre-accepted solutions were listed as contributing factors.
In the Palisaden project, iTre sought to tackle this challenge through three key measures.
Firstly, iTre secured support from the client Sis to embed CLT in the project description and
the pre-project design, ensuring that tenders were given in timber solutions only. iTre describes
this as a crucial measure for focusing the contractors attention. Otherwise a conventional
calculation would be given, based on steel and concrete.
Secondly, a series of seminars in cooperation with TreBruk were held to update the
prequalified consultants and contractors on the various CLT systems, their requirements and
logics prior to final bidding. iTre described the effect as when we had information meetings
prior to their calculations, all the contractors leaned forward and paid close attention. Everyone
was interested. There were questions and a completely different focus [in the group].
Thirdly, to counteract overpricing incurred through insecurity iTre produced a CLT
specification and liaised these offers directly to the producers. On-site assembly by experienced
Austrian firms was included in the timber subcontract further limiting insecurity related to
capacity and competence.
By working directly with both suppliers and building contractors iTre was able to ensure an
accurate pricing of CLT options. As one of the consultants pointed out, these measures ensured
that, the competency is brought into the market so that you not only get the right solution,
but you also get the right price.
6.3 Two key technical challenges
The successful implementation of CLT in the Palisaden project was dependent on the resolution
of two key technical challenges; fire safety and sound insulation. Key consultants were either
part of the projects development team prior to the tender or brought in at later stages to deal
with these issues. Solutions were developed in cooperation with the contractor. They were

206
essential in enabling the project to meet with regulatory requirements. With regards to fire an
analysis was made to document loadbearing capacity and stability according to codes during fire
in an eight storey-timber building. To verify compliance with the sound insulation requirement
between floors and functions, a series of four full-scale tests had to be carried out on site before
erection of the main CLT structure.
6.4 Well publicized successes
At the time of completion, the Palisaden project was, with its eight storeys, Norways tallest
timber building. This attracted attention from local and national media. The project finished
ahead of time and within budget. It demonstrated large scale application of a renewable
construction material with low associated emissions and energy efficiency on the passive house
level. The contractor emphasized the speed of construction and favourable on-site working
environment as important advantages of the CLT system. The positive contractor statements
were essential for gaining industry attention and support. Following its completion, the
Palisaden project was used as an example of sustainable and cost effective housing by national
government and industry bodies (Byggindustrien, 2013, Innovasjon Norge, 2013). Delegations
from student welfare organisations, municipality officials and industry stakeholders queued up
for site visits.
6.5 Spreading and adaption of model and solutions. New actors
The first phase of the Palisaden student housing project was completed in August 2013 and
provided a total of 254 individual student residences. A second phase with 220 units followed in
2014. By then another 354 flats at Remmen near the city of Halden in the neighbouring county
of stfold was under construction. Again, the client was the local student welfare organization
(Sist). The same project model was applied engaging the same team of consultants. This time
however, a local contractor won the bid and the knowledge of large-scale timber construction
started spreading. Next was the city of Porsgrunn, west of the Oslo Fjord, and then Haugesund
at the west coast of Norway where new architects entered an expanding network of consulting
firms. At Moholt in Trondheim, a third architectural firm had been selected through a limited
competition. The local student welfare association initiated a shift from concrete and steel to
cross-laminated timber in the winning proposal. Fire solutions were tested and revised, but the
core concept and iTres strategy proved to be adaptable to different situations. The contractor of
the initial Palisaden project successfully assisted its Trondheim "sister branch" in the bidding
process. At the time of writing, the Moholt student village is the largest CLT project in Europe.
By 2015, a total of 1193 student residences had been built across the country. As described by
one of the participants in the Palisaden project, after we completed the first construction
phase here, it seemed like it just exploded. By the end of 2017, iTre estimates that they will
have participated in building more than 4000 individual student residences using the same
model of development and production.
4100
2100
2013
1000
700
200
2014
2015
2016
2017
Figure 4. The spread and number of CLT student residences in Norway from 2013 2017.

207
Blays and Manley (2003) have pointed to the importance of integrating project experiences
into continuous business processes and building up organisational resources to facilitate
innovation in the construction industry. The Palisaden project brought together national
expertise on acoustics, fire and structure to realise the build. On the back of this iTre was able to
establish an expanding network of architects, consultants and suppliers passing on information
from project to project. In kick-off sessions, participants would meet to exchange experiences
and discuss important choices and solutions. By early clarification of key systems and details,
iTre estimates they save up to three months of the design time.
6.6 Transfer to new typologies and markets
The student housing projects have given the construction industry a testbed for developing
solutions that can be transferred to the mainstream residential market. If properly planned and
documented, they may present pre-accepted solutions to risk-averse private property developers.
By meeting the strict economic constraints of student housing, the CLT system has proven to be
competitive.
Following the successes of the CLT solutions in the student housing sector, iTre has sought to
develop timber construction for other markets. In 2015 the shopping complex
Almenningstrkket won the timber build of the year award. iTre has also taken part in a
harbour development with offices and warehouses built in timber. In the same year iTre took
part in introducing CLT into another big market buildings for the health sector. The 12 000 m2
Ullerud helsebygg nursing home presently under construction will be the largest public
building to date in Frogn municipality. Political support for priority of environmental
performance was expressed before bidding. Up to 2% extra costs would be accepted for a welldocumented timber solution (Nordvik, 2016). Yet the economic incentive proved unnecessary.
Among seven bids, five based on steel and concrete and two on timber, a CLT solution won
both on price and sustainability (Nordvik, 2016). Ullerud helsebygg is located only 9 km away
from the Palisaden project that initiated the CLT breakthrough. In spring 2016 a large
Norwegian producer of timber constructions announced that they would build Norways first
factory for manufacturing of large, cross-laminated timber elements (Byggindustrien, 2016).
7 LESSONS AND CHALLENGES
7.1 A breakthrough "by the book", waiting to happen
A number of industry reports concluded by the early 2010s that the necessary knowledge and
culture for timber-based innovation was missing among the large contractors (Nyrud et al.,
2011, Bysheim & Nyruds, 2010, Denizou et al, 2007). Yet the process described in this paper
shows that the early public and private initiatives of the 1990s and 2000s had established a
potential within the industry for a timber breakthrough. As Pyry (2011) concluded in their
evaluation of the national timber programme, Treprogrammet, the programme had been
instrumental in creating favourable conditions for increased use of timber nationally. The
various pilot projects had provided relevant case studies, equipped key consultants with
technical expertise and established connections to international producers. The pieces necessary
for facilitating a breakthrough had been laid out, but awaited assembly. iTres success, as
described in this article, was to identify the key components, companies and individuals that
jointly could offer a collective information package and to direct their collective competencies
towards a joint effort of commercialising large scale and multi-storey CLT construction.
7.2 Education, network and innovation
One of the cornerstone in iTres strategy for product integration has been to educate clients,
consultants and contractors on the use of CLT in construction. By updating contractors, it has
been possible to establish a group of competing and serious bidders for the main contracts. Yet
building a business model on the role of educator and relations facilitator, what Blayse and
Manley (2003) would call an innovation broker, does incur the risk of educating and
208

facilitating oneself into redundancy. Once the knowledge deficit in the industry has been met
and a critical number of actors have gained the relevant and necessary know-how and
experience, CLT student housing will be built by other actors (Veidekke, 2015).
By facilitating continous knowledge transfer the iTre network may have countered the
temporary contractual relationships endemic to the construction industry.
The success of the CLT system and the iTre led process has been founded on a design loyalty
to the CLT systems restrictions and logic with moderate and stepwise improvements.
Preventing this careful approach from evolving into a protective and conservative attitude is
vital if innovation and competitiveness for CLT based solutions is to be upheld. Through the
student housing projects, the CLT system has adapted successfully to different architectural
strategies. However, to secure CLTs future in the construction industry there is a need for
further exploration of variations in volumetric build-up, envelope design and interiors as part of
a continued development of large CLT buildings.
7.3 CLT consumes lots of timber
Cross-laminated timber has gained praise and popularity as a sustainable construction material
with exceptional CO2 credentials (Doodo.A et al. 2014). Yet while Norway has a rich and
expanding national forest, the process of CLT expansion described in this article has been
wholly dependent on imported CLT components, assembly and technical support. The CO2
emissions related to transport are consequently an issue of concern for the products
sustainability profile. In a study of the sveien school in Trondheim (Solem, 2014) Eggen
architects estimated that the transportation of CLT components from Northern Sweden added
21% to the products overall Life Cycle Emissions. Significant though this figure may seem, it
is important to note that the overall CO2 emissions incurred by the CLT elements (including
transportation) were less than 50% of the emissions of the concrete alternative.
As a timber product, CLT offers dense and robust elements with enhanced fire and acoustic
properties that sequester large amounts of CO2. Yet it has, perhaps not unwarranted, also gained
the nickname "Consumes Lots of Timber". The system offers more material for less labour
(Allwood et al 2013) in place of material efficiency. On a European scale, the annual timber
harvest still only accounts for two thirds of annual growth, but global demand is growing. More
material efficient structural systems such as conventional timber stud and cassette systems may
in the end increase the number of buildings that can be built with renewable and low-emitting
timber materials. Innovation in sustainable timber housing must take into account the
continuously updated research on the relations between global emissions and national and
regional strategies for forestry and construction.
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211
Design strategies for low-rise high-density prefabricated timber

housing
U. Groba
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
ABSTRACT: In the light of sustainability as an urgent global concern, this paper takes the
material aspect of buildings and urban densification as a starting point. It seeks to explore
architectural qualities within low-rise high-density prefabricated timber housing, with a focus on
Norway. Seemingly contradictory aspects of architectural quality, sustainability and
prefabrication come to attention. Comparative literature and project studies aim at contributing
to better-informed strategic design decisions in the initial project phases, when the architects
influence on a project is at its peak.
1 INTRODUCTION
Dense housing typologies up to four floors in timber promise to be relevant for current and
future building activities in urban areas in Norway. Nevertheless, only few currently built
examples exist.
So what is the potential of pairing these urban housing typologies with timber construction?
What are important qualities related to low-rise high-density (LRHD) prefabricated timber
housing? How have they been achieved in existing projects? This knowledge may be helpful
and developed further when designing dense residential buildings constructed in timber.
(The term typology is not discussed further here. LRHD housing can be composed of a range
of typologies that either are solitaires, linear structures, mat buildings, spatial compositions or
hybrids. This reserach focuses on buildings with up to four floors and with a density exceeding
the one of small houses. Small houses are one of the two main Norwegian building categories
(according to Byggforsk, A330.009, as referred to by Schmidt et al., 2001) and charactarized as
having up to two floors and providing direct access from the terrain for all units. Large
residential buildings are defined as houses with three or more floors and/or more than four
units).
The paper at hand presents initial reflections within a PhD project and consists of two main
parts. The first one argues for the suggested combination of a typology range and a construction
material and method. The second one, based on a literature review and a project review, reveals
212

important architectural qualities related to LRHD prefabricated timber housing along with
design strategies to achieve them.
2 URBAN TIMBER HOUSING (RESEARCH BACKGROUND)
2.1 Urban densification and a missing typology
Figure 1. Authors translation of Das Ideal by Kurt Tucholsky, 1927.
Along with other Scandinavian cities with a considerable predicted population growth within
the coming decades, Oslos strategy to meet this challenge in a sustainable way implies
densification within existing urban structures and at existing public transport nodes
(Plansamarbeidet.no, 2015). Housing forms the largest part of new constructions, with the
predominant typologies being blocks of flats or detached villas (Statistics Norway, 2016). While
blocks can be an efficient way of providing urban dwellers with a home, detached villas
represent the seemingly unalterable idea of a good home for many Norwegians (Guttu, 2003).
Important changes over the last years though condition a re-evaluation of LRHD housing.
After a loss of interest in this building typology after the 1980s, there is both a new need for,
and a higher acceptance of urban density. Households are smaller, expectations concerning the
size of a garden are smaller as people are less willing or able to maintain it (today, most often
both parents work), there is a new focus on environmental concerns, and new laws for universal
access entail even more changes. At the same time, families with young children still aim for
moving into a house with garden. For most, the realization of this wish is not possible within the
cities.
Instead of polarising between high-rise buildings and urban sprawl, the potential of a
neglected typology should be reassessed. LRHD housing could provide a complementary
solution with the potential to strike a balance between sought-after single-family dwelling
qualities, urban amenities and improved affordability. This might help to give more people
access to a home fitting their needs, and to create a better social mix. Instead of criticising it as a
neither-nor-approach, LRHD housing could be seen as a both-and-option. It offers greater
densities than single-family housing areas on the one hand and gives more room for urban
surfaces with unsealed soil than high-rise quarters on the other (as requested by Guttu et al.,
1997). Unlike in other European countries like the Netherlands, there are few current examples
of LRHD housing in Norway. It could be relevant though for Oslos outer areas as much as for
other cities and urban areas in Norway. One might question the assumptions on housing
preferences based on economic data in a pressed marked situation (Skodvin, 2015). However,
the current extreme selling prices for flats in Oslos garden city areas indicate a market for
urban housing with small gardens, a shared identity and informal options for getting involved in
a neighbourhood community.
While blocks of flats still most often are built in concrete or masonry, the biggest market for
timber constructions are small residential houses with up to two floors. What are suitable
construction materials for typologies in between these?
2.2 Urban timber construction low hanging fruit, yet difficult to reach
Figure 2. Konrad Wachsmann, 1930.

213
Clearly, many arguments for the use of timber as a construction material have already been
made almost 100 years ago. Today, environmental concerns ascribe timber even more relevance
as a construction material.
Worldwide, the construction and operation of buildings account for 40% of consumed
energy, 30% of annual climate gas emissions and a third of globally produced waste (UNEP,
2009; europeanclimate.org, 2016). Numbers for the Norwegian building sector are considerably
lower, with the largest part related to the production and transportation of building materials
(Statistics Norway, 2016; Lindegaard et al., 2015): from 2015 on, passive house standard has
become the norm for new buildings in Norway, and hydropower covers big parts of the energy
demand related to the use of buildings. Since the energy consumption during the use phase of
buildings (operational energy) has improved, the material aspect (embodied energy) gains
importance when pursuing sustainable architecture. Numerous studies show clear environmental
benefits of timber as a construction material: It stores CO2, replaces more harmful materials,
offers mass savings, and it can be reused, recycled or finally burnt for energy production (Sathre
& OConnor, 2010; Dodoo et al., 2016; Oliver et al., 2014).
Health benefits of building with timber include an improved indoor climate with levelled air
humidity due to the hygroscopic qualities of timber, low toxic emittance, and even lower stress
levels measurable as a lowered heart beat rate (Seebacher, 2012).
Besides ecological advantages, timber can also offer economic, social and cultural value, as
complementing aspects of sustainability (Bchtold, 1998, as adapted by Kohler et al., 2010).
Norways architectural history and building culture is strongly linked to wood construction
reaching back to Stone Age shelters, Viking boats, stave churches and decorated storehouses
(stabbur) (Gunnarsjaa, 2006). However, Norways forest industry currently does not use its
resources at capacity (Tomter & Dalen, 2014). As a result of banning timber from Norwegian
city centres after severe fire incidents in the past centuries, urban multi-storey buildings have
been mostly built in masonry or concrete. A booming oil industry and its supporting
infrastructure forwarded the dominance of urban concrete and steel constructions even more by
advancing engineering expertise related to these materials. Additionally, concrete and brick
could solve fire and construction requirements related to larger buildings better than traditional
timber building methods. Unlike in Austria, Switzerland and Southern Germany, the further
development of traditional timber construction knowledge and skills as well as local production
and innovation has been interrupted and stayed limited to small residential houses. This lack of
experience often results in higher pricing of wooden alternatives on part of construction firms.
Only very lately (this year in fact, 2016) this has been tipping, and suggested timber
construction manages to compete with reinforced concrete as an alternative. Timber engineering
knowledge and timber production have had to be imported to Norway for a long time now (as
the case in the two examples by Helen&Hard presented later in this text) and often been met
with scepticism. Current initiatives and plans for local production promise a change here, as
well (conversation during a lecture with Tycho, 2016).
New wooden building products and technologies, along with updated building laws, allow for
a return of timber architecture to Norwegian cities. While it has become possible to build even
elevator shafts in timber, and cities are competing in building the highest so-called plyscraper
(plywood skyscraper), the underused potential of building average housing in timber deserves
more attention. Requirements for universal access condition the implementation of elevators
into new buildings with more than two floors. As a consequence, these buildings need to be
equipped with sprinkling (independently of the used materials), which in turn eases fire issues
when building with timber (Sorthe et al., 2015). But also the calculation and simulation of
timber behaviour in the case of fire has advanced. In the initial phase of a fire, mostly furniture
feeds the flames. When the construction starts to burn, the outer layer of timber elements starts
charring. This layer of coal prevents the supply of oxygen, and the timber element stops
burning. The slight oversizing of loadbearing timber elements can be calculated accurately to
ensure required fire resistance and necessary stability (Cheret, 2104; Mayo, 2015). Pre-accepted
solutions regarding fire requirements for timber constructions up to four floors (Norwegian fire
class 1 and 2) make this range of buildings low hanging fruit (Forsn, conversations 2016) for
timber construction as they should result in economic advantages due to faster building
approvals for this range of buildings. This research focuses on residential buildings with 2-4
floors.
214

Other possibilities for cost savings are offered by various degrees of prefabrication. Weather
and season independency, controlled working environments, predictable working processes,
just-in-time-delivery, reduced area needs on the building site, quality control and independency
of skilled workers on site are amongst the advantages. Between pre-cut beams or studs on the
one end and whole room modules ready to plug-in and play on the other, prefabricated walls or
slabs can be produced as massive timber elements (CNC-cut cross laminated timber) or as
timber frame elements.
Interestingly, these new products also condition a change in the tectonic understanding of
timber construction. When contrasting between filigree and solid tectonic language, timber with
its linear post and lintel or rigid frame constructions has traditionally belonged to the filigree, or
roofwork side. New, planar products though allow for understanding them as solid elements,
and part of earthwork materials (Deplazes & Wieser, 2008, referring to Semper, 2004 and to
Frampton, 1985), and thus to established design and construction methods. Further development
has led hybrid products that harness the strength of timber and concrete, and to timber building
blocks that can be carried by a single person and that thereby offer new possibilities of
combining prefabrication with self-construction. These timber elements exploit the strong sides
of timber more efficiently than CLT/massive timber.
The combination of LRHD housing and timber construction seems to have obvious
advantages, but as mentioned before, very few current built examples exist. The simple
combination of this typology and construction method yet does not automatically produce
meaningful results. In order to discuss its potential compared to other options, quantitative and
qualitative data is needed. Different ways to calculate density highlight different views on
density, like building density, coverage, dwelling units or population density. These densities
however can be perceived in very different ways (Berghauser Pont & Haupt, 2010; Berghauser
Pont & Marcus, 2014). The experience of urban density as inspiring and enriching or as boring
and frightening depends fundamentally on architectural quality (Campoli & MacLean, 2007).
3 ASSESSMENT OF ARCHITECTURAL QUALITIES: WORDS AND FACTS
3.1 Architectural quality, sustainability and prefabrication
Figure 3. Skodvin, 2015.
It is difficult to discuss architectural quality in an academic way, as it depends on time, culture,

point of view, taste etc. However, the achievement of architectural quality is the basic
motivation for most students and professionals to endure the ups and downs of practice (see also
Awan et al., 2011), and maybe the most important reason to involve architects in building
processes at all.
Attempts to make architectural quality discussible could be to focus on qualities instead,
relating to categories such as properties, coherence and values (Beim et al., 2007; Beim et al.,
2010).

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Figure 4. Categories of architectural qualities.
Especially when considering coherence, it becomes apparent that architectural quality as

related to building design, and academic research differ fundamentally in their focus and scope:
while research tries to isolate aspects that then are researched in depth with repeatable results,
architectural projects are complex and touch on a broad thematic variety. Their quality is
measured on the successful consolidation of at times conflicting requirements. Due to the
unique context of every design task, and opposed to scientific rules, these results must not be
offhandedly repeated or copied (Cross, 2001, p. 2).
For this research, qualities are selected according to different scales (urban, building, detail)
and relating to relevant topics (density, housing, material). As developed later in this paper, a
filtering method developed for this research aims at implementing a breadth of concerns into a
focussed, researchable research question.
Some contradictions between these qualities become apparent. Even more so when adding
sustainability (as a key motivation for the two constituent components of this research) to the
picture even though sustainability is described as a part of architectural quality and vice versa.
The striving for architectural quality has already been framed and noted down more than
2000 years ago, when Vitruvius promoted a balance between function, construction and beauty.
Modernists however approved beauty merely as a result of well-designed functionality
(Berthold, 2010). A focus on user participation in the design process emerged in the 1960s
(Boosma, 2000). More recently, sustainable architecture has become a mainstream goal, and
often a meaningless label (Unterrainer, 2015). A trust in technical solutions to improve the
energy performance of buildings is currently being superseded by a call for more holistic
approaches (Malecha, 2016). Many definitions of sustainability exist, but it seems reasonable to
concentrate the various dimensions of sustainability into three main categories, whereby one is
more diffuse than the other two, comprising ecological, economical and
social/societal/cultural/ethical aspects (Bchtold, 1998; Knig et al., 2010; Sattler, 2016).
Architectural approaches with these holistic ambitions might be called relational architecture
(Braathen et al., 2012), vernacular design (Banham, 1984; Forster et al., 2007), ecology of
tectonics (Beim, 2015) or regenerative architecture (Jensen, 2015 as published by Unterrainer),
but they all have interdisciplinarity and an integrative conception in common as a key aim
towards architectural quality, joining culture, technology, form, materials, social perspectives,
the production process, tradition, change, etc. into a preferably synergistic whole. These
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approaches make the case for a pluralistic instead of a singular view, where architectural quality
is conceived as a consolidation of all concerns.
Aspects of prefabrication add even more controversy. Digital manufacturing allows for mass
customization as standardization of processes rather than products (Beim, 2013). However,
manufactured products are still quite standardized. Rationality resulting in repetition and
monotony contrasts with variety and diversity that are important for a positive experience of
urban density. A resulting generality might be opposed to originality and site specificity. A
good planning process is essential, together with technical knowledge related to prefabricated
constructions on product and component level together with holistic quality parameters.
3.2 Method
How can one investigate aspects on two opposed ends in a hierarchy of elements of built form
(Kropf, 2011)? Most obviously, urban density and construction material and method come
together in a built project. With the issues discussed before in mind, a methodology for the
analysis of built precedents has been established through a literature review. Extracted
contradictory quality criteria work as a filter for the analysis of example projects.
For this research, Norwegian and international literature is the source for definitions of
architectural quality in general, and specifically for criteria related to urban density, housing,
and timber construction. The considered works comprise academic articles, reports by research
institutes, specialized books, declarations by Scandinavian architectural associations and
architectural awards, criteria established by the Norwegian State Housing Bank (Husbanken),
and publications by recognized timber architects from Scandinavia and Europe.
As a first act of investigation, these quality criteria related to the mentioned architectural
scales are filtered by the influence of the chosen construction material and system on them.
Selected aspects that seem to be contradictory to sustainability criteria and to prefabrication
related issues form the basis for an analysis of precedent projects: rationality and variety,
coherence and individuality, community and privacy, compactness and spaciousness.
Precedents are assessed on their design strategies to consolidate these contradictory
requirements. As added information, the precedent projects are investigated upon their typology,
construction system and degree of prefabrication, the experience of their materiality, and
potential saving measurements to give a more complete picture. Selected projects had to fulfil
six requirements: have a load bearing timber construction (preferably prefabrication), be 2-4
floors high, serve as housing, be situated in Norway or Europe, recently built by recognized
architects.
Figure 5. Selected precedents for LRHD prefabricated timber housing: construction + timber experience.

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4 INCONGRUITIES AND STRATEGIES (RESULTS)

This chapter provides an overview and discussion of architectural qualities related to urban
density, housing and timber construction. Contradictory requirements related to some of these
architectural qualities, sustainability and prefabrication are used to analyze four precedent cases
and to reveal design strategies to consolidate these.
4.1 Assorted qualities
4.1.1 Qualities related to a positive experience of urban density
Figure 6. Jan Gehl, 2008.
Qualities enabling a positive experience of urban density are connections via public transport,
biking or walking, a mix of functions, the closeness to jobs and services, green infrastructure
woven through the area, facilities for recreation, visual diversity, views, user diversity, well
placed and proportioned public spaces that are varied, accessible, interconnected and designed
for different activities and users, human scale, the absence of noise and pollution, little car
traffic, good solutions for car parking, and attractive neighbourhoods with stable and safe
residential environments (Campoli & MacLean, 2007). A detailed hierarchy of urban structures
defining transitions between public and private space has a positive impact on atmosphere and
quality of life in dense areas (Trger, 2015). Coherence and complex sensory perception,
openness and possibilities to retreat, nature within built environments, and authenticity and
historical meaning can contribute to a positive aesthetic experience and wellbeing (Cold, 2010).
4.1.2 Qualities related to housing
Figure 7. Housing and dwelling. Sources: Oxford English Dictionary; Saegert, S. (1985). The Role of
Housing in the Experience of Dwelling.
Qualities highlighted on building scale and related to residential functions include the projects
main idea and aesthetic qualities, daylight exposure and openings to several sides, window
sizes, a view out while being protected from views in, the spatial experience (for example
through extra room height), movement, circulation, transitions, clearly defined and protected
private outdoor area with sun and possibly a view in addition to shared outdoor areas, greenery
(f. ex. a tree in the patio), spacious or space efficient solutions, smart storage space, flexibility,
variability and adaptability, robustness, individuality, affordability, the possibility to own a
home and to maybe rent out a part, tailor-made solutions, universal access, and finally
environmental concerns such as energy efficiency (Nylander 2002; Guttu, 2002; Schittich 2004;
Schittich, 2012; Schramm, 2008; Husbanken).
4.1.3 Qualities related to the use of timber as a construction material
Figure 8. Tschofen, 2001, as translated in wood works, Kaufmann, 2009.

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On detail level, important qualities concern low maintenance, room climate, touch, look and
smell, health, positive associations, longevity and graceful ageing, possibility to dismantle
pieces for reuse or recycling, and the specific design of joints in prefabricated constructions
(Beim, 2007; Schneider & Till, 2007; Kaufmann, 2009).
Scale related preferable qualities
urban density
Visual diversity
User diversity
Mix of functions (closeness to jobs and services)
Connected (public transport, biking, walking)

Public spaces (placement, proportion, varied, accessible,
interconnected, different activities and users)
Campoli, J., & MacLean, A. S. (2007) Green infrastructure woven through, recreation
Norsk byggforskningsinstitutt. (1994) Good places, good living environments
Attractive neighbourhoods, stable + safe residential environments
Schramm, H. (2008)
No noise, pollution, little traffic
Guttu, J.
Trger, E. (2015)
Views
Human scale
Dealing with car parking
.. timber typology influence?

No copypaste prefab
Allow for different sizes, division + joining, modification, different finishes
Span that allows for a variety of (future?) uses
Density that allows for a bus stop / shop / etc.
sources
dwelling
sources
Nylander, O. (2002)
Guttu, J.
Schittich, C. (2012)
Schramm, H. (2008)
Husbanken
details
sources
Beim, A., et al (2007)
Schneider, T. & Till, J. (2007)
Kaufmann, H & Kapfinger, O. (2009)
Forum Holzbau Garmisch (2015)
Projects main idea and aesthetic qualities

Spatial experience (e.g. extra room height)
Movement, circulation, transitions
Daylight, orientation (e.g. windows to several sides, window size)
Spacious / space efficient solutions, smart storage
Flexible, variable, adaptable
Clearly defined and protected private outdoor area with sun + evt.
view in addition to shared outdoor area
View out, but protected from view in
Green (f. ex. tree in patio)
Individual, tailormade
Robust
Affordable
Possibility to rent out a part
Universal access
Environmental concerns (energy efficiency)
Ownership
Exposed timber associated with cozyness, warmth
No endless walls
Low / midrise, importance of first floor
Deal with restrictions due to transportation
Readable and simple construction principles
Allow for selfcustomization

Material quality, detailing, maintenance
Inhabitable raw buidling
Dividable apartments
Span / space for main functions on entry level. Obligatory sprinkling > timber
Insulation within or added to constructive layer, airtightness, ventilation concept
Look
Touch
Smell
Grown, living material > unique, with character

Exposed timber surfaces
Exposed timber surfaces
Room climate
Health
Associations
Ageing gracefully
Longevity
Low maintenance
Specific design of joints in prefabricated constructions
Dismantable
Planning process + technical knowledge related to prefabricated
constructions (product / component level + holistic quality parametres)
resource efficient constructions or massive timber?
Exposed timber surfaces, > hygroscopic material, levels humidity

Low emittant. Untreated where possible.
Cozyness, warmth, wellbeing
Respect and design with weather side differences
Proper detailing, right wood type in the right place
Untreated wood, aegeing gracefully, detailing
Avoid look of stacked containers
Design for dissassembly
Plan with timber from the beginning, colaborate!
Figure 9. Scale related architectural qualities.
4.1.4 Impact of the choice of construction material and construction system on architectural
quality
Surprisingly, the choice of the construction material and system was found to have an impact
even on an urban level: A mix of functions and thereby the closeness to jobs and services
depends on constructive spans that allow for a diversity of uses und potential future uses.
Avoiding a copy-paste use of prefabricated products supports visual variety. User diversity is
enhanced by a construction system that allows for different apartment sizes, the division and
joining of residential units, and an exterior and interior modification of the dwellings. Different
degrees of finishing the dwelling before sale create a larger range of affordable options.
Inhabitable raw buildings allow for later upgrades and individual finishes and furnishing.
Minimal basic units with consciously planned exterior space make later extensions possible.
Finally, exposed timber associated with cozyness and warmth can contribute to good living
environments that are taken care of.
4.1.5 Contradictory or complementary?
Contradictions between the architectural qualities described before, sustainability and
prefabrication come to attention. Prefabrication is a relevant aspect to include in this context as
it is considered being an important way of constructing with timber in the present and future. Of

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course, it is not the only way to build with timber. But even historic Norwegian timber buildings
have been moved, for example when inherited and transported to a new site, and thus entailed
an early form of prefabrication as defined by an assembly at another place than their later
location (lecture by Nyb, 2016). Sustainability on its part, even though not addressed more
thoroughly on its terms, lies behind the decision to include urban density and timber
construction as main constituents into this research.
The selected contradictory pairs (rationality and variety, coherence and individuality,
community and privacy, compactness and spaciousness) are defined more in detail in the
following paragraphs where their ability to inspire consolidating design strategies is assessed.
sustainability
architectural quality
urban density
variety
prefabrication
rationality
coherence
individuality
dweling
compactness
community
privacy
originality
material / detail
affordability
flexibility
general
timelessness
spaciousness
architectural quality
research
context / site specific
generality
consolidation of a breadth
of requirements
narrowed
research question
no copypaste
repeatable results
Figure 10. Contradictory requirements related to architectural quality, sustainability and prefabrication,
and contradictory requirements related to architectural quality and research.
4.2 Design strategies for LRHD timber housing consolidating contradictory requirements
4.2.1 Design strategies for rational variety
The discussion of rationality and variety addresses the contradiction between repetition as often
associated with prefabrication and mass production, and spatial diversity as an important quality
for a positive experience of urban density. The focus lies mostly on visual and accordingly
geometrical aspects of a building design. Seven design strategies have been identified. Many
projects combine several of these.
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A basic building geometry that is repeated and rotated allows for a varied spatial experience
with identical buildings (Fig. 12, graphic 1). The position of entries and the placing of functions
and spaces towards sun and view have to be considered from the beginning. They could be
rotated with the whole geometry, or the geometry could offer flexibility for the placement of
access, functions and spaces. The assessed examples (Skadbergbakken by Helen&Hard and
Kjlnes by Helen&Hard) apply pentagon and square footprints combined with sculpted or tilted
roofs.
A rich topography within each repeated segment offers spatial variety even though using
identical units (Fig. 12, graphic 2). The project Hannibal Road Gardens by Peter Barber shows a
repetition of geometries and faade materials, but with a sculpted volumetry of each unit.
Variation in the positioning of faade openings changes the appearance of otherwise identical
parts, such as in the projects Mhlweg (Johannes and Hermann Kaufmann), Skadbergbakken,
Kjlnes or Hannibal Road Gardens (Fig. 12, graphic 3).
The implementation of repetitive units per block, with identical elements such as windows,
doors and balconies, but in a range of apartment sizes or access situations is another way to
create variety within repetition as seen at Mhlweg and Hannibal Road Gardens (Fig. 12,
graphic 4).
End elements that are adapted to the plot shape or form a visual mark to end a row with
repetitive units support the experience of variety, too, as in Hannibal Road Gardens (Fig. 12,
graphic 5).
Other projects than the ones assessed in detail offer further design strategies:
Warm body and cold skin could be a title for compact heated rational volumes providing
indoor spaces, and individual secondary outdoor elements, such as roofs, balconies, railings,
fences, terraces or stairs (as developed and planned by the author for Helen&Hard, for an
unpublished project for a private client). Outdoor elements disconnected from the isolated main
structure providing access are also part of the Mhlweg project.
Finally, a minimal basic structure to be continued or modified by the owners when the
necessary economic background or a new need is there can also have benefits for visual variety.
It makes a new development less dependant on the striving of one designer to achieve diversity.
The final visual and spatial result is less controlled by the architect and tends more towards a
natural growing process. Simple rules for extensions and modifications can ensure coherence,
such as the use of a limited range of materials or colours or geometries. Here, the basic,
predefined project and the resulting modified project might differ considerably in their outer
appearance: With clear geometries in the beginning, initial simplicity grows into formal
complexity when individual parts are added. Contrastingly, initial volumetric complexity grows
into simplicity when gaps are filled. The example Quinta Monroy in Chile by Elemental is not
constructed in timber, but timber would offer many advantages concerning DIY, modification,
and after use of the building material (Fig. 12, graphic 6). Skjettenbyen (by HRTB) in Oslo
could serve as another example.
4.2.2 Design strategies for coherent individuality
Coherence and individuality are two aspects of dense housing that can be conflicting or
complementing. Coherence refers to a visual wholeness and consistency of all dwelling units
within a neighbourhood that fosters a sense of home, meaning the feeling of belonging to a
social group and to a physical neighbourhood. At the same time, it is an archaic human need to
define ones own territory, to leave traces, to make a space your own by modifying it. Can a
certain degree of homogeneity create belonging and group identity while still allowing for a
visual presence of each individual? How can each individual unit be recognizable within a
greater whole? Here, physical and as the case may be spatial manifestations of a social group
composition are in the focus. There is a certain overlap with the aspects discussed before, but
while focus more on constructive and geometric repetition and rationality, this paragraph rather
addresses a visual coherence related to surfaces and spatial constellations.
In Skadbergbakken, repeated and rotated identical geometries still allow for an individual
placement of roof terraces that are oriented towards sun and view (Fig. 13, graphic 7).
In the same project, the same faade material and surface treatment are used for all units, but
with differences in detailing. Variations in the cladding geometry can for instance be achieved
through swapping outer and inner panels with different dimensions (Fig. 13, graphic 8).

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Identical faade material and treatment can also be combined with individual colour details
for each unit. In Skadbergbakken and Kjlnes, these appear as around windows and doors,
while whole faade elements and shutters provide colour in Mhlweg (Fig. 13, graphic 9).
4.2.3 Design strategies for privacy within a community
Advantages of living in a community can range from a feeling of belonging to a social group,
mutual help, social interactions and relationships and related mental health to shared resources
or initiatives. These networks seem to develop more easily in dense housing areas at moderate
heights than in very spread settlements or more anonymous large blocks of flats. In order to
thrive in dense settings with if carefully planned - resulting social interaction, the possibility to
retreat to secluded private areas indoors and outdoors is of equal importance, undisturbed and
eluded from social control. The precedent review for this paper focuses on the outer building
composition rather than plan solutions of dwelling units as a frame for social sustainability.
The typical urban block is accessed from surrounding streets, while the courtyard provides
individual or shared outdoor spaces. In Skadbergbakken, this order is flipped around (Fig. 14,
graphic 10): Access happens via shared tuns (traditional open courtyards formed between
solitary buildings) that the houses are grouped around. These tuns create subgroups within the
whole development where people meet informally when leaving or approaching their homes.
They provide additional functions that prolong the neighbours stay in that area and that invite
for interaction, such as guest parking, access to cellar rooms or playgrounds and shared green
areas connecting them with other tuns. Individual gardens are situated on the houses backsides,
in addition to individual and shielded balconies and/or roof terraces. Also in Mhlheim, the
buildings are grouped around a shared outdoor space. Allowing access from there as well as
from the street side seems indifferent rather than articulating a clear hierarchy concerning
circulation and use. Private terraces and balconies are turned away from the access side of the
unit. Some are recessed and thus more protected from views.
Another way of offering different levels of being together and on ones own is to create a
transition in the degree of privacy of outdoor areas (Fig. 14, graphic 11). In Hannibal Road
Gardens, all houses are accessed from the same side and facing a shared green area with a
playground. Various levels of private and more public outdoor spaces that each unit disposes of
are created by horizontal as well as vertical distance, in addition to separating elements, such as
walls and railings. These features provide access control and reduced visibility from the public
areas.
4.2.4 Design strategies for spacious compactness
While compact building volumes with a minimized enclosing surface contribute to less
consumption of space, building materials and maybe also furniture and things, as well as
requiring less energy for heating, spaciousness is associated with a good home. When at an
extreme, too narrow housing conditions can have negative impact on psychic and physical
health, as pointed out by Sta (2016). Furthermore, a certain amount of slack space or loose
fit ensures greater generality (Schneider & Till, 2007). A rich and stimulating spatial
experience can be enhanced by an experience of verticality and other contrasting spatial
constellations, e.g. wideness and enclosure. This relates also to an experience of the relationship
between inside and outside. A contact to nature is one of the key arguments for the discussed
range of urban density, allowing for a direct experience of weather, seasons, daytime, and
plants. The investigated precedents reveal several design strategies for compact building
volumes that still allow for a generous spatial experience:
Window openings in a maximised number of directions per unit create visual spaciousness,
with exterior elements as visual spatial limits and changing light conditions and shadow patterns
in the course of a day. This is supported by a faceted geometry, for example pentagon shapes as
in Skadbergbakken (Fig. 15, graphic 12) or angled cut-ins as shown in Hannibal Road Gardens
(Fig. 15, graphic 13). But even apartments with windows (and thereby views and light
conditions) on two opposed sides offer an improved spatial experience besides other advantages
such as cross ventilation like in Mhlweg (Fig. 15, graphic 14). Another way to achieve this is
with units crossing the entire building volume vertically and horizontally. Examples are the
double x house with 4 units and the spiral house with 5 units in Skadbergbakken (Fig. 15,
graphic 15). This also supports a vertical spatial experience as an alternative strategy to spaces

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with double height (single family houses Skadbergbakken, Kjlnes) or more conventional
duplex typologies as in Mhlweg (Fig. 15, graphic 16).
Multiple outdoor spaces on various levels such as terraces, balconies or roof gardens allow
for the experience of spaciousness in spite of compact indoor volumes, e.g. in Hannibal Road
Gardens (Fig. 15, graphic 17). An outdoor access solution can also contribute to an experience
of vertical space in-between or along a building (Mhlweg).
Reduced individual units and increased shared facilities would be another approach for
balancing compactness and spaciousness (as planned but not realized in student housing project
Kjlnes). Other new concepts for contemporary housing communities are Vindmllebakken by
Helen&Hard in Stavanger, or Lange Eng by Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter in Copenhagen.
Cases
Skadbergbakken (tun 7+9)

Housing development, Sola, NO
Helen&Hard, 2015
Kjlnes
Student housing, Porsgrunn, NO
Helen&Hard, 2015
same pentagon shape repeated

differently rotated
differently scaled (diff. building
typologies)
same basic geometry + material
different colour details
different cladding geometries
different orientation roof terraces
shared courtyards: access
individual and shielded gardens,
balconies, roof terraces on the other
side
compact volumes
double height spaces
apartments cross floors and sides
orientation towards up to 5 sides
same cubic shape repeated

differently rotated (tilted roof)
Mhlweg
Social housing complex, Wien, AT
Herm. + Joh. Kaufmann, 2006
Hannibal Road Gardens

Aff. + social housing, London, UK
Peter Barber Architects, 2012
Contradictory requirements
Rational variety
Coherent individuality
Privacy within community
Spacious compactness
repetitive units per block

same windows/doors/balconies
different appartment sizes
different access situations
same facade materials
same facade proportions
different colour details
same materials
differently coloured shutters, each
block has its own colour identity
shared outdoor space: access
possibility
private terraces, balconies on the
other side, some recessed
compact volumes
minimized heated area: outdoor
1 sided orientation, but some units access
with extra height + sleeping loft
some duplex apartaments
continuous outdoor area
orientation towrads 2 sides
2 alternating house types in a row

end apartments adapted to plot
shape
1 higher "landmark" house
same basic geometry + material
articulation of every entry and
individual outdoor area
Access from the same side, facing
a shared green area + playground
various private outdoor areas as a
transition from public to private
small houses in spite of many
bedrooms up to 7)
orientation maximised: cutins
each unit 34 floors in + outdoors
Figure 11. Design strategies for LRHD timber housing consolidating contradictory requirements.
Figure 12. Design strategies for rational variety.
Figures 13 + 14. Design strategies for coherent individuality / for privacy within a community.

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Figure 15. Design strategies for spacious compactness.
4.3 Further observations

Timber as a construction material and the chosen construction method were found to have an
impact on various levels. When typology and building scale contributed to the same effects,
they are mentioned here, too.
4.3.1 Costs
Cost reductions were achieved through shorter construction time due to prefabrication (almost
halved to 7 months at Kjlnes), low construction weight (cheaper transport, cranes and
foundation at Kjlnes) and a smaller construction site.
The scale of some buildings allowed for building without elevators (Kjlnes) or with a
reduced number of elevators (Mhlweg). Reducing indoor area and building exterior access
balconies (Mhlweg) also saved costs. General advantages of row house typologies or vertically
separated double houses are the nonexistence of non-private corridors, lifts, shared staircases or
vestibules. Sound and fire problematic are reduced to vertical separation walls (Hannibal Road
gardens, double house Skadbergbakken).
Although the focus of this paper is on timber as a construction material and not as a facade
material, it should not remain unmentioned that cedar shingles were chosen as a cladding for the
social housing project in London because of low cost and low maintenance. The Mhlweg
project features an untreated larch panel cladding instead of expensive hard woods.
4.3.2 Possibilities for prefabrication
Prefabrication possibilities exist in a much larger range than represented by the studied
examples, but they include some of the most important properties of wood in prefabrication:
High strength and low weight (transportable), and easy to cut, form and assemble both with
traditional and CNC tools.
CNC cut load bearing inner and outer CLT walls and slabs with individually placed openings,
in a combination with precut posts and beams are used in Skadbergbakken and Kjlnes.
Kjlnes features furthermore whole prefabricated bathroom units.
In Mhlweg, large weather-proof prefabricated, laminated timber panels are used, with highly
insolated facade elements (framed panels).
4.3.3 Flexibility and adaptability
Future adaptions are made easier and thus more probable with simplicity and readability of the
construction system. No extra knowledge either about the construction system, or specifically
designed elements that might not be produced any more, is needed (Schneider & Till, 2007).
The use of as few as possible different materials is beneficial for future disassembly and
reuse. Metal connectors can damage tools, but are not problematic when burning the wood to
create energy.
For future extension, the provision of extra space besides, underneath or on top of the
building that can be used without compromising qualities for the neighbours should be
considered carefully.
Internally, extra rooms that can be divided off the shared areas (as for example in the single
family house in Skadbergbakken offer one form of adaptability.
4.3.4 Diversity of uses
Ground floor area, height, free span and thus free plan organization allow for a variety of
eventual uses that could enrichen a citys streetscape. This opens for alternative incomes and
working models, adapts to growing or shrinking residential constellations or physical needs. For
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instance, the ground floor area could be used as office, shop, separable rent-out unit, universally
accessible main unit, etc.
4.3.5 Association / experience / timber exposure / room climate
Although a timber building does not need to reveal its construction material in any way (and not
all of the investigated examples do), all of the assessed reference projects with a timber
construction also have wooden faade solutions. Some are untreated (Mhlweg), others ferrous
sulphate treated wood (to fast-forward the greying process).
Exposed CLT surfaces (painted or untreated) on walls and ceilings, can balance room
moisture and also contribute to atmospheric experience of a home, like in Skadbergbakken or
Kjlnes. Kjlnes also has also been planned with (but executed without) built-in timber
furniture.
Some surfaces per room with exposed timber combined with surfaces with exposed mineral
materials can create a good room climate with balanced moisture and temperature (a thin layer
is sufficient). This is also aesthetically preferred by a majority of users (Bysheim, 2016; Nyrud
& Bringslimark, 2012).
5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
A great challenge for architectural research is the balance between narrowed research questions
that produce repeatable answers, while architecture as a discipline is very much about the
consolidation of various, at times contradictory requirements into one project. How can research
aiming for practical relevance accommodate for both standpoints?
For this paper, pairs of contradictory requirements have been selected through a literature
study and applied as a narrowing lense for the study of built precedents. With only four example
projects, a broad spectrum of general design strategies has been revealed that are relevant for the
development of LRHD prefabricated timber housing. Every design strategy is described roughly
and deserves further research. What does for example the rotation of a building volume imply
concerning views, daylight, access? Do plan solution and site plan allow for a rotation without
any adjustment? Would the construction system allow for adjustments? Does a rotation of
building volumes bring other advantages or disadvantages for the perception or use of urban
space with it? A different selection of contradictory pairs might bring to light more timber
construction relevant strategies, such as flexibility versus affordability.
Concerning the frame for LRHD typologies as discussed here, the suggested height range
from 2-4 floors could be assessed more critically: how do savings due to pre-accepted solutions
for fire protection requirements relate to the need of an elevator from more than 2 floors? This
might also inspire a further investigation into options for sharing an elevator apart from wellknown and often criticized access balconies, of typologies with dwelling units over 3-4 floors
that dont require elevators, or of topographic conditions that help avoiding elevators. Another
relevant (yet little timber specific) field of study especially in 4 storey mat buildings are light
conditions and privacy of outdoor areas.
Including more projects into the study will increase the number of potential design strategies.
These do not represent recipes that ensure architectural quality. But they bring architectural
qualities that are important for LRHD prefabricated timber housing to the designers attention.
The diversity and richness of conscious and maybe even subconscious design decisions
inspire to add to them or to develop them further. With these specific contradictory challenges
in mind when designing, architectural design can contribute more consciously to a positive
perception of urban density and to living quality in dense housing areas. In this way,
architectural design interacts with architectural research.
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Applications of building information modeling for high

performance homes
R. Grover, T. M. Froese, S. Staub-French, Y. Bai, A. Fallahi, S. Kim, S. K. Thontepu,
M. Kasbar & P. Zadeh
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
ABSTRACT: Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been applied to various stages in the
life cycle of building projects, with a focus expanding from more traditional design towards
areas of construction and facility management. This paper describes work exploring a suite of
BIM technologies and IT tools that can help achieve the cost, time and quality targets during the
construction phase of high performance single family house. The paper highlights the potential
benefits that can be achieved through this BIM suite. The tools and technologies include the use
of BIM for pre-fabrication, BIM for energy modelling, combining BIM and social media for
knowledge management, BIM for 4D scheduling, integration of BIM and GIS to support facility
management and generating as-built 3D models during construction. The proposed tool suite
was applied during the construction of a prototype high-performance, low-cost single family
home built on the campus of The University of British Columbia. The main goals of the
construction project were to provide affordable and energy efficient housing to First Nations
communities in Canada. The paper then explains the use of each of these tools on the project
and the associated time and effort required for their implementation. The paper concludes by
highlighting the extent to which the use of these tools helped the project achieve its goals and
the envisioned benefits. An attempt is made to present a Return on Investment (ROI) on the use
of the proposed suite of BIM technologies.
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is causing a paradigm shift in the Architecture,
Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, transforming the way buildings are designed,
constructed and managed. BIM is moving the construction process from lonely to social
data, in the sense that BIM is enabling project stakeholders to easily share digital project
information with each other (ARCHIBUS, 2009). This enables better design and management of
the projects (in terms of cost, time and quality), and results in improved decision making.
While the potential range of BIM application areas is very broad, common usage is currently
much more limited. BIM has most frequently been reported in the context of relatively large,
complex, and high-budget projects and it is most often used for specific design and geometric
clash-detection applications. Yet BIM use is gradually expanding to different project phases
from pre-construction to facility management because of the advancing level of software and
tools, growing industry experience, increasing numbers of people with BIM skills, and
established libraries of BIM elements that can cut the modelling time and effort.
Meanwhile, the demand for energy-efficient and affordable housing has also been steadily
rising worldwide. The use of BIM on such projects can potentially contribute towards achieving
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their goals by promoting a collaborative work process amongst project stakeholders, allowing
architects to simulate building performance, optimizing schedule, and providing access to rich
information to facility managers. This paper focusses only on small, single family housing
projects, and explores how the use of BIM can benefit these projects.
The authors propose a suite of BIM technologies and IT tools that can be used during the
construction phase of single family house. The underlying hypothesis is that this suite can
facilitate achieving the cost, time and quality targets for an energy efficient, single family home.
In order to test this hypothesis, the proposed suite was used during the construction phase of the
AYO Smart Home Project - a pilot single family home built on the campus of The University of
British Columbia (UBC).
This paper describes the combination of six different studies which were conducted on the
AYO Project. Each study tested the use of a specific BIM related tool or technology on the case
study project. The first section introduces the topic and the research hypothesis. The second
section provides a background of the project and data collection techniques used. The third
section summarizes the background, methodology and observations for each of the six studies.
Finally, the fourth section concludes with the major findings and learnings from each study.
2 AYO SMART HOME: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
AYO Smart Home is a company based in Vancouver, Canada founded in 2015. Their goal is to
provide First Nation communities and other markets with affordable, durable, and culturally
appropriate housing while maintaining high levels of livability and energy efficiency. To help
reach this goal, they have built a pilot home on the UBC campus as a research platform to
optimize the construction of future homes. This home was used as a case study to test the
proposed suite of BIM technologies. The design for the home was finalized in August 2015,
construction started in September 2015, and substantial completion was achieved by January
2016. The two story, 1620sq.ft demonstration home uses Magnesium Oxide (MgO) Structural
Insulated Panel (SIP). In addition to the high- performance SIP panel envelope, the home uses
innovative mechanical and lighting systems while adopting a passive design approach to
maximize solar energy (AYO Smart Home, 2015).
For data collection, the authors were provided complete access to the construction phase of
the building, including 2D design drawings, other project documents, interviews with project
stakeholders and access to site. Authors also had access to time-lapsed videos and site
photographs.
3 IDENTIFYING AND APPLYING A BIM SUITE OF TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES ON
AYO SMART HOME PROJECT
3.1 Pre-fabrication using BIM
The importance of using pre-fabrication in smaller scale projectssuch as the AYO Smart Home
Projectlies primarily on the ability to reduce the construction process times and eliminate
design errors. These pre-made elements can lead to significant time and cost savings. The
budget on smaller projects tend to be smaller and more restrictive. Hence, mitigation in case of
errors or unanticipated events can hinder the completion of the project.
Pre-fabrication requires accurate information to minimize re-work. Hence, there is a strong
case that BIM tools be used whenever prefabrication opportunities are available. Additionally,
due to the computing power of these tools, multiple iterations can be considered in short
amounts of time to determine the most cost effective and sustainable prefabrication layouts.
In this study, one of the authors, who is moderately proficient with AutoDesk Revit, made a
Level-of-Detail 400 (architectural and structural) model using the 2D architectural and
structural drawings provided by the project design team. Among the observations made:
o There were numerous discrepancies between various 2D drawings in terms of
placement of multiple structural elements that, if left unnoticed, would result in
rework and material waste on site. Using a BIM model, these were identified early.

229
o Using built-in Revit functionalities, the various module sizes could have been
optimized to be less variant, which would drive down the risks of poor fit or using the
wrong panel for the wrong place (a lack of panel uniformity was found to be a major
hindrance to the construction productivity).
o Using the model, very accurate, almost shop drawing-like drawings could be
produced, which could help ensure that the translation of information from the
designer to the prefab wall suppliers was error free.
o More ambitious designs could be attempted since any possible clashes could be
identified early-on.
3.2 Energy modeling using BIM
As concern about the environmental impacts of building grow, private and public organizations
increasingly require the building industry to design and construct buildings with minimal
environmental impact(Azhar et al., 2009). Thus, more accurate energy estimation methods are
required to anticipate the eventual operating energy consumption during the design phase. Many
researchers have worked to develop more precise methods, and BIM is being adopted broadly as
part of this trend. According to the recent studies, BIM-based energy analysis is considered to
be useful for energy assessment of buildings (Aksamija, 2012; Che et al., 2010; Dowsett and
Harty, 2013; Laine and Karola, 2007).The greatest benefit reported is that changes to the design
are reflected directly through BIM model, and the results of the energy analysis can be viewed
immediately. As a result, more design iterations can be evaluated to improve efficiency and
meet sustainability goals (Kalavagunta et al., 2015).
In this study, the BIM model was created and modified using Autodesk Revit. Energy
simulation was conducted by Green Building Studio, which was connected to Revit.
Simulations were done for 65 scenarios by varying the window size, position and orientation of
the model. The methodology is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Research Methodology for Energy Modelling.
In order to analyze the impact of window design on building energy load, the energy load of a
single family house with different scenarios was estimated using BIM and energy analysis.
Window size, position, and orientation were changed in 65 scenarios, and the heating and
cooling load of each scenario was analyzed. First, the size and position of the windows were
changed in 29 scenarios. The window-to-wall ratio (WWR) was changed from 0 to 100
percentages, and the position of windows moves from low to high. The energy simulation result
showed that the annual energy load increased as the window size increased, raising by 45% as
the WWR goes from 0% to 100%. The load variation by the window position in each size
indicated that the window position had a negligible impact on energy load of less than 1%. In
the next stage, the window position of each orientation of the building was changed in 36

230
scenarios to see what combination of window position yields the lowest energy load and which
side of windows position has the biggest impact on the energy load. Again, the differences
were found to be very small, with the lowest energy load arising when all the windows were
located at a middle height and the largest variations occurring when the windows were on the
east side.
3.3 4D scheduling using BIM
This study involved assessing the usefulness of a 4D BIM model with respect to construction
productivity. A 4D schedule was generated for the project using Navisworks by linking the 3D
BIM model to the construction schedule. The information and potential productivity problems,
which can be identified and enhanced through 4D BIM simulation, were analyzed. The
framework used to implement BIM, adopted from Staub-French and Khanzode (2007) along
with the time spent on each step is shown in Table 1 The times given are higher than expected
norms since this was the first encounter of the student with using Revit, MS Project, and
Synchro software.
Table 1. Framework to implement BIM.
Development Stage
Step 1; Establish Installation Sequence
Step 2: Reorganize 3D Models
Step 3: Refine Schedule
Step 4: Link 3D Objects and Activities
Step 5: Refine 4D Model
Total Hours Spent
Effort in Hours
50
55
10
13
0
128
3.4 Knowledge management using BIM and social media

Knowledge is one of an organizations most important assets, hence organizations should strive
to capture and reuse the knowledge of their workers to support continuous improvements. The
construction industry is often associated with low levels of productivity, one reasons for which
is poor knowledge management since mistakes are past projects are frequently repeated. In
addition to BIM, social media platforms are another recent invention that have diverse
applications in every field, including construction. The main objective of this study was to
assess the usefulness of a BIM-based social platform for knowledge management (particularly
for tacit knowledge) in the construction industry.
In this study, a SocioBIM platform called Green 2.0 (CANARIE, 2015)was used to
facilitate knowledge management on the project. The Green 2.0 platform allows users to walk
through a BIM model, comment on particular elements, categorize their comments, and reply to
comments by others. Hence, it was selected for implementation on the prototype house project
to assess the potential for BIM-based knowledge management during construction.
Installing the pre-fabricated SIP panels was selected as an appropriate activity for
implementing the platform. The installation lasted for approximately 14 days. The challenges,
issues or successes relating to productivity and site safety were documented on a daily basis by
conducting semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, recording time lapse videos, and
observing on-site operations. Five project team members were interviewed: the Project
Manager, the Architect, the Site Superintendent, the Structural Engineer, and the Panel Installer.
An experiment simulated these central project participants using the prototype daily (since it
was not possible to impose the system on the actual participants in real time during
construction). Once the panel installation was complete, five research participants (graduate
students at UBC who were also involved in studying the construction phase of this project and
were, therefore, very familiar with the details of the construction operation) were assigned one
of the 5 aforementioned roles. The architectural BIM model of the project was uploaded on the
system (using IFC format) and shared with the participants. The participants were then directed
by the platform administrators to walk through the BIM model and discuss the various issues
related to specific elements on the platform. This exercise lasted for 14 days, the same duration

231
as the installation of the panels. On each day of this exercise, the participants were shown the
recorded time-lapse video of panel installation on the actual day of construction. They were also
orally briefed on what activities took place on-site and what challenges and successes happened
on the actual day of construction. The key observations made from this experiment are
discussed in section 4.4.
3.5 Integrating BIM and GIS
Since life-cycle operation and maintenance cost more than initial construction, BIM is
increasingly being of interest as a potential approach for effective building facility management.
With collaboration of mechanical, electrical and plumping system data, facility managers can
obtain rich and reliable information from BIM to manage facility management process. Many
past research projects have been conducted in this area (Arayici et al., 2012; Becerik-Gerber et
al., 2012; Sabol, 2008). At a larger scale such as campuses, however, both building-level and
campus-level data are required to fulfil an operation. Taking campus service as an example,
when the operational office receives a request to fix the air- condition in a particular building,
the personnel need the campus map to locate the building and find the correspondent service
zone and its service manager. He or she also needs the interior building map to find the
equipment room; furthermore, detailed information about the air-condition equipment is
required. In such cases, BIM is very limited for locating an element accurately, providing
surrounding landscape information, and conducting spatial queries, etc. (Rich and Davis, 2010).
Therefore, BIM approaches need to be extended to increase the efficiency and accuracy of
facility management process. One potential discipline that could be incorporated is Geographic
Information System (GIS).
GIS can represent and analyze real-world objects and their relationships, typically at the
community level. It supports rich spatial data storage and organization. GIS has matured in
managing a large number of facility assets (Rich and Davis, 2010). BIM can be extended with
GIS so that it can visualize campus-level information and support spatial analysis such as
generating routes to a target location, in addition to building scale data. Hence, combining BIM
and GIS technology to realize building data and geospatial data sharing and exchange has much
potential value in facility maintenance.
The Industry foundation classes (IFC) standard is an open schema that supports BIM data
sharing and representation (buildingSMART.org). The IFC standard can contain information of
a buildings whole lifecycle, from design, through construction, to operation and maintenance.
CityGML is an open data and XML-based GIS data format for storing and exchanging city
models. The ArcGIS 3D City Information Model (3DCIM) is an information model that works
well for data management, analysis and visualization. They both represent virtual 3D urban
objects. This study explored a way of converting IFC to CityGML, and finally moving the data
model to a GIS environment for visualization. Due to similar data structure of IFC and
CityGML file, integrating IFC and CityGML is a potential solution to enhance interoperability
between BIM and GIS data. As 3DCIM performs better on managing data, CityGML is
converted to 3DICIM for FM purpose. This is achieved by two-step transformation: 1) IFC to
CityGML; 2) CityGML to 3DCIM. Safe Software can provide both reader and writer tools for
manipulating these data formats with its product Feature Manipulation Engine (FME); therefore,
FME is used to take care of technical aspects of the conversion process.
The main contribution of this study is the development of work processes to integrate
building data and its community into geospatial context to better support FM operations. The
methodology of converting IFC > CityGML > 3DCIM consists of four stages. First, capture
major building model feature classes from IFC standards. Second, create mapping schema
between IFC classes and CityGML classes and develop a FME workbench. Third, create the
workbench using existing feature relationships between CityGML and 3DCIM. Fourth, conduct
the actual transformation for the target project and deploy the result in CityEngine to visualize
the data.
The proposed approach was demonstrated using the BIM model of the AYO smart home and
the UBC campus map. The UBC map was originally in CityGM, Level-of-detail 1, which
means it only shows extruded building footprints on campus. The AYO BIM architectural
model was used to generate an IFC model. The two models were imported into workbench
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separately for transformation and merged into one 3DCIM database finally. The database was
exported to Esri CityEngine product for visualization. The detailed family house model and
simplified campus buildings were then merged together. Data manager could easily search and
edit building attributes in the software. The lessons learned from this implementation are
described in section 4.5.
3.6 Using Project Tango for quality assessment
Assessing the quality of construction for compliance with the design intent has been a
challenging task in the AEC industry. As modern design methods using BIM) techniques have
been increasingly adopted by the AEC industry, construction quality assessment using BIM has
become a challenging new task for practitioners. In the past few years, 3D as-built models for
construction quality assessment have been developed using data acquisition techniques like 3D
laser scanning and photogrammetry. However, certain limitations such as high cost, high
expertise requirements, and time-consuming processes restrict their usage for construction
quality control.
The main objective of this work was to study the applicability of using a new, affordable,
easy-to-use, and faster modeling technology to produce 3D as-built models for facilitating the
construction quality control process. Specifically, Project Tango by googlea low-cost, handheld tablet device that can capture 3D spatial models from real objects and spaces by using
advanced vision, depth sensor, and image processing toolswas tested on the AYO Smart
Home to assess its suitability for such projects. Three different scenarios (including interior and
exterior environments such as footings and interior rooms) were modelled using Project Tango.
Project Tango relies on various device applications that assist in developing the requiring asbuilt models. Two mobile applications were found to be useful for model-generation purposes:
(1) Tango Constructor; (2) Room Scanner (Google Developers, 2015).Tango Constructor
generates a 3D meshed object directly that can then be exported to .obj format (Google
Developers, 2015)while Room Scanner generates a 3D point cloud with a storage limit of up to
500,000 points. The data acquisition limitations, file storage format, and post processing
software availability for the exported files from these applications were studied to identify the
most suitable data collection tools.
A post-processing method was developed to prepare the scanned as-built models for
comparison with the design BIM. These accuracy level of these as-built models was also
evaluated using dimension accuracy analysis. The prepared as-built models and the design BIM
were then integrated and adjusted in the Autodesk Navisworks environment to perform the
quality control assessment. This assessment process includes object completeness testing and
spatial deviation analyses.
4.1 Pre-fabrication using BIM
The model mentioned in section 3.1 was a product of roughly 35 hours of work, done by one
person with an average knowledge of the tool (not inclusive of the time to be educated about the
tool). It is estimated that this time could have been reduced by at least one half with a more
experienced operator, resulting in a relatively small time investment to produce the
prefabrication BIM model. Examining the final result of the project and comparing the cost of
rework and requests for information, which cause many project delays, can suggest the relative
benefit-cost value of these model. On this basis, particularly given the repetitive nature of this
project and potential for future reuse, the authors believe this approach to provide a positive
benefit-cost value.
As the use of both prefabrication and BIM expands, individual project teams will need to
decide whether to apply these technologies on their projects. Some of the relevant
considerations in arriving at this decision include the following:
o Might the project be repeated elsewhere?
o Are there risky design decisions involved?

233
o Does the client want a unique and customized product?

o What are the local availability of necessary resources?
o Are there sustainability goals?
o What is the availability of proficient BIM modelers?
o Are most activities in the schedule on the critical path?
o What is the contingency funds for the project?
It is by close examinations of these and other similar questions that the true benefit/cost value
of using these systems (BIM and prefabrication) in conjunction are revealed and the project
managers and owners can decide on a suitable solution.
4.2 Energy modeling using BIM
As this study was based on a small-scale building, the total energy load was relatively small, so
the energy load variation arising from different window configurations was insignificant in
terms of annual energy costs. For larger buildings, the impact of window size on energy costs
could be significant, although window position and orientation would still have very small
impacts. Testing with measurements from actual window installations would be very beneficial
to validate these results. It would not be practical to physically test the many scenarios
examined through energy modeling here, and these modeling results could be beneficial in
identifying the best configurations to use for physical testing.
Visual comfort and other considerations of window configuration were neglected in this
research. Lighting load was also not considered since the required lighting load was relatively
small in the original design, but if the building scale changes and users require more lighting,
the lighting load should be considered. Finally, this research assumed that the energy modeling
was accurate in resolving the impact of the various window configurations.
4.3 4D scheduling using BIM
The 4D model was reviewed by the project superintendent, who was sked to consider the
expected impact of using the model for planning and for reviewing with sub-contractors. The
superintendent estimated that a significant number of change orders and requests for
information would take place earlier in the project, during design and construction planning
rather than during the main construction phase. He expected that this would lead to cost and
time saved during construction. The results of this project, then, were that 4D BIM scheduling is
useful for such projects and can improve construction productivity.
4.4 Knowledge management using BIM and social media
Once the implementation was complete, a total of 44 comments were created by the
participants, and 24 of these were replies to other comments. A few key observations regarding
the use of the platform can be made:
o The 3D BIM model in the platform made the discussions more holistic and engaging
as the visualization made it easy to identify conflicts between different building
elements and to anticipate future risks related to delays, safety, or other issues. For
example, one discussion highlighted that the installation of the front posts and the
roof could have been accelerated if certain modifications were made on the concrete
footing in advance.
o The problem solving followed a collaborative approach and there was continuous
feedback from different participants. This can ultimately result in creating a
continuously evolving knowledge base of best practices that can be used in future
projects.
o In addition to these observations, some recommendations were made by the
participants to improve the platform functionality and to make it more engaging for
users:
o Have the option of tagging different participants, quoting comments from others, and
rating the solutions of others.
o Add an ability to select multiple building elements at once to assign group comments.
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Include an ability to search for keywords within the comments.

o Add multimedia content to the comments.
o Provide a structured format for comments.
In conclusion, the authors of this study believe that such platforms can potentially benefit
homes similar to AYO Smart Home, since the lessons learnt from one project can effectively be
applied on subsequent future projects due to similar design and construction methods involved.
4.5 Integrating BIM and GIS
Despite the fact that Esri product supports lossless CityGML transformation, the authors still
found that there were some elements missing during the conversion process. One such case was
missing exterior columns in the 3DCIM. This is mainly caused by misclassified elements when
converting IFC to CityGML. Sometimes, elements in IFC are not correctly assigned to the
expected feature class, and some errors happen in the FME workbench. From another
perspective, this approach required a high qualified BIM model, any minor mistakes in original
building model may cause conversion fault. Additionally, although both CityGML and 3DCIM
support features other than building, such as streets and trees, in this study, the author only
considered the building asset and its components as research objects. Other type of elements
like roads and surrounding landscapes were not included.
In conclusion, it was observed that the BIM and GIS integration allows the facility managers
to view both campus level data and detailed building model in the same scene and easily search
and edit object attributes in the CityEngine or other GIS products. It can also improve the
efficiency of searching and viewing data during maintenance operations and highly reduce
dependency on experienced personnel and paper documents.
4.6 Using Project Tango for quality assessment
The results of the construction quality assessment highlight that the Project Tango devices use
of reflected IR light made depth perception difficult in certain cases, such as modeling black
surfaces and window regions. Furthermore, the results show that the accuracy of the as-built
models created with the device were generally accurate but had dimension errors of up to 6%
(or sometimes more for small components). The Project Tango device sometimes failed to
record elements of smaller dimension accurately. Major disparities are found in certain windows
location, and object completeness testing identified several missing objects from the initial
design model, thus assisting the team in recognizing the design changes that occurred during the
construction phase.
In addition, based on the experience from this work, an analysis was conducted in order to
provide a better overview about the advantages and weak points of the Project Tango in
comparison with the two other common techniques. Detailed results of this analysis are
summarized in Table 3 which is developed based on different related works (Bhatla et al., 2012;
Mahdjoubi et al., 2015; Volk et al., 2014; Zhu and Brilakis, 2009). This table includes three
following categories: (1) cost involved; (2) data acquisition accuracy; and (3) user convenience.
The analysis shows that Project Tango can act as a viable option for generating the as- built
models depending on project requirements. For projects with a budget constraint or small scale
projects where it is not necessary to develop highly accurate models, this analysis highlights that
Project Tango has the potential to serves as an alternative to 3D laser scanning. In addition,
Project Tango seems to be suitable solution in projects where it is intended to quickly generate
models without special expertise instead of opting for Photogrammetry. However, the level of
dimensional accuracy may limit its potential for quality control applications. Although the
resulting models were very usable, most of the modeling process was still manual. Thus there is
a demand for developing automated methods to address this issue and to reduce the potential
human errors in stages like data collection, post-processing, and quality assessment.

Table 2. Comparison of different techniques used for as built model generation.

Parameters
3D Laser Scanning Photogrammetry
Category
Highly costly in
1. Equipment
Affordable in the
the range of $50KCosts
range of $500-$1000
$150K
Costs involved
Need expensive
2. Software
Need software like
proprietary
support and costs
Autodesk 123D
software
Time required is
1. Post processing Huge amounts of
more than that of
time requirement
time required
laser scanning
User convenience
2. Mobility
Not very mobile
Highly mobile
Minimal learning
Very steep
3. Learning Curve
curve
learning curve
Device accuracy
and suitability
1. Acquisition,
Accuracy, Cost
High accuracy and

range to the extent
of a millimeter
Moderate accuracy
and loses focus for
large distances
2. Weather
conditions
Not affected by
weather conditions
much
Highly affected by
weather like cloudy
situations
235
Project Tango
Affordable with
a price tag of
$500
Need open
source software
like Meshlab
Time required is
less
Highly mobile
Minimal learning
curve
Moderate
accuracy
compared to
laser scans
Highly affected
by weather like
sunlight
5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The active support and collaboration of AYO Smart Homes as an industrial partner of this research and
the UBC Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability is gratefully acknowledged.
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Decisions. 2012 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings.
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Civil Infrastructure Modeling. Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, 170177.

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An investigation on characters of long lasting buildings in south

China
B. Jia
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Y. Jin
Beijing Institute of Fashion Industry, Beijing, China
Q. Wang
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
ABSTRACT: Currently the researches on sustainable housing development are largely

addressing the social and environmental issues in different contexts. Architectural researches
tend to neglect the questions related the long term quality of the buildings how to prolong the
life span of the building in order to but not limited by increasing the efficiency of embodied
energy. This paper investigates the characters of existing long lasting buildings from samples in
South China, in order to generate principles which may apply into new buildings. Adopting the
theories of Open Building and N.J.Habrakens spatial levels of control, this paper firstly
formulates a research framework consisting of four spatial levels: public space, structure
system, faade, and interior partitions. Selected cases represent different locations and
typologies. The finding of the paper suggests that the spatial hierarchy, symmetry arrangement,
flexible structure system, integration of artifacts and ornaments, and effective maintenance are
the important conditions of the building longevity.
1 INTRODUCTION
One of the important issues of sustainable building is to make the life span of the building
longer. It is not only because the efficiency of embodied energy can be increased. It is also long
lasting building is more economic, increase the chance of social stability and cultural identity.
In the 20th century, there was a move to make buildings more flexible or adaptable and to
encourage public participation in the construction process. Since then, architects and scholars
across the globe have engaged in residential projects wherein residents are allowed to design,
change, and/or reorganize indoor space by adding or removing infill parts to satisfy various
needs though generations. Through this concept, the life span of buildings can be maximized,
and structures can evolve along with the needs of users. A similar phenomenon could be
observed in ancient Chinese architecture. Revisiting Chinese traditional architecture in
particular will reveal a number of experiences that can be learned and applied to current
practices (Jia & Jiang, 2013). Along with the constant changing social environment, traditional
settlement and buildings always grow, transform and adjust themselves to meet new
requirements of changing mode of life. By this way, they become a sustainable built
environment that can exist for over hundreds of years. The flexibility and adaptability of
traditional settlement and dwelling make the discussion more meaningful that aims to inspire
our thinking of contemporary housing problems.
This paper investigates the ideas, design and technical solution of selected long lasting
building cases in South China. Most of the cases are conservation projects and/or listed cultural
238

heritage. The purpose of the paper is not summarized how to protect those historical
constructions but seeking to find out why and how those ones last such long period until now.
One of criteria of conservation in "National Famous Historical and Cultural Cities
Conservation Regulation" is buildings with traditional urban pattern and historic features,
interdependent with surrounding nature environment. Preservation requests the street blocks or
inner streets, historical building clusters, constructions, building details and surrounding
environment are well preserved. In the recent year 2014, Guangzhou government published
<<Guangzhou historical building and district protection method>> in order to archive and
protect those historical buildings. In which the definition is that the building has been
constructed more than 50 years, can reflect local urban development history, with relative high
historical cultural value, and also satisfy one of following conditions: 1) building can reflect
local urban construction history or social production and life history; 2) building type,
construction technology and engineer technology can reflect local construction cultural identity
or with scientific research value; 3) a building where significant political, economic, cultural
and military events took place; 4) typical and symbolic construction or representative project by
famous architects; 5) celebrities' former residences or monumental building; 6) other buildings
with historical and cultural significance. All these requirements to the conservation indicate the
long lasting buildings should obtain high quality of both technical and cultural including the
identity of the place.
The methodology using in this paper is learned from the open building theory of John
Habraken (1998). In the theory, the whole built environment is divided into several interinfluencing levels, according to the spatial hierarchy of sphere controlling, from the urban scale,
to architecture, indoor space and infill finally. The relationship between a higher level and a
lower one can be seen as structure-infill that the former provide a setting to the latter. By
separating different levels, a more flexible content can be provided. Thus, in this paper, the
analysis is conducted from four levels to clarify how the settlement and dwellings transformed
to adapt new emerging conditions of life in different periods that are the location selection of
settlement, the growth of settlement, the transformation of building, and the multi-role of
residents in community (Lin & Jia, 2015). On the other hand, for research on the level of single
house, peoples life style is considered as a decided parameter. It shapes the houses form and
its inner spaces. After all, as a kind of architecture responding to the needs and expectation.
2 LEVEL ONE - INFRASTRUCTURE AND PUBLIC SPACE
This session discuss the elements and their quality which can make a place last longer.
Shawan town is located in the south-central part of PanYu district in Guangzhou city and is
one of the oldest towns in Pearl River Delta area with more than eight hundred years history.
Shawan town becomes the most important historical town and can last such long period is not
simply caused by one single issue but synthetically influenced by multiple factors like social,
environmental and economical aspects.

239
Figure 1. Shawan township.
There are three hierarchy system became the foundation of public space. Street will be
enlarged in front of some public buildings and water space like temple, academy or pool, where
normally is an important space will be functioned as grain-sunning ground, social daily
communication space and holiday events playground. Normal street spaces and some lane
spaces will become the common public spaces for neighborhood communication and occasional
meeting between acquaintances or between strangers, while the courtyard is a public space for a
family or several blood relative families.
The three hierarchies is still clear but the public domain has been enhanced, such as temple or
academy constructions become a more public area open to wider range of visitors, same
situation happen in the major streets as well. More concentrated and diverse public activities
have taken place along the linear space that the interrelation between public and private became
more abundant.
Donghuali district, where is located in Zumiao region, is the most typical case that become
one of the biggest residential cluster in Foshan. Northern god is consecrated in Zumiao temple
and is the highest god in Foshan history and the spiritual pillar of citizens. This religion and
cultural priority is the prediction of policy, commerce and residence concentration.
240

Figure 2. Donhuili Neighborhood area.
Although the urban pattern in Donghuali is an outcome influence by social, climate,

geography and economic, the most significant one should be social and cultural impact. Public
space as those areas within towns, cities and the countryside that are physically accessible to
everyone, where strangers and citizens can enter with few restrictions.
Another important factor easy neglected by researchers and public is the celebrity charm and
agglomeration. Although some prominent families did not live in Donghuali for a long period,
their huge social influence still became an strong factor to attract people in Foshan to settle
down here. It is a kind of mutual effect that cultural and celebrity charm can strengthen the
agglomeration and the agglomeration can maintain the urban districts prosperous and
sustainable development. Most of the buildings are no more than two floors, with density more
than 70%. High density morphology on one hand is the outcome of limited land resources and
on the other hand, ensuring the shaded micro environment Donghuali historical district has all
above characteristics. Handicraft industry is highly developed here that huge amount of
commercial spaces is combined together with the residential spaces.
However, Donghuali cluster is a residential cluster mainly but very closed to the commercial
street, this convenience ensures vitality of Donghuali cluster and at the same time gives freedom
to fulfill other functions. Owing to the distinct structure of large woodwork, the scale of a set of
buildings becomes extensible in three dimensions. However, regardless of building type, spatial
extension of the house is controlled by certain patterns that are planned and designed at the start
of construction.
Figure 3. The enlargement of a courtyard (Zhao, 2000:142-143).

241
Within the same typology, buildings are extendable. Citing the courtyard house as example, a
set of buildings surrounding one court is a unit called jin. The primary courtyard with one unit
can accommodate a family of five. As the family grows, several units can be added along the
north-south axis or west-east axis (Fig. 3). If the land is sizeable enough, this expansion may be
endless, without losing the complete form of the house. At the very beginning of construction,
houses are built along the center axis. Subsequently, residences surrounding the center are
developed for existing family members. After several years, another section will be built outside
the existing ones for additional family members. With the increasing number of family
members, this construction process may last from several decades to several generations.
3 LEVEL TWO - BUILDING STRUCTURE
This session discusses how the flexibility and longevity are created by structural system of
spatial, technical and culturally quality.
Courtyard house is a popular prototype of housing in traditional society. However, in
Zhejiang province there has been development a particular spatial-structural system which is
simple and dynamic. The width and depth of courtyard always correspond to the width of main
building and side buildings. Basically, the spatial unit to counted area is liu (, a file of
space) in local dialect. It represents the space between two rows of columns from front to back.
(Fig. 4) It depicts the space going from the front door to the end accurately, which reflects the
recognition of inner space from the eyes of locals. In common, the width of courtyard is as same
as the length of main building facing to it; and the depth is as same as the length of side
building. Take the early houses with a smaller courtyard as an example. The five-liu main
building has three lius facing to courtyard, so the courtyards width is shorter than three lius
deducting the extruding distance of platform. Meanwhile, the depth of the courtyard equaling to
the length of side building usually is three or five lius adding the extruding distance of the
platform. Thus, the earlier courtyard is narrow with an area of 3*3 (liu), or 3*5 (liu). But with
an enlarged family, a house had more rooms or more lius for accommodation. So the courtyards
has been expanded synchronously as 5*7 (liu), or even 7*9 (liu).
The prototype of building is one hall, two rooms, a bilateral symmetric plan centered by a
main hall as public gathering space. The room next to the hall on one side is an independent
spatial unit. It is the living space for each independent sub-family in the big group. In fact, the
sub-family is the basic living unit in daily life consisting of the most closed immediate relatives.
Thus, in this plan, a modular strategy of space usage is formed that the independent spatial unit
corresponds to the independent living unit. The flexible plan system can adapt to different
situations easily. For example, due to the real pressure of population, the plan grows longer
automatically by adding more rooms at the each end of house. How many lius it has depends on
how many sub-families the big family has, in other words, the actual family structure. Except
few three-liu dwellings built in the end of the Ming dynasty, the common plans are always five
lius as one hall, four rooms or seven lius as one hall, six rooms, nine lius as one hall, eight
rooms, and even eleven lius as one hall, ten rooms for the richest families in later stage (Fig.
5).
Figure 5. Cases with Different Plans.

242
A distinct type of wooden construction is believed to trace its origin to ancient China 7,000
years ago, which is largely attributed to the construction materials used as well as the
architectural culture. In later and more developed structures (Fig. 6), large woodwork (da-muzuo) for the main structure and small woodwork (xiao-mu-zuo) for all fit-out, were clearly
separated in the process of manufacturing components and assembling (Jia, 2001:126-125). The
buildings walls, unfettered by weight, could be extremely thin; they could even be replaced by
doors, windows, or pieces of furniture. This type of construction system, although ancient, has
imparted flexibility and adaptability to both structure and function in the building systems at
present.
Large woodwork, the primary structure of Chinese traditional buildings, is composed of
beams, columns, bracket sets, and roofs that are connected without the use of nails (Fig. 7). The
weight of the upper floors and roof is concentrated and transferred to the beams and columns.
All parts of large woodwork can be changed independently. The following account, obtained
from a historical record, illustrates the soundness of this structure.
History of Song Dynasty: There was a monk named Huai Bing (around 1000
AD) in Zhending town. Once, the center pillar of a 13-storey pagoda was broken.
Huai Bing measured and produced a new column with the help of other carpenters.
Then, he replaced the broken column with the new one all by himself, while the
people outside the pagoda did not hear any chopping sound (Tuotuo & Alutu,
1346; quoted in Li, et al., 1990:36).
The above narrations demonstrate one of the most important characteristics of Chinese
wooden buildings: the systematic assembly of the elements of the structure. Another equally
important factor is the separation of the structure from the enclosure. As a result, immense
flexibility is created on two levels. One, the buildings high quality can be maintained by
changing the necessary components. Two, a variety of choices for materials for walls, doors,
windows, and other divisions are integrated to satisfy various requirements of usage and
aesthetics.
Figure 6. The installation of lattices doors.
Figure 7. The installation detail of lattices doors.
Structure is also the representation of art and cultural identity. Foshan is one of the four
famous towns in domestic history and especially famous of its ceramic craft in China even all
over the world. Therefore, it is convenient for its local construction better integrated with its
high technology of ceramic and other local crafts. General speaking, cultural representation in
Donghuali construction is a well combination of local cultural features, identities and

243
conventions. They are mainly reflected in the decoration of structural elements like roof truss
components, ridge, gable wall, and other parts in lower level like door, window, cornice and rail
(Fig. 8). Different from historical public building like temple and academy, which is with larger
span and more complicated decorated beam frame system, cultural decoration in Donghuali case
is focused on ridge and gable wall system.
Figure 8. Gable wall and timber structure of Chens Ancestor Hall.
The main axis of Chens Ancestor Hall is with highest status in the entire construction
organization system and a place undertakes more public functions, central halls along the axis
are important elements to construct and maintain this hierarchy intension. Hence, they should
have better spatial quality with wider width, higher floor high, as well as other better
representations like more complex decoration and interior spatial partition. Accordingly, the
structure system of central halls is brick-wood mixed structure system, in the south side and
north side are column-beam system, while in the west and east side are brick wall system.
Both large size and small size courtyard were designed based on the same basic modular that
contribute to the echoed and integrated feeling as well as enclosed by semi-permeable halls
from south-north direction and permeable corridors from west-east direction. Within those
courtyards especially the larger ones, where are the main public spaces of the construction,
plants, hill stone and stone carving are important elements to naturalize and enrich the spatial
experience and avoid monotonous ambiance. While different strategies vary from the six
courtyards. Rich and permeable gray spaces: Besides traffic, cooling and fire protecting
functions, connecting spaces are transitional spaces in the spatial organization system, and
important supplemented parts of entire ambiance creation.
4 LEVEL THREE - FACADE
Faade is the interface between public and private, and the important element of construction to
adjust and enhance indoor environmental performance. They will be therefore integrated with
the considerations of climate strategy, culture issue and residents use convenience. Vertically,
the faade of traditional Chinese buildings especially for those large scale and public dominant
ones is usually consisted of three parts: foundation, main body and roof, among which the roof
is considered as the most typical part with clear morphology evolution process. However, for
the residential house in this region, since the less rites influence and more convenience
requirement, the proportion of foundation part is relative weak. The material and construction
way is also important, local grey brick walls is good at fire resistance, normally with 40cm
width and without plastering and painting. Concentrated areas of decoration are the door,
window and gable wall. The important issue found out from the decoration convention is that
residents pay more attentions to the area between inside and outside, the reason behind is the
area can give attribution to the public domain on one hand, and on the other hand, residents can
244

represent their culture, wealth and desire to the public through those areas. And those open
zones are also highly integrated into the faade construction and system, they are normally with
hollowed designed (with same width of facade), which will bring abundant possibilities of
morphology and enhance ventilation between inside and outside. Moreover, decoration is
usually within residents and passengers sight scope like top area of gable and ridge. Culture
representation and psychological desire therefore is significant in faade area.
Two totally different strategies and characteristics are revealed in the Yuyin Garden between
outer faade and inner faade systems. For outer faade and wall system, except the main
entrance and the entrance of temples, high gable wall or high enclosure guarantee the daily
security. While much more open and translucent strategy is applied in inner faade system.
As for the window and door areas, wood carving combined with glass is dominating.
Decorations are inspired from local typical objects, natural elements and some abstract patterns,
some parts are from independent topic and some parts are from combined topics. Outer wall and
some inner walls divided gardens or courtyards are important decorated targets as well. Stone
carving is highly integrated with functional usage with similar color tone like foundation,
platform and handrail system, grey carving with color tone can vividly and comprehensively
depict the stories, both of which are mainly from nature world in this region. In addition, since
the garden is located in the area influenced deeply by western culture and marine culture, many
areas have revealed this impact such as color glass window and oyster shell piece decoration of
horizontal hanging scroll of connected corridors.
Figure 9. Internal and external faade of Yuyin Garden House.
The windows and doors are lightweight elements that they are easy operable and replaceable,
lightweight here has two meanings: construction way and the material itself. Hollow frame
greatly reduces its weight and wood is one of the lightest building materials. Besides, most area
of the faade inside the garden is designed by lightweight window-door combination, which has
enhanced the flexibility degree of entire construction. High level local craft is another strong
prediction of its high level construction maintenance.
5 LEVEL FOUR - LAYOUT AND FUNCTIONAL ADAPTABILITY
There are two types of neutrality: several functions overlaying in one space and one function
completely replacing another. With regard to the former, the following is a record pertaining to
a palace in Hangzhou:
The case of the Southern Song Government is unique as it fled from the north and established
its new state system in Hangzhou city within a short period. Thus, the governor was compelled
to transform the existing buildings into structures that resembled a palace. Owing to the limited
space for holding various functions, the hall mentioned above had to host at least four functions,
all of which required different facilities and furnishing. Furthermore, all four activities were

245
held at least once a year. Evidently, only a neutral space with flexible infill could serve as venue
for all the activities.
Figure 10. A example of alternations from a hall to a Buddhist chapel and a school, drawn by the authors.
In regular residential buildings, function was likewise changed, sometimes completely. Most
of the cases chronicled the transformations from residential buildings to temples or schools.
Spatial functions of rooms are usually vague and integrated. Differences in function as
bedroom, living room, and hall were only evident in the types of furniture placed within the
rooms while a similar spatial dimension was shared (Jia & Wang, 1998:3-4). Furthermore,
separators between two rooms were almost always removable. Therefore, a functional
change could easily be reached by altering furniture and removing separators. The
whole structure is retained (Fig. 10).
Woodwork defines the size of a building, small woodwork, including the manufacture and
installation of infill and fit-out determines space divisions and interior function of the building.
According to their usage, the infill and fit-out can be classified into several types (Jia, 1998b;
Liu, 2000):
x complete dividers as solid walls;
x translucent dividers, which can be opened or closed such as lattice doors and screen
doors (Fig. 11);
x semi-dividers with furniture functions such as bookcase and antique shelves; and
x partial dividers as the subsection symbol , and so forth.
Figure 11. Lattice door as interior partition.
In addition to the walls, almost any type of infill can be moved when necessary. The
following are two actual examples:
Notes of Living Room: Lu Zizhi built a 28-chi (a Chinese unit of length)-long
house to the north side of his living room. There was a big door on the southern
wall and a small door on the southwestern wall. In the winter, the house and the
living room were divided into two single rooms through the small door. In the

246
summer, the two rooms were integrated together by the big door for ventilation
(Lu; quoted in Li, et al., 1990:180).
Position of Studio: An open studio is suitable in the summer when all the
latticework partition and doors can be taken away. In this case, there is no wall for
hanging painting (Position of Studio; quoted in Li, et al., 1990:361).
The two cases mentioned above were recorded during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1125
AD) and Qing Dynasty (1640-1840 AD), respectively. In the first case, the owner of the
buildings adjusted indoor temperature and ventilation by opening or closing the partition. In the
second case, all partitions and doors were fully removable, allowing the studio to be
transformed into a pavilion. Both cases indicate that the ancient builders and owners considered
changes in the environment to meet comfort standards and fit in various living requirements. A
significant number of similar examples can be found in the design of landscape architecture in
the series Jian Yuan Shi Ying, such as painted pleasure boats and winding corridors.
Wood carving in Guangdong can be divided into Chao-shan and Guang-fu two main streams,
compared with Chao-shans elaborated and gorgeous style, Guang-fus wood carving is more
fresh and energetic, as well as smooth and free. This characteristic reveals residents in this
region are pragmatic and low-key that Chan Clan Academys partition wall and furniture is a
typical case. Precious wood material like camphorwood, rosewood and teakwood are mainly
used in the interior elements, although the wood frame system belongs to the structure level, its
relative separation of partition wall system enhances its visibility and the status of indoor
ambiance importance. Moreover, some murals can be found in the side halls, with strong themes
like the stories of ancient poet and gifted scholar, which are with artistic collection value
themselves and enrich the academy atmosphere (Fig. 12).
Figure 10. Interiors with flexible and articulated partitions.

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6 CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY

Compared with the popular evaluation system of green building and sustainable neighborhood
from other countries and China, as well as domestic adaptive design of housing evaluation and,
the long-lasting issues studied of typical traditional and vernacular housing in South China from
urban level to interior level can provide a comprehensive, has approved and new angle to
understand why and how they can last such long period. It is not a supplemented content but
rather can be seen as a core part with most valuable parameters to construct the long-lasting
evaluation system in this region.
Analysis of the infrastructure and public space reveal that traditional clusters are the outcome
of social, environmental and economic considerations, which is in accordance with the classic
definition and concept of sustainability. Social and cultural influences evidently play an
important role in its formation and longevity. Although environmental and economic impacts
inserted their influences as well as clan system collapsed later, it has enough flexibility to adapt
the uncertainty in the spatial and temporal dimension.
The structure system of vernacular housing in this region inevitably plays a more important
role especially from cultural influences. The hierarchical dimension system, symmetry
arrangement, flexible construction, and integration of folk art, are all important elements
contributed to structures longevity.
Facade becomes the important interface between public and private, and is responsible for
more cultural and public obligations. Those elements like window and door are ideal
combination integrated with the considerations of climate strategy, culture issue and residents
use convenience.
Active changeability and reform can be found in the interior level through case studies. In
case of small scale construction, flexible partition structure like light-weight partition, gate
mask, hanging fascia, and ancient frame are helpful for further temporary division. Craft
technology is important in this level since it has closed relation to residents dally life. Partition
wall and furniture are with high culture value.
Thus, the sustainable building does not only refer to the kind of building using advanced
sustainable techniques, but also points to an innovative way to think, to design and to build
buildings. This sustainability catalyzed by the new discussion does not limit on the physical
level, it emphasizes more on the level of time, function and the relation to real people. From this
perspective, our discussion on traditional building seems to be more meaningful, in order to
inspire new ideas on solving contemporary housing problem.
REFERENCES
Chen, S. (n.d.). Notes of Palaces. In G. Li, W. Yu & Y. Wang (eds.), Jian yuan shi ying: Zhongguo gu dai
tu mu jian zhu ke ji shi liao xuan bian (--= The Cream of Chinese
Architecture and Civil Engineering----Selected Historical Technological Materials) (1st ed., Vol. 1).
China: Tongji University Press, Shanghai.
Habraken, N. J. 1998. The structure of the ordinary: form and control in the built environment. Edited by
Jonathan Teicher, Ordinary. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Jia, B. 1998a. Component Strategies For Adaptable Housing In China's Dense Urban Setting. Open
House International, 2.
Jia, B. 1998b. Living Legacy: Hong Kong's Housing Heritage Provides Gives Advice to Eco-housing
Development of the Future. Paper presented at the Workshop 10: Cultural Heritage and Urban
Change. City and Culture International Conference.
Jia, B. 2001. Infill Components in High Density Housing: The Past, Present and Future of Hong Kong
Housing Sustainable Development. Open House International, 28(3), 9-18.
Jia, B. & Jiang, Y. 2011. "Flexibility of traditional buildings and craftsmanship in China". Open House
International, 36 (4):20-31.
Jia, B. & Wang, W. 1998. Adaptable Housing Design. (1st ed.). China: Southeast University Press,
Naijing.
Li, G., Yu, W., Zhang, J. & Zhang, Y. (eds.). 1997. Jian yuan shi ying: Zhongguo gu dai tu mu jian zhu
ke ji shi liao xuan bian (--= The Cream of Chinese Architecture and
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Civil Engineering----Selected Historical Technological Materials) (1st. ed. Vol. 2(I)). China: Tongji
University Press, Shanghai.
Lin, X. & Jia, B. 2016. Living Sustainability: Transformation of the Built Environment in Xiaqiao
Village, China. International Conference on Sustainable Development of Civil, Urban and
Transportation Engineering 2016.
Xu, S. 2001. Probe into Traditional Craftman Ethics = .. Economy and Audit Study,
16(4), 14-17.

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Architecture and ecology as agents and symbols of community

transformation - the Pumpkllehagen housing development,
Viskafors, Sweden
L. O. Nylander
Department of Architecture, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
ABSTRACT: 1998 PhD work The Home as Architecture were presented. In 2002 the thesis was
rewrited and published by Wileys, London, in the book Architecture of the Home. In 2005,
seven years after the dissertation, there were an opportunity to use the concepts and the theories
developed in the thesis The Home as Architecture. Mikael Bengtsson, CEO of the non-profit
housing corporation Viskaforshem planned to build new apartments in VIskafors city centre.
The ambition was to develop Viskafors from a society with low status and with migration to an
attractive place. As part of this ambition was new and attractive dwellings. The mission to draw
new dwellings covered the hypothesis that the seven concept I developed in the thesis also were
of the utmost importance to create an attractive housing. Combined with using ecological
material and passivehouse technic. Axiality, enclosure, and circulation have given the homes a
rich variety of experiences, with features such as room enfilades, circular loop circulation loops,
contrasts between brightly lit, open spaces and more enclosed, intimate ones. The careful choice
of materials and careful detailing has resulted in high-quality homes. Wood floors, stone
windowsills, wood paneling etc, important to establishing the identity and status of the
Pumpkllehagen homes. The first houses were completed in 2009, and in 2011 Pumpkllehagen
was inaugurated ceremoniously by minister Maud Olofsson. With all of the attention it has
received, Pumpkllehagen is becoming a symbol of the new London. The new homes are a lift
for the community. Their high quality is helping to enhance the status of the neighborhood. This
paper will discusse the role of the architecture in the design process and also the relation
between architecture research and architecture design practice.
1 INTRODUCTION
In 2005 professor Ola Nylander was invited to design a small housing development in
Viskafors, a town eighty kilometers east of Gothenburg, Sweden. Nylander is a researcher and
theoretician with a PhD in Architecture, and the project presented him with a unique
opportunity to test the concepts and hypotheses Nylander worked with in his doctoral
dissertation.
The public housing developer Viskaforshem AB planned to build about twenty single-story
detached rental homes for which energy conservation was a priority. In the spring of 2005,
Viskaforshem CEO Mikael Bengtsson asked Nylander to put together a proposal for a new
housing development that through good architecture would play an important role in helping to
transform the town of Viskafors. The hypothesis was that designing the neighborhood according
to the concepts presented Nylanders dissertation would result in attractive new homes.
Extremely low energy consumption was just one aspect of what was to be a high standard of
quality. Other aspects were the use of materials and details that are sustainable over the long
term, homes with rooms of general utility (not functionally specific), and floor plans that offer a
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great variety of experiences through axiality, dynamic circulation patterns, and generous contact
between inside and out. The urban design of the neighborhood would be characterized by spatial
articulation.
Viskaforshem hoped that high-quality architecture would attract more residents to the area,
especially those looking for larger apartments, thus expanding the tax base to provide better
services, shopping, and schools. From a long-term perspective, a popular new housing
development could contribute to creating a new and positive image for the community of
Viskafors.
1.1 Scientific background
When Nylander began post-graduate studies in 1993, housing construction in Sweden was
distinguished by a rational approach. Since the unparalleled building boom of the 1960s, our
image of residential architecture has been dominated by its functional and practical aspects, and
the architectural design of the home has been widely neglected. Public officials, politicians, and
housing developers were therefore unaware of the importance of a holistic approach to
residential architecture and of the significance that non-measurable aesthetic attributes have for
the home and its inhabitants.
The purpose of Nylanders thesis was to identify, describe, and analyze some of the nonmeasurable architectural properties of the home, to demonstrate the role these properties play in
the home, and to describe their influence on residents perceptions of their homes. By
conceptualizing these issues, the study also intended to contribute a greater clarity to the
discussion of the architectural qualities of the home. In so doing it deepens and expands the
implications of several well known, widely used concepts.
The study resulted in the identification of seven property fields that are important to the
architecture of the home: Materials and Details, Axiality, Enclosure, Circulation, Generic
Rooms, Daylight, and Intermediate Spaces.
The study reveals the nature of the respective fields and shows how each appears in the home.
The study concludes that these non-measurable architectural properties are essential to the
overall quality of the home and particularly important in the enrichment of residents perception
of the home environment. These properties are also intimately connected with the process by
which residents appropriate their homes and assign meaning to them.
1.2 About Viskafors
For Viskaforshem, the success of the new housing development was important. Since the 1980s,
the community had been plagued by industrial plant closings and widespread joblessness,
resulting in low status. Viskafors wasnt considered a nice place to live, and many of those who
could chose to move away from the area. Building some new, modern apartments with a high
standard of architectural design was intended to be a positive signal and therefore an important
part in the effort to turn the community around.
Today Viskafors has just over four thousand inhabitants. The town developed as the Swedish
textile industry became established during the middle of the 19th century. Proximity to the river
Viskan and the ability to generate power from its high waterfalls were essential to the founding
of Viskafors Textile Mill in 1854. Later a large rubber factory was built downstream of the mill.
A couple of kilometers upstream lay Rydboholms Vveri, founded in 1834, the first mechanical
textile mill in Sweden. In 1880 the rail line between Varberg and Bors opened, with a station in
Viskafors. The community developed around the textile industry, and in 1961 Viskafors became
a municipality. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, a lot of multi-family housing was built, with
small apartments for the factories workers. In the 60s came a wave of detached single-family
homes. A large school was built, and in 1970 a new downtown area with shopping and
community services. Adjacent to it, eight two-story apartment buildings were constructed with a
total of just over a hundred new units.
But in the 1970s and 80s, all industrial activity in the area was shut down. Textile production
moved to countries where the labor costs were lower. Over 1500 jobs were lost. Many residents
relocated for new job opportunities in nearby Bors and Gothenburg. At the same time, the
municipality of Viskafors was absorbed by that of Bors. Viskaforshem struggled with high

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vacancies in its stock of nearly six hundred apartments. The number of vacant apartments even
forced the company to demolish several buildings in order to remain economically solvent.
Shopping and service disappeared from two of the municipalitys smaller communities,
Rydboholm and Svaneholm.
Once a thriving industrial community, Viskafors was going downhill fast, and the
municipalitys status was plummeting. Shopping, community services, and businesses in
downtown Viskafors struggled with low profitability, and some had to close their doors. The
declining downtown made it less attractive to live in the area. People moved away, but no one
was moving in to Viskafors, which further worsened the customer base for running a profitable
business in town. The community was in a downward spiral that was hard to escape.
But in the early 2000s, the economy improved and more and more people found work in the
area or within an easy commuting distance. Viskaforshem dared to invest strategically in
renovating and making the downtown area more attractive. Under their leadership the services
and amenities available in the central plaza were expanded.
New construction in a small and vulnerable town like Viskafors is a sensitive prospect. The
downside includes factors such as the difficulty in predicting demand. The low status of the area
keeps home prices depressed and limits what people are willing to pay to live there. On the
upside, the construction of new housing becomes a symbolically important act. The return of
construction activity to an area that has since the 1980s been marginalized and suffered from
plant closings and downsizing shows that something positive is happening again in the
community.
1.3 Hypothesis
The Pumpkllehagen project came to life against this background. Viskaforshem chose the
strategy of investing in high quality. The new buildings were to be symbols of a new and
positive development in the community. Building new housing for knowledge workers was
especially important in a town that was so strongly associated with industrial society. So the
new buildings needed to be something extra. They needed to be filled with enough quality to
make moving to Viskafors attractive. Part of the basis of design for the project was Mikael
Bengtssons statement that If we can get a single person to move from Bors (the big neighbor
town) to Viskafors, it will be something huge for this town.
The design program for the new buildings was built around four Es:
x Energy:
The buildings must meet the Passive House standards of extremely low energy
consumption.
x Esthetics:
The buildings materials, spatial forms, and floor plans must be of the highest quality.
x Ecology:
The buildings must be made from materials with long-term sustainability.
x Ethics:
The materials must as far as possible be ethically correct.
Architecture can play an important role in the process of transforming a community.
Architecture can become a symbol of that transformation.
2 THE FLOOR PLAN
The floor plan is based on the kitchen and its role as the heart of the home. From the kitchen
there is visual contact with the street outside the front and the children at play there, as well as
with the patio on the rear side. The kitchen may be accessed from both the entrance and the
mudroom, and has direct contact with the living room as well.
Inside the front door is a place to hang coats and a bathroom with a shower. Farthest from the
entry in the plan are two bedrooms. One of these is joined to the third bedroom by a large walkthrough closet.
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The kitchen and living room form one corner of a private outdoor patio room completely
protected from the view of neighbors. A carport forms the opposite side, where there is a
mudroom entrance with an adjacent second bathroom.
Figure 1. 3-bedroom apartment, 108m2. The plan is built up of so-called generic rooms sized 3.6 x
3.6m.
Two outdoor rooms face the street: the shallow entrance veranda and the place outside the
kitchen window. These two, open to the public space of the street, complement the private patio
at the back.
Each home has its own carport with adjacent storage shed.
These are rental apartments with the qualities of a detached single-family home, including
four exterior walls, privacy, and parking next to the home.
2.1 Passive House technologies
The buildings are well insulated. There is 50cm of insulation in the walls, 55cm in the roof, and
40cm under the slab foundation.
The buildings are airtight. Each one is tested for air infiltration before the wood paneling is
installed on the interior. In Pumpkllehagen, Olofsson Bygg has built the most airtight buildings
in Sweden with an infiltration rate of just 0.06l/sm2.
Figure 2. Pumpkallehagen, passivehouses, a cold vinterday.

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An FTX system heat recovery ventilator reclaims 85% of the heat exhausted from the house
to preheat the supply air.
The heat exchanger, located in the storage shed, blows warmed supply air into the bedrooms
and living room. Air is exhausted from the two bathrooms. The kitchen exhausts directly to the
outside to prevent flammable grease from accumulating in the heat exchanger.
During extended periods of cold weather, extra heat must be added to the supply air through
heating elements in the exchanger. The amount of warm air introduced to each home is roughly
equivalent to that produced by a common hair dryer. Despite some initial technical glitches, the
system worked well and kept the homes comfortable throughout the extremely cold winter of
2009-10.
As important as the insulation, air-tightness, and heat recovery is the quality and accuracy of
the construction work. Adlarberth has developed a variety of techniques for installing the plastic
vapor and air-infiltration barrier around floors, windows, and ceilings. The walls of the
Pumpkllehagen homes are so well insulated that there is not enough heat transfer through them
to dry out any moisture that might accumulate in them. During critical stages of construction,
therefore, the homes were covered to protect them from precipitation. Before the walls were
closed and the vapor barrier was installed, the moisture content of the wood frame was
measured to ensure it was dry enough to avoid future moisture and mildew problems.
2.2 Site plan
The idea for the site plan is based on the interplay between public and private and between
natural and urban space. The homes lie close to the streets and public spaces, with minimal
setback. In a few places, facing homes come close together, compressing the street space to
create the sense of an enclosed public room. These constrictions also define the ends of two
more open public spaces, the Plaza and the Hill (a bit of preserved natural terrain). On the
private side of the homes is a natural landscape of tall pines and spruces.
The boundary between public and private is clearly delineated. The street has a traffic lane of
asphalt with a broad band paved in stone on either side. The entrance to each home is designed
with a ramp and white concrete stoop 20-30 cm higher than the elevation of the street. This
height difference underscores the distinction between public and private realms. The entrance
stoop stands like a podium in the street space, but gains a degree of privacy because of the
physical action required for visitors to step up and stand in the niche of the veranda at the front
door. It carves out a semi-private intermediate space between the path of passing neighbors and
the front door.
Respect for individual privacy has been an important part of the design of the urban space in
the project. Whats private is private; it is not on stage. The stage is the street and the public
space. The rear patio is a truly private realm, in contrast to the traditional row-house backyard,
where ones every secret, personal opinion, and problem is revealed to neighbors on either side,
who have their own private yards on the other side of a fence. No one at Pumpkllehagen is
relegated to socializing in a common courtyard or garden. There are opportunities to encounter
neighbors and socialize in public, but also private outdoor rooms in which to be alone.
The public space of Pumpkllehagenthe streets and plaza-like street spacescontain many
elements designed to attract residents when they feel like being public and meeting others.
It is becoming increasingly important to design housing developments with crime prevention
in mind. Many of the urban space qualities described above also contribute to a well thought-out
crime prevention strategy. Clear distinctions between public and private space are a
fundamental aspect of safe neighborhoods. Its important for residents to have a clear overview
of the development, over what is included in the private realm and what is part of the shared
public realm.
Statistics show that break-ins to storage sheds and parked cars are among the most commonly
recurring crimes. The greatest risk for car break-ins is in large, remotely located parking lots.
The greatest risk for break-ins to home storage rooms is in large, consolidated storage units that
are not visible from the apartments they serve. The safest solution is to have the car in a carport
next to the home and the storage shed on the owners property. Safety and security are almost
always a natural part of what it means to be content with ones life.
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3 MATERIALS AND DETAILS

Materials and details make up an important part of the process of appropriation that residents
go through with a new home. The term appropriation (Henri Lefebvres, 1991, 1974), has the
same meaning in this context as its etymology suggests: to make ones own. The appropriation
process is how a resident makes the home an integral part of his or her life, and familiarity with
the materials of that home influence the residents relationship to it (Gromark, Sten, 1993).
Figure 3. Oiled, white-pigmented solid pine flooring. Tongue-and-groove glazed spruce paneling on the
walls. Limestone slab windowsills. The doors are trimless except for a flush board across the head.
Instead of baseboard and crown molding, one of the vertical paneling boards is turned horizontal at the
base and top of each wall.
The making of space is a construction of meaning. In the relationships between resident, site,
and home, appropriation is the processthe human activitythrough which the social
implications of a work of architecture are generated. Appropriation is the process by which the
resident incorporates space and architecture into his or her life patterns and life projects.
By conveying signs of care, materials and detailing play an initiating role in the process of
appropriation. The perception of care has an intimate connection with how residents identify
themselves through their homes. Signs of care can elevate their sense of self and be interpreted
as indications that the residents matter to someone. Architecture can thus satisfy a residents
need for dignity if it seems to be a confirmation of his or her social importance (Gromark, Sten
1993).
Because residents are so physically and emotionally touched by the materials and details that
surround them, their design is of great importance to the process of appropriation. A material
that is perceived as genuine and authentic can more easily be interpreted as a sign of care. It is
important to the perception of authenticity that we understand where a material came from, how
it was made, and how it is used. A well-designed detail executed with great skill and

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craftsmanship is also an important part of the concept of carethe sense that someone cared
about the aesthetic and functional standard of the home.
The oppositepoorly executed craftsmanship, shabbily resolved details, or material
selections that dont seem authentichas a destructive effect that inhibits residents from
developing a feeling of home. The mechanical systems of the home, including electricity,
ventilation, and heating, are important parts of the design and the overall impression of the
home.
This insight into the importance of materials and details for the appropriation process has
figured prominently in the design of the Pumpkllehagen homes. There is a lot of wood on both
the exterior and interior. The floors are solid pine lightened with a transparent white-pigmented
oil. The walls are clad in white-glazed spruce tongue-and-groove boarding. Trimless doorframes
and recessed flush baseboards give the walls a solid, unbroken character. The floor and walls
are treated with oil-based finishes; no latex paints have been used, so the wood can breathe. The
woods ability to absorb moisture is important part of creating a good indoor climate.
The windowsills are made from a 3-cm-thick slab of limestone with a saw-cut refined finish
made locally from stone quarried in nearby Kinnekulle. The cheaper alternative, a sill of painted
wood or factory-finished fiberboard, would have required more maintenance. The stone surface
is robust and can take the splash of water from caring for plants and will remain maintenancefree long into the future. Rather than an added expense, its an investment in the future.
In these authentic materials we get a sense of a relationship to nature. That relationship
becomes tangible, for example, in a wood plank floor. Each plank seems to say something of its
originsfrom the felling of a tree in the forest to its cutting in the sawmill. Its a relationship to
something genuine and understandable.
The careful fitting of the dressed wood planks into the rooms of the home has also left visible
traces of craftsmanship. Using simple hand tools, the planks have been joined one to the next,
the width of each determined by the diameter of the tree it came from. As the floor is used it
will develop a patina. In the floorboards, the softer early wood that separates the harder rings of
the tree is worn down more quickly, leaving a natural relief texture. That texture becomes soft
and smooth with years of scouring the floor with soap and water.
The faades are clad in wood siding made of pine boards that have first been pressure treated
and then boiled in linseed oil. This proprietary Bitus process provides a maintenance-free faade
for the next fifteen or twenty years. After that, all it will need is a periodic coat of linseed oil.
The cheapest wood siding would have cost about thirty percent less in first costs, but would
need to be repainted about every ten years. If we include the cost of future painting in our cost
analysis, the Bitus siding is 30-40% less expensive after only ten years.
The standing-seam metal roof is made of reinzink (titanium zinc). It costs three times as
much as the cheapest alternative, which is tar paper. But tar paper must be replaced every fifteen
years, and after just the first replacement the total cost exceeds that of the zinc roof.
The materials for the project have been chosen in light of the fact that Viskaforshem is going
to own the homes for the next fifty years. For the company, whats important is the annual cost
of owning the property over this fifty-year period. The cost of construction is usually 20% of
their total cost when operating and maintenance costs are included.
Materials with exceptional durability are not just beautiful materials, but also the best
economic choice.
4 DAYLIGHT
Daylight is of fundamental importance to the architectural experience of the home. Light plays
an essential role in the Scandinavian home, with our long, dark winters. In the norms for
housing construction, the authorities have long striven after sunny interiors, even requiring
calculations for the amount of daylight. But the quality of that light is also important, as is the
design of windows and window niches, where natural light enters the home.
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Figure 4. Daylight plays a critical role in the experience of axiality, openness, and circulation. A skylight
in the livingroom.
Concentrated light is one of the wonderful qualities daylight can have. In small spaces with
plenty of both direct sunlight and reflected light, such as deep window niches and glassed-in
verandas, the conditions are right for concentrated light. Daylight is loaded with symbolic
significance. An abundance of natural light can underscore the public character of a living room,
just as a dimly lit bedroom has a more private and intimate ambiance. And daylight plays a
critical role in our experience of axiality, openness, and circulation in the home. Daylight
provides focal points for directional axes and circulation paths, while strengthening the feeling
of openness in a space.
The super-insulated exterior walls are 60cm thick, which creates extremely deep window
niches. To prevent the unpleasant impression of deep holes in the wall, one side of the niche is
splayed at a twenty-degree angle. This widens the opening and admits more light into the room.
The windows at Pumpkllehagen are chosen for their extremely low U-valuethere were few
alternatives that could match their energy performance. With their simple frame profiles,
however, we needed to add decorative molding to the sides of the niches in order to create a
beautiful play of light as it enters the home.
5 AXIALITY
Axiality in architecture is usually associated with urban planning in which buildings, streets, or
landscaping elements are grouped along a straight axis. In the home, axiality refers to a line that
connects two points of interest, an orientational direction that stretches through and engages two
or more rooms, or a line of site that affords a view through several rooms of the home.
The home is of existential importance. Like it or not, we are cast out into something, into
some kind of space. That space is a foreign and controlling medium. The philosopher Gaston
Bachelard holds that this something into which we are cast out is always preceded by our early
experience of the nurturing cradle of the home. Our childhood home remains a standard of
value against which we measure other spaces throughout our lives (Bollnow, Otto, 1993, 1963).
Bachelard also describes the types of values and attributes of the home that lie beyond the
objective, measurable bounds of space. These are difficult to capture in descriptions, according
to Bachelard. They are values stored as memories inside us, and with the help of artistic forms
of expression such as poetry we can plumb the depths of these values. He describes the poetic
values of the home as something that exists apart from the objective observation of its geometry.
He uses terms such as hidden dimension, proximity, and depth. To give an object poetic space
is to give it more space than it has objectively, he wrote (Bachelard, Gaston, 1964, 1958).

257
Figure 5. Enfilade of rooms with aligned doorways and interconnecting sightlines. The hall, living room,
and bedroom/dining room form a long axis or enfilade of rooms. It is a circulation path in the daylight
along the faade. In contrast, there is a second enfilade located deeper in the darker part of the home that
connects a bedroom, the living room, and another bedroom.
Axiality plays an important role in the floor plan of the Pumpkllehagen homes. As soon as
we enter we have a view through the entire depth of the home. Hall, living room, and
bedroom/dining room form a long axis, an enfilade of rooms that spans from front to back, from
street to forest. It is a circulation path in the daylight along the faade. In contrast, there is a
second enfilade deeper into the darker part of the home that connects a bedroom, the living
room, and another bedroom.
The enfilades of rooms are complemented by a variety of different sightlines through the
home. The opportunity to see from room to room and be able to follow the changing light
throughout the day from morning to evening is a valuable quality. Room enfilades and
sightlines create a rich variety of experience in the home, which is an important aspect of
residential architecture. On the floor plan above, some of the homes axes are indicated,
including the sightline interconnecting kitchen, living room, and corner bedroom.
6 CIRCULATION
Circulation, the patterns of movement through a building, is an important condition for a full
and complete experience of architecture. Architecture invites movement through space. The
importance of circulation to the architecture of the home is interrelated with other attributes. For
example, circulation is extremely important to our perception of axiality. One circulation pattern
is circular loop, the ability to walk a complete circuit from one room to the next through the
home. This circular loop movement through an interconnected ring of spaces is one way to
create a feeling of greater volume and spaciousness in a small apartment.
The philosopher and psychologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues that man understand the
room through the body. (Merlau-Ponty, 1993). It is the body which is the basis for all room
experience, and all registrations of physical locations and directions. The body inhabits space
and time. We can never be objective in the scientific sense of the word. We can not sufficiently
inhabit the things that we want to investigate scientifically. The soul inhabits the body and can
never leave it. It is similar to man's approach to his house. Eye inhabits lasted as man inhabits
his house.

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Merleau-Ponty argues that language is crucial to our understanding of the words is inhabited
by meaning. We cannot decouple us and suddenly see the world objectively. Objects and entity
flows together. Man is approaching the world through his body. All interpretations of the
varseblivningar takes place in the glow of our history through the interaction between new and
old experiences. There is no consensus between different individuals, the interpretation is
subjective after the previous experience.
Circular loop requires rooms with more than one opening, and it creates flexibility.
Circulation through the home has a rhythm that depends on the rooms size, shape, and
lighting conditions.
The rooms in the Pumpkllehagen homes work together to form spatial sequences. We move
from room to room. There are many opportunities for circular loop walking a loop of
interconnected spaces. That distinguishes these homes from the typical Functionalist apartment,
which is made up of dead-end spaces usually accessed from a centrally located hall.
In the enfilade of hall, living room, bedroom/dining room, we move from the small and
relatively dark front hall toward a large, open living room with a high ceiling and skylight. The
contrast between these spaces creates the effect of surprise, an important element in the
experience of architecture. The contrast between the small, dark, enclosed hall and the living
rooms brightly lit spaciousness gives us a vivid experience much like the aspect of
experiencing art known as getting a sense of realitythat is, the bodys participation in the art
experience.
Circular loop allows us to experience the rooms of the home both as individual spaces and as
an interrelated whole. Movement through an interconnected ring of spaces gives us a feeling of
spaciousness and a richly varied experience. In the Pumpkllehagen homes, a circular loop
movement interconnects inside and out through the kitchen, patio, living room, and
bedroom/dining room.
Every room has at least two doors, so there are many different paths to take, many possible
circulation patterns. Giving rooms more than one opening, providing different ways of
accessing the rooms, expands our mobility and flexibility in the home.
Movement is life; stagnation is death.
7 INTERMEDIATE SPACES
The design of the home should help its inhabitants to see and interpret the qualities of the site.
The architecture of the home should help people to dwell in the full sense of the word. It is
architecture that makes dwelling in a place something more than just the fulfillment of a
practical need. As Norberg-Schulz says,
While the fulfillment of practical needs is based on measurable conditions and
can be handled rationally, the manifestation of meanings is an artistic problem that
comprises non-measurable quantities. (Norberg-Schulz, Christian, 1978).

Swedish architectural theorist Finn Werne once wrote that:
Architecture has a double representation: an outer form, the image of the
building as we immediately perceive it, and an invisible inner form in our brains.
We construct an invisible architecture, loaded with different experiences and
atmospheres. (Werne, Finn, 1987).
The spatial organization of the private spaces of the interior of the home in relation to the
public exterior spaces of the street, common courtyard, and block determines can create an
interplay between inside and out. The design of this interaction (in the form of intermediate
spaces) between the home and its surrounding environment (site, courtyard, and street) is an
important part of home life.
Intermediate spaces between inside and out are an important element in the architecture of the
home. An intermediate space is a part of the home that gives us an experience of contact with
the outside space.

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In Pumpkllehagen there are different types of intermediate spaces between the public and
private realms. On the street side, the stoop, veranda frame, and front door niche make up an
entrance sequence that create increasing privacy as we approach. The front stoop is a room
delineated from the street only by a difference in elevation. The projecting frame of the veranda
creates a shallow space in front of the entrance. The deep niche in which the front door is
recessed is a final space before we reach the door itself, the definitive barrier between public
and private.
In the splayed sides of the front door niche we can see the walls thickness, its mass.
The entrance veranda works in many ways like a traditional old veranda. It may be furnished,
and because it is raised it feels like a distinct room on the border between public and private.
One can sit there in the midst of the public streetscape, but feel the security of proximity to the
private home. The same is true of the outdoor space in front of the kitchen window. Here one
has left the security of the elevated veranda and come a step further out into the public
streetscape. The public space of the street and the interface between it and the private home
make up Pumpkllehagens urban side, where spatial boundaries are delineated by urban design
elements.
The private side of the homes abuts the forest that surrounds the entire neighborhood. Here
there is a different kind of interface. The private patio is a link between the home and the natural
landscape. The home opens onto the patio and the forest, with all of its symbolic significance.
The Pumpkllehagen forest becomes an important aspect of living in the neighborhood. The
private side of each building is oriented outward to the surrounding forest, and nature is present
even inside the home. This openness to the forest is part of the openness to the original character
of the site. The new neighborhood is like a clearing in the continuous space of the forest.
8 FORWARD-LOOKING RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE
Construction at Pumpkllehagen was completed in July of 2010. So far the project has satisfied
the intensions and objectives that were established in 2005. The monthly cost is 120Euro for
each house, 108 m2. The building cost is 3000Euro/m2. It was 300Euro more than average, but
depended mostly on a complicated building site.
All of the homes have been rented. Theyve given some long-time residents of Viskafors an
opportunity to remain in the area after downsizing from larger detached single-family homes,
and some newcomers have moved to Viskafors to live in the neighborhood. A couple of the
houses are now home to former residents of Bors, but there are also families in
Pumpkllehagen from Lidkping, Hultsfred, and Germany. The fact that families with highly
educated and high-salaried parents have chosen to settle in Viskafors means that the towns
downward spiral has been stopped.
The project garnered quite a lot of attention during the construction phase from television,
radio, newspapers, and the professional press, but also from a large number of field trips by
politicians, property managers, students, and others. The homes have been shown during the socalled Passive House Days as well as other events that have brought over a thousand visitors to
the area. In the fall of 2010, the model home will be used temporarily for an exhibition of the
work of three artists arranged by Viskafors Art Club. (Viskaforshem www.viskaforshem.se)
All of this indicates that as a community Viskafors is being mentioned and associated with
something positivea change that is especially important in light of the industry closings and
unemployment that plagued the town during the 1980s. When the residents of Pumpkllehagen
have become more settled in their new neighborhood, there will be housing studies of the area,
with in-depth analyses of how Pumpkllehagen has affected Viskafors, a survey of resident
satisfaction, and an evaluation of the architecture of the buildings.
In 2009, the development became a demonstration project for the Vstra Gtaland regions
investment in sustainable housing construction. With funding from the regional administration,
a model home was created for the period 2009-10. This investment, which is part of an EU
collaboration, has meant that the project has had visitors from abroad. The model home was
decorated by furniture designer Gunilla Allard.
The concepts Nylander presented in the doctoral thesis have played an important role in
creating an attractive home environment for the residents of Pumpkllehagen:
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Axiality, enclosure, and circulation have given the homes a rich variety of
experiences, with features such as room enfilades, circular loop circulation loops,
contrasts between brightly lit, open spaces and more enclosed, intimate ones.
The careful choice of materials and careful detailing has resulted in high-quality
homes. Wood floors, stone windowsills, wood paneling, and skylights are all
materials and details that are not usually associated with rental apartments. These
have been important to establishing the identity and status of the Pumpkllehagen
homes.
The environment around the homes is built up of clearly articulated spaces. A
series of intermediate spaces establishes a relationship between the private interior
of the home and the public space outside. The architecture of Pumpkllehagens
streetscape is of a different sort than the usual cluster of single-family homes in
which the street space is simply an undifferentiated asphalt surface with no
particular demarcations of more private places adjacent to the homes.
There is a natural sense of territoriality and privacy around intermediate spaces
like the stoop, the space outside the kitchen, under each street tree, and around the
trash cabinet. There is a clear delineation of public and private realms, which is
essential to neighborhood security. That sense of security is enhanced by an
architectural design that discourages crime. Residents have a view of their storage
sheds and carports, an important crime prevention strategy.
The projects lifecycle cost perspective recognizes the economic benefits of
energy conservation, careful material selection, and quality detailing. Together they
create long-term sustainability. Its a forward-looking approach that has become
part of Pumpkllehagens identity and status.
With all of the attention it has received, Pumpkllehagen is becoming a symbol of the new
Viskafors. The new homes are a lift for the community. Their high quality is helping to enhance
the status of the neighborhood.
Figure 6. Siteplan with 18 passivehouses. Rental flats, 108sq m. Productioncost per squaremeter 3000Euro. Monthly rent for a house 120Euro, exkl electricity.

261
Sectionthroughlivingroomwithextraceilingheightandskylight.Showingprinciplesforheatingexchangethrough
theFTXmachine.
x 505mminsulationinexteriorwalls
x 545mminsulationinroof
x 400mminsulationinfloor
x Uvalueoflargewindows0.7w/m2(ImperialUvalue0.12;R=8.1),smallwindows0.9w/m2(ImperialUvalue
0.16;R=6.3)
x Energyconsumption24kWh/m2(7610BTU/ft2)
x Addedheat12W/m2 (3805BTU/ft2).
Figure 8. Technical specification.
Figure 9. Exterior space, Pumpkallehagen.
REFERENCES
Bachelard, G. 1964 (1958). The Poetics of Space. P. 188, from 1994 edition. Boston: Beacon Press.
Bollnow, O. 1963. Vara-i-rum och ha-rum. From Mensch und Raum, 1963. Swedish edition 1994,
Nordisk Arkitekturforskning, 1994-1.
Gromark, S. 1993. Befriande arkitektur. Gothenburg: Chalmers University of Technology.
Hjort, B. 1983. Var hr mnniskan hemma?. P. 70. [PhD Thesis] KTH, Stockholm.
262

Key, E. 1976. Hemmets rhundrade. In E. Liljas, Modernitet, urbanitet och vardagsliv, p. 11,
NORDPLAN 1994:5. Stockholm: Aldus.
Lefebvres, H. 1991 (1974). The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd..
Merleau-Ponty, M. 1993. Phnomnologie de la perception. From the swedish edition in
Sammanfltningar av Bengtsson, Jan, page 74. Gothenburg: Bokfrlaget Daidalos.
Norberg-Schulz, C. 1978. Mellom jord og himmel. P. 87-88. Oslo.
Nylander, O. 2002. The Architecture of the Home. London: Wileys.
van der Laan, D. H. 1983. Architectonic Space. Leiden.
Wiklund, T. 1995. Det tillgjorda landskapet. [PhD Thesis]. Nordplan, Stockholm.
[website] Viskaforshem. www.viskaforshem.se.

263
The [meta]project and the episodic articulation of the

space/form
M. C. Surez
University Lusada-Norte, Porto, Portugal
K. Vandenhende
KULeuven, Leuven, Belgique
ABSTRACT: Framed in what Steven Holl calls episodic articulation of the space and form,
we can take the concept of flexibility to the extreme, using it also for the genesis of the project.
Therefore, the project becomes a [meta]project. This means that it isnt developed as a finished
plan or elevation, but as a set of rules, whereby an initial nucleus" offers multiple growth
directions for an indefinite number of possible variants. Therefore, not only the final plan can be
flexible, but also the [meta]project itself; from the moment of conception until its final
construction phase, in houses designed to be built in stages. The system also predicts the
management by self construction, in which the owner, based on the [meta]projectual rules
system proposed by the architect, is self-sufficient to choose the solution which will be adopted
in later stages of the construction.
1 INTRODUCTION
We have to think better an unfinished house, a house where the initial investment,
always limited, is dedicated to achieve a proper urban location, all possible surface
and some common elements of the best quality. (Paricio, 1996)
Looking back, we noticed a big difference between the dynamics of the house of our ancestors,
where they lived all their life, and the contemporary house. In the generating process of the first,
two situations can happen. When there was enough money, the house was built at once,
resulting in a building without any kind of adaptability or flexibility. This was the reason the
house became a rigid space, a container of life experiences impossible to predict, depending on
how the family life would develop (how many children would exist, if the head of the family
would go to war, etc.). That house could receive several generations, as inhabitants or as guests.
In the second situation, the lack of money forced the construction of one initial nucleus that
satisfied the minimum family needs, later on growing in successive stages, with a spontaneous
(non)logic, often dubious, as the family was increasing the number of children. This solution
was the poorest, but also the most flexible in terms of construction. Finished house versus
unfinished house, where the unfinished was, in most cases, synonymous of: 1) uncertainty about
the final stage, 2) a lack of planning of the growth forms; 3) absence of control over the creative
process (formal-spatial-functional-constructive) based on spontaneity.
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Nowadays, we witness a reformulation of the living space. Lifestyles, constantly changing,

require it. In the last decades, the traditional concept of family has resulted in new and different
ways of human association. Mothers who once stayed at home all the time looking after their
children, now work outside all day, while the children attend to a marathon of classes and
extracurricular activities, synchronized in a perfect way from morning till evening. Formerly the
children left their parents house at the age of 20 years or even younger. Now they often stay
there being already older than 30. Marriages that previously took a whole life, become
shooting stars that last few years or even months. In opposition, we witness the formation of
reconstituted families, with the children of both previous relationships. Work options such as
telecommuting or home business are added to these situations, requiring all updated
architectural responses, able to meet the new social needs.
Thereby, every architecture that currently is not able to adapt to the needs that emerge from
contemporary households, becomes obsolete in no time. Hopefully, it will allow to
accommodate families more than one stage of their life. But, sooner or later, it will force its
members to seek new spatial solutions which serve as scenarios for new life stages. If new
architectural scenarios continue to be inflexible and inadaptable as space of family life, this will
force the habitants to a new search, and another, and another, turning the occupants in "urban
nomads" by necessity, not by choice.
This last aspect is relevant, since the level of satisfaction of one family may exponentially
decrease if the reasons that are responsible for the change of the house are purely functionalquantitative, to reach a minimum of dignity in the living standards of its members (lack of
space, privacy, etc.) rather than to raise qualitatively their living standards.
2 FLEXIBILITY IN THE CURRENT DAYS: THE TIME IN TWO SCALES
Today, many architects seek a change in the spatial conception of the buildings, whether for
housing or work. Therefore, the criteria and strategies of flexibility focus mainly on the internal
organization of spaces that are already pre-defined and topologically pre-positioned. In this way,
the key lies in determining: 1) the strategic position of the fixed elements (mainly, bathroom and
kitchen); 2) the shape and profile that they adopt; and 3) the type of mobile elements (doors,
gates and sliding or pivoting walls, closet-doors, and all kinds of furniture that may be hidden).
This seems the way to be more conventional to resolve an unconventional issue, which demands
more and more solutions for today's society, defined by change.
Count as an example some housing proposals by Steven Holl, being the set of Fukuoka a key
example and a great contribution in the field, as numerous authors have mentioned. But it is
possible to go even more back in time, until the 20s, when Le Corbusier planned some of the
apartments of Immeuble Wanner (Fig. 1), arranged in a day-night scheme, anticipating what 70
years later Steven Holl would do. Providing a fixed device of corridor-closet elevated from the
floor, Le Corbusier hid a set of sliding beds below that corridor, creating a big open space by
day and a bedroom-apartment by night1. In other Wanner apartments, Le Corbusier use folding
beds that during the day are hidden in closets. The graphical representation of the apartments
makes it clear, this is a spatial manipulation with a clear temporal connotation. This is the same
scheme that, few years later he would use in the prototype Loucheur (Fig. 2), where folding
beds turned two bedrooms, at night, into a large living space and studio, during the day.

265
Figure 1. Le Corbusier, Immeuble Wanner (1928-29). Credits: Fondation Le Corbusier.
Figure 2. Le Corbusier, maisons Loucheur (1929). Credits: Fondation Le Corbusier.
This is what Steven Holl calls diurnal articulation (1997), through which the social areas of
the house expand during the day, allowing recovering the bedrooms and the privacy of their
occupants, at night. But Holl also refers to a second time scale, which generates an episodic
articulation of the space. This has to do with the stages in the life of one family, and allows the
reconfiguration of the space with the increase and/or decrease of the number of members of that
family (Holl, 1997).
In both cases, Holl emphasizes an extra attribute of flexibility, with consequences beyond the
functionality: the attribute that allows to customize the own house that, although embedded in
a multifamily block, can be distinguished from the others, adapting to the preferences and
lifestyle of its occupants. Count as examples the incremental projects for the Quinta Monroy,
Villa Verde and Entre Ros (in Chile), or Monterrey (in Mexico), of the group Elemental, where
their occupants complete the original proposal with ideas for their own houses.
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3 EPISODIC ARCHITECTURE: THE [META]PROJECT

Framed in the second time scale that Steven Holl proposes as articulator in architecture, we
can take to the extreme the concept of flexibility, placing it in the same genesis of the project.
Therefore, the project becomes a [meta]project, enabling to rethink conceptually the house as a
live system, an open process adaptable to diverse family groups and situations, in opposition to
the traditional concept of housing as a frozen and finished product.
This means that it isnt developed as a finished plan, or a finished elevation, but as a set of
rules that, from a common seed, an initial nucleus (Fig. 3), offers multiple growth directions
for an indefinite number of possible variants. Therefore, not only the use of the final plan can or
should be flexible, but also the [meta]project itself, from the moment of conception until its
final construction phase, in houses designed to be built in stages. The system also predict the
management by self construction, in which the owner, based on the [meta]projectual rules
system proposed by the architect, is self-sufficient to choose the solution which will be adopted
in the later stages to the construction of the initial nucleus.
Figure 3. [Meta]project, example of different initial nuclei for an exemplary plot. Credits: Fondation Le
Corbusier.
Methodologically, it takes a few strategies to build an efficient [meta]projectual system.

One [meta]projectual strategy is to determine the shape and internal organization of the initial
nucleus (Fig. 3), consisting by the fixed elements of the house, kitchen and bathroom, and also
by one living space and one to sleep, without which nucleus could not be self-sufficient until the
next construction phase.
Of great importance is the [meta]projectual strategy to determine the relative position of the
initial nucleus on the terrain (Fig. 3), because it will be from that location that will emerge the
possible growth directions of the house for the successive phases. These growth directions can
be chosen or not by the client before constructing the initial nucleus, therefore it is indispensable
to place it in a way that provides the largest number of further possibilities.
Another [meta]projectual strategy is to determine the key elements of the system and try them
out with different solutions for the interior compartments that will complement the initial
nucleus in the later stages: bedrooms, bathrooms, corridors of circulation, etc. (Fig. 4). Equally,
will be systematically provided the exterior elements (porches, patios, etc.) which, in addition to
the own function, can be real formal-spatial-constructive connectors between the initial nucleus
and the remaining elements of the system, and of them with each other.

267
Figure 4. Example of key elements of a [meta]projectual system. Credits: M. C. Surez.
The [meta]projectual system proposes a kind of flexibility that allows choosing not only one
house2 among many, but it also allows to change the configuration initially chosen in any
subsequent construction phases (Fig. 5). This [meta]projectual strategy leads us to the beginning
of the presentation when, referring to the house of our ancestors, we confronted the two ways of
building it: Finished house versus unfinished house, where the unfinished was, in most cases,
synonymous of uncertain final stage, of lack of planning of the growth forms, of absence of
control over the creative process (formal-spatial-functional-constructive) based on spontaneity.
Figure 5. Example of initial nucleus and construction phases for one of their possible [meta]projectual
solution. Credits: M. C. Surez.
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We could say that the [meta]projectual solution is the architectural systematization of a set of
strategies that conform a creative process (formal-spatial-functional-constructive) where
spontaneity as mentioned above is latent, but in a regulated or pre-established way by the
architect. The [meta]projectual house potentiates its character of a living organism, flexible, and
also of an optimized container of contemporary life, developed in a world defined by the speed
of change, and by the multiplicity and mutability of family structures.
4 AN EXAMPLE OF [META]PROJECTUAL WORK
As an example of this work system, we present a case study developed for a geographic subtropical area, humid, with little seasonal variation, in the province of Misiones, Argentina. The
region has abundant rainfall. The annual average temperature is 21C. The winds are regular and
of low intensity. The maximum slope of the sun, in summer, is 86 at noon, and 39C, in winter.
The recommended orientation is North-South, to gain cross ventilation and to avoid large
exposed surfaces to the East and West.
Due to the high temperatures, the inhabitants of the region are forced to develop many of
their activities outside of their houses. But, to make that possible, the architecture must also
provide solutions to protect them from the rain. Consequently, there are distinctive elements of
the sub-tropical architecture that begin to be functional responses to a problem, but it ends up
consolidated as spatial-formal mechanisms of great interest for architecture in general (Fig. 6).
Figure 6. Example of a [meta]projectual system, developed in Misiones (Argentine). Credits: M. C.

Surez.
These elements of the traditional architecture of the region are reinterpreted in this proposal
(Fig. 7) through porches and semi-covered patios that protect from the rain, and are at the same
time formal and spatial articulators of the remaining elements that compose the [meta]projectual
rules system.

269
Figure 7. Reinterpretation of the elements of the traditional architecture in the proposed [meta]projectual
system. Credits: M. C. Surez.
The result is a series of houses developed on two floors (ground floor: public activities, with
the possibility of accommodating up to three bedrooms; private first floor, with until three
bedrooms). Each has its perimeter permeable to breezes, and is configured from several initial
nuclei (in this presentation are only 3 exposed: A, B and C), with intensive use of the exterior
spaces, and protective covers from the sun and the rain. The components of the proposed
[meta]projectual system (Fig. 4) are:
Local of implantation (in this case predetermined: 14,5m x 14,5m);
Modulation: in this case 3,40m x 3,40m, determined by the dimensions of the site,
medium-module (1,70m x 3,40m) and sub-module (0,85m x 0,85m);
Initial nucleus, composed of: a) Kitchen + staircase, on the ground floor; b) Main
bathroom + staircase, on the first floor; c) Living-dining room; d) One bedroom; e)
Fragment of porch;
Bedroom;
Large bathroom for the ground floor;
Alternative small bathroom for the ground floor;
Corridor, used to distribute bedrooms in first floor.
Furthermore, by the way the components are combined, we have, for example:
Living-dining room nucleus (Fig. 8): the possible conformations of this space will
increase if we also use the porch, which is already part of the initial nucleus.
Living-dining room + porch/semi-covered patio + bedroom (Fig. 8): the different
groupings of these elements allow different spatial, visual and functional experiences,
by the intensification of the longitudinal or diagonal direction.
Semi-covered patio (Fig. 8).
Bedrooms (Fig. 9), with combinations 3+0, 3+1, 2+1, 2+2 (first floor + ground floor,
respectively);
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Bedroom on the ground floor (Fig. 9): when there is only one, it can be separated
from the living-dining room by a semi-covered patio, and supported by the additional
large bathroom, or by the alternative small bathroom.
Two bedrooms on the ground floor (Fig. 9): grouped by a corridor and supported by a
large bathroom, it also allows a third room on the other side of the corridor.
Porch (Fig. 9), with the possibility of becoming interior.
Figures 8 9. Some combinations of the components of the proposed [meta]projectual system. Credits:
M. C. Surez.

271
In the case of the initial nuclei A, B and C, discussed in this presentation, different final
ground floors appear that, according to the growth directions, determine seven possible final
first floors (Fig. 10). The way how each ground floor combines with the first floor, creates the
final possible versions. It is important to emphasize that the the [meta]projectual rules system
predicts the interruption of the growth of the house in any of its stages, so the image in all those
stages is of a finished house, in formal, functional and spatial terms.
Figure 10. Possible final first floors for the initial nuclei A, B and C in the proposed [meta]projectual
system. Credits: M. C. Surez.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Arguably the [meta]project is a kind of incremental architecture ; but incremental architecture is
not always [meta]projectuel. Incremental architecture allows developing a home in phases, but
always following a lineal process to a single preconceived solution. This is the case of the
dwellings of the Chilean group Elemental (mentioned in this paper), where the strategy is to
build a preconceived half of the volume, leaving the other half empty. This way, there is only
one direction of growth and a unique opportunity for overall massing, controlled by the
architects. On the contrary, the [meta]project stand open for an election of successive growth
phases until the end of the proces, allowing the occupants to follow several different paths,
regardless of initial forecasts. It is here that lies the richness and value of the the [meta]project.
Thereby at each stage including a completed building, with the possibility of selfconstruction, following one of the multiples possibilities proposed by the architects. Combining
the right strategies, the [meta]project becomes a rigorous projectual methodology in the design
of efficient housing typologies.
But there is still little publicity about this kind of alternative architecture, which obstructs the
conservative conscience of society to turn to this type of solution with a speed proportional to its
need for change. Moreover, until now there are only a few theoretical and practical studies
performed to optimize the construction-economic aspects of building by stages.
These negative aspects might be both reversible. On the one hand through marketing
strategies. Hopefully, the appointment of Alejandro Aravena (founder of Elemental), as director
of the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice this year, might provides the necessary
impulse for a change of view in the field of the incremental architecture, in general, and the
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[meta]projectual architecture, in particular. And on the other hand through the development of
research methodologies that optimize the constructive aspects (thermal-waterproof-acoustic
isolation, structural, etc.), resulting in an economy of means, that allows to reuse elements from
one stage to another.
The [meta]projectual system presented in this paper gives an idea about the potential of
incremental architecture as a tool for solutions for individual growth contemporary house (1 or 2
floors). But we still miss the virtues of the system as applied vertically in collective housing
projects. In that case, the field is no longer the small horizontal piece of single-family house, but
the vertical grid composed by slabs and pillars. A study of this dimension of the [meta]project is
being developed by the student Carla Sofia Pereira da Costa (4), showing us that this system is,
in addition to a rich architectural solution, an educational tool that also deserves to be
strategically explored in the teaching of architecture design.
ENDNOTES
1
The strategies for flexibility as presented in this example of Le Corbusier, resemble a project by spanish
architects Aranguren et Gallegos: apartments in Carabanchel (Madrid, Spain, 2003-2005). They
recreate the corbusian solution of 1929, demonstrating its usefulness almost a century later. The
authors themselves mention Le Corbusier on the descriptive memory, saying The house is a Machine
that is meant to be inhabited (http://www.arangurengallegos.com/ag/portfolio_page/housing-incarabanchel/, acceded on 22/08/2016).
2
House imagined as finished object by the customer, at the moment of the purchase of the
[meta]projectual solution.
3
In case of being chosen at the start of the construction, it should allow the client to change his ideas
according to his later preferences, or his familiar needs at the exact moment of building each new
stage.
4
A dimenso vertical na habitao metaprojetual (master dissertation in prep.), Lusada University.
Under the direction of M. C. Surez.
REFERENCES
Holl, S. 1996. Entrelazamientos. Steven Holl 1989-1995. Barcelone: GG.
Paricio, I. 1996. Construyendo Hbitos. Alternativas a la vivienda: del estuche a la caja. Arquitectura
Viva, N 49, julio-agosto, 19-24.
Turner, J. F. C. 1977. Vivienda, todo el poder para los usuarios. Hacia la economa en la construccin del
entorno. Buenos Aires: Blume.
Chapter 4
Ecology and development of housing solutions

Chapter 4: Ecology and development of housing solutions
275
Housing buildings as a feedstock of materials resources to be

harvested: a review of the Portuguese scenario and opportunities
R. Amoda
School of Architecture and Arts, University Lusada Norte, Portugal
Lab2PT, University of Minho, Portugal
ABSTRACT: On the last century housing construction industry in Portugal was based mainly
on the use of cementitious and ceramic materials, such as reinforced concrete, concrete blocks,
ceramic bricks and mortars. These construction processes have led to build housings with a
great mass per sqm, consuming great amounts of primary resources, part from local origin, part
imported from other countries. On the other hand, the surplus of housing dwellings reached
45% regarding the number of Portuguese families. Costs with maintenance of unused and used
buildings are increasing, especially those related to materials end of life and to environmental
performance improvement, such as energy efficiency. Governmental policies and strategy plans
try to encourage rehabilitation and maintenance of existing dwellings and several Decree-Laws
and strategic plan have been published. In spite all this legislation, the main questions are still
leaving outside of the strategies: how to use efficiently the construction and demolition waste
that will be produced, and how to improve housing design in order to easily reclaim end of life
materials. The surplus of vacant housing buildings in Portugal will lead to several demolition
processes due to buildings degradation and obsolescence. This decay process will create a
feedstock that should be harvested in search of available resources to supply the construction
industry and closing materials loop, diminishing the dependence on primary non-renewable
resources.
1 INTRODUCTION
Construction industry is responsible for the use of a great amount of natural resources and also
responsible for a great amount of Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW). These numbers
are well known and the barriers to invert this cycle were already deeply studied and the optimal
top down end of life scenarios (Fig. 1).
Recycling valuable materials as metals and plastics is already a common practice, as the costs
of reclaimed used metals are deeply low when compared with their extraction from nature.
These processes allow reducing materials embodied energy and contributing to diminishing the
emissions of green house gases. In general, these type of recovered materials can be kept on the
production of high level quality materials, even in upcycling scenarios. For instance, availability
of steel sections can be easily reused, avoiding the recycling process.
However, other materials, like those that are stone based such as concrete and mortars, or
ceramic materials are quite difficult to reuse as they easily lose their integrity and generally are
contaminated by additives, such as gypsum. Therefore, recover this kind of CDW need complex
recycling procedures that usually lead to downcycling processes (Fig. 2).
276

Figure 1. Waste management hierarchy for demolition and construction operations according to Kibert &
Chini (2000).
Figure 2. BRBS central of CDW sorting and recycled aggregates production in the Netherlands (image
source: the Author).
Several experiences of housing built using reclaimed materials show the possibility to use
demolished buildings as feedstock for new ones.

277
In the C.K. Choi Building, built in British Columbia, Canada, designed by Matsuzaki Wright
Architects on 1996, structural timber elements were reused, as also ceramic bricks, wood doors
and sanitary appliances.
In the BedZED housing complex designed by Bill Dunster, built in Sutton, London, England,
1500 tons of materials used came from demolished buildings, being wood reused in the faades,
recycled aggregates in concrete and pavements, 89 tons of steel sections, ceramic bricks and
350 doors were reused.
2 THE PORTUGUESE SCENARIO ON CDW
In Portugal, the actual trend is to reduce the amount of materials consumption. An over view by
materials indicates that the non-metallic materials consumption had a significant reduction on
the past few years (Fig. 3). As the Portuguese construction industry consumes mainly heavy
materials such as cement, stone and ceramics, this represents a significant reduction on the
number of ton/year of resources consumption.
Figure 3. Portugal: trends in material consumption 2000-2014, by category of materials (EEA, 2016).
There are no data on the real amount of CDW that is produced and recovered in Portugal.
Several studies were made by different researchers and results were quite uneven.
On 1997 the (INE) indicated 7.690.749 ton/year (Mlia,2010: 53).
On 1998, the Instituto Nacional dos Resduos (INR) produced a different number of 63.164
ton/year (Mlia, 2010: 53).
The Symonds Group (1999) on a report to the European Environmental Agency estimated a
production of 3,200,000 ton/year (i.e. 325 kg/inhabitant/year).
Broderson et al (2002) published a review of selected waste stream in several European
countries, but Portugal was excluded from the study, as no data were available.
Pereira (2002) estimated around 6,440,000 ton/year produced in Portugal, based on a
questionnaire survey to the construction companies.
On 2011, Bio Intelligence Service published a report on management of construction and
demolition waste, funding by the European Commission, given a global panorama of CDW
generated by European countries (Table 1).
Data reporting the evolution of waste flows from 2010 to 2014, showed that CDW represents
circa 20% of the waste generated in Portugal on the last years (Fig. 4).
278

Table 1. CDW generated in EU 27 in 2010 (BIS, 2011).
Commerce and services

Construction
Water supply and sewage
Water supply and sewage
Industry
Mining industry
Agriculture, forestry and fishery
Figure 4. Distribution of waste fraction by economic activity (INE, 2014).
3 THE PORTUGUESE POLICIES AND MANAGEMENT ON CDW

The first Portuguese Decree-Law on waste management, Decree-Law 488/85, was published in
1985. Later, in 1995, by transcription of the European Directives n. 75/442/CEE, n.
91/156/CEE and 91/689/CEE, the Decree-Law 488/85 was replaced by the new Decree-Law
319/95 and this last replaced by the Decree-Law n 239/97.
In 2006, the Decree-Law 178/2006 was published (MAOTDR, 2006) to transcript the
European Directive n. 2006/12/CE, with the purpose to order the dispersed European

279
legislation on waste management. The Decree-Law 178/2006 aimed to establish a waste

management strategy based on their life cycle, by registering data on production and
management of waste. Another goal was to stimulate the growing of the waste market, creating
valor on the reuse and recycling of materials on the production of new products.
Given the general approach to waste types of the Decree-Law 178/2006, in 2008, the new
Decree-Law 46/2008 recognizes the specificity of the CDW (MAOTDR, 2008:1567):
x The amount of CDW that is generated globally;
x The singular characteristics of the construction industry;
x The difficulty to control and survey the environmental behavior of the construction
companies.
Therefore, the main goal was to held responsible owners, contractors and municipalities for
an efficient management of CDW, by introducing innovative mechanisms to prevent and
recover the most amount of this kind of waste (MAOTDR, 2008; EEA, 2011), by reducing,
reuse and recycling the CDWs flow.
However, article 7. restrains the use of CDW on new constructions to those applications for
which technical norms have been published. Such norms were after studied by the Laboratrio
Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC), the entity in charge of homologation of Portuguese
norms for civil construction, who published a few specifications/norms as guidance for the use
of this kind of materials:
x E 471-2009: Guide for the use of coarse recycled aggregates in concrete, that
establishes the minimum requirements that these materials must comply to be use in the
production of concrete (LNEC, 2009a);
x E 472-2009: Guide for the production of recycled hot mix asphalt, that establishes
guidelines and minimum requirements for the use of reclaimed asphalt in hot mix
recycled asphalt (LNEC, 2009b);
x E 473-2009: Guide for the use of recycled aggregates in unbound pavement layers,
that established the requirements of recycled aggregates covered by EN 13242+A1 and
En 13285, so they can be used in unbound sub-base and base pavement layers (LNEC,
2009 c);
x E 474-2009: Guide for the use of recycled materials coming from construction and
demolition waste in embankment and capping layer of transport infrastructures,
establishing the minimum requirements that this waste must comply with so can be
used in embankment and capping layer of transport infrastructures (LNEC, 2009d).
In 2011, the Decree-Law 46/2008 was amended by Decree-Law 73/2011 (MAOT, 2011) with
the intention to reinforce the prevention of waste generation and to reinforce reuse and recycling
scenarios in a hierarchy perspective. One of the most important aspects is considering that waste
from a production system might be a resource for other production system.
In 2014, the Portuguese Government published the Decree n. 40/2014, to clarify the way
how CDW should be reclaimed, transported and deposited in waste treatment centrals,
especially those containing asbestos (MAOTE, 2014).
In 2015, it was published the National Plan for Waste Management (PNGR) (PCM, 2015),
which main goal is to reduce the new resources needs between 17% and 24% until 2030. The
Plan has 3 strategic measures:
1. Dissociate the economic growth from resources consumption;
2. Dissociate the economic growth from waste production;
3. Increase the amount of reclaimed materials in the economy.
The main goals of this plan are:
4. To reduce the waste production;
5. To reduce the amount of eliminated wasted;
6. To reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG).
4 THE PORTUGUESE HOUSING SCENARIOS
According to INE, the Portuguese entity for statistical publications, on the last census of 2011
the Portuguese housing scenario was characterized by a number of 3.5 millions of residential
buildings corresponding to 5.9 millions of dwellings. From this number, 31.8 % were second

280
residences (19.3 %) or vacant dwellings (12.5 %) (INE, 2012:4). Therefore, according to the
same source, the number of dwellings in Portugal over passed in 45% the number of families. It
was accounted for more 1.8 millions of available dwellings than the number of existing families
(circa 4 millions).
More than the half of existing dwellings was built after 1981, being 35% built between 1991
and 2011. The growing of dwellings is related to easy access to bank credit for housing
investment by the contractors and for housing acquisition by the families during the 80s and
90s of the 20th century (Fig. 5).
Dwellings
Families
Figure 5. Growing of dwellings (grey color) versus growing of families (brown color) between 1970 and
2011 (Source: INE (2012:14)).
5 POTENTIAL OF MATERIALS RECOVERY FROM HOUSING DEMOLISHING IN

PORTUGAL
The potential of materials recovery for reuse and recycling in the Portuguese housing sector has
some constraints. Some barriers can be identified:
1. The construction systems and materials that are most commonly used in the housing
market;
2. The low level of standardization and use of prefab components;
3. The non-existing market for CDW, mainly regarding reuse due to non existing norms
and standards;
4. The architectural approach to housing design that does not consider a life-cycle
approach.
5.1 The construction systems and materials
The type of construction systems used in housing was and is still based mainly on the use of
cementitious and ceramic materials, such as reinforced concrete, concrete blocks, ceramic bricks
and mortars, which leads to heavy buildings. On housing construction, the buildings structure
is usually conceived to form a structural system composed by reinforced concrete columns and
beams. The slab is usually built using a pre-stressed concrete beams frame that is filled by
ceramic bricks and covered by a thin layer of concrete (Fig. 6) thus reducing the costs with slabs
by reducing the amount of concrete and steel.

Figure 6. Lightweight slab

http://www.archiproducts.com).
currently
used
281
in
housing
construction
(image
source:
The use of these kinds of construction materials influences the overall weight of the CDW
produced in Portugal and represents the major fraction per weight (Fig. 7).
Figure 7. Constituent materials of CDW in Portugal (weight %) according to Pereira et al (2004).
The external walls enclosure is usually made by using double walls made of ceramic bricks
and finished outside by a cement mortar or ceramic tiles. The internal walls are usually made
using single walls made of ceramic bricks. Actually, the use of interior plasterboard walls
increased due to working time reduction.
Regarding the most current construction system, Amoda (2010) calculated a initial mass
input of 285 tons of weight for a small house with 86,4sqm built using concrete, ceramic brick
walls and mortar as finishing (Figs. 8 and 9), being possible to reclaim 90% of this mass, being
247 tons for downcyling (86%) and 14,2 tons for reuse (4.9%).
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Figures 8 and 9. 3D view and 3D section of the house built stone-based materials (Amoda, 2010).
As shown by the example, this kind of construction system does not allow an easy recovery
of materials as they are joined using adhesive and chemical connections which difficult
materials separation. The process of separation of demolishing debris needs to follow a costly
process:
1. Transportation;
2. Pre-sorting (i.e. separation of coarse wood, metals and rubble);
3. Pre-screening (sand recovery);
4. Primary crushing;
5. Magnetic recovery of ferrous metals;
6. Secondary crushing;
7. Mechanical separation of wood, plastics, rubbers, non ferrous metals and other light
weight materials (e.g. paper, cardboard), as also separation of contaminants such as
gypsum, asbestos and organic matter;
8. Screening for granular inerts recovery (e.g. concrete, stone, ceramics).

283
The limited use of these materials is due to the legislation and few norms for reuse and
recycled of reclaimed construction materials.
Another constraint is that he Portuguese construction sector does not use traditionally prefabricated or standardized components. The use of these components is quite limited to
technical components such as doors and finishing panels. Some new construction companies
start to introduce modular housing systems and the use of light steel framing construction
systems.
Finally, in general architects dont design housing according to a life cycle perspective.
Design for Deconstruction is an effective approach to housing design that allows materials
changeability overtime: materials and components separation, optimization of end of life
scenario, spatial flexibility, infrastructural upgrading and, the most important, a continuous
supply chain of construction materials.
6 CONCLUSIONS
As argued before, the increasing amount of vacant dwellings in Portugal and the disinvestment
on new construction and rehabilitation constitute not just a problem but also a opportunity to
reclaim those materials and components in a supply chain perspective. However, these
opportunities are strongly constrained by the quality of recovered materials as also by the lack
of norms that allow these materials to effectively supply the materials chain in the construction
industry. Selected demolition is a first step to assure the pre-sorting of different materials as also
their quality, what may benefit the reclaimed materials market development. Norms regarding
reuse of materials are mostly need than existing downcycling norms for concrete aggregates and
hot mix asphalt.
However, the key step is changing how the contractors build in Portugal and how architects
and civil engineers integrates materials and spatial reversibility, in order to design easily
demountable buildings, integrating mechanical connections, standard measures and prefabricated components.
Shifting the actual paradigm is not an easy task, and no strategic plan for CDW management
may go forward if the construction industry will not accept the new paradigm: in a nearly future
will have to build with reclaimed certified materials.
REFERENCES
Amoda, R. 2010. Design for Deconstruction: Emergy Approach to Evaluate Deconstruction
Effectiveness. [PhD Thesis]. Guimares: University of Minho.
(BIS: see Bio Intelligence Service)
Bio Intelligence Service. 2011. Service Contract on Management of Construction and Demolition Waste SR1: Final Report Task 2. Paris: Bio Intelligence Service.
Brand, S. 1994. How Buildings Learn. New York: Penguin Books.
Brodersern, J., Jull, J. & Jacobsen, H. 2002. Review of Selected Waste Streams: Sewage Sludge,
Construction and Demolition Waste, Waste oils, Waste from Coal-fired Power Plants and
Biodegradable Municipal Waste. Copenhagen: European Environment Agency.
(EEA: see European Environment Agency)
European Environment Agency. 2011 Survey of resource efficiency policies in EEA members and
cooperating countries - Country profile: Portugal.
European Environment Agency. 2016. 2011 More from Less Material Resource Efficiency in Europe Country profile: Portugal.
ICOMOS. 1964. The Venice Charter.
(INE: see Instituto Nacional de Estatstica)
Instituto Nacional de estatstica. 2012. Evoluo do Parque Habitacional em Portugal 2011-2011. Lisboa:
Instituto Nacional de Estatstica.
Kibert, C. J. & Chini, A. 2000. Introduction: deconstruction as an essential component of sustainable
construction. In C. J. Kibert & A. Chini (eds.), Overview of deconstruction in Selected Countries, 6-13.
CIB Publication 252. Amsterdam: International Council for Research and Innovation in Building
Construction.
(LNEC: see Laboratrio Nacional de Engenharia Civil)
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Laboratrio Nacional de Engenharia Civil. 2009a. Guia para a utilizao de agragados reciclados em
betes de ligantes hidralicos - E 471-2009. Lisbon: LNEC.
Laboratrio Nacional de Engenharia Civil. 2009b. Guia para a reciclagem de misturas betuminosas a
quente em central - E 472-2009. Lisbon: LNEC.
Laboratrio Nacional de Engenharia Civil. 2009c. Guia para a utilizao de agragados reciclados em
camadas no ligas de pavimentos - E 473-2009. Lisbon: LNEC.
Laboratrio Nacional de Engenharia Civil. 2009d. Guia para a utilizao de materiais reciclados
provenientes de resduos de construo e demolio em aterro e camada de leito de infra-estruturas de
transporte - E 472-2009. Lisbon: LNEC.
Mlia, M. 2010. Indicadores de Resduos de Construo e Demolio. [MA Thesis]. Lisbon: Instituto
Superior Tcnico.
(MAOT: see Ministrio do Ambiente e do Ordenamento do Territrio)
(MAOTDR: see Ministrio do Ambiente, do Ordenamento do Territrio e do Desenvolvimento Regional)
(MAOTE: see Ministrio do Ambiente, Ordenamento do Territrio e Energia)
Ministrio do Ambiente, do Ordenamento do Territrio e do Desenvolvimento Regional. 2006. Decretolei n. 178/2006 de 5 de Setembro. Dirio da Repblica, 1 Srie (n. 171): 6527-6545.
Ministrio do Ambiente, do Ordenamento do Territrio e do Desenvolvimento Regional. 2008. Decretolei n. 46/2008 de 12 Maro. Dirio da Repblica, 1 Srie (n. 51): 1567-1574.
Ministrio do Ambiente e do Ordenamento do Territrio e Energia. 2011. Decreto-lei n. 73/2011 de 17
de Junho. Dirio da Repblica, 1 Srie (n. 116): 3251-3300.
Ministrio do Ambiente, Ordenamento do Territrio e Energia. 2014. Portaria n. 40/2014 de 17 de
Fevereiro. Dirio da Repblica, 1 Srie (n. 33): 1435-1442.
(PCM: see Presidncia do Conselho de Ministros)
Pereira, L. 2002. Reciclagem de Resduos de Construo e Demolio: Aplicao Zona Norte de
Portugal. [MA Thesis]. Guimares: Universidade do Minho.
Pereira, L., Jalali, S. & Aguiar, B. 2004. Gesto dos Resduos de Construo e Demolio. Workshop
Sistemas Integrados de Gesto de Fluxos Especficos de Resduos. Lisboa.
Presidncia do Conselho de Ministros 2015. Resoluo do Conselho de Ministro n. 11-C/2015: Aprova o
Plano Nacional de Gesto de Resduos para o horizonte 2014-2020. Dirio da Repblica, 1 Srie (n.
52): 1610-(8)-1610(48).
Ruivo, J. & Veiga, J. 2004. Resduos de construo e demolio: estratgia para um modelo de gesto.
Final Report to obtain BSc degree on Environmental Engineering. Lisbon: Instituto Superior Tcnico.

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Senda, progressive environmental quality system for rooftop flats

J. Arts
ETSA La Salle-Ramon Llull University and La Casa por el Tejado, Barcelona, Spain
L. Volpi
Societat Orgnica, Barcelona, Spain
G. Wadel
ETSA La Salle-Ramon Llull University, La Casa por el Tejado and Societat Orgnica, Barcelona, Spain
N. Mart
ETSA La Salle-Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain
ABSTRACT: Senda is an environmental quality implementation system specially developed for

vertical extension projects. The system abides by the philosophy of a simplified life-cycle
analysis and draws on the experience of existing tools. Even if building technicians do not have
prior experience in environmental evaluation, the tool allows them to apply a common analysis
method and decision-making process to projects. It is applicable from the extraction of raw
materials to the end of life cycle. This environmental quality management system has been
applied to a dozen projects in which it was necessary to reach an overall minimum result of 60%
savings in impacts with respect to a traditional project. Based on an initial result of only 29%
savings, its application in successive projects and the extension of knowledge among
technicians have allowed us to reach a loftier goal of 60%. The present article introduces the
initial state, methodology, implementation, results, discussion, current state and predicted
evolution of Senda.
1 INTRODUCTION
The construction and use of buildings is responsible for a third of greenhouse emissions (CO2
and other GHGs) in most European countries (Chalmers, 2014) and in the United States (US
Energy Information Administration, 2016). International policy on climate change has proposed
measures to mitigate GHGs that have been incorporated by administrations into regulations and
subsidy plans (IPCC, 2016), as well as periodic assessment systems using indicators that allow
for determining different actions degree of compliance (EEDS, 2007-2016). These policies and
commitments also result in requirements that must be complied with in the case of new
construction and rehabilitation, gathered into the mandatory regulations and voluntary
environmental quality initiatives.
In that direction, a number of experts in the industry have launched environmental quality
assessment and certification systems for buildings, which help analyze, measure and verify
whether new or existing buildings actually consume less energy (VERDE, LEED, DGNB,
BREEAM, among others) than the limits laid out by the environmental regulations and policies.
Most of these tools, however, imply a considerable economic cost to the projects in question
and an added complexity of execution (according to different sources, at least two months time
and starting at 5,000 in costs for an individual dwelling). Furthermore, they require expert
knowledge and prior experience on the part of the design team, technical collaborators, site
managers, etc., which many professionals in the Spanish market do not possess. In practice,
286

these factors make it difficult to apply the criteria of environmental quality parameters intended
to exceed the current regulatory requirements.
In response to this situation, Senda is as an easy-to-use tool for the support and assessment of
environmental quality in design projects, although it is based on a simplified life-cycle analysis.
Senda was created by specialists with years of experience in generating and applying
improvement strategies, and in developing assessment tools. Beginning in first phase of the
project, Senda lets designers integrate environmental criteria, helping them understand the
effects of their decisions on each of the parameters. As such, they can determine the projects
potentials for improvement and how to reach them.In that way, every designer developing a
project can evaluate it using a common system for analysis and decision making, which
encompasses from the extraction of raw materials for the manufacture of building materials to,
at the end of the buildings useful life, its dismantling, and the reuse or recycling of the invested
resources.
Senda also runs an assessment for a number of environmental categories: changes in
biodiversity, consumption of non-renewable energy, depletion of drinking water, impact caused
by the materials used, and the generation of polluting waste products.
Senda is envisioned as a commitment to sustainability established by a project developer,
which must be fulfilled by the designers. Created by Societat Orgnica for La Casa por el
Tejado, the tool is part of a broader philosophy that takes into account the structure of the city
and its evolution. It is applied to improvement projects that add additional floors to buildings, in
line with the following definition: adding to existing construction allows for taking advantage of
residual floor area ratios, filling out the built volume as dictated by planning regulations,
finishing the city that was designed and representing a growth model that harnesses existing
infrastructures instead of extending the city via sprawling urbanization.
This article first presents the tools methodology and its management to understand its
interface and its scope. Subsequently, it introduces a series of case studies ten designs with
similar typologies: improvement combined with additional construction with an analysis
based on the results of an assessment using Senda compared to the required energy certification
for Spain. The conclusions outline how far it has been possible to advance in matters of
environmental quality, as well as how much ground we still need to cover toward achieving
optimum improvement levels from the interventions. Finally, the article proposes how to
continue with the development and applications of the tool.
2 METHODOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
2.1 Methodology
Senda is structured in its present form as a navigable Excel file and contains two main sections:
Help and Evaluation. The Help section contains ordered information about strategies and
actions for environmental improvement as well as references to specifications, products and best
practices in each topic (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Diagram showing how the Senda tool works.

287
The Evaluation section consists of eighty questions, and possible frequent responses, formed
in a way that they can be answered with the information normally contained in a technical
project of architecture. Both sections, Help and Evaluation, allow any design team to aim the
project towards best practice and verify that the work is being carried out in the right direction
(Fig. 1).
Sendas 80 questions formulated for each project are organized into five sections:
Biodiversity, Energy, Water, Materials and Waste. Although each of them has different
complexity and therefore requires more or less information, all questions concern the most
important aspects, albeit in a simplified way, from the point of view of environmental impacts
to be avoided.
Some of the queries made are: is there an increase in vegetation compared to the existing
situation (Biodiversity)? Is the efficiency of the HVAC superior to standard? (Energy)? Are
there saving mechanisms in taps, cisterns and showers (Water)? Are natural or recycled
products used (Materials)? Do they generate less waste than a conventional construction
(Waste)?
Each section (biodiversity, energy, water, materials and waste) will have a final score as well
as each of the answers (Table 1). This allows distributing weight and impact, first for each
section and then unified in a single note.
Table 1. Criteria of aid and evaluation of the Senda tool.
Local
Demand
Efficiency
increase
resources
reduction
Efficiency
Solar energy
Energy
Site
equipment
Surrounding
Solar protection
Low power
Infiltrations
Systems
Ventilation
management
Internal loads
Dissipation
Materials
Quant.
Soaked energy
Evaluation
Rainwater
Low watering
Efficient
Water
appliances
reuse
Waste
Less waste
Biodiversity
Recycling
resources
Impact rescue
electric. 0 CO2
Use of recycled
Grey waters
Selective
separation
Increase in vegetation and wildlife in the plot, regarding the initial situation
There are two levels of weighting, one for each section and one for each group of questions
within the sections themselves. Energy paragraph is weighted 35% of the total, materials 20%,
water 20%, waste 15% and 10% Biodiversity.
The results are displayed in different ways. On the one hand, each question has a "traffic light"
that indicates, with a scale of graduated colors from red to green, how bad or good the answer
is. Moreover, on the front page results are displayed for all sections, as well as the global result,
indicated in% saving over conventional impacts reference. Results are also displayed
graphically in a web graph, where a stain indicates the impacts: the bigger the stain, the bigger
the impact. If the stain is within the specified limit (defined in the environmental objectives), the
result will be positive.
2.2 Management
The best methodology may remain just a theory if it does not go hand in hand with management
that makes it effective. Senda was born, precisely, from rethinking the management of support
and environmental quality assessment in projects by La Casa por el Tejado. At first, the efforts
focused on bringing in experts who consulted with the lead designers and site managers for each
project, on a case by case basis. This method was quickly seen as ineffective: the
implementation of environmental parameters was slow due to differences in the various
288

designers training and motivation. The rotation of the experts through the different projects
meant that the process had to be restarted repeatedly with different people, and as the number of
projects increased the consultants were soon overwhelmed. A shared system was then created
for help and evaluation, but also for knowledge building, record keeping and the exchange of
information. In other words: start speaking the same language, create a written record, and send
a copy to everyone involved.
Senda ultimately became a shared code for all projects, intended to be used directly by the
professionals involved in each project, and with minimum intervention from the consultants.
However, although the tool is simple and contains a detailed help section, the practical
applications and monitoring still implied major involvement on the part of the consultants.
The main difficulties in its application were not technical (the features of a particular
improvement measure or how it is implemented) or economic (many of them do not imply an
increase in cost), but rather derived from the desire, motivation, and capacity to incorporate new
challenges into the everyday work of design and construction. Nonetheless, the combined
efforts of consulting and follow-up between designer and consultant managed to result in a
process of learning and improvement.
3 CASE STUDIES
Between June 2014 and August 2016, ten improvement and enlargement projects were
undertaken on existing buildings in Barcelonas Eixample neighborhood (Fig. 2). The buildings
were all between one and six stories tall, built between 1880 and 1940, which had not reached
their maximum floor area ration according to the urban planning regulations.
Figure 2. The first ten improvement and enlargement projects.
The vertical structure of load-bearing brick walls, unreinforced concrete foundations, and soil
conditions also make them good candidates for supporting additional loads. These two baseline
conditions (additional floor area ratio and remaining load-bearing capacity), along with an
economic agreement between the current owners and the developer responsible for the
enlargement, are the keys to beginning the buildings refurbishment and completion. In this
way, the existing buildings are improved and new apartments are made available in the center of
the city. The building stock is renewed and further expansion of the city is avoided.

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The experiences with support and assessment for environmental improvement carried out
using Senda in this first ten projects show an evolution. At the beginning, when there was less
shared knowledge and experience, the projects showed poorer results in terms of environmental
quality. The goals were and continue to be achieving an energy efficiency rating of A and 60%
savings in terms of environmental impact as compared to usual practice on Senda (usual
practice is understood as what merely complies with the requirements of the building code, from
2013, with an energy efficiency rating of level D, as established by Royal Decree 235/2013).
However, we can see that as the development of the projects advanced and more cases were
added, the continuous learning and accumulation of experience made it possible to achieve the
desired results. The following graphic (Fig. 3) shows this development, indicating for each
project the theoretical levels of energetic consumption and savings according to the efficiency
rating (light green) and the overall environmental impact according to the Senda tool (dark
green). The levels from both assessments do not always coincide. there are cases where the
results of the two evaluations show significant differences.
This is because the energy rating focuses exclusively on the energy used in the buildings,
whereas Senda also includes other environmental vectors such as water, materials, waste and
biodiversity. And not just in one phase, but in all phases of the buildings life cycle.
Figure 3. Reduction of energy consumption and environmental impact in the first 10 projects.
When we set aside the energy rating and analyze just the results of the assessments done with
Senda, added together for all the stages of the buildings life cycle (Fig. 4), the learning curve
from the first projects to the later ones is even clearer. The pentagons outer limits represent the
impact of usual practice, the red line represents the objectives set by the developer, and the
orange area is the impact determined for the project.
The impact mark reflected by the eco-compass for each project is clearly greater in the first
five projects and lesser in the last five. Again, learning and experience were essential to
achieving good results. However, the level of the results is different according to which
environmental vector you look at: in terms of energy, the values are on target, but for waste or
materials they are further from the goal.
This could be chalked up to two main reasons. On the one hand, greater knowledge of energy
saving strategies, as opposed to other types of environmental improvements, among the
professionals working on the project. On the other hand, the relationship between what is being
assessed for the required energy rating and for the voluntary Senda tool with regard to energy.
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The former has a general application and is well known. The latter is applied to projects by La
Casa por el Tejado and is just emerging.
Figure 4. Environmental impact of the first ten projects along its life cycle (E: energy, B: biodiversity, A:
Water, M: materials, R: waste).
4 DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS

Use of the Senda tool makes it possible to accumulate experience, both in terms of methodology
(measures to apply, adequate or inadequate results, simple or difficult processes, actions that are
economically feasible or not, etc.) and in terms of management (which consulting and
monitoring actions have been effective and which have not, which communication mechanisms
have worked and which have not, etc.). The analysis of the contents of the Excel files from the
ten projects included in this assessment tells us which of the 80 questions regarding the
environmental quality of each project received the qualifications of high, average and low
compliance with the conservation and environmental impact measures (appearing in red, yellow
or green in the tool).
Table 2. Criteria with positive, average and negative response in the use of the Senda tool.
Positive
Intermedium
Negative
Medium vector
Energy (54,7%)
Surrounding
Surrounding
Average installed
Efficiency facilities
Solar protection
power
Infiltrations
DHW by electric
heating
Use local resources
Materials that allow
Recycling or reuse of
Materials (34,1%)
Proximity of materials
recovery at the end of
existing building
Removal of expendable
building elements
the life cycle
materials
Need for low irrigation by Consumption of health
Recue, reuse and
Water (44,5%)
purification of
native plants
items
rainwater or greys
Increased green
Biodiversity (46,6%) Creating spaces for insects
building surfaces
Forecast of plant elements
100% native vegetation
Waste (27,2%)
Operator Training Plan
Lower selective
Process for monitoring and
separation 3 levels
collecting data

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A summary of these measures (Table 2) organized according to the level of compliance

shows us, in general: what is working properly and what is not; which measures are the simplest
or the most difficult to apply; which aspects are most familiar to designers; where the
difficulties are focused, etc.
The analysis of this information, and the conversations with the professionals who use the
tool, help toward planning the development of the tools contents and the evolution of its
support mechanisms. For example: in terms of content, the negative results in the use of
renewable or recycled materials points to the need for investigating alternatives and offering
further information to designers. As far as support goes, a difficulty in implementing grey water
recycling systems could indicate it would be useful to schedule a short course or a visit from
consultants to provide designers with further information. Looking into specific aspects,
especially those with average or low levels of compliance, allows for establishing a more
complete perspective, defining priorities, making changes, etc.
Likewise, it also allows consultants to compile the accumulated knowledge, i.e., sharing it
with the design and construction professionals as a benefit from the work they have done, which
they can share with one another. Plus, anyone who has had a problem and has been able to solve
it can share their experience. That way, anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation can
take advantage of that information.
The projects share many similar characteristics and preexisting conditions. Drawing on that
fact, the completed projects that have achieved better results in the global Senda evaluation are
taken as reference points for future projects. If we achieve a 60% reduction of environmental
impact in one case, it is highly probable that we can do it again. When it comes to the how, the
documented experience can provide a lot of help.
5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE LINES OF WORK
The experiences in the use of the Senda tool on ten building improvement and enlargement
projects, and the analysis of the results achieved, lead us to some conclusions:
- It is possible to develop and implement a tool for the support and assessment of
environmental quality in architectural projects that is simpler and less expensive than
the commercial certification systems available on the market.
- Simple tools, however, may not be enough to achieve project environmental quality
goals when used in isolation. They need to be complemented by consulting and
monitoring from experts in building sustainability.
- The ongoing application of criteria for environmental improvement to the projects
helps not only to strengthen the projects in which they are applied, it also provides for
the accumulation of knowledge and experience, which can help toward optimizing
other cases.
- The analysis of data from the continuing assessment of various project lets us know
where actions are on track and where they have been ineffective. This also serves as
the foundation for making improvements to the tools methodology and its support
systems.
- The difficulty in progressing toward better quality in design and construction is not
limited to technical aspects. How information is managed, the motivations of the
people involved, and access to professional development are also key factors.
Likewise, these conclusions also help to determine the future lines of work to be pursued
toward enhancing the tool and its results:
- The system of data generated by Senda needs to be improved, along with the
mechanisms for sharing information. The use of an individual Excel file for each
project should tend toward the use of a shared centralized platform.
- This platform should function in a web environment with multi-user access in order to
ensure it is updated and universally accessible. It could offer a support mode,
information on past projects, and even aggregate data from all recorded projects.
- Senda currently focuses on environmental aspects (energy, materials, etc.), but it
could also gradually incorporate social criteria (comfort, quality of living, etc.) and

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economic aspects (cost-efficiency relationship, amortization of the improvements,

etc.).
Another dimension of the tools expansion could include the evaluation of the
existing building where the improvement project is being built, offering alternatives
for intervention and a net balance between the initial situation and the final outcome.
While the tool is currently focused on the work done by designers and site managers,
we should also bear in mind that the use and management of a building are also
central to the environmental outcome. The tool should also be targeted to users and
building managers.
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our thanks to Carlos Delgado, from the Research, Development and Quality department at La Casa por el
Tejado, for the preparation and initial analysis of the information on the projects evaluated using Senda.
We would also like to thank the environmental consultancy firm Societat Orgnica for their advice and
guidance in the creation, maintenance and future development of the tool.
REFERENCES
Certificacin Energtica de Edificios.2013. Real Decreto 235/2013. Ministerio de Industria y Turismo de
Espaa. Avaliable at: http://www.idae.es/index.php/id.25/relmenu.346/mod.pags/mem.detalle.
Chalmers, P. 2014. Climate change: implication for buildings. Cambridge Institute for Sustainability
Leadership. IPCC_AR5__Implications_for_Buildings__Briefing__WEB_EN.pdf.
Cdigo Tcnico de la Edificacin. (n.d.). Ministerio de Fomento de Espaa. Available at:
http://www.codigotecnico.org.
EEDS. (n.d.). Estrategia Espaola de Cambio Climtica y Energa Limpia, Horizonte 2007-2012-2020.
Ministerio de Mediambiente. Espaa.
Informe de Evaluacin de Edificios. (n.d.). Ministerio de Fomento de Espaa. Available at:
https://iee.fomento.gob.es.
IPCC. Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climtico. 2015. Cambio climtico 2014.
Mitigacin del cambio climtico. Suiza.
La casa por el tejado. Barcelona. 2015. Available at: http://www.lacasaporeltejado.eu/.
Societat Orgnica. (n.d.). Herarmienta de Ayuda y Evaulacin Ambiental de Edificios Senda. Available
at: http://www.lacasaporeltejado.eu/es/blog/calidad-ambiental/.
U.S. Energy Information Administration. 2016. Monthly Energy Review. Annual energy outlook. USA.

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A comparative study on conventional and sustainable construction

with special reference to housing development administration
buildings of Turkey
T. Guzeloglu
Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey
ABSTRACT: Common methods of construction in Turkey are investigated in order to

comprehend the sustainability potential of the construction industry. Housing Development
Administration of Turkey (TOKI) buildings were selected and used as a representative building
type. Two selected cases are analysed in terms of sustainability potentials such as orientation,
wall and roof assemblies and window sizes using Autodesk Green Building Studio software.
Since the weather conditions also have a significant effect on sustainability potential, two
extreme locations were chosen and used in the analytical study. Carbon emissions of the
buildings are also analysed to provide the optimum results in this study. It must be noted that all
parameters have significant effects on the sustainability potential and that the effect of each
parameter is explained and necessary suggestions are made. Different combinations of these
parameters are also compared and results are explained in detail to obtain further understanding
of sustainability potential of selected buildings.
1 CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IN TURKEY

According to the former Minister of Environment and Urbanism of Turkey, Erdoan Bayraktar
78% of the Turkish population lives in the cities and the buildings in Turkey are consuming
40% of total energy consumed. At the same time, construction industry accounted for more than
30% of Turkish economy. 51% of energy used in Turkey comes from imported natural gas.
According to Bayraktar, We are spending 55 Billion dollars on energy which is more than 40%
of our annual export and 60% of current account deficit is from energy imports. (Bayraktar
2012).
In his speech in 2012 Green Building Summit, Bayraktar also addressed the current building
stock of Turkey and the near future plans for the urbanization around Turkey. According to the
data Bayraktar provided, Turkey has 18 million building stock that does not satisfy the demand
hence, 2,5 million more are needed. It must also be noted that 8 to 9 million out of the current
building stock needs to be renewed in order to bring them up to the current earthquake codes in
Turkey (Bayraktar 2012).
According to the information obtained from the former Minister, 10 to 12 million new
buildings will be constructed in the near future all around Turkey which means another 30% to
35% more energy will be needed just to operate those buildings alone (Bayraktar 2012).
Since 2010, with strong governmental support, there is a dramatic growth in construction
sector in Turkey.
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In Europe, construction industry, with a share of 28.1%, is the biggest and most active sector.
It is the driving force of the European economy with the employment rate of 7.5%. It not only
represents 25 % of European industrial production which generates 750 million euros annually
but also the largest exporter with 52% of the global market share. Globally, construction
industry considered as the fastest growing industry. It is expected that in the next 20 years China
alone will need total 40 billion square meters of residential and commercial floor space which
equals to the area of Switzerland, every two years (Dobbs, 2010).
Construction industry is also responsible for 30% of carbon emissions and the buildings are
consuming 42% of all energy produced in Europe. Since it uses nearly 3000Mt/yr. of raw
material, it is called to be the largest raw material consuming sector (Torgal & Jalali 2011).
Given that the construction industry is the most active and the largest industry both in Europe
and in Turkey, it should be noted that it is the largest industry that consumes energy and is also
largely responsible for carbon emissions.
1.1 Conventional construction methods in Turkey
For centuries, several construction methods and materials have been used and investigated in
Turkey. Depending on the availability of materials, methods like stone masonry or timber frame
construction have been used in different regions. In some regions people also developed their
own construction methods based on their needs, life styles and cultures. Two of these methods
are; Gz Dolma and Muskali. These two techniques, as vernacular architecture, are mostly
preferred in Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. Even though, common natural materials are
used, such as stone and timber, the applications of these methods are not commonly seen today.
They are, in fact, much more environmentally friendly than the methods in use today (Kahya et
al. 2010).
Figures 1, 2. Examples of a Goz Dolma and Muskali Dolma Construction Methods.(Szen,et al,2010).
In recent years, reinforced concrete frame construction replaced almost all other types of
traditional construction methods. In this construction method, reinforced concrete frames filled
with bricks, which are later plastered and texturized or painted with different finishes, are used
to construct facades and architectural partitions. Extruded polystyrene foam boards are also
added as an insulation material in recent years for this type of construction (zkan et al. 2008).
It is now the most preferred method of construction in Turkey, due to its mass production
capacity, earthquake resistance of reinforced concrete, design flexibility and lower costs.
According to Turkish Statistical Institution TUIKs building permit statistics, there exists
123,778 buildings that are constructed in 2014, and 91% of the preferred construction method
is, unfortunately, reinforced concrete frame. As opposed to this high percentage, the wood
frame construction is only about 0.2% of all construction methods used in Turkey in 2014
(Turkish Statistical Institute 2015).

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Despite the advantages of reinforced concrete frames, this type of construction is considered
as a non-sustainable method due to the use of excessive amounts of natural materials, higher
consumption of energy and vast amounts of toxic gas releases during production.
Figure 3. Typical Reinforced Concrete Construction for Residences (Maksem Insat Biten Projeler
Kocaeli Arzl, 2012).
1.2 Sustainable construction methods

The definition of Sustainable Development was first published in 1987 in Our Common
Future which is also known as the Bruntland Report. It is worth mentioning that the report
discussed the sustainable development with the following phrase Sustainable development is a
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet theirs (World Commission on Environment and Development1987).
The main principle of Sustainable construction developed from the idea of using less energy
and natural resources to get the same quality of life. This idea embodied in the world of building
industry under many different names. These names are; Green Architecture, Sustainable
Architecture and Development, Eco-Efficient buildings or Eco-design. It is important to note
that, the term sustainable construction is not always used correctly. Unfortunately, instead of
genuine advantages it can provide on sustainability, this term is used as an advertisement for
marketing purposes, especially in Turkey.
Sustainability principles are well understood and published in scientific papers therefore
author is not aiming to re-view sustainability principles but would rather focus on the key
elements of sustainable construction.
Following list summarizes key elements of sustainable construction:
Reduce resource consumption (resources)
Reuse resources (reuse)
Use of recycle resources (recycle)
Protection of nature (Nature)
Elimination of toxics (toxics)
Application of life cycle costing (economics)
Focus on quality (quality) (Kibert, 2008)
2 HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION OF TURKEY (TOKI)
The Housing Development Administration of Turkey was established in 1984 to promote the
construction industry and to build modern and economical accommodation for the nation. It is a
nonprofit government organization whose revenue comes from the proceeds of the sales.
(Building Turkey of the Future:Corporate Profile ,2011). TOKI is also the master planer of the
urban regeneration projects in Turkey. TOKI has both completed and is still developing projects
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in all regions of Turkey (Illere gore TOKI uygulamalar, Insaatlar tamamlanan ve devam eden
uygulamalar,2011).
According to the TOKIs corporate profile catalogue, only in 17 years, between 1984 and
2001, a dramatic number of 43,145 housing units has been built. From 2001, TOKI
demonstrated dramatic increase for promoting construction sector and began growing more and
more each year and became the leading financer and promoter of the construction industry in
Turkey (Building Turkey of the Future: Corporate Profile, 2011).
By 2011 TOKI was able to provide jobs to 600 contractors and to 30 different construction
related sectors. Over 800,000 people are benefited in many different development projects from
TOKI (Building Turkey of the Future: Corporate Profile,2011).
Even though it was originally established as a promoter for the housing needs of the country,
TOKI successfully finance and construct government buildings and build structures for different
social needs. There are many building types from schools to hospitals, disaster shelters to multipurpose sports complexes that have been built under the management and the administration of
TOKI.
TOKI successfully built over 700,000 housing units in 81 cities over 3,000 construction sites
by 2015. It is planning to build 1,2 million housing units before the year 2023 (TOKI, 2015).
3 CASE STUDIES
In this study, two TOKI projects are investigated and the influence of their geographical
location, building design and the area of the units are studied to assess the sustainability criteria.
They are both social housing projects for the lower-middle income families.
One of the projects is selected from the Marmara region of Turkey and the other is selected
from the Southeast region of Turkey. These locations are deliberately chosen in order to assess
differences of parameters such as energy efficiency potential, rainwater collection potential and
carbon emissions potential of different regions. It is worth noting that these two locations also
have very different population density. In addition to that, Marmara region and Southwestern
region of Turkey have very different weather patterns and hence are carefully selected for this
study.
The first selected project is TOKI Kocaeli, Arzl, a social housing complex, located on the
Marmara region which is Northwest part of Turkey. This project will be referred as Case A
from here on throughout the paper.
The construction consists of 706 housing units, one elementary school, one mosque and a
commercial unit. The building blocks are grouped based on the number of stories. There are
total of 20 building blocks and they are named B-1 Blocks but separated as B+Z+8, 2B+Z+7,
3B+Z+6 types and shown in Figure 4. The gross area of the project is 49,555.70m2 and divided
into 8 sections. One block of building B+Z+8 was selected for the analyses.
Figure 4. Block Types and Number of Units for Case A.

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The second project is located in Sanlurfa, Halfeti. The project designed as Tarm ky
project which is a social housing project mostly for the agricultural workers and local villagers
around the area. This project is referred as Case B from here on throughout the paper. The
gross total area of construction is 18,038.24m2 and has 148 single story units. One single story
house was selected for analyses.
Figure 5. Site Plan of Case B and Representative Layout Plan of Case B.
All the units are the same size and design. They are 121.88 m2 each, placed on approximately
430m2 of land. It was observed that there is no special orientation chosen for the buildings when
the site plan considered.
For the year of 2012, when the study was conducted, the average temperature was above the
normal temperatures in Marmara region. The minimum mean temperature in Marmara Region is
5.00C recorded in Krklareli and Edirne and the maximum mean temperature is 9.40C recorded
in Sakarya (Kocaeli) (Turkish State Meteorological Services, 2013).
The average temperature of South-eastern Anatolia region was within the mean temperature
range for the year 2012. The minimum average temperature was recorded at Gaziantep as 9.40C
and the maximum average temperature was recorded at Cizre as 12.90C.
There is 0.50C to 3.10C degrees of temperature difference, between these two regions during
winter months and during the summer months the temperature gap reaches to 8.20C degrees.
The average daily sunshine between these cities also shows substantial differences during the
year. In the winter months, the daily average sunshine is 2.3 to 5.3 hours a day in Kocaeli while
it is 4.0 to 7.4 hours in Sanlurfa, with an average difference of 2.1 hours in total. This
difference goes up to 3 hours during the summer months (Turkish State Meteorological
Services, 2013).
3.1 Software packages used for the analyses
There are two different software packages for the analyses used in this study. The first is
Autodesk Revit Architecture which is building information modeling (BIM) software, used for
the 3D modeling and the calculation of the square meters of the rooms, facades and openings.
The second software is Green Building Studio (GBS), a web based program, used for the
calculation and comparison for the potential sustainability of the existing buildings.
Autodesk describes the Green Building Studio as web based service which works with the
gbXML file format which can be introduced from different modeling softwares like Revit
Architecture, ArchiCAD and Triforma. The software has the ability to analyze different
alternatives in order to compare different variables such as the orientation, glazing types, roof
and wall assemblies and lighting power density (Azhar, Brown & Frooqui, 2009).
GBS is the most preferred and used BIM based building energy consumption and carbon
emission analysis software. It has been preferred and used by 59 per cent of industry related
professionals. There are also many other software packages like Autodesk Ecotect and
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Integrated Environmental Solutions Virtual Environment, for the energy analysis of buildings
(Lee, 2012).
GBS is web based; free of charge and user friendly therefore it was preferred by the author
for the analytical study.
4 SUMMARY
Analysis on the eight story building (Case A) and one story building (Case B) with their current
material properties were carried out. In order to have an optimized sustainable design, a detailed
parametric study was carried out considering the orientation, wall assemblies, roof assemblies,
window glazing types, window sizes lighting power density, water consumption and carbon
emissions.
Orientation analyses were carried out for both buildings. It was shown that the energy
consumption of the building for Case A is not significantly affected by the rotation, due to its
square plan design. Therefore, it can be concluded that for square shaped buildings as far as the
facades, that are identical on all sides, the orientation does not provide significant energy
savings or carbon emission savings. The orientation analysis for Case B showed that there is a
significant reduction on the annual energy costs when the building rotated to 105 degrees
counter clockwise from its current position. The annual fossil fuel and electric costs are also
reduced at this degree. The author observed that there has been a significant reduction on the
energy consumption of this building when the longer faade had been turned towards the North
in order to get more sun exposure.
Figure 6. Energy Use Intensity Results for orientation analysis of Case A and Case B.
Exterior wall assembly analyses are also conducted for both cases, in order to compare the
cost of annual energy. It was observed that selecting the suitable insulation material and exterior
wall assembly type has a significant effect on the energy consumption of the building for both
Case A and Case B buildings. It was concluded that the optimum result can be achieved by
superior insulation materials even though brick filled reinforced concrete frame construction
method is applied. It was suggested that the application of recycled or natural insulation
materials such as recycled denim or recycled cellulose insulation are preferable by the
construction professionals due to their thermal conductivity values and sustainability potentials.
For Case A building, massive walls with super high insulation showed a better energy savings
results when compared to the other wall assembly types in the analyses. The exterior wall
assembly analysis in Case B building showed that straw bale external wall type could reduce the
annual cost of energy by 33.3%.

299
Figure 7. Exterior Wall Assembly Analysis for Annual Energy Cost of Case A and Case B.
Roof assembly analyses for Case A building indicated that the construction method and the
insulation materials have almost no effect on the energy consumption when it is applied to this
type of building. The analysis of Case B building for different roof assembly types showed that
continuous deck with denim insulation provides the optimum annual energy cost. The annual
cost of energy is reduced by 29% and results in 1631 TL (550 dollars) of savings by this type of
roof assembly.
Figure 8. Roof Assembly Analysis of Case A and Case B.
Parametric studies on window glazing types are carried out for both buildings. For Case A,
the optimum results are obtained with the insulated green Low E type glazing. The author
suggests using this type of glazing would be the best choice for this building when the weather
conditions of the region are taken into consideration. For Case B building, the application of
insulated clear glazing, specified for hot climates, dramatically lowers the annual cost of energy.
This is due to its characteristics, as this type of window glazing reflects the ultraviolet sun rays
back and prevents heat gain so that keeps the thermal conditions constant while it allows
ambient light inside the building.
Figure 9. Window Glazing Analysis for Annual Energy Cost of Case A and Case B.
Window size analyses indicated that when both window sizes on all faades are changed
proportionally, the energy consumption of the building is not significantly affected for Case A
building. However, changing the window sizes on north and south facades according to the
orientation of the building and climate conditions, can affect the energy consumption of the
building. The author recommends further detailed analyses for window sizes for different
facades to achieve optimized energy savings. Analyses of Case B building showed that
changing the window sizes on the northern facades does not improve the energy consumption;
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however there was a significant difference in the energy consumption when southern facing
window sizes were changed. It is also observed that increasing the window sizes on the eastern
facades by %50 increases the annual cost of energy dramatically.
Figure 10. Window Sizes Analysis for Annual Energy Cost of Case A.
Figure 11. Changes in Size of North and South Facing Windows by Percentage.
Figure 12. Changes in Size of West and East Facing Windows by Percentage.
It was observed that the reduction in the energy consumption of the building is proportional
to the reduced percentages of lighting power density for both cases.
Figure 13. Lighting Power Density Analysis for Annual Energy Cost of Case A and Case B.

301
The analysis of the water saving potential for Case A building indicated a significant water
saving potential when energy efficient appliances and low flow plumbing fixtures are used in
the building. A total of 1617.6 tons in annual water saving is achieved when the water savings
criteria applied to the Case A building which resulted in 59% of reduction in the annual cost of
water. It was also concluded that by integrating the water harvesting system in addition to
energy efficient appliances and low flow plumbing fixtures, a total of 83% saving in annual cost
of water for Case B building can be achieved.
To achieve an overall optimized sustainable design for the buildings, optimum parameters
from previous parametric studies shown above were chosen and applied to Case A and Case B
buildings. For Case A, it was shown that the building can save up to 23% in total annual energy
cost and a total of 28.3% of reduction in carbon emissions can be achieved for Case A.
Optimized results for Case B were remarkable with a reduction of 45% of savings in energy and
55% carbon emission reduction. The overall sustainability potential analysis showed that, it is
vital to consider all sustainable parameters while designing buildings to minimize carbon
emissions.
Figure 14. Carbon Emission Analysis of Case A and Case B.
Figure 15. Sustainability Potential Analysis of Case A and Case B.
5 CONCLUSION
It has been observed that majority of the TOKI buildings do not consider orientation, wall and
roof assemblies, window sizing and glazing types or the construction methods and materials
during the design process. It was also shown that site planning, regional weather conditions or
urban planning are unfortunately not taken into consideration during design phase. Therefore
TOKI buildings can be categorized as not environmentally friendly and energy efficient
buildings. Although TOKI is the highest promoter and the largest contractor of construction
industry in Turkey, it is observed that TOKI is not committed to protect the natural resources or
to prevent global climate change. The work in this study showed that it is possible to lower the
energy consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by minor changes during design
stage.
Therefore the author strongly recommends considering the application of sustainable design
in new projects of TOKI. As a pioneer in construction industry in Turkey, TOKI should take all
sustainability principles and sustainable construction methods and materials in to the
consideration of new building design and construction. Study shows that adopting sustainability
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principles and practices would result in significant savings in natural resources and energy
consumption.
Further research is needed to study already available local materials in Turkey as to provide
precise suggestions to the construction industry. Moreover, renewable energy resources and
integration of sustainability parameters, such as photovoltaic panels, wind and wave turbines,
vertical gardens and natural ventilation potentials, are also needed to be carefully investigated
and added for better understanding of the sustainability potential. Energy consumption of the
buildings and sustainable alternatives mentioned above need to be studied further.
REFERENCES
Azhar, S., Brown, J. & Frooqui, R. 2009. 'BIM Based Sustainability Analysis: An Evaluation of Building
Preformance Analsis Software'.
Bayraktar, E 2012. '1st International Green Building Summit', 1st International Green Building Summit
Conference Report, Istanbul.
'Building Turkey of the Future:Corporate Profile. 2010/2011' 2011. TOKI, Ankara.
'Climate Change 2007:The Physical Science Basis Summary For Policymakers'. 2007. Paris.
D&R International,Ltd.. 2008. 'Buildings Energy Data Book'. U.S. Department of Energy.
Dobbs,
R.
(n.d).
Megacities.
Available
at:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/16/prime_numbers_megacities [Accessed on 12 May
2010].
Gevorkian, P. 2010. Alternative Energy Systems in Building Design. The McGraw-Hill, New York.
Illere gore TOKI uygulamalar. (n.d.). Insaatlar tamamlanan ve devam eden uygulamalar. Available at:
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An investigation on both sides of the ocean: how to turn waste

into ecological housing solutions developed through research at
public universities
M. P. Mercader Moyano
School of Architecture (ETSA), Univervity of Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain
M. Edith Yajnes, S. Caruso, M. Belen Putruele, M. Carla Berardino, L. Leone & P.

Goi
Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
ABSTRACT: In this presentation we aim to show the activities developed in parallel between
two research centers that signed framework and specific agreements, belonging to public
universities, both located in big cities, Sevilla in Europe and Buenos Aires in South America,
the points in common and the differences that were in the process as well as the joint activities
and its respective developments and challenges. The agreements between both universities and
centres were signed in 2014 and were the result of previous presentations at conferences on the
subject in common. In 2015 workshops and research were developed in both cities, where each
one coordinated activities according to its relative advance in research. Its repetition is expected
in 2017. Both cities are characterized by a constructive tradition based on the use of masonry of
ceramic origin, generous thicknesses in the constitution of the envelopes of low-rise housing
and its replacement for new constructions. The central axis of this research lies in the processes
of collection, quantification, qualification, transformation and reuse of construction and
demolition waste (rubble) and urban and non-hazardous industrial solid waste such as papers,
fibers and expanded polystyrene, among others. We aim at developing materials for building
systems that contribute to the improvement of the building envelope both in its hygrothermal
insulation ability, surface finishings and work time reduction. From the technical aspects we
are looking for products that lower the weight of the traditional ones. From the economic and
social aspects we intend to reach final costs equal to or less than those on the market, generating
both new jobs and improvement of existing training. We look for holistic solutions that not only
improve the conditions of comfort of dwellings but also the reduction of factors of exclusion.
The differences found in the parallel development in both houses of study relating to the
materials are the different characteristics of the granulometries or densities of the arid
aggregates and the specific additives. The differences in the technological aspects are related to
the availability of the testing machines and the resources for this process. There is in study stage
the comparison of the enabling regulations for new products such as structural minimal
resistances, values of u and other particular requisites.
1 AVAILABILITY CHECKING OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE (MSW),
CONSTRUCTION AND DEMOLITION WASTE (CDW) AND NON HAZARDOUS
INDUSTRIAL WASTE (NHIW) IN BUENOS AIRES
In the field of the residues a materials diversity can be generated and various sub typologies can
be registered from the habitual street trip of the team and from the contact with direct
generators. The recycled Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) used for this research comes from both
packaging of appliances and from the pharmaceutical industry. According to the INDEC,
National Institute of Statistics and Census, in Argentina, during the first half of 2015, an amount
of 2.071.267 units were sold, considering TV sets, refrigerators, washing machines, air
conditioners, gas stoves and gas heating appliances. According to our data practise at least 20
litres of EPS can be obtained from small packaging parts such as 32 "LED TV sets and up to 85
304

litres in the case of big refrigerators. If we take an average of 40 litres per package there would
be a potential of 82.5 million EPS litres suitable for 789,000m2 of walls that can conform a
thermal envelope for 10,000 homes of 50m2 to the usage of Block Ladrilln product described
below. According to the report produced by the research team coordinated by Sutelman and
Yajnes Architects (Yajnes, Sutelman et al, 2014), only considering the rubble generated during
2014 in the area of Buenos Aires City, 32,000 tonnes were generated per month. Moreover, the
demolition performed by construction and demolition companies rise up to 39,000 tonnes
whereas small home demolition was 1,000 tons. Considering only a recovery of 22,000 tons
annually, we could build the significant number of houses referred. Regarding waste paper and
according to the Association of Portland Cement Manufacturers in 2015 in Buenos Aires
219,834 bagged tons (4,396,680 bags of 50kg) were delivered. Each bag empty and clean from
waste material cement weighs 150 grams, totalling 659,502kg per year. According to a survey
performed to a Local Construction Hypermarket, cement bags account for only 16.55% of total
sales of bagged products. Based on own calculations, (Caruso, S; Yajnes, M., 2015, pp. 210212), it is estimated that this amount of paper waste would be enough to make enough
papercrete to build 2,645 homes of 50m2 per year.
1.1 Challenges and difficulties
Possibility of discontinuity in residue availability over time due to changes in the uses and
preferences of the consumers, changes on construction materials for technological renovation in
part influenced by the paradigm of sustainability of waste disposal. Possibility of changes in the
policy and procedures of local waste management and in the market valorisation of the residues.
1.2 Solutions and actions
Assess the real possibilities of availability of residues over time from knowing in forehand
future changes in related industries, antiquity of the usage of materials and knowledge of new
technologies. Assess the feasibility of applying the progress made to similar materials.
2 DEVELOPMENT OF LOGISTICS FOR EPS RECOLLECTION IN BUENOS AIRES
This stage involves the analysis of waste generators and their characterization as individualcollective, public-private and home-businesses. In the first phase packaging were collected on
public roads, in tippers and contributions of the FADU community. In the second phase
pharmaceutical laboratories and health centres contacted the CEP in order to obtain waste
management certificates for their discarded EPS boxes (used for medicines transportation).
In the first phase the greatest difficulty is transferring the EPS boxes due to its large apparent
volume and the need to discard items contaminated by various substances. In the second phase
the challenges are related to the coordination for deliveries, also taking into consideration the
necessity of available retail space for the delivery to take place and the adequate space for cargo
operation at the agreed place, among other factors.
In the first case there is no other option than reducing its size for easy transportation and to
dispose the contaminated parts. In the second case, a solution can be to expand the storage
capacity so as to receive more donations in alternative spaces.

305
3 DEVELOPMENT OF LOGISTICS FOR RUBBLE RECOLLECTION IN BUENOS AIRES

The rubble is characterized analysing its components and its weight, taking into account
apparent volumes and actual volumes of debris crushed in demolition to the size used in this
research. This point is very important to know the ratio of contribution of this waste in mixtures.
The feasibility of characterizing the rubble, presence of sharp materials (nails, vitreous
remains), excess dust from plaster, the weight of the residue when hand-picking and
transportation in private vehicles due to limited budget to hire logistics.
Provide a toolkit that includes gloves, hammer, tape measure, calculator, reinforced shovel,
brush, magnets removal of metallic elements, tweezers for glass removal, scales, resistant bags
for fractionation and transfer and locking clips in order to facilitate the task.
4 DEVELOPMENT OF LOGISTICS BINDERS BAGS COLLECTION IN BUENOS AIRES
It is necessary to characterize the type of paper and cardboard from a construction site,
calculate volume and average weight, find a way to store the material on site and a collection
system developed by specialized managers, which would carry out the preparation and
distribution of the residue to be transformed into an aggregate for construction mixtures.
It is considered beneficial to evaluate the possibility that these residues could be recycled in
situ. This activity could generate a tax exemption, which would work as an incentive to save
costs and emissions from collection and transfer of such waste.
There is still not an established activity that dedicates to collect and separate certain types of
paper without market value such as: poly coated paper packaging or construction waste such as
bags of cement, lime, powder adhesives and grouts or cardboard boxes of claddings. Both law
No. 1854 Zero Waste (Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2005) and law No. 25916
(Honorable Congreso de la Nacin Argentina, 2004) Minimum Standards for Environmental
Protection in Residential Waste require the recovery of waste and decreasing the amount of it
sent to landfills. However being fully usable, they are currently disposed in landfills.
The recycling of papers in situ at construction sites requires the establishment of specific public
policies and strategies developed by the professionals in charge and the companies of the sector.
As a successful example it is possible to mention the case of a Colombian cement factory. The
company implemented a program for its clients that consisted in collecting cement bags used in
construction sites applying to the concept of Circular Economy, with subsequent delivery to
cement or cardboard manufacturers to be used as an input. The initiative includes the training of
staff on site for proper handling and recycling. If Spain, follows the strict European
environmental legislation, paper recycling rates in 2014 reached 80% (IDE, 2015). The
Association of Construction and Demolition Waste Management Companies of Castilla and
Len, mentions on its website that 90% of waste from construction and demolition can be
recovered, including waste paper and cardboard, which is recycled by specialized operators
(AGERDCYL, 2016). Implementation of existing standards and creating specific laws for
achieving the objectives of recycling and recovery of construction sites paper and cardboard is a
pending work in Argentina.
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5 FRACTIONATION AND PROCESSING SYSTEMS IN BUENOS AIRES

To be able to give a second life to the residues it is necessary to process and to divide them.
That is because of the relationship between aggregate size and total and partial product
thicknesses that allow adhesion between components. To quantify the ideal measure, relations
between particle size and thickness are studied, both regulatory and casuistically.
There are not machines and specific tools on the market for all the required processes that fulfil
the requisites, grain size, local availability, possibility of transfers, power and budget ranges.
Manufacturing of Centre own equipment based on the study of existing similar parts.
6 SEARCH FOR FUNDS AND HUMAN RESOURCES IN BUENOS AIRES
This stage refers to the search for subsidies for the purchase of raw materials, dissemination of
information, researchers mobility, and purchase of machines, tools and moulds and machine
parts to assemble in the laboratory. This stage also includes the search for human resources
complementary to the research team belonging to the payroll of the laboratory.
The difficulties are related to the scarce amounts of grants and the bureaucracy both for the
management of the time that elapses between the presentation, the granting and the accreditation
of the same as to the referred to the conditions of the issuance of vouchers, maximum amounts
and type of billing. With regard to human resources in general the difficulties are related to the
low amount of rented scholarships and the time elapsed since the registration until the payment
of the stipend, with the consequent possibility that they change their objectives and priorities.
These aspects also affect interns taking this subject as one of the electives of the career. In some
situations fellows found difficult to understand the spiral working methodology with continuous
quality improvement, where each part is developed based on the whole product and every new
member must be able to continue work started by others.
Emphasis on seeking private sponsorship, perusal of conditions and subsidy amounts before
applying to them. Human Resources: With the work developed on a long-term basis, human
resources often approach by recommendation, already aware of the type and intensity of tasks to
develop, facilitating their integration. Having more human resources it is possible to preselect
applicants and to rescind applications who do not comply strictly with the requirements of the
semester curriculum course. It is tried to include younger human resources in congresses and
presentations promoting their collaboration in the finding of specific funds in order to anchor
their participation. Workshops are another possibility to widely promote that scouting.
7 DEVELOPMENT AND / OR ACQUISITION OF MACHINES AND TOOLS
NECESSARY FOR FRACTIONATION AND PROCESSING IN BUENOS AIRES
We refer to the specific design of moulds, machines and tools for the quoted fractionation and
processing, such as a crusher of EPS residues in different densities and a crusher for rubble with
sieves of different sizes to allow adequate granulometries curves and dedusting. In the case of
papercrete the Centre needs to develop machines that can perform processes of grinding the dry
paper, liquefying it with water, pour it, drain and mix with cement and additives.

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Cost of inputs and availability at the expected time. Availability of human resources with the
skills to design and manufacture tools including management, scheduling, commitment and
aptitude for teamwork. Unlike what happens in other schools where the machines are designed
and paid by students remaining its property, in this case both funds and tenure are for the
Centre, therefore the feeling of belonging and dedication of the students decrease although they
end up designing something that will be in use by the Centre.
Search of human resources upon recommendation from other students, flexibility and fund
reservation from subsidies. Flexibility of schedules in the case of finding eligible students for
the task that do not conform to established timetables. Articulate the needs of the Centre with
Technology four level course from Industrial Technology career, proposing collaborative work
such as design and manufacture of machines, survey and technical documentation, practical
work carried out in teams with members from all levels, dividing tasks and responsibilities
according to the knowledge of each student, which would provide a wide range of resolutions
and a high degree of development in the final products in a relatively short period.
8 CONSIDERATIONS
AGGREGATES
OVER
MIXTURES
WITH
CDW,
MSW
AND
NHIW
At this stage the inclusion in mixtures of different municipal solid waste, construction and
demolition waste and non-hazardous industrial waste were studied for subsequent application in
construction products and equipment both in a home scale as well as in an urban scale.
Channelling the creative chaos and infinity of possible solutions to raise.
Reducing weight and consumption of raw materials, value the contribution of local materials,
compliance with regulations at different locations, among others. Consultation of case studies
both to take vantage from successful solutions as well as to take precautions otherwise.
9 ACQUISITION OF RAW MATERIALS
It is necessary to use some raw materials such as binders (cement and lime), fine aggregates
such as sand, tackifiers, drying agents, flame retardants, waterproofing insulation and dyes.
Cost of the inputs especially bearing in mind that the budget for the prototypes is low so much
for the negotiation of prices as of deliveries, needing to be bought and moved to the laboratory.
Search for sponsorship from local companies, taking advantage of actions developed from the
highest levels of the institution for linking industry with universities.

308
10 DEVELOPMENT OF SAMPLES OF EACH PROJECTED MIXTURE

At this stage prismatic specimens are prepared taking advantage of existing wooden moulds 4
cavities 24 x 12 x 5cm each joints reinforced with nails. The specimens are cured and weigh
after the first week and in 7-day intervals, with the aim of establishing their specific weight and
then develop electronic consumption tables of each mixture per m3. Specimens are tested for
moisture volume modification, drillability, surface hardness and edge stability.
The expansive nature of mortars and concretes difficult the demoulding of the pieces, the
aggressive character of mixtures containing cement and lime that threaten the durability of the
moulds, the difficulty in maintaining the surface layer levelled.
Use of demountable moulds by changing existing nails by screws, use of materials as interface
between mould and mixture. (Recycled advertising canvas) and / or rolls of metallized paper
(residues of some companies deficient packaging). Preparation of extra mixture to reach
perfectly level back cover mould, dusting with dry cement and trowelling.
11 CONSIDERATIONS AND ANALYSIS ON COMPETITORS IN THE MARKET
At this stage it is decided which products can be developed, for example if they are blocks for
bearing walls or able to contain plants, if they are to double or parapets wall, if the plates are for
covering walls, ceilings, solar control for balconies or for internal partitions in homes or offices.
To design and develop products that take advantage of lighter mixtures that incorporate greater
inputs of waste transformed into resources while complying with local regulations. Ex: those
concerning to resistance to minimal compression, both for bearing walls or not as in the case of
the blocks. To design and develop products that are competitive in their target application,
which does not mean they are the cheapest in the market but they can compete within the ones
in the market that are in the same targeted sector with equal benefits.
To use the three-layer design to add resistance, design for forms and make decisions from the
study of the actual conditions of use. In the comparative analysis of products in the market, the
feasibility of generating pieces of custom sizes in order to reduce cuts and surplus at the site.
12 DEVELOPMENT
MODELING
OF
TECHNICAL
BLUEPRINTS
OF
THE
PRODUCT,
3D
Refers to the preparation of technical documentation for internal use by members of the research
team to transmit the necessary data of the product or service to providers and potential parties
interested in their application. Each actor requires different quantity and quality of content.
The variety of different programs used for representation, depending on the different careers and
its customs, as well as the requirements of the different ancillary service providers (cutting of
metal sheets and rubber for moulds and machines). The overabundance of information.

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Conversion of the documentation to universal formats as PDF to facilitate the rapid reading of
all the participants. Careful selection of the information needed by each actor.
13 PREPARATION OF MOULDS
At this stage there are constructed the moulds that will give form to the products. Termination
edges and minimum thicknesses must be respected.
In a first stage the moulds must be made by interns, with recycled materials such as EPS,
discarded and phenolic and fibreboard remains, recycled packings or plastic tubes as a means of
generating holes in plates and blocks. Once tested the feasibility of the projected part, verified
and addressed the possible difficulties in the unmoulding, the definitive moulds can be sent to a
manufacturer. In the early stages, especially in the case of concretes with EPS only or with
rubble, EPS moulds cannot be used beyond the first testing because they do not allow to vibrate
the materials.
Use of fitting pieces made of flexible materials for creating holes in products. Presentation to
programs that grant subsidies to be able to confront the costs of the definitive moulds.
14 MOLDING OF PRODUCTS, STOWAGE, CURING, DRYING, INTERNAL TESTS
At this stage are studied and developed all the actions cited before, from the manufacturing of
the pieces until the tests of perforation by nails, drilling, various forms of cutting, exposure to
flame and wetting among others.
In concretes with EPS water loss by evaporation is a factor that can generate weakenings and
fissures in the pieces. In the case of papercrete it has a long drying time, because of its property
of absorbing large amounts of water, delaying the unmoulding of the parts. This situation is
complicated because of the lack of sufficient laboratory space for this process, with the need to
carry parts to researchers own homes, with the danger of breaks, cracks of parts and additional
work for staff. Internal tests have no difficulty because of the workability of the pieces.
In concrete with EPS simple plastic and discarded rubber foam blankets are used for the curing
process. Regarding to papercrete various natural and economic additives and with no or very
low toxicity are used, mainly calcium carbonate, having managed to reduce significantly the
time for demoulding to a few hours. Constant efforts to improve and expand facilities were
claimed to the authorities. Various donations were used to generate shelves and stowage places.
For the care of the equipment awareness talks are given to the participants.
15 REELABORATION OF STEPS AFTER RESULTS AND PROGRESS
After the results obtained from the steps mentioned above, both defects and disadvantages in
production processes were studied for remediation.
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The main challenges at this stage are: a) Not to take account of steps already made, situation
favoured by the quarterly replacement of interns adding to this the frequent lack of records. b)
The temptation to produce profound changes in the product or material when any disadvantage
happens. c) Limited funds in some opportunities to carry forward the best solution proposed.
To improve the registration system, in order to encourage good students to perform two periods
of internship. Involvement in fundraising calls and private sponsorship.
16 LABORATORY TESTING
Different tests needed so much to know the behaviour in itself of mixtures and products as to
the fulfilment of each one to the current local regulations both in individual and collective form
to obtain in the future certificates of technical aptitude. Compression testing of blocks in a trilayer system with superficial layers of 1 and 0.5cm of cement mortar 1:3 (cement and sand) and
soul of 12cm of concrete with EPS and rubble. Two variants were tested: 1) mixture called
HEPS1 proving its ability to compression average of 3Mpa suitable for walls of enclosure,
consumption of cement 300kg per m3. b) Mixture HEPS 19 dosage 1:1.5:1.5:1.5 cement sand
rubble in kilos and EPS in litters proving its ability to compression average of 7Mpa suitable for
load-bearing walls, consumption of cement 375kg/m3 were performed at INTI. Papercrete
specimens and the ones made with concrete with EPS and HEPS debris denominated 1 (1: 1: 1:
3.75) were tested at the INTI obtaining in the testing of Smoke Optical Density Level 1:
Materials that generate Low Stock Fume and in the testing of Flame Spread Index it was
obtained the Class RE 2: Material Very Low propagation of flame tests. Tests of thermal
conductivity in EPS concrete plates in densities of 630 and 710 kg/m3, showed that the material
is favourably placed under the curve values established by Argentine standards for the same
concrete with virgin EPS taking the values of densities of 300, 500, 1000 and 1300kg/m3.
Challenges and difficulties related to the tests are based on the lack of equipment for completion
of tests at the FADU, high costs and non-availability of machines and technicians for
performing them in certified laboratories and the logistics for transportation of samples. In the
case of tests on concrete with debris + EPS the focus is on two aspects, on one hand the need to
use machines and testing programs consistent with the condition of light material mixtures and
the other the concept of three-layer product, where the value of acquired resistance is related to
the design of the part where two surface layers of high bearing capacity will significantly
improve the supporting capacity to its soul together with insulating capacity because of its low
weight. In the case of papercrete, in Argentina there are some experiences mostly in the form of
thermal insulation materials (Gubinelli, G., 2015). One drawback that researchers of new
materials in Argentina have is that IRAM regulations often follow very conservative criteria,
requiring high compression resistance for non-bearing materials. A compressive strength test
performed by the INTI on bricks of the more resistant formula developed so far in this
investigation (1/2 part of Portland cement, 1/8 part of sand, 1 part of paper pulp, 1/4 part of
water, 3% of the weight of Calcium Carbonate), obtained a resistance of between 5MPa and
14.8MPa, being the minimum strength required for a non-load-bearing block of 2MPa and for a
bearing block 5MPa. A disadvantage for this test was that the technical staff of the laboratory
did not take into consideration that along with measuring the compressive strength the grade of
deformation should be measured as well in order to really determine the properties of the
specimen.

311

Two members of the team performed a research stay at the School of Engineering in Gijon,
University of Oviedo with Doctor Eng. F.L. Gayarre to improve their studies in the area. In the
case of papercrete the researchers are compiling standards and international procedures that can
serve as a guide to obtain reliable data for testing and consulting with other laboratories to
repeat tests, measuring at the same time the compressive strength and the grade of deformation
of the material, addressing the task of collecting foreign norms and proceedings that can serve
as a guide to obtain reliable data for the tests. It would be appropriate to achieve consensus at
national level to update the regulations applicable to new sustainable construction materials.
There are negotiations to make agreements with other laboratories in local universities.
17 TESTING OF ACCEPTANCE BY THE POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS AND BY THE
EXPANDED RESEARCH TEAM
At this stage the team evaluates the results of the application of the products in all their aspects,
schedules, costs, and difficulties faced and overcome about the production - assembly, state of
conservation during the minimum time of evaluation of twelve months. Testing of the products
in certain construction places whose manager agrees to use some of them as a case of study of
the answer of the clients and the measurement of the impact in the observers and users.
Temptation to generalize the particular views regarding both positive and negative results.
Coping with the inevitable doubts and conflicts inherent in any innovation process.
To characterize the particular situation regarding the market sector considered: type of labour:
prior training, job stability and results obtained, whole costs considering the savings loading and
unloading of materials, percentages of waste used, ecological footprint, carbon gases emitted
among others. Analyse each stage with clear indicators scientifically established.
18 STRATEGIES FOR THE PLACING OF PRODUCTS ON THE MARKET
Generation of strategies to transmit the production concept to the different stakeholders on
environmentally sustainable management, the reduction on waste generation, its classification
and productive employment, corporate social responsibility and the generation of green jobs.
Market policies implemented by various governments in Argentina led to the loss of purchasing
power. Wage employment as a source of social insertion was degraded gradually. The challenge
is to demonstrate the economic advantage of using products created at the CEP considering the
full costs of similar products on the market such as transfers, transport, loads of dump trucks,
cumbersome and dangerous tasks such as plastering walls or ceilings. Also consider the benefits
associated with the reduction of waiting times and the environmental benefits of having no
residues due to the cutting of pieces because these pieces can be custom made in situ.
Concepts such as social inclusion and employment are raised by creating jobs with the use of
recycled materials from a comprehensive vision that includes social, economic and
environmental aspects. CEP especially favours the relationship with municipalities in the
metropolitan area to help to consolidate the production of cooperatives and micro enterprises
312

which use waste as a raw material. These municipalities can create situations of incubation
(workspaces and monetary contributions for expenses in the early stages) and initial markets to
install the new brands (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Ladrilln and Plaque documentation. Source: Own elaboration.
19 PROGRESS IN SEVILLA
After an exhaustive investigation study on materials with recycled aggregates, they proceeded to
obtain the regulations in Spain for a concrete block and a brick of low density. Datasheets of
similar materials were obtained from manufacturers. They obtained the technical characteristics
to be tested, EU regulations for carrying out the tests and the data of the tests on reference
products that will guide this investigation. It was determined that the process to be followed for
conducting the tests will consist of starting from a basic dosage for a concrete block or brick
that meets the values stated in the regulations (compressive strength, conductivity, absorption of
water, among others) and to modify it adding recycled aggregates to replace raw materials. This
dosage will be established depending on the study of the information obtained after the contact
with manufacturers. Regarding to trials were studied the tests required by the EU: parallelism
and flatness, density, resistance to compression, absorption of water, expansion by humidity,
reaction to fire, thermal properties, percentage of holes, soluble salts, mass and adherence. Once
established the required tests, the study of the UNE regulations has been realized, obtaining the
procedures, the minimum amount of samples as well as test materials and equipment needed.
20 CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE EXPERIENCES IN BOTH SHORES
1. Degree of progress in both investigations and time elapsed from the start of the
investigations: In the case of Buenos Aires the investigation on concrete with recycled EPS
began in 2010. The investigation on papercrete began in 2012 while in the year 2013 began
the investigation on materials with rubble. In Seville the research began in the year 2015

313
after the workshops dictated on the occasion of the II Congress of Sustainable Construction
and from the signing of the framework and specific agreements between the two
universities.
2. Number of interns and researchers involved: In Buenos Aires there is an average of
20 interns working in this investigation for a four-month period twice a year. They
study different aspects of the application of residues to products, working together
with 3 professors researchers and 2 trainees. In Seville until now 1 researcher and 1
intern are working on this investigation. Having been originated in the FADU UBA
the system of use of waste of EPS, rubble and paper from CDW for bearing and nonbearing blocks and cladding plates the activity in terms of the manufacture of
materials is predominant in Buenos Aires as Seville is specializing in statistics and
creation of software for characterization of waste, complementing the activity of both
universities. In the next months an on line program to level knowledge and
experiences in both universities will be started. Workshops were been realized in
occasion of the II Congress of Sustainable Construction, Seville 2015 and will be
repeat them in 2017 coming edition.
3. On the relationship with the suppliers of raw materials and testing laboratories: In
Buenos Aires the relationship between companies and University in general and
especially with our faculty is complex and pendular, the advisors tend to have
objections with regard to the concretion of long term links. Only in 2016 the present
administration opened doors to their inclusion. In Seville as in the rest of Europe's
universities, the link with companies is a rooted fortress that allows them fluidity in
the availability of raw materials. On the other hand, Spain`s universities have own
laboratories and/or close links with external certificated laboratories.
4. On the frame of development and local use of masonry: In Buenos Aires the building
materials market is a collective of varied demand with professionals interested in
having a sustainability label beyond thermal capacity, bioclimatic design and specific
equipment (photovoltaic panels, solar water collectors, green terraces). The
constructors commonly use ceramic craft type bricks of slightly irregular edges
known as common bricks of 24 x11.5 x 5.5cm. They are not sustainable both for the
generation of particles in its production as for the type of fertile land for crops used. It
is also common the use of industrialized hollow blocks using lands not useful for
other uses, 12 x18 x 8/12 and 18cm. In Spain they use bricks for enclosing walls of
24x11.5x10cm.
5. On the results achieved: The FADU UBA came both to test mixtures and products as
to verify the feasibility of use of new products both by the demand of market as by
the response to the technical requirements of resistances to compression, optical
density of smoke and to spread of flame. The Seville University on the other hand has
created a specific software for the calculation of construction and demolition waste.
The differences found in the parallel development relate to materials different
characteristics such as granulometries or densities of the virgin and recycled arid
aggregates like sand and rubble in that order and lack of specific additives. In the first
problem the consequences of that difference will be studied to maintain fixed the
weight of material incorporated and in the second problem the local team will study
similar products available.
ENDNOTES
Yajnes, Sutelman et al (2014), http://cep-fadu-uba.blogspot.com.ar/pdf El camino del Cascote en Buenos
Aires, Argentina.
Caruso, S. & Yajnes, M. (2015). Rehabilitacin de una vivienda familiar en Buenos Aires, Argentina,
utilizando materiales fabricados con residuos reciclados. Proceedings of the II International Congress
on Sustainable Construction and Eco-Efficient Solutions. Sevilla. pp. 210, 211, 212.
Gobierno
de
la
Ciudad
de
Buenos
Aires.
http://www.cedom.gov.ar/es/legislacion/normas/leyes/ley1854.html. Accessed on January 2015.
314

Organismo Provincial para el Desarrollo Sostenible. http://www.opds.gba.gov.ar/index.php/leyes/ver/241

Accessed on July 2016.
ARGOS.
http://grandesrealidades.argos.co/argos-implementa-programa-de-reciclaje-pionero-encolombia/. Accessed on July 2016.
Revista
IDE.
http://ide-e.com/wp/el-sector-del-reciclaje-se-da-cita-en-el-7-congreso-nacional-dereciclaje-de-papel/. Accessed on July 2016.
AGERDCYL. http://www.agerdcyl.es/asociacion.html. Accessed on July 2016.
Gubinelli, G. (2015). Novedoso proyecto nacional de aislacin trmica mediante celulosa reciclada.
Revista Energa Estratgica. de http://www.energiaestrategica.com/novedoso-proyecto-nacional-deaislacion-termica-mediante-celulosa-reciclada/. Accessed on December 2015.
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2016].
Contreras Lojano, C. 2012. Concreto con ridos reciclados. Universidad de Cuenca. Available at:
http://dspace.ucuenca.edu.ec/handle/ 123456789/535 [Accessed on February 2014].
Departamento de Medio Ambiente, Planificacin Territorial, Agricultura y Pesca. 2012. Decreto
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Report
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at:
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Garzn, B. 2007. Arquitectura bioclimtica. Edit. Nobuko, Buenos Aires.
GCBA, Direccin de Fiscalizacin de Obras y Catastro. 2005. Buenos Aires. Available at:
http://lapastoriza.com/pdf/pdf-bp.pdf [Accessed on July 2016].
IHOBE. 2011. Usos de ridos reciclados mixtos procedentes de Residuos de Construccin y Demolicin.
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3.0 - 2.2 Standard Categories and Their Scope, pg7. Available at: http://epeahamburg.org/sites/default/files/Certification/C2CCertified_V3_Overiew_121113.pdf [Accessed on
July 2016].
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http://www.inti.gob.ar/cirsoc/501.htm.

315
Biobased building materials. Resources for a bright future in

housing?
M. A. R. Oostra
Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen, the Netherlands
M. Sailer
Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Enschede, the Netherlands
Xyhlotrade, Goor, the Netherlands
ABSTRACT: In the housing market enormous challenges exist for the retrofitting of existing
housing in combination with the ambition to realize new environmentally friendly and
affordable dwellings. Bio-based building materials offer the possibility to use renewable
resources in building and construction. The efficient use of bio-based building materials is
desirable due to several potential advantages related to environmental and economic aspects e.g.
CO2 fixation and additional value. The potential biodegradability of biomaterials however
demands also innovative solutions to avoid e.g. the use of environmental harmful substances. It
is essential to use balanced technological solutions, which consider aspects like service life or
technical performance as well as environmental aspects. Circular economy and biodiversity also
play an important role in these concepts and potential production chains. Other questions arise
considering the interaction with other large biomass users e.g. food production. What will be the
impact if we use more bio-based building materials with regard to biodiversity and resource
availability? Does this create opportunities or risks for the increasing use of bio-based building
materials or does intelligent use of biomass in building materials offer the possibility to apply
still unused (bio) resources and use them as a carbon sink? Potential routes of intelligent usage
of biomass as well as potential risks and disadvantages are highlighted and discussed in relation
to resource efficiency and decoupling concept(s).
1 INTRODUCTION
This paper will focus on the developments within the context of the European Union (EU).
Several developments are influencing the usage of resources.
1.1 Increase of population & welfare
If we do not change the way we use raw materials the amount of resources required is not going
to drop on the short term. Since the global world population is still growing, while also the
overall global living standards rise an increasing amount of resources will be necessary to meet
the global demand. It is estimated that the built environment is responsible for 40% of global
energy consumption and about 40% of the waste produced. Additionally the construction
industry is using up to 36% of newly extracted resources (SERI, 2009; OECD, 2013). This
means that solutions found and implemented in constructions will have a major impact.

316
Eur ope a n Union ( EU- 2 7 )
Rest of t he w or ld ( ROW )
Biomass
(141 million tonnes)
Manufactures
Fuels/mining products
EU- 2 7 e x por t s ( 2 0 1 1 )
EU- 2 7 im por t s ( 2 0 1 1 )
Biomass
Tot a l t r a de
fr om EU- 2 7 t o ROW
in 1999:
397 million tonnes
Manufactures
Tot a l t r a de
fr om ROW t o EU- 2 7
in 1999:
1 340 million tonnes
in 2008:
536 million tonnes
in 2008:
in 2011:
568 million tonnes
in 2011:
Fuels/mining products
(1 274 million tonnes)
Figure 1. Resource balance for Europe, direct imports and exports of biomass, fuels/mining products and
manufactures as well as totals of the EU27 in million tonnes [European Environmental Agency, 2011].
1.2 Challenges in housing and consequences for resource usage

In several parts of the world, like China, the challenge is to provide local citizens with healthy
and comfortable dwellings that fit their aspirations. This is an enormous task. In EU the focus is
currently on the rejuvenation and renovation projects. When focusing on housing alone this is
also an enormous task. In specific regions a decline of the populations is complicating this
challenging task since it is unclear in which properties should be invested by housing
associations or other professional investors. The assignment may change if disasters and war
force more people to flee their countries and migrate to these more prosperous parts of the
world.
New build, rejuvenation and renovation projects increasingly focus on energy efficiency and
renewable energy generation. Simultaneously, there is also so an increasing interest in
sustainable building and resource efficiency issues.
For most governments, economy prevails sustainability issues, since this the economy will
affect their voters on the sort term. Sustainability and resource efficiency of course are part of
the long term development. Due to the relatively low commodity prices in the 1990s (VDI,
2008), the availability of resources was not a big issue for companies, their clients and therefore
less discussed in most governments. Since 2003, however, the prices of various raw materials

317
rocketed. This was not only true of steel and crude oil prices, but had in fact turned out to be a
general trend (VDI, 2008), as shown by the movements in the Reuters CRB Index. The main
reason is that the old rule of thumb 20% of the worlds population in Europe, North America
and Japan using up 80% of its natural resources is no longer valid. Emerging economies such
as China and India are now staking claims to these same resources (VDI, 2008). Rising prices
al-lowed resources to be extracted in locations that were previously unprofitable. Companies
were also investing more in the exploration of new sites and extraction methods because it has
be-come economically viable to do so.
Several factors, like the economic crisis, fracking and dumping prices of oil has brought the
price of a barrel of oil down recently. As a result the Reuters CRB Index has come down since
the end of 2014. Companies and countries however have now experienced how fluctuation in
price can hurt their budgets and operational business. This has given a new impulse to rethink
their views on resources. Since a long time, we treat natural resources as if they were infinite.
Those times now seem to change slowly. Despite that, more is being invested in the extraction
of resources in general and methods are constantly being improved. The question arises whether
all these efforts are enough to meet the demand for new resources and result in environmental
improvements. For example, in 1925, copper ore consisted of 25% copper. By 1985, this percentage had fallen to 0.8% (M2i, 2009). This means that more energy is needed to extract copper and that, at some point, it will no longer be worth making the extra investment.
As some natural resources are extracted in just a handful of places, geopolitical tensions may
surface. For example, in 2010 some 95% of the worlds scarce earth metals are mined in China
(King, 2014) for use in the manufacture of mobile phones, LEDs, wind turbines, batteries, and
computers. Green and clean technologies as for example developed in the US, Japan and
Germany are dependent on these scarce earth metals. With demands for new resources peaking,
production companies depending on the usage of natural resources may get into difficulty.
Figure 2. Increasing resource usage [Aachener Stiftung Kathy Beys (eds.), 2011).
1.3 Increasing demand for bio-based materials

At the same time there is an increasing demand for bio-based materials with lower
environmental impact and with additional functionality. After the economic crisis in Western
318

Europe, the construction and real estate market became more demand-driven. It is now more
obvious that sustainable buildings do not only contribute to objectives in the field of responsible
social business but also to technological progress Sustainable buildings are also more easily
rentable, have generally lower operating costs and provide improved comfort, health and
productivity (WSBC, 2013). Architects, builders and developers are therefore more and more
looking for quality solutions for the realization of sustainable buildings. Supplying companies
realize that they should respond to this, but do not really know how. These companies realize
that the development of sustainable products with more added value is no longer a matter of
choice, but a necessity (Sailer et. al., 2015). For them the urge is caused by increasing
competition from lower-wages in other countries and mass production as a result of ongoing
globalization. The development of higher quality products, is an obvious way for suppliers to
improve competitive advantage. In case of failure, economic shrinkage and substantial job
losses might otherwise be the result. The market also feels the pressure of increasing regulation.
In the areas of environmental performance or fire safety for example, increasing demands are
faced with the consequence that there is hardly any new material available that can meet all
requirements. Therefore a number of new building products are applied although they do not
meet all requirements arising from existing regulations (Sailer et. al., 2015).
Economically it is useful to improve the energy performance of buildings although from a
material perspective it can be discussed whether this is desirable. Frequently the relevant
conditions are not considered, e.g. material properties besides insulation, availability, fire and
safety risks, environmental and biodiversity implications, embedded energy or resource
efficiency. Interest in bio-based is on the increase, but it will be impossible to realize the
amelioration of building performance with the current amounts of materials available, when
constructing or renovating buildings.
2 FROM ENERGY EFFICIENCY TOWARDS RESOURCE EFFICIENCY
As a result of agreements made in Kyoto, COP21 and subsequent agreements made within the
EU, or on national or regional levels the current focus in construction is mainly at CO2 and
energy. Construction authorities and local initiatives are still struggling to translate these
agreements into matching market proposals for renewable energy and energy efficiency. As
shown in the introduction, also the countries present at the UN Climate Conference in Paris
realize that in order to remain within a global temperature rise of 2 or 1.5 degrees, we do not
only need an energy transition, but also need to balance resource usage versus the availability of
resources. The Dutch government claims that 25% of CO2 consumption could be reduced if we
would transform towards a circular economy in which everything is recycled and reused. This
would additionally lead to a reduction of 25% of the required import of new resources (TNO,
2013). Although energy is in principle available in abundance, resources are the scarce.
According to the Global Footprint network we as a species need 1,4 planets to sustain current
needs. The average American however has an Ecological Footprint of 9 hectares. A daunting
thought since this lifestyle is still appealing to millions all over the globe. If everyone would
live like an aver-age US citizen we would need 5 planets. The average in the EU is half, still a
4.5 global hectares per capita. Using the average of people in the UK we would need 3.4 times
our planet earth (Global Footprint Network, 2006). And one should realize this number is the
sum of the ecological footprint of consumption (for the UK on average 6.1) and the footprint of
bio-capacity of the country (for the UK on average 1.6) (Global Footprint Network, 2009).
It is therefore clear we do not only have to put an end to our addiction to fossil fuels for CO2
reasons. We have to realize resource efficiency in general, hence increasing our efforts to transform towards a circular economy. In the next paragraphs current strategies will be presented to
increase resource efficiency.
2.1 Decoupling
As a result of fulfilling demands of a growing population that is eager to improve on welfare,
more and more resources are deprived from our ecosystems. On the other side disposals and
emissions are burdening the natural environment. One of the different concepts to combine

319
economic growth with environmental requirements is the so called decoupling. This concept
tries to combine the reduction of impact to the environment with increasing value created per
kilogram at the same time. With this concept the EU is aiming to break the linkage between
economic growth, the use of resources and the generation of waste (EU, COM (2001)264). To
balance supply and demand, fundamental changes are needed in the way we produce and
consume. It needs a lot of struggling to get such concepts accepted and applied by the majority
of the population, although they are urgently needed.
Worldwide positive signs of decoupling across sectors are measured. According to OECD,
the global economy generates 50% more economic value today with one ton of raw materials
than it did in the 1980s, rising from USD 0.70 per kilogram (2005 USD and PPPs) in 1980 to
USD 1.05/kg by 2008 (OECD, 2013). Between 1980-2000 materials productivity from 15 EU
member stated increased form 867 to 1316 euro / tons (2,1% per year), with signifies they got
more efficient in deriving value from the resources that were used (Bosmans, 2008). But these
numbers are bleak compared to the challenge we are facing.
Dematerialization is a way to decouple and can be accomplished via different routes, for example:
x to use of less materials for a specific product or function, thereby increasing material
efficiency
x to re-use and recycling of materials (promoted by concepts as product-as-a-service)
x to share the use of a product among different users (e.g. with the help of online platforms like neighborgoods.net)
x to substitute materials with a high negative environmental impact by materials with a
lower environmental impact (diminishing e.g.: toxicity, energy use during production,
weight).
2.2 Circular material loops across sectors
Another basic strategy is the development of resource loops for materials of biological and nonbiological origin. These loops are not restricted to materials used in the construction sector only.
More likely they will be cross-sectorial. And when possible the different fractions available in
crops are ideally all used, possibly in different sectors. The introduction of first generation
biofuels was followed by criticism on the amount of farmland used for the production of
biofuels, displacing food production and increasing food prices. This initiated a quest to
combine streams of ingredients from the same crop for different usage.
The amount of resources used has grown considerably globally during the 20th century. At the
end of this century we used 34 times more materials, 27 times more minerals, 12 times more
fossil fuels and 3,6 times more biomass (UNEP, 2011). While resource consumption grew the
amount of waste increased as well. In the EU alone total waste generation in EU amounted to
approximately 2.5 billion tons in 2013. Only 0.9 billion ton was reused or recycled. This means
that 1.6 billion tons were lost for the European economy. It is estimated that at least an
additional 600 million tons could be recycled or reused. As is stated in the proposed amendment
Directive 2008/98/EC on waste; The Union thus misses out on significant opportunities to
improve resource efficiency and create a more circular economy. In this proposed amendment,
changes where suggested for a number of Directives: Directive 2008/98/EC on waste, Directive
94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste, Directive 1999/31/EC on the landfill of waste,
Directive 2000/53/EC on end-of-life vehicles, Directive 2006/66/EC on batteries and
accumulators and waste batteries and accumulators and Directive 2012/19/EU on waste
electrical and electronic equipment which form part of a Circular Economy Package which also
includes a Commission Communication "Closing the loop An EU action plan for the Circular
Economy" (proposal to amend Directive 2008/98/EC on waste).
2.3 Cascading
Another concept is to cascade materials before they are incinerated or re-melted. Currently
wood and other bio-based materials are used to reduce the CO2 emissions of energy production.
Cascading means that when a component or product faces end of life; e.g. a windowsill, usage is
found in another building for the same purpose. Preferable a way for up-cycling is found, or,
320

when the component is down-cycled, usage is chosen in a way which leaves room for numerous
reuse options in a next round. Since we generally did not design buildings to be demounted and
to be re-used, this approach will change the way future buildings will be designed and
constructed. Architects and builders therefore will have to deal with additional requirements.
Also building components need to be redesigned in such a way they can be easily re-used and
recycled. In case performance requirements and fashion demand rework of the component, the
different elements, of which the component is made, should also be ready for re-use. In the end
it would be logic to limit the use of fossil fuels for the production of high value purposes with
no alternative. Companies are looking for alternatives for products currently made from petrolbased raw materials. Preferably they should be replaced by bio-based alternatives. This ensures
that there are alternatives by the time that there are issues with supply or extreme price
increases. For industry it is a way of diminishing dependency to look for alternative materials of
biological origin, so-called renewables or bio-based materials. Examples of products in
construction for which fossil fuels are used as a basis for the production: e.g. windowsills, films,
insulation materials, ducts, finishes for facades, walls and floors.
3 ISSUES IN RELATION TO BIO-BASED BUILDING MATERIALS
3.1 Advantages
The advantages presented here will be structured according the Triple Bottom Line (TBL)
(Elkington, 1994), also know as the three Ps: people, planet and profit. These aspects are most
commonly used to evaluate and report on sustainable development (SD) and corporate social
responsibility (CSR).
Starting with planet, the environmental perspective, bio-based building materials offer the
possibility to use renewable resources in building and construction. The efficient use of biobased building materials is desirable due to several potential advantages related to
environmental and economic aspects e.g. CO2 fixation and additional value. Buildings can be
framed as carbon sinks and as materials banks. This will foster to include cascading thinking
during the design phase. This is mostly not the case. Also materials outside the actual
construction area should be considered. To give an example, clothing of the employees of
Aliander, which was no longer in use, was collected as a resource for the insulation material for
the new head office in Hoofddorp (Rau, 2016).
Figure 3. Head Office Aliander in Hoofddorp of Thomas Rau [www.rau.eu].

321
If the bio-based components and materials are reused this will result in a reduction of the use
of virgin resources. Energy consumption will be diminished as well as CO2 emissions. If
building components are used in the same region these achievements can be doubled due to
transport savings. This was experienced in two Dutch pilot projects Stadstuin Overtoom in
Amsterdam were CO2 emissions were reduced by 50% and a pilot project in Rotterdam
Hoogvliet were CO2 emissions were reduced by 67% (Cramer, 2013). When local building
components and materials are being reused in that same region, the amount of traffic will be
diminished. In London transport movements were reduced by 68% with the introduction of a
transport hub for reuse and recycling purposes (Brett, 2007). That is a lot if you realize 30-40%
of road traffic is construction related. This will be a noticeable effect in city centers like London
and Amsterdam.
The local economy could benefit from growing the biomass needed and local production of
products and components. This could be improved if additionally the reuse and recycling of
building components and materials is organized regionally. From the pilot projects in
Amsterdam en Rotterdam it became clear that the costs for incineration or disposal can be
skipped, as well as the costs otherwise necessary for the purchase of virgin materials. What is
needed is extra labor and technology to retrieve the building components from the old building
without damaging them. Additionally these components need rework and sorting. The
additional costs are somewhere between 10-15% depending on the situation (Cramer, 2013).
The assumption is these costs will be reduced when we become more skillful. With experience
we will become more efficient in reuse and the flow of reused components and materials will
increase allowing economies of scale. BREEAM already developed a demolition directive for
the Dutch situation (Cramer, 2013).
A side remark is that these issues should be looked at from different levels of scale allowing
us recognize the entire value chain. Optimizing one phase, for example, re-use, may mean that
e.g. energy consumption increases during the use phase is increased to such extend, overall
energy consumption worsens. We also should not forget to change perspective. One might have
the inclination to start to look at existing buildings from the perspective of a dealer in second
hand building products only. Buildings also represent a cultural and historic value that is not
easy to capture. A decision to renovate or demolish a building is not simply an economic or
environmental question only. Together with other structures buildings form urban fabrics that
have their own intrinsic value. Why do we find old city centers appealing? Yet they attract
tourist, new citizens and creative professionals. A lesson well learned in the sixties, we should
not only look at inner city centers and old neighborhoods from an efficiency perspective in
order to structure traffic, high quality dwellings and services.
Finally we arrive at people, the social perspective. People will relearn about local materials
and their characteristics. (Re-)working (bio-based) materials will help us to build the necessary
circular economy. With the recycling processes new meaningful jobs will be created in the
region. Residents of inner cities will also profit from the reduction of traffic, noise, dust and
vibration when a regional circular way of working becomes more common.
3.2 Risks and other important aspects
An important aspect of biomaterials is the technical service life. In order to extend the service
life biomaterials need to be protected against degradation by e.g. UV-radiation or microorganisms. These degradation factors frequently cause higher maintenance costs and limit the
functionality as well as the aesthetics in building skins. Adequate sustainable solutions are
therefore wanted especially since the use of toxic substances (biocides) is being increasingly
restricted by legal regulations (Directive 98/8/EC). In coatings heavy metals may no longer be
used. Most countries prevent the use of CCA (copper-chromium-arsenic) and the use of
impregnated wood is more and more restricted (Kwon et al, 2004). Because there are (still) not
enough sufficient sustainable competitive solutions, the use of indigenous renewable resources
such as wood is still limited. Without technically and economically viable alternatives the
ambitions have to be adapted to the technological available possibilities. This happens despite
the fact that different governments are trying to encourage the use of sustainably produced
materials (EU commission, 2011). The potential biodegradability of biomaterials however
demands also innovative solutions to avoid e.g. the use of environmental harmful substances in

322
buildings. It is essential to use balanced technological solutions, which consider aspects like
service life or technical performance as well as environmental aspects.
Circular economy and biodiversity also play an important role in these concepts and potential
production chains. Questions arise considering the interaction with other large biomass users
e.g. food production. What will be the impact if we use more bio-based building materials with
regard to biodiversity and resource availability?
Does this create opportunities or risks for the increasing use of bio-based building materials
or does intelligent use of biomass in building materials offer the possibility to apply still unused
(bio) resources and use them as a carbon sink?
4 STRATEGIES TO INCREASE THE USAGE OF BIO-BASED BUILDING MATERIALS
As is stated in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation report, implementation of sustainability
measures are helped by collective goals. From what is known in the domain of transition
management and what is learned from the quest on how to implement and upscale energy
efficiency in the Netherlands and other innovations in Finish construction it is known that
strategies should be addressing the following three aspects when aiming at step change
innovation (Oostra & Huovinen, 2016):
4.1 Goal setting
It has proven to be very helpful if a mutual goal is set among a group of stakeholders that are
able to make the change. Key public decision making bodies, at a governmental, regional and or
city level, or an organization that is representing the general interest, define clear goals in
conjunction with key stakeholders, daring to be frontrunners.
These goals are set (1a) to improve outcomes on each of the socio-political,
economic, institutional, technological and environmental contexts, (1b) to unite
stakeholders in terms of balancing their aims and benefits, (1c) to stimulate the
sector to include other (only value adding) stakeholder groups in order to be able to
reach goals and overcome barriers to be met, and (1d) not to be afraid of asking for
radical innovations on key dimensions (Oostra & Huovinen 2016).
Usually the programme starts with small-scale pilot projects to make visible that the goals are
actually achievable and to reassess the goals before the programme actually starts.
4.2 Network formation
Example programmes show that a range of networks needs to be formed in which (2a) new key
roles can emerge for stakeholders, (2b) connecting multi-dimensional, causal links between
different stakeholder/party roles to fine-tune issues. Space is left to introduce novel expertise
and insightful stakeholders when new issues pop up during the developments. Memberships are
expanded through the different phases of the programme. While there should remain some
space to exchange things without spotlights, e.g. think out new innovations, key decisions,
activities and tasks will be made transparent for others to learn from, to analyze and evaluate.
The programme should be able to tune itself along the way. All sorts of institutional, digital and
physical supportive systems will need to be developed as well, as well as tools that parties can
rely upon (Oostra & Huovinen 2016).
4.3 Learning
To enhance learning,
a range of alternative ways of learning, exploiting existing knowledge and
creating new solutions, be selected and planned by learning areas, to arrive at: (3a)
a flexible, highly sustainable market and better knowledge of user preferences in

323
relation to changing demographics, public, private and third sectors, built

environment, nature, etc., (3b) product and process innovations,
incremental/disruptive, solo/co-innovated, co-funded, given/openly competed,
scaled up/down, etc., (3c) new rules and regulations to mend hampering or missing
legislation, on city/country/EU levels, by areas and units, etc., (3d) affordable
prices, performance improvements and guarantees for stakeholder groups and
participant roles, home/apartment/house types, public and private buildings,
infrastructure, etc., (3e) improvement of architectural quality, environmental
quality and building quality to enhance the realization of appealing cities, attractive
country-sides, meaningful places, true well-being, environmental sustainability,
personalized living, inclusive society, regional prosperity, etc. and (3f)
commitment from stakeholders to take on new roles and responsibilities designated
to realize the goals set and provide performance warranties. The members of the
programme compare the alternative routes, choose the most effective ones and
integrate them accordingly in designated sub-programmes to start the next learning
cycle. (Oostra & Huovinen, 2016).
5 CONCLUSION
As shown before the broad implementation of biomaterials for housing is a complex field with
many different factors to be considered. Although huge political efforts are made, the realization
within a still relative traditional production and implementation chain like the building industry
is complicated. The technological progress and competiveness have to be faster improved
otherwise bio-based materials will probably not get a serious market position compared to
traditional products with more negative environmental impact. If decoupling and cascading
concepts succeed with more technological, environmental and economic impact a broader
implementation of bio-based materials can be achieved. Circular economy concepts as well as
creative implementation strategies are a prerequisite to realize the ambitions and overcome the
existing challenges to build socially, economically and environmentally acceptable buildings.
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325
Fisherman housing and settlement renovation to avoid slum at

coastal area
H. R. Santosa, B. W. Isworo & A. Hayati
Department of Architecture, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Indonesia as an archipelago country consists of many islands, with two-thirds of

the area covered by water and one-third consist of land. Most of the human activities located in
the coastal areas, including activities within the fisherman settlement. Many of the fisherman
until presently has been unable to improve their economic and housing conditions. Whereas
within the MDGs agenda, by the year 2020 was decided there will be no slums. In the efforts
toward off slums especially in the coastal areas, this research objectives were to explore how the
living conditions are suitable in the housing and settlement of the fisherman community, and
what measures that can be executed in eliminating slums. Explorative survey was used as
research methods to understand the poor quality of housing and settlement of the fishermen
community. Analysis based on the housing standards (SNI: Indonesian National Standard) and
healthy settlement issued by the ministry of public works. The analysis of basic services based
on Suzuki, et al (2009) indicators. Study case was conducted in Weru village in Lamongan
regency. Results of the research indicate around 15% of the low quality of housing and require
immediate renovation were mostly made of bamboo with earth flooring. Whereas the
environment conditions of the housing that requires repairing include the environmental
cleanliness.
1 INTRODUCTION
The problem of inadequate settlements and housing conditions of fisherman villages in
Indonesia still existed (Menko Perekonomian dan Laboratorium Perumahan dan Permukiman
ITS, 2010 and Isworo et al, 2014). This problem should be tackled properly since in 2015 slum
area should be reduced to 50%, and there will be no slum area in the year 2020 (UNDP, 2000).
To meet the MDGs Agenda, the aim of this research is to find the answer of how far the slum
condition in the fisherman settlement and housing, and what step should be taken to avoid the
slum.
The method used was explorative survey to find the answer of the settlement and housing
conditions included the physical conditions of infrastructures in the village. The survey was
done in 2014. As a case study the Weru village in Lamongan regency was chosen because this
village was known as a slum fishermen village in the regency. Communities living in slum areas
face inadequacies in the basic services, such as shelter, land, water, electricity, sanitation,
garbage collection, drainage, and paved streets, often caused by inadequate supply of services
(Suzuki et al., 2010). The Suzuki suggestion was used in guiding the field survey and analysis.
To avoid slums Indonesia has developed Indonesian National Standard (SNI) for housing and
settlement. This standard was used for the analysis of housing.
Study connected to this research indicated that healthy and viable settlement should have
basic infrastructure and housing and should meet the standards (Kusnoputranto, 2006). Study
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showed that comprehensive Kampung Improvement Programme (C-KIP) in the improvement of

houses and infrastructure showed good results. Such a programme might be useful in the
innovation of fisherman settlements and to avoid slums (Santosa, 2010).
2 WERU VILLAGE CONDITIONS
The case study: Weru village can be labeled as one of the central fishing hub in Lamongan city
since nearly 90% of its population works as fisherman. Most of the fishing produce was
dominant by fish and shrimp. In this district there are fish auction areas (fish markets) which are
located in the boundaries of Weru and Sidokumpul districts. Weru village has total area of
9.53m2. The total population recorded as of February 2013 was 4921 people, with 2450 people
were male and 2471 people were female. 90% of the population was fishermen (Kecamatan
Paciran, 2013).
2.1 Housing conditions and infrastructure
From the field survey it was found that houses in the Weru village consist of permanent and
semi permanent buildings. Most of the houses were in permanent condition with simple types of
construction but poorly-maintained, although around 20% of the semi-permanent houses were
constructed with walls made of bamboo and wood. The majority of flooring in the houses used
ceramic tiles and cement, around 8% of the houses located in the north directly adjacent to the
sea still uses earth flooring (Figs. 1-2).
Figure 1. Semi-permanent houses in Weru Village.
Figure 2. Permanent houses in Weru Village.

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Building height in the majority of the houses in the village were single-storey, however there
were a few houses that are two-storey. The single-storey houses mostly owned by small scale
fishermen, whereas two-storey houses were owned by fish collector and also individuals who
work as migrant workers outside the coastal areas such as those working as Indonesian migrant
workers.
Housing patterns in the Weru village were relative regular pattern, which was grid pattern or
linear with the building layout located in the right-left of the road or paralell with line of the
waterfront. Building density in this village was high with the building coverage ratio over 90%
and nearly no distance between buildings or between 0-1 m.
The study area was part of the distribution of clean water system (PDAM) in Lamongan. The
need for clean water in the study area was fulfilled from the pipeline taps and boreholes. The
quality of water in this village tend to be muddy and mixed with sea water because Weru village
immediately adjacent to the beach. Northern area of the Weru village used clean water network
as a conduit of water while in the south used boreholes.
Electricity needs were fulfilled by the PLN (City Electrical Board), where the whole village
was already served by the electricity systems. Meeting the needs of electricity, the PLN served
the needs of residential, commercial and public facilities and services. The phone was a tool that
was sufficiently meets the needs of the activity of the people. In the area, communication had
not fully served by the telephone network. However, with the development of
telecommunication facilities at this time, along with the development of increasingly
sophisticated mobile phones and modern course of communication, links can be run quickly and
efficiently.
The village still relies on (on-site) sewerage systems for the disposal of human waste,
including septic-tanks, latrines, WC. Most of these facilities were owned by each household.
The domestic waste, originated from various household activities such as faeces and other such
liquid effluent wash water, while industrial waste originated from fishing activities waste, such
as waste at the fish auction at the pier and waste originated from fishing vessels that moored.
Some people still throw their household waste directly into water bodies, especially for
settlements located around the river and sea.
Waste management system in the area was done with two phases of disposal, independently
by the community with the traditional management system and managed exclusively by the
government of Lamongan. The waste generated by residential areas, fish auction area, coastal
pier area and market. Waste management was traditionally done by the obliteration of garbage,
the garbage accumulation in the junk yard, or even took out the waste and burned it in the empty
fields that exist or dumped in rivers or the sea. As for the market area, the garbage was managed
by the Department of Health Lamongan Regency.
Drainage system was not very visible in the research area. This is because the drainage
system became one with the sanitary sewer drain and the channel was closed. Rainwater was not
accommodated to the maximum but did not cause flooding or tidal in this area. In the Weru
village street systems formed by the environment that has had asphalt pavement the road in
alleys within the settlement have pavement. The condition of roads in Weru village is shown in
Figure 3.
Figure 3. Street condition in settlement alleys.
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3 DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS

Slums in Weru village are based on availability and condition of the existing basic services. As
Suzuki suggests that slum areas have some inadequacies in: 1. shelter, 2. land, 3. water, 4.
electricity, 5. sanitation, 6. garbage collection, 7. drainage, and 8. paved streets (Suzuki, et al.,
2010). These aspects are used in the analysis. Weru village has the potential as a developed
village with a marine source. However, there were some limitations that hinder this village to be
an ecological village.
3.1 Shelter/livable housing
The house is a basic human need that in addition to functioning as a shelter and perform daily
activities in the family, also plays a major role in shaping the character of the family. It must
meet the technical requirements of health and safety. The home must also provide comfort for
the occupants, both internal and psychological comfort in accordance with the needs of its
inhabitants.
As the house is a family formation center, each house should be habitable. Occupancy must
be able to sustain decent daily life activities normally. The view of the livable house is varies.
References worth a dwelling are usually determined by the level of ability and level of need. In
a healthy and decent shelter, problems can not only discuss about the sheer physical problems.
Healthy and viable settlement should have basic infrastructure and residential housing that
meets standards such as electricity, clean water, sanitation, and waste management as well as
various means of support, such as educational facilities, social facilities, public facilities such as
markets, green open spaces, sports fields, place of business and trade, etc (Kusnoputranto,
2006).
Some of the standards and conditions that must be met in residential buildings are the
strength, durability, beauty and health. For more details can be described as follows:
1. Strength: a building should have a strong construction to protect the occupants from
the danger of collapse so that residents can feel the serenity while staying in it.
2. Durability: buildings should be planned in order to last long, strong and durable
because it will be giving out a sense of security and peace for the residents, for it to
get good durability should consider the type of material used.
3. Beauty: the beauty of the building will give pride to the inhabitants and also add value
to the building. To make a beautiful building, requires a proportion between the
structure and organization of space according to the function of the building.
4. Health: Designing the building should pay attention to hygiene and environmental
cleanliness. To maintain health therefore the factors that must be considered are the
availability of sewerage and sanitation, garbage dumps and also to the lighting,
ventilation, air temperature and humidity in the room.
Almost all the residents of this village have stayed home with the construction of adequate
and decent housing. Most of the houses use a roof cover; the walls are already using bricks and
tiled floor. There are three types of home size in the village is a house with an area of small,
medium and large. Only 15% of houses was still using wooden wall construction, other
structures have been using floor tiles, or a mix of ground floor. Although in the coastal areas,
which generally use on stilts construction system stage to avoid the tide of sea water, single
house in Weru village is using the structure. Their building is directly attached to the ground.
Based on standard POB 2012 of livable housing, decent housing structures in its
implementation must meet the following requirements: good quality building, the existence and
dimensions of the corresponding structure, all elements of the main structure is connected
properly and good quality workmanship (Department of Public Works, 2010).
In the Weru village, the roof structure in all the major construction of houses using wood
either directly exposed or covered ceiling. The width of the houses in the Weru village are
maximum of 12 m (only few houses). Other houses uses the span of about 2.5 m, therefore does
not require a lot of beams and columns. All frames and doors and windows use wood materials
(Figs. 4-5).

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Figure 4. The house in Weru village.
Figure 5. The house in the Weru village with limestone wall.
The main materials used in the whole house are wood and limestone, which is in line with the
coastal environment that has salinity in the soil, making it easy for corrosion to occur when
using other materials. In addition, the wood can absorb more water. In contrast to the brick wall
that is porous if it is in an area with high water content. Also wood materials are readily
available in the surrounding area and costs cheaper.
3.2 Settlement pattern and land use
Settlement pattern in the study area was divided into several types. Settlement patterns that
follow the pattern of roads, grouped settlements, and settlements that were not arranged in
groups. The settlement following the pattern found in the neighborhoods that are not adjacent to
the beach i.e the settlements adjacent to the main road access to the village. The settlement was
shaped in a grid and there were lined up perpendicular to the shoreline with some were lined up
parallel to the direction of the shoreline. Clustered settlement pattern commonly found in the
alley. Disorganized settlement patterns found on the beach, adjacent to the fish markets. Most of
the settlement pattern of this type of semi-permanent and non-permanent (Fig. 6 - Source:
Google).
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Figure 6. Street structure system and housing in the research area.
3.3 Open space

Existing open space located near the fish auction market and the field near the Village Hall.
Allotment of open space is as a means to play for the children as well as other village activities
such as the Eid prayer and gathering. Additionally, the open space was also found in many
research areas such as open land that was left unbuilt. Open space was used as a vehicle parking
lot that was left open and untreated. The open space condition should be improved in terms of
cleanliness. As a place for children to play the open space is very useful.
3.4 Marine produce processing area
Marine produce processing area is very important place. Seafood processing was focused on
processing and fish auction markets that were on the waterfront. Placement of the seafood
processing space on the waterfront was to facilitate both fishermen and prospective buyers in
the transaction. Fishermen did not need much processing of the marine products and the buyer
does not need to go to the beach to buy fish. This provides easiness for the sellers and buyers of
sea products. Seafood processing space in the form of an open shelter was to put freshly
harvested seafood as well as traditional fish market as a purchase transaction area. The fish
market also accommodated the fishermens catch and serves purchases in small quantities.
Existing seafood processing includes drying fish on the beach. The fish to be sold in dried
form was dried beforehand. Drying was only relying on sunlight therefore when approaching
the rainy season, not many of dried fish was produced (Fig. 7).
Figure 7. Fish drying area.

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3.5 Marketing area

Lamongan regency has large fishery resources, particularly fisheries in aquaculture and capture
fisheries (marine). The area was very strategic, including fisheries production center in East
Java. Production of fishery products in Lamongan mostly results in commodity of shrimp
aquaculture and fish, also fisheries with most commodities are flying fish, brass, song, tuna, and
mackerel. Marketing of marine products in the Weru village still uses traditional means.
Fishermen used fish auction facilities as a means of marketing their seafood. Not many
fishermen who took the initiative to market their catch outside the Weru village, since
prospective buyers come to the fish auction and buy marine catches.
Traditional means of marketing that still resulted in fishermens catches are less able to
market to a wider market share. One of the reasons may be caused by the lack of knowledge of
fishing of the local community in terms of marketing the catch of marine produce. This
condition should be improved to provide more income to the fishermen.
3.6 Infrastructure
According to SNI (Indonesian National Standard) 03-1733-2004 for a standard infrastructure in
a residential area as follows.
3.6.1 Clean water distribution
In general, each house must be served clean water that meets the requirements for domestic
purposes. To that end, a residential area must be completed in accordance with the water
network and the technical requirements set out in the rules. The type of network elements in the
planning of water that must be provided in a residential neighborhood is the need for clean
water; network of water; public taps; and fire hydrants. In Weru village the clean water is
available but not supported by public taps and fire hydrants. This facility should be available for
fire protection.
Water network in the Weru village, in all type of houses, large, medium and small, most have
not been distributed clean water from PDAM, national clean water provider. According to the
Minister of Public Works Regulation No. 41 of 2004 on technical guidelines, residential areas
should be equipped with clean water, are eligible both in quantity and quality. The need for
clean water at Weru village was met by the availability of wells in each house either dipper
wells and well pumps. However, the quality of well water in the Weru village less than good,
due to a sense of well water is salty and brackish.
3.6.2 The electricity system
Settlement should be completed with the provision of electricity system and technical
requirements. Installation of the entire electrical installation in a residential area or in residential
buildings should also be planned in an integrated manner on the basis of regulations and in
additional requirements that apply, such as any residential neighborhood should get the power
of electricity or other sources, and each household unit must be served a minimum of 450 VA
power per capita and for the environment means 40% of the total households. Electricity is
available in the Weru village which supports the well being of the households.
The use of electricity whose primary function is as a means of lighting is intended to facilitate
the activities of the community and are expected to be able to serve the entire electric service of
Weru village. Electricity network in the study area is derived from city electricity and most of
the houses have made use of electric lighting, as well as for other uses. However, some small
houses that have been underserved electricity, channeled the electricity from the surrounding
houses to their homes.
3.6.3 Sanitation/wastewater network
Housing environment must be equipped in accordance with the waste water network and the
technical requirements set out in regulations / laws that have been enacted, especially regarding
the procedures for the general planning of the wastewater network in an urban residential
neighborhood. One is SNI 03-2398-2002 on Planning Procedures of Septic Tank with
Absorption Systems. Guidelines on the management of waste water communally in a residential
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neighborhood is also applicable. The types of network elements in the planning of wastewater
that must be provided in a residential neighborhood in the city are septic tanks, infiltration field,
and waste water piping network.
In Weru village, only septic tanks were available. Infiltration field and waste water piping
network were unavailable. Residential area should be equipped with a waste water disposal
system which meets the planning requirements of applicable plumbing. If the possibility of
making a septic tank is not there, then the residential area should be equipped with a waste
water disposal system or the environment must be connected to the city sanitary sewer system
or other processing methods. If it is not possible to create air infiltration field in every home, it
must be made along the catchment areas that can serve multiple homes.
Wastewater disposal systems in the houses in the Weru village were adequate. This is
because most of the houses in the study area, already has its own waste water disposal facilities /
private septic tanks. However there are some small type of houses that did not have septic tank
and waste water disposal, residents dispose of domestic wastewater directly into the sea.
3.6.4 Garbage collection
Settlement environment requires a garbage disposal system which refers to SNI 19-2454-2002
on Procedures for the operational techniques of urban waste management; SNI 03-3242-1994 on
Procedures for waste management in the settlement; and SNI 03-3241-1994 on Procedures
concerning landfill sites (Department of Public Works, 2010).
The types of elements that must be provided is planning of wheelie bins; garbage dumpster;
and landfills. In Weru village the wastes system was not up to standard, resulting in slums
condition of the village.
Every home should have a waste disposal system such as trash and garbage carts. The size of
the waste disposal area is 2 m3. In Weru village, almost every house does not have adequate
garbage facilities, no wheelie bins around their home. Most residents dispose of their household
waste directly into the sea or on vacant land hoarding around the coast. There are also people
who collect their organic waste in the yard, and then burned. As for inorganic waste, they throw
it into the sea. It is not very conducive to a healthy housing environment requirement.
The main problems that hamper were rubbish and waste management. Currently there are no
waste management measures in this village. The residents throw their garbage daily into the sea
because there are no specific management both from the village and the government. The
villagers themselves also have no initiative to improve their environment. According to the
residents, a few years ago there had a similar organization set up such as youth clubs for waste
management, but did not run as expected. In the northern area the low quality of housing in the
coastal village are increasing. Therefore, it needs innovation and the handling of waste so that it
does not become a slum of fishing settlement.
3.6.5 Drainage network
Settlement environment should be completed in accordance with the drainage network and the
technical requirements set out in the rules / regulations that have been enacted, especially
regarding the procedures for general planning of drainage networks in urban residential
neighborhood. One of the provisions in force is SNI 02-2406-1991 on procedures for general
planning of urban drainage. Drainage network is the infrastructure that serves the water surface
to the receiving body of water and artificial recharge or to the building, which should be
provided on the housing in the environment. This drainage network is unavailable in the village,
resulting bad condition of the environment surrounding the houses.
3.6.6 Street structure of the settlement
Street structure in the Weru village was formed by the village street that has had asphalt
pavement along the one kilometer, whereas the streets in alleys of the settlement have pavement
and dirt road paving. The street and alleys of the settlement was generally acceptable. No alleys
were bare land, however some alleys were dirty. This condition needs improvement and
cleaning.

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4 CONCLUSION
Most of the house construction in the Weru village was adequate and feasible. Although several
problem include the construction has aged and no repairs was done because of limited funds.
Most houses have roof cover. However there were still many houses with plywood or wood
materials for walls. Many have tiled floors or old tiles for flooring. This should be improved up
to standard. Most of the small type of houses was constructed using plywood or bamboo for
walls, while houses with larger sizes already of limestone wall construction. Other structures on
the existing houses used tile and ceramic floor or both with earth flooring. The earth floors
should be covered with cement or ceramic.
The system of wastewater disposal at the houses in the Weru village was adequate. Most
homes already have their own / personal wastewater disposal such as septic tanks. However
there are some small type of houses that does not have septic tanks and waste water disposal.
Some residents dispose of domestic wastewater directly into the sea which polluted the seawater. This should be avoided.
For the needs of clean water, most of the houses in the Weru village not served with clean
water system of taps from PDAM. The need for water is served by wells in every home. The
quality of well water in the Weru village was less than good and needs improvement.
Almost all the houses in the Weru village have no adequate waste facilities, no waste
container or disposal bins around their home. This condition resulted from the slum in the
village. To meet the MDGs target the wastes management of the village should be improved.
In the service of the electrical network in the Weru village, most of the houses have been
served electricity to power at least 450 VA. However, some small type houses, for the needs of
electricity in their homes were distributed from the surrounding houses that have been served
electricity. It is preferable that each house is served with the standard electricity power.
To summarize, the slum area in the village was about 20%. This was not fast areas. However
for the health of the fisherman community some innovation still needed, particularly in the
wastes management, sewage system, drainage and house physical conditions.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The writers would like to thanks and appreciate the master students, Department of Architecture ITS:
Tantri, Mehdia, and Emalia for their contribution during the field survey and data writing.
REFERENCES
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Pantai. (Arrangement of Fisherman Settlement in Surabaya in the Frame of Coastal Ecosystem).
Surabaya: LPPM-ITS.
Kecamatan Paciran. 2013. Kecamatan Paciran dalam Angka Tahun 2013. (Paciran District in Numbers).
Lamongan: BPS.
Kusnoputranto, H. 2006. Aspek Kesehatan Masyarakat dan Permukiman di Wilayah Perkotaan, Sejumlah
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Infrastruktur serta Penanggulangan Kemiskinan dalam Kampung. (Role of Comprehensive Kampung
Improvement Programme in the Improvement of Housing and Infrastructure). Surabaya, LPPM-ITS.
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UNDP. 2000. Millennium Development Goals.
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335
Unlocking sustainable routes for dwellings: assessing Earthships

buildings
S. X. Toh
University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
ABSTRACT: In todays sustainable architecture challenged by a demanding economy and

prioritization of achieving low carbon emissions; brings forth the upswing in biotecture such as
the development of Earthships. These sustainable buildings features passive solar design traits
and constructed with low environmental impact materials, targeted to simulate a net-zero energy
building concept. This paper presents a review of recent development of sustainable
construction for multi-purpose accommodation and private dwellings. Different framework
practices have been implemented to permit these construction, especially; in rural areas albeit
the lack of policy and financial sustenance in supporting Earthship projects and earth sheltered
homes. Recognizing recent trends of several communities and organizations demonstrating
initiatives in building sustainable accommodations through the Earthship concept, presents a
new sustainable planning framework for green dwellings through the lens of grassroot
innovations. Based on case studies of developed Earthship projects and concurrent
constructions worldwide, the presented methodology for biotecture led construction in this
paper is structured based on the collective research review of the issues and expectations raised
by the agent roles in executing those projects. Addressing the different perspectives and
sustainable building through earth sheltered architecture approaches, highlight renewed
sustainable building frameworks involving eco-socialism roles in driving green capacity
building towards the development of low impact dwellings.
1 INTRODUCTION
The multiple benefits of earth-sheltered construction integrated with independent water
treatments, natural food production, and power generation had sparked strong interest amongst
society and organizations to participate in education programs; as well as working in
community-based sustainable housing ethos with permaculture practices. Peoples motivation
for building their own Earthship is not at all about environmental sustainability, but for other
reasons, like long-term financial security (Hewitt and Telfer, 2007).
Besides targeted goals in achieving energy efficiency performance in buildings during energy
consumption, the European Union Energy in Buildings Performance Directive simultaneously
emphasizes construction, renovation and retrofitting buildings to be compliant within the
sustainable framework which accents cost optimality (Voss, Mussal, and Lichtme, 2011).
Despite the advancement in modern housing construction and cutting edge green building
materials, the principle of optimal cost or affordability have an equivocal relationship in
defining sustainable buildings. Earthships, in particular for this matter, is an epitome form of
earth sheltered dwelling design which translates sustainable impacts. Improved policy measures
such as the Code for Sustainable Homes and recent developments in Climate Change Act
(Hewitt and Telfer, 2007) challenged the functionality of Earthships as well as the long term

336
value it frames for the transitioning crowd who quests earth sheltered dwelling as a sustainable
pathway of living. In the reams of various perspectives underpinning the practicality of earthsheltered concepts as a sustainable construction option and dwelling mode, this paper assesses
the principles stemming from the evolution of earth sheltered construction in the next section.
The third section of the paper provides an overview of exemplary worldwide Earthship projects
implemented with a review on the building performance in the multi-facets of sustainability
impacts. The fourth section highlights a proposed framework which regards the planning,
management, execution and feasibility of earth sheltered building. Finally, the last section of the
paper encloses a final remark.
2 EARTH-SHELTERED CONSTRUCTIONS EVOLUTION & PRINCIPLES
Through the course of time, the heritage of underground of dwellings (eg. Cappadocia, Loess
Plateau, Santorini Homes and etc.) is still predominantly existing today as notable architecture
works (Benardos, Athanasiadis, and Katsoulakos, 2014). Modern earth-sheltered architecture
advanced later to incorporate sustainability aspects which accolades energy efficiency practices
through passive solar-cooling or heating, permaculture, or integrated with renewable energy
systems (Fig. 1). The analysis shown in Table 1 notably highlighted aspects of sustainability
which concerns efficient use of natural resources and preventing biodiversity degradation as
main drivers of low impact buildings. The evolution of earth-sheltered dwellings and
assessment of the objectives it embodies for occupants focus the establishment of sense of
security and safety retreat for habitation.
Table 1. Earth-sheltered Evolution and its Drivers (Role).

Evolution
Period
(Details and Reference)
Cave Dwellings : underground space in natural
form or mined, for protection from predators
<1980s
and adjusting to climatic conditions (Benardos,
Athanasiadis, and Katoulakos, 2014)
Earthship Biotecture : autonomous homes with
innovative off-grid systems from natural or
>1990s
waste materials (Frenzy, Soebarto, and
Williamson, 2013)
Low Impact Development (LID): efficient and
adaptable homes built from reclaimed materials;
>2000s
exploring ecological, education, cultural, and
comfort purposes. (Pickerill and Maxey, 2009)
Sustainability
Role
Security
Shelter
NO
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
Terman (1985) states the paradox of modern age is the separation that occurred between
ourselves and the natural processes on which mankind survival depends. This perspective
challenges the understanding of complex law of ecosystems and biodiversity disciplines, which
further argues the importance of cultivating green innovation for ecological preservation.

337
Figure 1. Facets of Earthships, Passive Solar Buildings and Net-Zero Energy Buildings.
Concerning similar objectives to achieve sustainability and improve measures in energy

consumption, the different parameters which conceptualize Earthships, Passive Solar Buildings
and Net-Zero Energy Buildings are illustrated in Figure 1. In which, all three constructions
share similar attributes and basic building envelopes. Green buildings which focuses minimizing
heat loss to reduce energy consumption differs from the concept of net-zero energy buildings
which primary purpose focuses in the electric fittings and facility that effects the energy
consumption. The modest construction of Earthships on the other hand, encapsulates most
dimensions. The appraisal of intricate details and resilient design framework based on the
building materials used, as well as the labor intensive construction skills is lacking from current
research.
3 CASE STUDIES
3.1 Sustainable school in Uruguay: una escuela sustentable
Figure 2. (UNESCO, 2016).
338

In June 2016, a community in Uruguay (Tagma) announced the first sustainable public school in
Latin America, which aimed at fostering community participation and capacity building through
sustainable education was. Built based on the primary Earthship model framework by Earthship
Biotecture, the building is self-sufficient and 100% constructed using natural resources as well
as recycled materials (eg. glass bottles, tires, and cans). This expands the application of
Earthship construction methods beyond the scope of accommodation. Earthship building
framework and the benefits it provides extends to different use and purposes.
3.2 Offgrid Earthship in East Sussex, United Kingdom: the Brighton Earthship
Figure 3. Brighton Earthship (CSBE, 2004).
Used car tyres filled with earth and ram, lined with cardboard and pounded, forms the building
block of thermal mass in the walls of the Earthship. Using over 20 tonnes of reclaimed wood as
well as 2 tonnes of cans and bottles. The architecture aspects incorporate both the hut and nest
modules. Based on the study conducted by CSBE (2004), different thermal temperature
performance had shown to occur when comparing two spaces that nestled the aesthetics of the
built modules. Efficiency in thermal control for comfort is dependent in the effects of skylight
ventilation. Roof designs, and the associated angle of glass windows which effects internal
temperature gains (as shown in Fig. 2), represents the flexibility of minimizing solar radiation
during summer periods through a glazed faade. Brighton Earthship construction materials are
low impact, consisting from reclaimed wood and stone to cans and bottles. Over 20 tonnes of
reclaimed and recycled building materials were used in the project, including 1,000 used car
tyres, 2 tonnes of cans and bottles.
Figure 4. Schematic of Solar Gain in Earth-sheltering (CSBE, 2004).

339
Figure 5. Construction Plan integrating Hut Module and Nest Module (CSBE, 2004).
The framework plan for Earthships constructions in Figure 5 depicts the functional attributes
of the water facility which permits rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling. An innovative
architecture aspect features the conservatory space which buffers the separate sections
between the hut and nest area of the building. A conservatory area provided space to store and
optimize the measured thermal performance data of the building envelope. 1,500 cardboard
boxes, 90 reclaimed granite blocks, 4 tonnes of granite and marble offcuts, in addition to 5
reclaimed doors are the main building composites in separating the sections of the home.
Figure 6. Flow diagram of Earthship Greywater Recycling System.
Brighton Earthship building is integrated with greywater recycling system, featuring one of
the main features in Earthships (Fig. 6). Filtered water for various uses is sourced naturally from
rain harvest. A grease and particle filter fitted in a rubber lined botanical treatment cell provides
an adaptive eco-system in treating the wastewater flows. The system cycle operation encourages
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reusing water as many times as it can and also to conserve water to facilitate the following
necessary household consumption. In this cases, the average annual rainfall occurring at
Stanmer Park where Brighton Earthship is located, provided fifty thousand litres (50m3) of
water per year, more than sufficient to account for the average individual water consumption at
150 litres in a day.
3.3 Oldhams modern single family home using an Earthship approach: Dark Lane, Delph
Figure 7. Construction plan of a Residential Unit (adapted from (Aka Community ,2012)).
Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council granted the development of an Earth-sheltered

conceptual ecological home (Fig. 7) on a privately owned green belt land. Hidden in the
Pennine hills, the project was aimed to cultivate the home urban planning for affordability and
sustainability. Differing from the contemporary Earthship building approaches, the property was
constructed to suit the client (family) profile and living design preferences. Through spatial
planning, the semi-elliptical shaped dwelling provided ample space and facilities room for
entertainment, functional kitchen, and multiple bedrooms. Despite the building length and vast
surrounding space of the property structure, the enclosed construction was well fitted within the

341
natural surrounding hilly landscapes, seamlessly providing a green visual impact surrounding
the vicinity of the neighborhood.
Refining the basis of Earthships design concepts and extending the focus in self-sufficiency
as well as sustainability, the uptake of innovative earth-sheltered architectural aspects provide a
different solution in addressing the practicable route or most preferred form dwellings that is
common in society. Besides reclaim materials or waste resources as a main building material
resource, Oldhams proposed property utilizes a combination of recycled and natural
(biodegradable) materials such as drystone, straw bales and re-using timber for framing. Besides
a passive solar system, a family permaculture system is integrated to promote farming of
vegetable crops and free-range live stocks. Aquaculture and measures to build series of ponds to
augment the bio-diversity life and facilitate the use of greywater recycling further enhances the
property ecological matters.
4 RECOMMENDATIONS PROPOSED FRAMEWORK
Figure 8. Modern Earthsheltered Building Framework.
The accolades of building an earth-sheltered dwelling such as Earthship (Fig. 8) can be a

reference tool for future project managers or developers. The four main focus area (planning,
sustainable building parameters, integrated resource management, and auditing) highlights the
required taskforce to consider and execute in building a modern earth-sheltered property. It also
highlights the architecture concerns and project prospective for investors, and building
practitioners. The proposed framework also may serve as a guide for architects and facility
managers in ensuring the property operation is at efficient levels. Achieving energy efficiency
performance is a justifiable concern, due to the cost optimality whereby different household
income and client financial capacity can provide. An in-depth consideration of choosing the
suitable building materials is vital, as a building thermal efficiency performance is dependent on
the components of the materials which frames the overall building envelope. Energy
consumption savings at end-use of the ecological design dwellings can be attain through
incorporation of thermal mass walls which reduces heat gain in summer, or cultivate heat gain
during winter. In most cases, active solar and/or passive solar heating in earth sheltered
dwellings adapts to the nature elements in terms of design, planning, and integrating other
applications which improves the overall building efficiency during the total occupancy period.
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5 FINAL REMARK
Case studies highlighted the vagueness to integrate approaches managing the eco-socialism
dimension in enhancing the socio-economic impacts through the Earthship development
framework. This provided further analysis for future researches to be extended in a holistic
sustainable building planning framework. Societal roles, here referred as eco-socialism as the
change agent in overcoming the challenges of sustainable housing options proposed future
recommendations that must be contextualized to valorize and integrate the Earthship concept as
part of the common building design pathway. The transition towards modern earth-sheltered
dwellings enables a better examination of urban architecture and exploring unknown building
patchwork or construction ideas. Earthship, forms the basis of sustainability, self-sufficiency,
and pre-figurative biosphere values which serve to be the main drivers in replicating the
building model. This approach although is feasibly possible and parallel to the sustainable
targets, it calls for innovative solutions which prevent losing sight in the radical act,
pragmatism, and long-term life cycle of the property which eventually translates multiplier
positive impacts.
REFERENCES
Aka
Community.
2012.
The
Invinsible
Home.
Available
at:
<http://akacommunity.org/documents/The_Invisible_Home/The_Invisible_Home_Design_and_Access
.pdf > [Accessed on 5 September 2016].
Al-Temeemi, A. & Harris, D., 2004. A guideline for assessing the suitability of earth-sheltered masshousing in hot-arid climates. Energy and Buildings, 36(3), pp.251-260.
Benardos, A., Athanasiadis, I. & Katsoulakos, N. 2014. Modern earth sheltered constructions: A
paradigm of green engineering. Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 41, pp.46-52.
Centre for Sustainability of the Built Environment (CSBE). 2004. The Brighton Earthship: Evaluating
Thermal Performance. Durabuild, pp. 6-47.
Frenzy, M., Soebarto, V. & Williamson, T. 2013. Thermal Comfort of Global Model Earth ship in
Various European Climates. 13th Conference of International Building Performance Simulation
Association, Chambery, France, pp.1625-1632.
Hewitt, M. & Telfer, K. 2007. Earthships in Europe. 2nd ed. Brittany: IHS BRE Press, pp.11-115.
Pickerill, J. &Maxey, L., 2009. Low impact development. University of Leicester, Dept. of Geography,
Leicester, pp.2-68.
Terman, M.Bailey, V. 1985. Earth sheltered housing. Van Nostrand Reinhold Company Inc., New York,
pp.6-150.
UNESCO. 2016. Teaching sustainability in a self-sufficient space. En.unesco.org. Available at:
<http://en.unesco.org/greencitizens/stories/teaching-sustainability-self-suffcient-space> [Accessed on
14 September 2016].
Voss, K., Musall, E. & Lichtme, M. 2011. From Low-Energy to Net Zero-Energy Buildings: Status and
Perspectives. Journal of Green Building, 6(1), pp.46-57.
Chapter 5
Inclusivity and equity in housing

Chapter 5: Inclusivity and equity in housing
345
Sustainability in residential solutions

B. Andersson
Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
S. Gromark
ABSTRACT: Currently there is a mounting demand on housing providers to contribute to

sustainability in residential situations and to deliver practical demonstrations and experiments in
this field. One such example in Sweden has been initiated as a research based project
development process by a cooperative housing association in Gteborg, Riksbyggen EF, and a
major actor on national level. During a period of three years a transdisciplinary collaboration,
involving Chalmers Architecture and the University of Gothenburg a building project
comprising more than a hundred flats has been defined now to be built within a year at
Chalmers campus site. The project, the so called Positive Footprint Housing claims a future
realization of a number of radical implementation in a design strategy of significantly raised
residential resilience of Brf Viva, as the name given. Examples range from a wide variety of
components like sharing of electric car pool, limited parking lots, extensive application of roof
pv-cells and electric production to the introduction of low cost starter flats for young residents
and structural flexibility of apartments with extensive common facilities like a winter garden for
parties, meetings and cultivation. Efforts to create social sustainable solutions have been both
procedural and substantive in character. This paper will take a critical stance towards this
endeavor building upon related conducted research with insights and observations of authors
from participation within this process of research informed residential projective realization.
The focus has been set on unfolded and identified crucial social aspects of sustainability and
related architectural residential solutions of alterability and flexibility. Our study shows the
inherent vagueness of general sustainability formulations, especially concerning social
sustainability, and the importance of doing research directly in the conflicting social fabric
where sustainability goals are negotiated and given a concrete significance.
1 INTRODUCTION
Sustainability has today become a catchword in the discourse on housing and many actors in the
field try to develop their interpretations and applications of the concept. The municipalities in
Sweden have the benefit of a monopoly on planning and often connect land allocation for housing construction with requirements of sustainability plans. This forces construction companies
and other entrepreneurs to investigate how their projects can be developed in order to meet these
new demands.
One example of this has been initiated as a research based project development process by the
cooperative housing association Riksbyggen. Riksbyggen was founded in 1940 and is owned by
construction unions, housing associations and by other national cooperative associations.
Riksbyggen both builds and manages properties and is a major actor on national level. The
organization has an outspoken ambition to be a developer of the society (riksbyggen.se) and
sustainability is seen as an important part of its cooperative basis and ideology.

346
In 2011 Riksbyggen set off a collaboration involving among others Chalmers Architecture
and the University of Gothenburg, called Positive Footprint Housing (from now on PFH). The
aim of the project is to create a transdisciplinary knowledge hub in order to increase the
possibilities of ecological, social and economic sustainability (riksbyggen.se). One important
part of the PFH is that it contains demonstration projects, that is actual housing projects in
relation to which ideas and knowledge concerning sustainability can be tested and developed.
This far, the planning of the residential quarter Viva has been a main employment for the PFH.
In this paper we will describe and reflect upon experiences from taking part in the PFH and
the planning process of Viva, with focus on social sustainability aspects. The authors represent
Chalmers Architecture and Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, and we have
been active researchers in the project from its beginning.
2 POSITIVE FOOTPRINT HOUSING AND VIVA
The construction of the PFH and the relation to the Viva housing project is illustrated in Figure
1. Members of the project carry out their missions either individually or in small groups.
However, important for the work process is that most activities and results are reported and
discussed in a work group. This work group was formed in 2012 and have had meetings every
month. The group has also organized seminars and special sessions open to the public or to
invited guests.
Most members of the work group have been the same persons since the start-up. This has
been important for the continuity of the process. Also, the mode of working has emphasized that
every group member should take part in all discussions, no matter the subject. One goal of the
project is to investigate the connections between different aspects of sustainability and therefore
it has been understood as important that the discussions have a cross-sectorial approach. It
should be underlined that the work group has no authority to take decisions concerning the
project. The PFH is lead by Riksbyggen and the organization also provides the majority of the
project resources. We will come back to these matters later in the paper when discussing the
sustainability of the internal processes of the project.
POSITIVE FOOTPRINT
HOUSING
Work group:
x Riksbyggen
x Chalmers
x University of Gbg
x Architects
x City of Gothenburg
x Technical research
Institute of Sweden
x Johanneberg Science
park
VIVA
Processes of application and

knowledge
A
residential
quarter
comprising 132 flats. Organized
as a local housing association
where the members/tenants own
a share of the housing
cooperative. To be built in the
residential area Guldheden,
situated in the south central parts
of Gothenburg close to the
campus area of Chalmers.
DECISION PROCESSES: RIKSBYGGEN CITY OF GOTHENBURG LEGAL AUTHORITIES

Figure 1. Organisation of Positive Footprint Housing.
Positive Footprint Housing is intended to be a lasting project dealing with knowledge

production in the field of sustainable housing. As mentioned, the idea is that the project shall get
parts of its driving force through the application of knowledge on an existing, a real, housing

347
project. It has this far been the Viva project that has had the function of being a demonstration
project.
The Viva project is a small building project, comprising 132 flats, with Riksbyggen as main
contractor. The location of the project is an area just between the south part of Guldheden, a
residential area built in the 1940-50's, and the campus of Chalmers University of Technology.
This position reflects one of the central aims of the project: to create linkage and
communication between the two areas. Viva is projected to have an experimental design and the
intention is to meet high standards when it comes to sustainable planning and housing.
There is a long tradition of engagement in residential issues among people living in
Guldheden. Several local housing co-operatives are active in the area. Also, two local activist
organizations have been working with housing and environmental issues for many years. Their
goal is to preserve what they consider to be essential qualities in the district; especially the
wellordered balance between built areas and green zones. For this reason, these organizations,
called Maintain Guldheden and Save the Bog, oppose any densification in the area.
The planning process of Viva began formally in January 2012 with a start meeting at the City
Planning Office in Gothenburg. In December 2014 the Land and Environmental court approved
the plan and after that Riksbyggen has got building permits for the project. During the planning
process the City Planning Office took part in the work group of PFH. The office was
responsible for administering the ordinary plan procedure and tried to coordinate and adjust this
process in relation to the work in PFH.
3 SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
Social sustainability is a concept that has been on the agenda for several years. The discussion
started with reference to the Brundtland Report in 1987 (World Commission On Environment
and Development), though the concept was never mentioned in this text. It was in the following
adaption of the report that the well-known three dimensions of sustainability: social, ecological
and economic, was delineated. In 2008 the Marmot report, Closing the gap in a generation
(World Health Organization), fuelled the discussion and offered a partly a new entry by using a
health perspective. Also the climate crisis contributes to keeping the issue of sustainable
development alive.
Of the three dimensions outlined the social is often considered the most difficult to define and
give substance; it becomes the missing pillar (Bostrm, 2012). Efforts made to create
definitions have often resulted in very generic and common sense solutions. Stephen McKenzie
(2004) has made an ambitious try and ends up with the following suggestion: Social
sustainability occurs when the formal and informal processes, systems, structures and
relationships actively support the capacity of current and future generations to create healthy
and liveable communities. Socially sustainable communities are equitable, diverse, connected
and democratic and provide a good quality of life (McKenzie, 2004:18).
Definitely, McKenzie manages to encapsulate a vision of a fair and inclusive society, but,
nonetheless, the definition does not give much practical guidance regarding how this may be
achieved. For one thing, there is the question of which goals that social sustainability shall aim
at: Social sustainability is a wide-ranging multi-dimensional concept, with the underlying
question what are the social goals of sustainable development?, which is open to a multitude
of answers, with no consensus on how these goals are defined (Dempsey et al, 2011:290). And
further, as Lehtonen points out: Different geographical and temporal scales as well as
situational contexts require their own frameworks, which do not necessarily provide a coherent
picture, but a mosaic of partly contradicting views of reality (Lehtonen, 2004:211).
As an alternative to general definitions, keywords are often used to signify the meaning of the
concept. Murphy (2012) has made an extensive review of documents and literature concerning
social sustainability and claims that the general discussion can be summarized in four
dimensions: equity, social cohesion, awareness for sustainability and participation (2012:15).
Others have followed the same track; Weingaertner & Moberg, for example, provide a list of
seventeen social sustainability aspects in the urban context (2014:125).
The keywords displayed in these various lists tend to overlap one another. This signals at
least some basic agreement concerning which direction to travel and what challenges that have
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to be met in order to move towards social sustainability. One important aspect is that the lists of
keywords, as well as McKenzies definition, contain concepts covering both substantial and
process-oriented dimensions of social sustainability. Bostrm recognizes this and separates
between substantive aspects, dealing with the what-question, and procedural aspects, related to
how these could be achieved and maintained (2012:6). This division has often been referred to
in the PFH-project and we will use it for the presentation below.
To be useful in a more concrete context the concept of social sustainability must be further
clarified and operationalized. At another level we can see this being done through the
development of a range of models and standards. Well known are BREEAM (breeam.com) and
the standards of the Global reporting Initiative (globalreporting.org). In Gothenburg, the City
administration has developed what they refer to as a knowledge matrix (socialhallbarhet.se). In
this social sustainability is analysed through six dimensions, for example a functioning
everyday life and identity and experience. These can then be read off against a spatial scale
moving in five steps from the single building to the whole region. The matrix has an interactive
design, so each position is clickable and general information and local examples are provided
for all possible outcomes. This asset is much used by the City Planning Office and has also been
tried in relation to the Viva project.
Finally, it should be noted that the validity of the three-pillar model has been put into
question (Kates et al, 2005:19) and that many writers underline the importance of connecting
the different aspects. Murphy stress that environmental goals need social arrangements to be
fulfilled and suggests a social/environmental framework (2012:19). Peterson, in a recent
overview, has pointed at the integrated approach to sustainability that local studies often result
in and concludes that forcing complex and unprecedented socio-environmental problems
into three, four, or seven distinct containers represents an outdated, unduly modernist way of
problem-solving that tends to approach environmental, economic, and social issues as
independent, and consequently, their solutions as separate (2016:3).
We will now move further in our contribution to existing local studies and present some
results and aspects of the PFH and Viva projects this far.
Figure 2. Digital presentation with the planned Viva residential project encircled. Chalmers campus area
to the right and existing housing to the left.

349
4 VIVA - SUBSTANTIAL GOALS

This deals with conditions for a sustainable living in the residential area. There is an emphasis
on ecological goals, but it is very clear that there is a strong connection between the ecological
and the social sustainability.
One central part of the effort to make Viva stand out as an example of environmental
awareness is that the residents are expected, and encouraged, not to have private cars. In
principle, this is difficult to forbid, but this intention is clearly communicated when the
apartments are offered for sale. It is also underlined by the fact that there are no private parking
spaces on the premises. The city has a standard regulating the number of private parking spaces
that must be offered when a new housing area is built, but Viva has been exempted from this. It
should be mentioned that the availability of public transportation is very good in the area.
There are alternative transportation arrangements for the residents of Viva. All members of
the housing cooperative have access to a vehicle pool, which includes electric cars, bicycles and
cargo bicycles. There is also a lot of space allocated for the storage of bicycles and there is a socalled bicycle hub, which is a place for repairs equipped with tools. This hub can also be used
for other repairs, such as furniture.
Some spaces are designed to combine utility functions with the possibility of social contacts.
One such place is called the recycle-room where people can leave and exchange belongings,
for example clothes and toys that they no longer need. Another example is the postal and delivery room where the residents fetches mail and where they also have the possibility to get goods
and groceries delivered. These can be left in locked cabinets, which means that there is no need
to be present at the time of delivery.
Several areas and rooms are designed for social gathering and meetings. There is a
greenhouse that also offers opportunities to cultivate plants and an orangery, which is partially
kept tempered during the winter season. This can be booked for private events. One common
space has been labelled 'the life room'. It is equipped with large-screen TV, has a small kitchen
and can be booked for private purposes.
Viva is designed to be a plus-energy housing complex, it will produce more energy than it
consumes. Solar panels, insulation and systems of heat distribution are important to accomplish
this, together with the building materials used. New ways of producing and transporting the
concrete have been developed, which will lead to significantly reduced environmental impact
during the construction process, compared to normal conditions. There is also a special storage
system for electricity, where used car batteries are re-circled. The intention is that Viva during
certain periods of the year will be able to deliver energy to surrounding buildings.
Viva is organized as a local housing cooperative, which means that the apartments are
acquired by paying a share and then a monthly rental. All residents form a local housing
association and exert through this influence over the management of the buildings and the
neighbourhood. The local associations are often connected to a larger cooperative organization,
like Riksbyggen, which offers services and property management. The residents do not really
own their apartment, but rather a proportion of the housing cooperative corresponding to the
apartment. Despite this, the apartment, or actually the share, can be sold on the housing market.
The development in major Swedish cities has been that the cost of such shares has increased
sharply for a number of years, which has contributed to the socio-economical segregation of
residential areas. Viva is no exception in this regard; future residents will largely recruited from
groups with good economic conditions.
To somewhat counteract this, Riksbyggen is trying new model for some apartments of Viva.
Six one-bedroom apartments will be sold with certain restrictions. For these, the price of the
share is set considerably lower than the market price. At the same time, the monthly rent is
higher. These six apartments will not be available on the market, but offered to young people
between 18 and 30 years. The city administration of Gothenburg will be involved in the
selection of residents. Whoever moves in can stay also after the person concerned has turned 30
years, but the apartment will again be offered at the special conditions once someone is moving
away. The price of the share will then be calculated on index-basis, so there will not be any
possibility to make profit for the shareholder. The residents of these apartments will be full
members of the housing association and have the right to use all common areas and assets in the
neighbourhood. This construction concerns only a small part of the total number of apartments,
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but represents an attempt to contribute to more socially equalizing solutions on the housing
market.
5 VIVA - PROCEDURAL GOALS
The planning process of a new housing project is in many ways quite regulated and routinized.
As mentioned all planning of new residential areas is controlled by the municipalities and
directed by the City Planning Office; most often carried out in dialogue with contractors and
developers. Information is displayed in public and meetings are held in order to give different
stakeholders a possibility to follow in the planning process, contribute with information and
ideas and ensure their interests.
During the planning of Viva, the City Planning Office took part in some of the meetings in
the work group of PFH. Riksbyggen also put an effort into organizing a number of extra
opportunities for individuals, groups and organizations to participate in the planning process.
Partly, this was quantitative in character; there were more meetings of the same kind as the ones
organized by the Planning Office. However, there are also examples of more innovative
communication strategies.
For one thing two extra meetings was organized with residents in the neighbourhood. There
are a couple of hundred people living in the close vicinity, so there was a possibility for a quite
large audience. However, these meetings was attended by 15-20 people, most of them coming
from another housing association in the neighbourhood.
The existing housing area that will be most affected by the Viva buildings is a neighbourhood
with rental apartments. Since just one person from this area attended the open meetings some
special meetings were arranged in this neighbourhood. The meetings were held in a locale on
the premises, organized together with the local caretaker and advertised to each household. Still
just two residents turned up.
There was also a special meeting organized with the two interest groups in the area that try to
maintain what they feel are essential qualities of Guldheden. These groups are generally very
interested in green issues and local housing policy matters. Due to that, the members of the
interest groups in many ways seconded the ambitions of PFH and the Viva project. They
support housing policies and projects that make a sustainable living possible. During the
meeting some representatives said that they wanted the Viva project to be built, however, in
another area. They considered that Viva is misplaced and that the wooden hillside that Viva will
make use of contains qualities that will be lost forever. On this basis the groups opposed the
intensions and one member appealed against the building plan.
Other stakeholders, in relation to whom meetings have been arranged, include politicians
from the District Council and officials from the District Administration.
Central thematic meetings have been organized focussing issues like car-pools, participation
and common space in the neighbourhood. These meetings have often been arranged as
combinations of expert presentations and workshops. The invited have sometimes been
representatives of organizations working with for example housing or green issues. Some
participants have just been people interested in the project. There has been a Facebook site
organized for the Viva project and some people have attended meetings due to information they
have gathered there.
The public has been addressed through media coverage, including newspaper articles, films
and commercials, and through conferences and open meetings.
6 DISCUSSION
PFH/Viva project has been running since 2012. The construction of Viva will begin during the
autumn 2016 and the occupation of the new residential quarter is planned to come about in
2018. What can be evaluated and discussed from a sustainability point of view this far is the
planning process of Viva and the structure and process of PFH.
Obviously, PFH/Viva is very much a top down project. It was initiated by Riksbyggen and
mirrors an interest from the corporation to investigate how it can develop sustainable strategies

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and practices, both when it comes to the development of new housing projects and regarding the
maintenance and service of existing ones. One basis for this interest is Riksbyggens background
as part of the cooperative movement and its ambition to function as a developer of society.
The ideology of the cooperation movement fits very well into the ideas of sustainability.
Actually, one could argue that the cooperative movement was sustainable long before the
concept had come into use.
However, there is also another fundamental reason for Riksbyggen to engage in sustainability
issues and this has to do with the trademark of Riksbyggen and its convertibility into values and
positions on the housing market. It is important for a housing actor like Riksbyggen to have its
name and reputation connected to symbols that convey an image of being socially committed
and in front of the development. Initiating research-based knowledge production like the
organization of PFH and carrying through an experimentally designed housing project like Viva
are also parts of this picture. It helps to sell the product in general.
Quite clearly, the orientation towards the cooperative ideology and the endeavour to be a
successful market actor is not always easy to combine. During presentations and discussions we
have had with the Riksbyggen corporation it has become obvious that different segments of the
organization emphasizes diverse values and strategies. To some, the PFH/Viva engagement
represents a long-wanted effort to enliven the cooperative roots of Riksbyggen. Others have
been more sceptical: How can we sell this?.
This says something about the three pillars of sustainability. In many ways, the Viva project
demonstrates the closeness between the environmental and the social pillars, just as Murphy
(2012) underlines. However, it seems much more complicated to integrate the economical
aspects. In the beginning of the Viva procedure, economy played a very marginal role in the
discussions. It was as if this would have restricted the creative process. But the longer the
process progressed, economy was introduced and the people representing this perspective
critically engaged in what was really possible to implement. This led for example to a slimming
down of space for common purposes in the suggested housing plan and to less experiments with
building materials in the construction. So the question is if the three pillars really support the
same building?
The top down character of PFH/Viva limits the possibilities for stakeholder participation.
Given all the invested interests from Riksbyggen, the aim that the buildings should have an
experimental and conspicuous design plus the ambition to ground the housing project on
research documentation and knowledge, there is really not much left to influence. The efforts
made during the planning process with extra meetings and targeted sessions were serious, but
did not result in an over-whelming response. As in many similar planning procedures, most of
the partakers represented well-to-do stratums of society who had their own, sometimes
projectnegative, agenda (Lindholm et al (eds), 2015). There were steps taken in order to engage
other groups, but with poor results. It is possible that a more outreach-based and dialogic
method could have produced more contact and better communication. However, there were no
resources or preparedness for that kind of strategy inside the PFH organization and it would
probably have been difficult to combine with the other activities in the project.
The discussion about participation as an important part of social sustainability has its focus
on external relations; that is on how to create relationships to actors outside the core group that
organizes the planning process. The experience from the PFH/Viva project is that also internal
relations are vital. That is about how the project is kept together and how different partners and
participators can express their views and stimulate on another in the process. This is especially
valid for a project that contains both independent research activities as well as a concrete effort.
As mentioned earlier the work group of PFH has played an important role for how the project
has developed. A core group of participants, among them the authors of this paper, have taken
part in the work group for a long time and engaged in mutual discussions across professional
background and expertise. This has created continuity in the project and formed a basis for
collective understanding.
From a research point of view this is not an uncomplicated situation. On the one hand it has
given us a position from which we have been able to follow internal processes and discussions
that would have been concealed to an outside observer. It has also facilitated one of our chief
missions as researchers in the PFH: to formulate and disseminate knowledge and existing
research/discussion concerning sustainability, foremost social sustainability, and through this
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affect the development of the project. On the other hand one must be aware that the proximity in
the work group creates bonds. Over time a collective belonging is formed and it is difficult for
the individual member to see through how this impinge on his/her judgment and actions. It is of
course even more obscure for an external onlooker.
We have tried to counteract the latter problem through always emphasizing our role as
researchers, never representing any other organizational body than our academic institutions.
We have never taken part in any decisions and never positioned ourselves as responsible for any
part of PFH/Viva. On the basis of existing knowledge we have given advice and come up with
ideas, but we have continuously made clear that a central part of our mission is to undertake a
critical evaluation of the whole project. This includes of course actions and results where we
have taken part at an earlier stage. Especially in the beginning we had to make our position very
clear in relation to Riksbyggen, but gradually we have achieved agreement.
This process has been facilitated by the possibility to link it to qualitative attributes of social
sustainability. When discussing how to accomplish and apply social sustainability we have
underlined that this is very much about the approach and attitude that characterizes the work.
There must be a dialogic way of approaching people that includes openness, listening to other
points of view and critique. It is also about transparency: to give everybody access to all relevant existing information. Further, it is important that there is a possibility for change. It is not
enough that meetings are arranged and that people can have their say. There must be options to
modify plans in relation to suggestions expressed. Finally, this approach must be constantly
scrutinized and assessed.
7 CONCLUSION
When concluding the experiences from the PFH/Viva effort this far, it is easy to agree with
Bostrm: The inherent vagueness and interpretative flexibility of both the sustainability
concept in general and social sustainability in particular cannot be fully overcome. () The
consequence is that (social) sustainable development needs to be framed, filled with content,
and interpreted from time to time and place to place (2012:11).
This is precisely what we can see has happened in this Gothenburg example and our
understanding can be summarized through two different characteristics.
The first is that social sustainability is used to serve diverse interests and solve a lot of different problems; it becomes what we would like to call a multi-tool concept. Social sustainability
is used as a:
x trend tool: function as key expression to position the project as an interesting experiment
on the housing market.
x substantial tool: serve as a basis for the planning of a social sustainable everyday life in
the intended housing block.
x process tool: function as a control instrument to make the planning process open and
possible to participate in for various stakeholders.
x brand tool: function as a trademark for the entrepreneur, which is compatible with the
image the company wants to be connected with.
x inner organizational tool: organize the internal processes of the project organization.
x tool for opposition: articulate resistance to the project from critical activist groups
among the inhabitants of the area.
x research tool: work as a concept for conducting research.
The second characteristic is that social sustainability is very much a product of the context in
which it is used:

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Figure 3.
In the discussion there is a lot of emphasis on definitions and keywords. However, these are
not deciding factors when the concept is put into use. Central actors, problems and temporal
circumstances all interact to shape a certain application of social sustainability. This points at
the importance of a contextual understanding of social sustainability.
REFERENCES
Bostrm, M. 2012. A missing pillar? Challenges in theorizing and practicing social sustainability:
introduction to the special issue. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, Vol. 8/1, 3-14.
Dempsey, N., Bramley, B., Power, S. & Brown, C. 2011. The Social Dimension of Sustainable
Development: Defining Urban Social Sustainability. Sustainable Development, 19, 289-300.
Kates, R. W., Parris, Th. M. & Leiserowitz, A. A. 2005. What is Sustainable Development? Environment,
Vol 47, no 3, 9-21.
Lehtonen, M. 2004. The environmentalsocial interface of sustainable development: capabilities, social
capital, institutions. Ecological Economics, 2004/49, 199-214.
Lindholm T., Oliveira e Costa, S. & Wiberg S. (eds.). 2015. Medborgardialog demokrati eller
dekoration?. Stockholm: Arkus, no 72.
McKenzie, S. 2004. Social Sustainability: towards some definitions. Hawke Research Institute Working
Paper Series No 27, University of South Australia, Magill, South Australia.
Murphy, K. 2012. The social pillar of sustainable development: a literature review and framework for
policy analysis. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, Vol. 8/1, 15-29.
Peterson, N. 2016. Introduction to the Special Issue on Social Sustainability: Integration, Context, and
Governance. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, 12(1). Published online May 31, 2016.
Weingaertner, C. & Moberg, . 2014. Exploring Social Sustainability: Learning from Perspectives on
Urban Development and Companies and Products. Sustainable Development, 22, 122133.
World Commission On Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future. UN Documents.
World Health Organization. 2008. Closing the gap in a generation. Geneva: World Health Organization.
[website] breeam.com. BREEAM.
[website] globalreporting.org. Global Reporting Initiative.
[website] Riksbyggen.se: Positive Footprint Housing.
[website] socialhallbarhet.se: Social resursfrvaltning, Gteborgs stad.
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Low-tech housing built by universities: two case studies

D. Aureli
Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy
ABSTRACT: In the track of what Samuel Mockbee was doing in Hale County, Alabama, with
his Rural Studio since the early 90, Designbuildbluff was founded in 2000 by the University of
Utah. Led by Hank Louis, Designbuildbluff introduces students to the culture and history of
utahs desert southeast, where they design, and ultimately build homes for the Navajo families.
In 2004 the The University of Art and Design Linz, founded BASEhabitat - architecture for
development. Under the leadership of prof. Roland Gnaiger, BASEhabitat has made a number
of buildings around the world, in developing countries, with the help of the students, but above
all, through direct involvement of the inhabitants. While having many similarities, these two
educational experiences, represent two different ways of approaching the construction of a
house in the poor areas of the planet. Two different ideas of low-tech building.
1 INTRODUCTION
After graduating from high school in the late 1990s Anna Heringer worked as a volunteer in
Radapur in Bangladesh for eight months. Her enthusiasm for the experience was such that she
decided to return every year. Her thesis project for her 2004 degree from the University of Art
and Design in Linz, Austria was a school designed for a poor community in Bangladesh.
Under the supervision of Professor Roland Gnaiger, chair of the Department of Architecture,
Anna Heringer designed a school to be built by hand using traditional materials like earth and
bamboo, materials that had been almost completely abandoned by the countrys construction
industry in favour of more expensive and less sustainable materials. The goals of the project
were to make the population of Rudrapur, a poor rural region, more independent, make the best
use of local resources, and create an awareness of the available possibilities to improve living
conditions.
When Paul Tigga, director of Dipshikha, a local NGO dedicated to education and
development in Bangladeshs poorest rural areas, offered to build the school, Anna Heringer
and Roland Gnawer jumped at the chance. Between the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005
they founded BASEhabitat, a spin-off study program of the Department of Architecture and its
only operational initiative, to construct socially sustainable low-cost buildings using sustainable
energy in developing countries.
356

The year 2004 was also important for Design Build Bluff, a university program founded by
Professor Hank Louis at the University of Utah School of Architecture. That was the year the
programs first project for a house in Bluff was completed. Louis founded the design/build
program in 2000, following the example of Samuel Mockbees program at Auburn University.
Mockbee had created Rural Studio, encouraging students to leave the comforts of their campus,
and throwing himself and them into the harsh reality of Alabamas poorest rural areas. The
students were directly involved with potential buyers and end-users and participated in both the
design and construction of the buildings.
In 2004, after working on several small projects in Salt Lake and Park City, Louis choose
Bluff, Utah, and the nearby Navajo Reservation as the design/build programs operational
headquarters and the place to advance the programs mission. Louiss goal was to build a new
experimental house every semester. Energetically and economically sustainable, the houses
were destined for poor families in the Navajo community; the first, the ROSIE JOE house, was
built in 2004, the start of a long series.
2 SIMILARITIES
Both experiences belong to a long tradition with roots in theories developed by E. F.
Schumacher, who as early as the 1960s expressed the need for new ways of thinking about
technology as related to its use in the poorest areas of the planet.
In 1965 Schumacher and some economist colleagues founded the Intermediate Technology
Development Group (ITDG) in London, a direct outcome of his experience in Burma as an
economic adviser for the United Nations.
During his time in Burma Schumacher began to see the world from a new perspective, a
result of coming into contact with a completely different reality from Europes. His meeting
with Gandhi and the study of his economic theories gave shape to new economic thinking.
Production should be mainly from local materials and mainly for local use. These
requirements can be met only if there is a regional approach to development and, if there is a
conscious effort to develop and apply what might be called an intermediate technology
(Schumacher, 1973).
In 1968 the term Intermediate Technology was replaced with the more politically correct
Appropriate Technology (Akubue, 2000). The new phrase removed the spectre of inferiority
while at the same time including cultural and social dimensions in innovation research and
development in poor countries (Pellegrini, 1979). Appropriate Technology means understanding
the most appropriate innovations for the poorest regions of the globe according to a new
paradigm of people-centric values, and includes projects that are small-scale, decentralised,
labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally controlled.
The elaboration of the concept of Appropriate Technology and some historic experiences in
low-cost construction, such as the famous Peter Land PREVI project in Chile (Correa et al.,
1987), are expressions of the same cultural ferment. Since the 1960s this way of thinking helped
create a new environmental consciousness, even before the 1973 oil crisis and even before the
1972 Meadows report, widely regarded as one of the original elaborations of the concept of
sustainable development.
BASEhabitat and Design Build Bluff, founded in the early 2000s, are both results of this
tradition. The concept of Appropriate Technology and the many experiments in low-cost
building that have materialised over the years, both converge and can be clearly identified in
these two university initiatives.
BASEhabitat and Design Build Bluff have a lot in common and are both designed and
structured as training programs for architecture students with very specific missions. Both are
intended to combine theory and practice, carry out research, and make experiments and new
contributions to the concept of sustainable architecture while at the same time directly affecting
the quality of life in a given site; creating experimental reality by offering homes to people
without means of their own.
Both programs interpret and respond to the requirements of the three pillars of sustainability:
economic, environmental and social. These three pillars, used in balance, make a system or an

357
economic process sustainable. Depending on the place and situation, each of the three pillars
needs special attention.
To this end, both programs chose places where poverty had denied people access to the basic
resources needed to leading a dignified life, and adopted a very strict methodological approach.
This also helped avoid an unnecessary degree of arbitrariness in their results. In particular, the
key words in BASEhabitat's manifesto are: HABITAT, INTEGRATION, CLIMATE,
MATERIAL and BEAUTY. Keywords that extend and explain the aforementioned pillars of
sustainability: society, environment and economy, and also words that characterise the work of
Design Build Bluff.
Evident in both programs are a profound respect for habitat, for the space people live in,
where they feel safe and protected. Involvement of future users is encouraged during
construction to create real INTEGRATION between architecture and social needs. In this way
people experience the built architecture not as something foreign but as useful and contributing
to the community.
Furthermore, the work and achievements are characterised by careful attention to CLIMATE
and materials, using passive energy technology and readily available, low-cost local materials.
The concept of beauty is always present, Both in BASEhabitat's manifesto and Hank Louiss
words. Beauty is considered a structural element for creating quality of life.
On the poster shown on the web site, BASEhabitat's manifesto is expressed on the term
beauty in this way:
"Beauty does not cost anything except intelligence and spirit, care and
(affectionate) attention. Cultures and beauty do not cost anything. Cultures and
beauty can enter into a relationship with simplicity and modest use of resources, as
well as with plenty and abundance".
3 DIFFERENCES
However, as obvious and clearly stated as the similarities are, there are also equally obvious
differences between the two programs. In particular, the programmatic differences and
outcomes over the years have led to divergent evolutions.
In programmatic terms, the most obvious difference is the use of construction techniques.
While BASEhabitat is geared to rediscovering traditional techniques and materials, Design
Build Bluff explicitly declares a willingness to experiment with new techniques and alternative
materials. Both champion low-cost techniques and low-cost materials readily available within a
few kilometres. On one hand is the willingness to reinterpret and optimise traditional
techniques, on the other, a specific intention to find innovative solutions.
Therefore, with regard to BASEhabitat,
the rediscovery and use of endogenous potential is a prerequisite for sustainable
development. We therefore make sure that local materials, and to a large extent
unprocessed materials, are used in all BASEhabitat projects. Building using locally
available materials elevates them to a new level. Using building materials from the
immediate surroundings gives the people involved greater independence while also
strengthening the local economy. In addition, traditional building forms and
techniques are used when building with these materials that activates and increases
the existing latent knowledge (as written on the BASEhabitat's manifesto on the
website).
Whereas on the Design Build Bluffs site, you can read the explanation of the mission with
the following words:
We offer students an immersive hands-on opportunity to design and build a
full-scale work of architecture in collaboration with the Navajo people. We
emphasize sustainability and a respect for the unique social, cultural, and
environmental needs of the region. Students are encouraged to explore alternative

358
building methods, unique materials, and innovative solutions. It is, in a way, the
ultimate sustainability to use elements naturally at hand, within reach, both
physically and economically.
However, this apparently formal difference between the two experiences is mostly a question
of their different mission statements.
BASEhabitat offers students an opportunity for contact with materials and traditional
techniques, the possibility of working with materials and using building practices that meet the
modern worlds performance demands. But the real goal of the program is to gain constructive
knowledge of the local population, involving the largest possible number of local workers and
local people, and giving them a greater awareness of the richness of the places they inhabit.
The main aim of Design Build Bluff, on the other hand, is to educate architects. The mission
is strictly didactic, and the choice of the Navajo community is instrumental and founded on an
agreement between the Navajo community and the university.
The Navajo community owns of the land, which means that the cost of the houses built by the
university and students for families in the community is not increased by the need to purchase
land. In addition, the community enjoys considerable administrative independence on its land,
making it much simpler to test new materials and techniques, otherwise impossible and/or
expensive under the States usual administration.
As mentioned, the programmatic differences determined how the programs evolved over
time, and in some ways actually making them complementary.
BASEhabitat has begun to broaden its reach, working in other countries in the developing
world with the idea of triggering virtuous processes with local populations in an ever increasing
number of countries. Between 2005 and 2015, as well as a number of projects not realized, have
been built a number of buildings and homes around the world: SUNDERPUR housing and
PHOOLNA teachers in India, HOMEmade and METI in Bangladesh, IPHIKO, BAYA and
Living TEBOGO in South Africa, all evocative names of the places where stood the realized
structures.
The university component, in the same time frame, is basically unchanged; although Anna
Heringer left the program in 2008, the program is still directed by Professor Roland Gnaiger and
the University of Art and Design in Linz.
Instead, Design Build Bluff is closely tied to the Navajo community. From the first house, the
ROSIE JOE house, were built more than twenty houses all with names of Navajo tradition,
(WHITEHORSE, RABBIT EAR, NAKAI), and all with their own characteristics and different
from each other. Hanck Louis left to make room for others to have the opportunity to lead the
program, which has expanded to other universities. In 2010 it was part of the University of
Colorado Denver program, and in 2013 Jos Galarza of the Yestermorrow Design/Build School
became the new director, while the number of students involved has grown exponentially.
4 CONCLUSION
The two approaches, therefore, are similar but different, even though their roots are in the same
cultural landscape; their common genesis leavened by the different nature of their products.
Indeed, inherent in the concept of Appropriate Technology is that there should be differences
between a built project in one place and a built project in another. Dealing with the construction
of low cost buildings for the world's poorest areas, then, does not necessarily conform to a
particular technology or architectural language, rather it means discerning the most appropriate
approach and language according to different situations.
From this perspective the two programs presented here are examples of what could be
defined as the real worth of the Low-tech scene (Aureli, 2014): a multifaceted point of view,
always looking forward, and with diversity as its real treasure.

359
REFERENCES
Akubue, A. 2000. Appropriate technology for socioeconomic development in third-world countries. The
Journal of Technology Studies, 26 (1).
Aureli, D. 2014. Low. bold approaches measured architecture. Roma: L'Erma di Bretschneider.
Correa C., Khan, H. & Cantacuzino, S. 1987. Charles Correa: architect in India, pp. 52-55, London: A
Mimar book - Butterworth Architecture.
DesignBuildBLUFF team. (n.d.). Building better architects with Native communities. Available at:
http://www.designbuildbluff.org/index.php/about-us/.
Gnaiger,
R.
2010.
BASEhabitat
architecture
for
development.
Available
at:
http://www.basehabitat.org/base.
Pellegrini, U. 1979. The problem of appropriate technology. In A. De Giorgio & C. Roveda (eds.),
Criteria for selecting appropriate technologies under different cultural, technical and social
conditions. New York: Pergamon Press.
Schumacher, E. F. 1973. Small is beautiful: Economics as if people mattered. New York: Harper &Row.
Szita, J. 2014. Rural Studio | DesignBuildBLUFF. MARK Magazine 53.
Tibbals, A. 2013. DesignBuildBLUFF Good Stuff. City Home COLLECTIVE, December 13, 2013.
Available at: http://cityhomecollective.com/design-bluff-good-stuff/.
United Nations General Assembly. 2005. 2005 World Summit Outcome, Resolution A/60/1, adopted by
the General Assembly on 15 September 2005.
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361
Residential design affecting dimensions of equity

A. B. Eriksson
ABSTRACT: In Sweden social sustainability perspectives on housing design are rare, this
strikes the group of weaker households. Due to the present housing shortage a dwelling
providing a qualitative space for every-day life is not a realistic alternative for many
households. The groups of households that not have the economical strength to involve in the
housing market have little power to change their residential situation. The housing market focus
on the limited group of buyers and the alternative, the rental apartment, implies years of
abeyance in a que-system to get hold of an apartment. Meanwhile the on going demographic
transformation challenges existing residential design and the design practice in turn tends to
employ a narrow perspective on household constructions and residential use. The research work
is focused on residential usability (flexibility) and how this can affect social sustainability
dimensions in a residential situation. It also focuses on how social sustainability issues can be
activated into the practice of residential floor plan design. The methodological approach is
based on a mixed method research where qualitative, empirical studies and research by design
are employed. The work embrace a theoretical perspective based on assumptions from
Schneider and Till. Findings from the research show that flexibility in residential design
represents an important factor in the realisation of a sustainable society. A salient finding is that
flexible space can provide more equitable residential solutions as the extended spatial capacity
can provide qualitative residential situations for diverse households during a residential process.
This paper concentrates on the magnitude of flexible space as an agent for the dimension of
equity, presenting parts of the work with empirical studies. The continuing research intends to
delve deeper into the question of residential usability and social sustainability from the
perspective of time and the residential process.
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The ongoing research work
This paper brings up questions from ongoing research focusing on residential usability and
social dimensions of the residential situation. The overall aim for the research is to develop
knowledge of residential usability and how this can affect social dimensions in a residential
situation (Braide Eriksson, 2016). The research has a critical approach on current practices of
residential design which is not considered to represent the present plurality of residential needs
from a diversity of modern households, something that affects social dimensions of households.
The specific aim of this paper is to discuss residential usability from the perspectives of
overcrowding and equity. Overcrowded situations can result in dysfunctional residential
circumstances and the situation can affect aspects as for example safety, privacy, recreation and

362
social cohesion. However, small contributions to the residential design can result in substantial
outcomes when looking at the consequences for the overcrowded situation.
Some terminology needs to be explained. Firstly, the notion social dimensions regards for
example security, belonging, identity, quality of life and social cohesion, as well as equity
(Bostrm, 2012). The social dimensions are substantive aspects of social sustainability (ibid.).
The notion of social sustainability is understood as contextual, context dependent and
comparative notion, which make it difficult to define and quantify (Lehtonen, 2004; Bostrm,
2012; Dempsey et al., 2011). In my earlier studies Murphy (2012) present four pillars as a
conceptual framework for social sustainability: social cohesion, participation, equity and
awareness of sustainability. The dimensions are considered containing relevant aspects for the
questions of residential usability and demographic conditions. Second, the notion residence or
dwelling regards apartments in multi-family housing together with other indoor as well as
outdoor spaces for common use found outside the individual apartment. Third, I will
consequently use the notion residential usability. This notion relates to Schneider and Tills
approach to flexible housing (2007), which consider the dwellings capacity to deal with the
volatility of the residential process, with the changing needs for a household over time, as
crucial to the task of residential design. Schnedier and Till (2007:41) assert that:
Housing has to be flexible enough to deal with two conditions. The first is the
need to adapt to the changing needs for individuals as they grow old or less
physically able. The second is housing that can respond to the changing
constitution of a family as it grows and then contracts.
The flexible residence is adaptable or flexible, or both (Schneider and Till, 2007: 5). The
authors define on the one hand adaptability as something which can be achieved through rooms
or units that can be used in a variety of ways. On the other hand, flexibility can be achieved by
altering the physical fabric of the building, for example by dividing one room into two.
The research concentrates on apartments in multi-family housing in urban locations, which
today represents 45% of the Swedish households (SCB, 2016-a). Current standards and building
codes framing contemporary multi-family housing development, the present housing markets
conditions as well as current architects practices for residential design constitutes important
frameworks for the research.
The methodology is qualitative and mixed methods has been employed for gathering data for
empirical studies. Different residential situations of selected households have been studied
through qualitative interviews (Braide Eriksson, 2016). The method for data collection and its
analysis is influenced by Grounded Theory as described by Charmaz (2012). In addition,
analyses of the furnished floor plans of the apartments where the households live has been based
on an established method called form analysis. A method commonly used by architects in their
work of designing floor plans. When employed in research, this method can be described as
figurative empirics (Braide Eriksson, 2016: 31-37). One example of the residential situations
that has been studied is presented in this paper.
The results support Schneider and Tills theory on flexible housing. The residential usability
can affect several social dimensions in the residential situation and the capacity of the apartment
to support a residential process i.e. changing needs of a family as it grows and diminish through
different periods of life, something which can be critical for fulfilling qualitative social aspects
of the home (Braide Eriksson, 2016). Important social dimensions found in the studies of the
households and their residential situations were among others: safety, recreation, social
cohesion, continuity and identity (ibid. 79-82).
1.2 The knowledge field
The subjects flexible housing and social dimensions have had large influence on architectural
practice and has been discussed in literature written by architects. Examples are Habrakens
(2011) Supports, Hamdis (1990) Housing Without Houses and Schneider and Tills (2007)
Flexible Housing. In fact, in Europe, in the field of planning and development of housing,
flexible housing has been used as a tool for attaining and promoting social aspects since the
1920s. These aspects still have influence, and some recent housing projects that focus on

363
flexible housing and social dimensions are Cit Manifeste (Lacaton and Vassal, 2005) and
Quinta Monroy (Elemental, 2003).
Also in the field of housing research, the question of social dimensions is seen as a critical
aspect of residential quality. In the 1940s, the government started to engage in housing research
in Sweden. This laid the foundation for todays Swedish housing standards and design. The
research focused on functional aspects and high qualitative dwellings became a governmental
concern (Nylander, 2013: 99). More recent housing research deals with questions of belonging,
identity and qualities on a neighbourhood level (Redvall, 1987; Hurtig, 1995; Olsson et al.,
1997).
Although the issues encircling social dimensions of housing, in housing research there is few
that have linked this to the residential usability and residential process. A research project by
Duelund Mortensen, Welling, Liv och Wiell Nordberg (2006) has a similar focus. They study
the flexibility of residential space focusing on diverse spatial use, but they do not have the social
focus.
The question of residential usability and how this can affect social dimensions in a residential
situation must therefore be regarded as an identified research gap. From this perspective the
built housing projects together with the residential qualities they can provide constitute a critical
base for future research work.
1.3 Housing standards, demography and the housing market
Much indicates that current housing standards and regulations, and how these inform architects
in contemporary housing design do not result in housing that cope with current residential
demands (Werner, 2007: 61; Jonsdotter, et al., 2016). Contemporary housing rarely supplies a
flexible use that correspond to residential usability. Housing is designed focusing on the nuclear
family, a household group corresponding to 22 % of all Swedish households (SCB, 2016-c). At
the same time as Sweden has a high standard for housing, such major factors as on-going
demographic transformations and the difficult situation on the housing market where there is a
serious housing shortage in which economically weak households are sidelined (Boverket,
2016: 19-20) do not seem to influence the present development of housing. This situation
hinders many households to come by a dwelling or to relocate.
Demography should be seen as a base for the residential demands (Schneider & Till, 2007:
37). Today there is an ongoing demographic transformation that involves urbanisation and an
aging population. In Sweden, the size of households is decreasing at the same time as the
number of diverse household constellations are increasing (SCB, 2016-c). Some households
which are not in focus for the present housing provision are: shared custody households, single
parent households and people who wish to live collectively. This indicates that there is a need
for more diverse residential design and provision that can meet these pluralistic residential
needs.
These conditions imply a misfit between an accelerating diversity of articulated consumer
preferences and appropriate offers on the housing market. The possibility to come by a dwelling
corresponding to the households residential needs or to have the ability to choose
neighbourhood or housing area is limited. The situation means that freedom of choice is limited
for many households.
2 A DWELLING THE RIGHT TO HEALTH, WELL-BEING AND SAFETY?
Overcrowding can imply that important social dimensions of the residential situation are
affected. Alternatives for a solution to this situation can be few or no.
2.1 Overcrowding
The notion overcrowding is seen as a central well-fare indicator (SOU, 1986:5). The
overcrowding standard is today a goal for the housing policy and is used as a benchmark for
what is the least acceptable spatial standard. In Sweden, you live in an overcrowded situation if
you have less than one room for each household member kitchen plus one living room, if you
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have cohabiting adults in the household the room demand reduces with one room
(overcrowding, norm 3)(SOU, 1984:36, 277).
The norm is framed to attend to the most apparent experienced factors perceived in
overcrowded situations: lack of privacy for the personal development and overbalance of
stimulation and interaction. The number of persons for each room therefore becomes the
relevant measure for overcrowding and the supply of rooms in the apartment becomes a critical
factor (Boverket, 2006: 12, 19). Overcrowding results in practical consequences but can also
affect both physical and mental health for both adults and children. The problems identified
affect primarily children and families with children (SOU, 1986:5, 47-48).
One reason for overcrowding is that families transform and grow (Baum & Hassan, 1999: 23;
Clark et al., 2000: 49; Dieleman, 2001: 250). The dwelling can then be perceived as tight or
dysfunctional (dysfunctional sizes of rooms or floor plan disposition). This connects to the
question of the residential process and Schneider and Tills (2007) ideal of the flexible
housings capability to function over a period of time in a residential process with different
arising needs. This can mean that a dwelling providing residential usability can affect a crowded
situation, although out from the households construction with belonging residential needs there
is always a limit for the potential spatial use.
Today 16% of all households in Sweden are overcrowded (SCB, 2016-a). Overcrowding is
more common among households with a weak economy, among these, families with many
children, single parent households and migrant households are frequently represented (ibid.: 7).
Out of the migrant households and the single parent households 33% respective 41% are
overcrowded (SCB, 2016-a, b). Overcrowding also increase most in these groups of
households1.
3 OVERCROWDING AND RESIDENTIAL USABILITY ONE EXAMPLE
In order to illustrate how residential usability can affect an overcrowded household an example
of a study of a residential situation (Braide Eriksson, 2016) is presented.
The household is a single parent with one child and an external lodger. The single parent is in
a way representative for the more common household groups being overcrowded but being a
household with a lodger also distinguish the household as more atypical. Also, the household is
not a nuclear family. This means that the example can illuminate how a dwelling designed for a
nuclear family can function for other groups of households.
The dwelling is a two-bedroom apartment. In addition to kitchen, bathroom and living room
the apartment has a large bedroom, the parents bedroom, and a small bedroom, the childs
room. The apartment is not designed to provide a flexible use corresponding to the significance
of the notion residential usability. To reflect the implication of residential usability in the
apartment an alternative design providing a flexible solution in the same floor plan is presented.
The example is concluded by reflections of how the dwelling functions in the residential
situation and how residential usability can affect the situation for the overcrowded household.
3.1 A residential situation
The single parent lives together with her daughter and a lodger in a rental apartment. Schools
and nursery are located within short distances. The daughter goes to nursery in the vicinity and
both the parent and the daughter have social networks among the neighbours. The area provides
many qualities that they value. There is a diversity of people living here and there are many
children. You can also find nature and a lake nearby.
The parent prefers a two-bedroom apartment instead of a smaller one, but she does not have
enough income to live here alone. To solve the situation she has a lodger. One day she might be
able to afford the apartment alone. The parent shares the large bedroom with her daughter for
sleeping. She has an extension bed that can be pulled out from under the daughters bed. In
daytime the room serves as the daughters own room. Here she has all her belongings. If she has
friends at home they often play in this room. The parent can use the living room or the kitchen
as a retreat during the day. The tenant, a twenty-one-year-old student, has the small bedroom.
Here she has a convertible bed and a small desk. The kitchen and the living room are used as

365
common space by the whole household. This can occasionally mean unwanted confrontations,
for example when tenant or parent have guests. Sound between the two bedrooms is also easily
overheard. The parent thinks that the apartment works for the present use with the lodger, even
though there is a lack of living space and not enough room for storage.
Figure 1. A. shows the floor plan of the apartment. B. shows an alternative design of the floor plan
enabling residential usability. The apartment becomes flexible with an additional window.
3.2 Residential usability and social dimensions

The household is crowded as the parent cannot have a room of her own. The dwelling is
designed for the nuclear family with the large bedroom and the small bedroom. This design can
be questioned when looking at the households needs and reflecting the room sizes and the floor
plan layout. The room rented out is small and provides limited options when it comes to for
example visitors and storage. Also, a residential situation with less close relations as for
example collective living or having a lodger calls for the need of well-defined private and public
space to avoid unwanted confrontations and enable privacy. This can for example be
accomplished through a neutral space connecting the rooms. However, as shown above, through
very simple interventions this apartment could become flexible and thus provide another room.
The solution is made possible by an additional window.
The social dimensions attended: The parent has no room of her own for recreation or privacy,
this can mean a stressful situation. On the other hand the interview shows that the
neighbourhood constitutes many residential qualities, enclosing many social dimensions. To be
safe in the neighbourhood, to have social cohesion and continuity is stressed as important
aspects in the residential situation, where social interaction with neighbours, qualitative schools,
closeness to nature and well-functioning public transport represents many qualities. Having the
possibility to arrange for another room in the apartment would help out the now crowded
situation for the household. The possible need for having to change apartment and leave the
neighbourhood can be diminished, and residential qualities along with social aspects can be
attained.
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The example presents one single residential situation and cannot be seen as providing general
knowledge of how crowded households experience their situation. The potential of additional
rooms in a dwelling though, can be seen as a general, flexible factor in residential design.
4 CONCLUSION
This paper reflects upon the question of residential usability and how it can affect overcrowded
situations and also the question of equity.
Overcrowding is a critical question, also aggravated with the current housing shortage. The
overcrowding we see today has been increasing during the last years. Among the households
with weak economy more than a third is overcrowded (foreign-born households and single
parent households). Due to the housing shortage there are not many alternatives for households
that are overcrowded and have a weak economy, a dysfunctional residential situation cannot
always be solved by moving on to another dwelling.
The overcrowded households can be seen bereaved of residential qualities correlated to
practical issues as storing and absence of a room. But the residential situation can also have
consequences for social dimensions which the example in this paper shows. The dysfunctional
residential situation affects aspects as for example safety, privacy, recreation and social
cohesion. From this perspective overcrowded households do not have the same right as other
households to a well- functioning every-day life and the social dimensions this can comprise.
This situation is not socially sustainable and the question of overcrowded households constitutes
a challenge for the question of everyones equitable right to a dwelling.
Can then dwellings providing residential usability have some affect for the question of
overcrowding and equity? The example shows that a dwelling providing residential usability
can transform a dysfunctional residential situation by supplying one additional room. A critical
issue to observe is that the example demonstrates a situation where small interventions results in
substantial outcome when looking at the consequences for an overcrowded situation.
Some questions need to be reflected upon though. There is a risk for developing tight
dwelling situations, apartments with many too small rooms. This can be avoided with qualified
architects and developers. It also needs to be said that a dwelling, with for example the capacity
to provide another room, not generally can be said to solve overcrowding. Out from the
households construction with belonging residential needs there is always a limit for the
potential spatial use, and the potential residential usability may not always be employed. But, a
dwelling providing residential usability can enable the access for a larger diversity of residential
solutions for a larger diversity of households. This provides larger opportunities for solving
overcrowded situations. The residential usability is in this context a tool for supplying more
equitable residential situations, providing larger opportunities for overcrowded households to
solve their situation.
ENDNOTES
1
From 2009-2015 overcrowding has increased with 1,3% in total for all households. For the household
groups foreign-born and single parent overcrowding has increased with 4,3% respective 3,9% (SCB
2016-a, b).
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369
People with health vulnerability: strategies and designs for

housing
F. Giofr & L. Porro
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
ABSTRACT: In Italy, elderly self-sufficient people and adult disabled people with moderate
impairment traditionally lived with their own families. Nowadays, due to demographic and
socio-economical changes, the family unit can no longer be the only support for these
vulnerable inhabitants. To answer these new needs, new strategies and new forms of housing,
which are more inclusive and sustainable, have been experimenting. Furthermore, in most cases,
these projects are developed thanks to new funding forms based on the cooperation between
public bodies and private foundations.The paper reviews the Italian policies for cohousing and
analyses some success experiences of residential projects that allow these vulnerable people to
live autonomously, through creation of cohousing communities. This model, thanks to the
involvement of all users, seems to guarantee social inclusion of inhabitants and the achievement
of a mutual sharing and caring culture.
1 A NEW HOUSING CRISIS

In Italy, and on a broader level in all Europe, the number of people belonging to social groups
that may be considered "weak" for health reasons is increasing. The main reason is the
population-ageing trend: as longevity increases, we face an extension of the period of life during
which the conditions of ability and autonomy change significantly and people develop different
care needs. Likewise, the disabled population has increased life expectancy, therefore it is more
often the case that people with disabilities live with elderly parents or can no longer count on
their support.
More into detail: in Europe the 65-and-older population, which in 2013 represented the 15%
of the entire population, will increase up to 20% in 2030 and to 24% in 2050, while the 80 or
over age group will pass from 3,9% in 2013 to 8,3% in 2050 (Fig. 1) (UNECE, 2015).
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Figure 1.European population: trends of age. (UNECE, 2015). Elaboration by the authors.
Data concerning Italy follow the same trend and, moreover, such tendency is coupled with
the increase of the percentage of elderly population living alone (for details on the distribution
of single person families, see the Fig. 2). When not alone, they tend to live frequently in
families made up exclusively of 65-and-older people: such phenomenon increased from 21,9%
in 2003 to 23,9% in the 2012-2013 (ISTAT, 2016).
Figure 2. Italy: distribution of single person families. (ISTAT, 2016). Elaboration by the authors.
The relational life of elderly Italian people is mainly entrusted to the family network: 91,9%
of men and 91,3% of women over 65 years declares to be fairly or totally satisfied by their
family network, whereas as time goes by, contacts with friends and acquaintances lower,
especially among the female population (ISTAT, 2016).
In 2013 Italian recordings stated that disabled people amount to 3,2 million, that is the 5,5%
of the population over six years. This number takes into account all those who have functional
limitations in the physical sphere, lack of autonomy in the daily routines, in the communication.
Among these 2,5 million are elderly. Moreover, data show that there are about 540,000 people
with severe disability who do not live in socio-medical units. 269,000 of these live with one or
both parents. In particular, 89,000 people are living in a critical situation, being less than 64
years old and living with elderly parents (Alleva, 2016). If, at the death of their parents, the

371
State will not be able to provide the economic support and the cares they currently receive from
family network, these people risk of suffering from marginalization and exclusion.
These variations in the age and degree of autonomy imply changes in the housing needs as
well. Also the kind of assistance required both by elderly and disabled people has changed.
The housing solutions adopted in Italy until now for these people are of two kinds: the
informal care and the institutionalization. The informal care falls under the responsibility of the
family, friends and neighbors, without any professional training and formal status (UNECE,
2015). The institutional one considers a full-time placement in care units.
Both these models have some issues: elderly people often have a residual autonomy that does
not require them to live in nursing homes, and they often prefer to keep unchanged their habits
and their homes ("ageing in place"); on the other hand, for adult people with disabilities, living
with the families, or living in a facility exclusively inhabited by other people with disabilities
can be an obstacle to the construction of paths of participation and inclusion in social life. In the
following sections, we will try to understand how cohousing and cohabitation can represent
successful alternatives to these models.
The paper is structured as follows: in section 2 we review the current status of Italian
legislation on cohousing, and in section 3 we analyze some Italian cases that involve elderly
and/or disabled people.
2 COHOUSING: A RESPONSE TO CHANGING NEEDS
2.1 Traditionalcohousing and new forms of cohabitation
The term cohousing usually stands for an intentional community of private homes clustered
around shared space" (The Cohousing Association of the United States, 2015), which has the
advantage of providing to its inhabitants some services and goods. These practices of shared
residence are gaining new fortune in Italy, thanks to the potential that they have of promoting
the integration and the active life of weak categories of the population.
In particular, we identified two forms of cohousing: a traditional mode, consisting in a private
home space and in some shared common areas, and a more recent interpretation that implies the
sharing of the entire apartment. The traditional cohousing originates from the active
involvement of a group of people who choose to live as a community. The private spaces of
each family are clearly distinct from those in common, so that the inhabitants can keep a high
level of privacy. The common areas are the places where social interaction is promoted. These
are, for example, the green areas, the common rooms, the laundries, and also the kitchens or the
canteens in some cases. The principles on which the cohousing is based is that the management
and the administration of the common spaces is the responsibility of the whole community, and
that the activities that take place there do not produce profits for the inhabitants.
These forms of sharing recreate the neighborly relations traditionally produced within small
villages or agglomerations where whole families lived. This kind of cohousing can provide
significant benefits to the people with health vulnerability, both for the opportunity of
promoting the social relations, the mutual help, the integration and participation of all
inhabitants, and for the practical advantages originating from the sharing of the spaces and
services. For example, in some cohousing cases, mainly addressed to elderly inhabitants, some
innovations have been introduced making the care services more efficient. Among these, there
is the presence of professionals such as the caregivers, the nurses, and the doctors available to
the whole community.
The apartment's sharing, on the other hand, considers people who may have different needs,
and who can take benefit from mutual help, living in the same apartment. In most of the success
stories in Italy, there is an involvement mainly of young people and of people with mild
disabilities. People with disability have the chance to experience the housing autonomy and
apartment sharing with people of their own age. People without disability, usually students,
benefit from a reduced rent price, thanks to agreements with the universities or other
institutions. In return, they are exhorted to provide a minimum established presence in the house
and to commit to the inclusion and the participation of all the tenants, but is not required a
specific expertise concerning health care or medical assistance.
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Compared to traditional forms of cohousing, the apartments sharing implies a reduction of

the sense of privacy, but allows to avoid the presence of a personal assistant for people with
disabilities, when is only necessary a minimum unqualified help. That promotes the integration
of disabled people involved in an ordinary home environment, yet different from their families'
house, and reduces the social costs that would be needed to support institutionalization. It also
promotes, through the active involvement of young people who participate in these projects, an
education to social inclusion and understanding and respect for differences.
2.2 Policies and main actors of cohousing in Italy
We present a review of some Italian national and regional laws, and of the main actors involved
in cohousing projects, aimed at supporting categories with social and/or health vulnerability.
The most important national regulation is the recent Law n.112/2016, "Measures of assistance
to people with severe disabilities without family support". It should be pointed out that the
beneficiaries of this law are people with severe disability (i.e. non-autonomous people). This
law creates a special fund in their favor. We highlight that this fund has, among its aims,
innovative actions of housing, the creation of de-institutionalization paths, the inclusion and the
care assistance of people with disabilities in apartments that reproduce the relational conditions
of the family's home. For the realization of these projects, the fund may cover purchase costs,
rent, refurbishment and implementation of systems and equipment necessary for the usage of the
houses. The fund can also support forms of mutual help among people with disabilities.
Some regional laws address the issue of cohousing from two points of view: the first, and
most common, is the regeneration of the built heritage and the revitalization of the urban
pattern, the second involves social policies for the support of vulnerable categories.
In 2015, Region of Tuscany issues a competition announcement for urban innovation
projects. The announcement identifies among the eligible proposals the construction of new
infrastructure, or the refurbishment of the existing ones, in order to increase the facilities for the
elderly and for people with autonomy limitations. These are socio-medical residence units, daily
centers, facilities for people without parents' support, experimentations with innovative ways of
user involvement in unconventional processes and lifestyles (i.e. cohousing, solidarity housing
groups).
The Region of Emilia Romagna includes cohousing among the social policies in favor of the
weak social categories. A Regional Law of 2014 for the promotion of the solidarity economy,
finances territorial proposals for cohousing projects and for supportive living experiences.
The Region of Lazio brings together in one single law (Regional Law 08.10.2016, Integrated
system of interventions and of social services) both the social and the urban perspectives,
emphasizing the connection between the two. It promotes cohousing both as a policy in favor of
the elderly and the homeless, and as a strategic tool for housing policies and for urban
regeneration. Moreover, the law recognizes the therapeutic and social role played by supportive
agriculture and by cohousing, allowing the individuals without support, or needy families, to
create new communities. It also promotes positive interaction between public and private actors
for the economic development of these projects.
Also in other regions, the housing foundations play a key role, supporting cohousing
interventions. These foundations are made up of both private and public bodies. For example,
the Region of Lombardia, the local branch of ANCI (National Association of Italian
Municipalities) and the Cariplo Foundation (a bank foundation) are partners of Fondazione
Housing Sociale, based in Milan. It promotes interventions of regeneration of the territory,
with a focus on supportive forms of housing.
The social cooperatives are often active in these processes, especially when people with
health vulnerabilities are involved, playing the role of management of socio medical services.
They mediate between local bodies and final users of residential facilities.
Analyzing the ongoing projects, we notice that many differences exist between local policies
of each region. It implies that the access to residential utilities is not uniform along the country
and, in particular, the southern regions undergo a lack of services and of structures.

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3 SHARED HOUSING FOR PEOPLE WITH HEALTH VULNERABILITY: ITALIAN

EXPERIENCES
Here we present seven case studies: at first, we gather and analyze some info from the web, and
then we examine in depth through interviews with project managers, documentary research, and
field surveys. In Figure 3 we display the distribution of these projects on Italian territory. Cases
are split in the two aforementioned categories: traditional cohousing and apartment share.
Figure 3. Placement of case studies in Italy.
3.1 Traditional cohousing

3.1.1 Casa Arcipelago
The "Casa Arcipelago" (Archipelago House) is located in Crocetta, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan).
The project of residential integration of people with disabilities was launched in 2015. The
"Casa Arcipelago" hosts people with intellectual and/or relational disabilities, and families with
low income, with an overall capacity of fourteen people.
Five residences are available (three dedicated to people with disabilities and two to needy
families). Each apartment hosts three or four people, organized in single or double rooms (see
Fig. 4). The project aims to strengthen the relationships between the inhabitants, the
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neighborhood, and the territory, and to involve volunteers and social organization in cooperative
actions with disabled people living in the apartments.
The Cooperativa Arcipelago owns the apartments. The families with limited resources can
access to housing through the payment of a reduced rent price, in exchange for the active
participation in the project; whereas the "Cooperativa Arcipelago" asks the families of the
people with disabilities for the mobility allowance and the pension the State devolves to their
children (about 750 Euro per month).
Figure 4. Casa Arcipelago. View; distribution of apartments (elaboration by the authors).
3.1.2 Con-Dominio Sociale

The "Con-Dominio Sociale" is placed in Groppello di Cassano d'Adda (Milan).
The people involved in this social housing project are disabled adult people with physical
and/or mental impairments, people with cognitive disabilities experiencing a love relationship,
with a psycho-educational supervision, persons with a severe psychosocial disorderand who are
experiencing tough conditions with respect to housing and health care, young people with
psychiatric disorders but capable of working, at least for rehabilitative purposes. In total forty
people with disabilities are currently present in the flats.
The facility has four different operating units, which are characterized by different intensity
of assistance and protection necessary to the users. The operating units are connected to each
other and share the use of some spaces. In particular on the ground floor there is a shared
housing unit hosting ten people, on the first floor a shared housing unit that houses twelve
disabled advanced age persons, on the second floor there is a shared housing unit where thirteen
young disabled people with good margins autonomy reside, on the third floor there are three
independent residential units: one, two and three-room apartments inhabited by people with
mental and psychosocial problems that can experience conditions of semi-autonomy.
In addition to the residence, services such as social and health care are offered, including the
preparation of the individual education plan by a team of psychologists, psychiatrists and
educators. It is also planned the participation in rehabilitation activities such as laboratories in
external spaces.
The inclusion on residential projects in the "Con-Dominio Sociale" are normally on a
continuous basis and open-ended.
The block of flatshas been acquired on loan for use by the Non Profit Organization "Punto
d'Incontro", which manages the project of residence and the organization of care assistance. As
the service is complex, the costs of access to the structure are considerably high, and vary,
depending on the intensity of assistance required by guests, from 2,500 to approximately 4,200
Euros per month.

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3.1.3 Condominio Solidale

The "Condominio Solidale"is located in Lodi (Milan).
The residence project was initiated in 2008.
The people involved are people with mental disabilities, families, and young volunteers.
In total reside in the unit four disabled persons, two volunteers and two families. These are
distributed in tree apartments with two rooms (two for people with disability and one for the
volunteers), two apartments with tree rooms (for co-operative families), and two apartments for
social services (Fig. 3).
The "Condominio Solidale" was born thanks to a partnership between the ''Aiutiamoli"
Association, and the Department of Social Services of the City of Lodi. It also collaborates with
other volunteering organizations acting in this territory, such as the "Emmaus" Community and
the Diocesan Caritas. Accommodations are not assigned directly to individual co-resident but
are given in concession to Bodies who manage the housing accommodation. The associations
"Aiutiamoli" and "Emmaus" of Lodi pay a reduced rent price in exchange for solidarity
commitment assumed by the people involved in the project.
As for the admission of persons with disabilities instead, they correspond to ''Aiutiamoli"
Association an amount, including both the costs related to the residence and the costs due to
psychological assistance.
Figure 5.CondominioSolidale.Picture; distribution of apartments (elaboration by the authors).
3.1.4 Casa alla Vela

The "Casa alla Vela" is placed in the Vela district, near Trento.
The cohousing project was launched in 2014.
People residing in the apartments are in this case partially autonomous elderly people and
students attending the University of Trento.
Currently five elderly people and six students reside in the unit. In addition, two family
caregivers support the non-autonomous residents.
Elderly people are distributed in two apartments, while the third is dedicated to students.
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The building hosting the shared residence is owned by the Social Cooperative "SAD", which
has also financed a recent renovation, and which manages the project, also thanks to the support
of some voluntary organizations active in the area.
To access a room in one of the apartments, the elderly guests share the costs of the rent, those
of utilities, the food, and those of remuneration of the family caregivers. Instead, students offer
some hours of their time as volunteers with the elderly residents, and pay a reduced rent price.
They can also reduce the costs of their stay with some additional tasks useful to the House,
earning a salary.
In February of 2015 the project "Casa allaVela" has been mentioned into a publication by
UNECE - United Nations Economic Commission for Europe -among the best eleven
Europeangood practices in the field of social policies, particularly among innovative care
strategies for the elderly population.
3.1.5 Namast Residential Network
The apartments that are part of the "Namaste" Residential Network are located in San Paolo
d'Argon (Bergamo).
The residence-sharing project has been launched in 2005.
People who take part in this residency project are people with mild intellectual disabilities
from 18 to 40 years, boys and girls with very slight disabilities between 18 and 22 years and
young people in need of help for the separation from their families. They collaborate to
activities of common utility, as the cleaning service of stairs, the gardening of adjacent open
spaces. There is a strict connection with elderly people resident in the apartments, also thanks to
the presence of a shared family assistant.
At the beginnings were involved five people, while at present there are twelve residents with
disabilities, distributed in three apartments.
3.2 The apartment share
3.2.1 ETD Enjoy The Difference
The apartment sharing project ETD - Enjoy the Difference is based in Turin, and is active since
2011.
It is an au pair cohabitation between young people with disabilities between eighteen and
thirtyfive years old, and university students.
The number of residents has increased over the years, going from the three in the first edition
(2011/2012) to the twelve in the edition 2014/2015, and reaching a maximum of thirteen guests
in 2013/2014.
Currently the guests are divided into three apartments. In each apartment live one person with
disability and three students.
The project was developed by the City of Turin, in collaboration with several funding bodies
(such as the Waldensian Church). Also in the planning phases of ETD, students, people with
disability and their families, Institutions delegates, NGO Associations members and university
researchers have been involved. That made the project known and participated by the whole
community.
To access the residences of ETD each inhabitant pays a monthly membership fee of 200
Euros.
The project was the overall winner of the ''Oscar of Health 2016", an award held by the
Network of Healthy Cities of the World Health Organization.
3.2.2 Casa Comune
The project "Casa Comune" is headquartered in Milan and is active since 2014.
The people participating in this project are university students and people with disabilities. In
particular, the 2016 edition saw the participation of three girls with intellectual disabilities,
including two with Asperger's syndrome, aged between 21 and 28 years, and of two students.
The project is supported by funding from the "Cariplo" Foundation, and achieved with the
specific contributions that the City of Milan recognizes to people with disabilities. The
managing body is the Association "La Comune", which contributes at the economic,

377
organizational and management level. The apartments are property of the City of Milan, which
rents them to the managing body.
To participate in the project the students pay a reduced rent price of 150 Euros per month,
and undertake to ensure their presence in the house from the 18:30 to the 9:00 the next morning.
Girls with disabilities instead, contribute to the cost for board and housing for six days a week,
to the cost for educational assistance for autonomy, for educational counseling, and for
participation in sports activities that take place on external facilities.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The review of the case studies led us to understand that all traditional cohousing experiences
have been set up thanks to the initiative of social cooperatives, and most projects took advantage
of the participation of local bodies, while only in one case, namely, a bank foundation
committed to the creation of an apartment share project. One project takes place also due to the
participation of resident volunteers, while other three (from both models, namely two apartment
share and one traditional cohousing) engage university students, thanks to an agreement with
university institutions, and two involve co-operative families. Most of efforts are focused on
people with disabilities. In fact, only one residential experience advantages elderly people. Two
of the cohousing projects that involve people with disability organized the apartments according
to the level of assistance needed by the inhabitants.
All the projects analyzed are placed in existent building, after adapting the apartments to the
new inhabitants needs through some refurbishment.
Such solution fit perfectly the Italian situation, with its old historical town center, and may
represent an efficient tool for the requalification of the built heritage.
All case studies are successful models encouraging the inclusion and the social participation
of people with health vulnerability, and useful to avoid the institutionalization and the
segregation of weak social groups. These are based on the mutual support that people with
different needs can give and receive from and to the community.
The analysis conducted reveal that those are isolated best practices: there is not a
homogeneous territorial distribution, and they are all in the north of Italy. Furthermore, there is
no national coordination that could allow all the needy people to access these facilities.
It is worth noting that the national law that promotes this type of residential experiences is
quite recent: therefore the spread of cohousing projects cannot be interpreted as a result of
Government incentives, but rather the Institutions took some practical experiences as models in
order to define a set of priorities in social policies' funding.
In the future, such social policies are likely to create a more efficient and accessible network,
which could spread evenly in the national territory and fill gaps in access to housing facilities.
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379
External expectations of potential acquirers of real property rights

according to sustainable housing
B. Grum
Institute for Real Estate Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia
D. K. Grum
Department of Psychology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
ABSTRACT: Housing as an essential aspect of quality of life, is significant for sustainable

development. The article focuses on the role of external expectations of potential acquirers of
real property rights in terms of their attitude towards sustainable houses. As external
expectations we listed participants' expectations in terms of governing the housing policy, tax
measures of the country, regulatory measures of the country, increased offer of real properties
and price trends on the real property market, changes in the economic position, financial
situation of potential buyers, unemployment rate in the country and the perfect time to purchase
real property. The article concludes that it is essential to target resources at enforcing building
regulations, providing sufficient social and affordable housing as well as the social
infrastructure required for sustainable communities, adequate management and maintenance,
and retrofitting the unsustainable housing constructed in the past. Barriers to achieving
sustainable housing include the lack of a shared vision of sustainable housing, inadequate
building regulations and non-compliance with existing regulations, limited knowledge and
expertise in green building methods, negative perceptions of higher density housing, poor
quality designs, negative attitudes to social mix, an emphasis on demolition, a failure to
recognize the need for social regeneration and limited resources.
1 INTRODUCTION
Urban renewal and sustainable development are two popular issues in both policy agenda and
academia. Affordability is a dominant and controversial issue in housing policy all over the
world (Hui, 2001). Hui (2001) argues that household affordability could be gauged more
correctly by adopting economic first principles, which render a better operational definition in
housing resource allocation.
Housing, an essential aspect of quality of life, is also significant for sustainable development
(Winston et al., 2007). Housing is a key issue to consider in delivering healthy and attractive
communities. Sustainable housing should be well available, high-quality, economical,
ecological, aesthetical design, comfortable, which would better suit the needs of a person.
Furthermore, dwelling houses, apartments or, in other words, housing premises, must be set out
according to the conditions of that locality and must meet the established technical and hygienic
requirements (Maliene, Malys, 2009). Erdogan at al. (2008) point that the overall housing
satisfaction is directly influenced by perceived living conditions, while perceived living
conditions are related to satisfaction with the physical surrounding, satisfaction with the social
relations, satisfaction with the performance of the local authorities, and perceived quality of the
facilities.
380

The article focuses on sustainable housing issue in the Slovenia. The main instrument for
measuring the participants' expectations according to sustainable housing is a questionnaire in
which 1,006 participants took part. The article shows partial results of the survey being
conducted in Slovenia and is aimed at determining the factors which have a decisive influence
on the potential acquirers of real property rights when deciding to purchase real property
(according to sustainable housing). The article focuses on the role of external expectations of
potential acquirers of real property rights in terms of their attitude towards sustainable houses.
The article concludes that it is essential to target resources at enforcing building regulations,
providing sufficient social and affordable housing as well as the social infrastructure required
for sustainable communities, adequate management and maintenance, and retrofitting the
unsustainable housing constructed in the past. Barriers to achieving sustainable housing include
the lack of a shared vision of sustainable housing, inadequate building regulations and noncompliance with existing regulations, limited knowledge and expertise in green building
methods, negative perceptions of higher density housing, poor quality designs, negative
attitudes to social mix, an emphasis on demolition, a failure to recognize the need for social
regeneration and limited resources. As refers Lux and Sunerga (2014) the reasons for the limited
success of new social housing policies are attributed to broader historical and institutional
factors, such as the privatization trap, the decentralization paradox, the impact of the
informal economy and a strong socialist legacy in housing policies. These findings contribute to
the study of how post-socialist housing systems emerged, and reveal how short-term policies
can produce long-term structural change and can become a barrier to effective and sustainable
social housing policies.
2 EXPECTATIONS ACCORDING TO SUSTAINABLE HOUSING
Researchers states that habitability of a house is not only influenced by the engineering
elements, but also by social, behavioural, cultural, and other elements in the entire societalenvironmental system. Determinants of satisfaction and expectation are influenced by diverse
opinions from various professional perceptions. These include urban planners and designers,
architects, environmental psychologists and policy makers (Danquah, Afram, 2014). Urban
planners places much importance on the social issues and quality of life indicating that a
dwelling is a social issue which embeds not only its construction and environment but also
satisfaction and expectation in environmental quality (Sam et al, 2012). Architects agree with
the urban planners that consequently this influences the quality of life and the psychosocial
aspects of the inhabitants (Mohit et al., 2010). The environmental psychologist have been
identified two main parameters namely centrality and socio-physical characteristics of residents.
These include social and neighbourhood relationships, social activities, social facilities, scenery
and utility services (Sam et al., 2012). Residential satisfaction and expectation are reflection of
the sentiments of satisfaction/expectation and joy in a residential area (Sam et al., 2012).
Residential satisfaction and expectation have been considered by policy makers as a major
factor in preparation of guidelines for housing construction for a variety of people (Sam et al.,
2012).
Uri (2005) used the case of Savsko naselje in Ljubljana to study whether factors, such as
age of settlement and poor maintenance and thus consequently worse quality of life in the
settlement cause migration of a certain population group, increase social non-homogeneity and
social instability. He established that in the near future a good fifth of inhabitants plans to
relocate, these being in terms of age group mostly young inhabitants aged 40 and under. In
analysing demographic characteristics of the group showing high potential housing mobility he
stated that next to age there are two other factors, which stand out significantly, the income
(joint monthly household income) and the level of education. He acknowledged that
resettlement is also significantly affected by a housing status and a number of people in a
household (Uri, 2005). Trek (2005) analyses in greater detail factors such as age, quality of
buildings and housing units, maintains costs and future preferences of the people surveyed. In
terms of dissatisfaction regarding the characteristics of the neighbourhood, he establishes that
the first place holds maintains costs, issue of quality of building. In the analysis of existing and
wanted housing units Punder and Ferlan (2009) as the most important physical factors identify

381
calm (not noisy) housing unit and the heating system. In analysing key factors, which influence
the value of real estate, they assess that the key physical factor mentioned by the respondents is
orientation or position of the housing unit. The latter can be linked to appropriate natural
lightening. In the survey of the market in wood product (prefabricated houses) carried out in
Japan, Cohen et al. (2005) establishes that among the most important physical factors when
purchasing a house is access to natural light. The quality of the living conditions in
contemporary new buildings can be indirectly increased by increasing their energy efficiency,
however only through the use of suitable concepts for heating and ventilating spaces that take
into account the specific characteristics of the new buildings (Praznik et al., 2014). External
expectations best express the housing policy in the country. Here we understand the housing
policy of the country as the respective nationally directed policy by which the country and its
operators, taking into consideration social and other elements of forming public policy,
especially real property market elements and social needs, create opportunities for uniform and
transparent management of the housing area (tritof Brus, 2009). The housing policy is
therefore linked also to the accessibility of apartments (such as a sufficient number of
apartments on the market corresponding to demand, balanced supply and demand conditions,
price affordability of apartments and suitable housing costs) (Sendi, Kerbler, 2009).
3 METHOD
The main instrument for measuring the participants' expectations is a questionnaire that was
formed by ourselves. Compiling the questionnaire is part of a wider survey which is being
conducted in Slovenia. It is aimed at establishing factors which are decisive for potential real
property buyers when deciding to purchase sustainable houses, at subdividing possible
differences between listed expectations and current legislation in the area of real property and at
determining whether modern economic environment is positively linked to the expressed
expectations. In composing the questionnaire we thought the guidelines according to Tarik
(1990) and took the questionnaire composed of three sets as the main instrument for measuring
participants expectations. The first set measures demographic factors, the second one measures
personal expectations of participants and the third one measure participants' external
expectations. We used the method of review based on the questionnaire (Walonic, 2007).
Participants responded to questions by means of Likert scale, where the value 5 meant that they
completely agree with a statement and the value 1 that they completely disagree with a given
statement. The data collection was carried out via personal correspondence and internet. The
anonymity of participants involved in the survey was ensured. The data was processed with a
SPSS statistics system.
In analysing external expectations we used the first and the third set of the questionnaire
which were subdivided beforehand. The first set of the questionnaire measures demographic
factors and includes 34 variables. We defined 8 factors, which explain over 60% of the total
variation (Basti, 2006). The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy is 0.7.The
Bartlett's test (BT = 2178.1), which is statistically significant, shows that defined factors can be
interpreted (Fulgosi, 1984). Results of the third set of the questionnaire, which is based on
external expectations, show that four factors explain over 61% of the variance. The KaiserMeyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy is 0.9. The Bartlett's test (BT = 2791.8) which is
statistically significant shows that extracted four factors can be interpreted. The reliability of the
questionnaire established by the inner consistency method or the Cronbachs alpha coefficient
indicates that the questionnaire expresses a high level of reliability. The Cronbachs alpha
coefficient for the first set of the questionnaire is 0.8 and 0.6 for the third set.
The sample includes participants aged 20 to 40 who were selected according to cultural
identity, gender, age, employment, marital or family status and economic social status. 1,006
Slovene participants.
382

Table 1. Structure of participants according to gender, age, education, place of residence.

Demographic characteristic
Number
Participants
1,006
Gender
women
623
men
383
total
1,006
Age
aged 20 to 29
490
aged 30 to 40
516
total
1,006
Education
less than secondary school
10
secondary school
370
533
higher education
93
masters degree or more
total
1,006
Where you live (location)
in the city centre
316
on the city outskirts
321
234
densely populated rural settlement
dispersed rural settlement
116
elsewhere
8
total
995
Table 2. Structure of participants in terms of ownership of house, monthly costs for resolving housing
problem, satisfaction with the current residence status.
percentage
Structure of participants
number
Ownership of the house:
owned or co-owned
531
52,78%
market rent
99
9,84%
27
2,68%
non-profit
with relatives
269
26,74%
64
6,36%
other
total
990
98,41%
Monthly expenses for resolving housing problem:
nothing
450
44,73%
less than 30% of personal monthly income
216
21,47%
149
14,81%
approx. 30% of personal monthly income
129
12,82%
more than 30% of personal monthly income
almost total personal income
40
3,98%
total
984
97,81%
Satisfaction with the current residence status:
very dissatisfied
76
7,55%
dissatisfied
105
10,44%
220
21,87%
medium satisfied
281
27,93%
satisfied
300
29,82%
very satisfied
total
982
97,61%

Statistically significant differences (p<0.01) regarding the expectations of potential acquirers of
real property rights regarding the affiliation to sustainable housing and development are shown
in tax measures, housing policy, regulatory measures, in increased offer of real properties on the
market, economic situation in future months, personal financial situation during past months
and the perfect time to purchase real property. Statistically significant differences (p<0.01)

383
regarding the expectations of potential acquirers of real property rights regarding the affiliation
to sustainable housing and development are shown in economic situation during past months
and in unemployment rate.
Table 3. Presentation of the results of the analysis of variance regarding external expectations of potential
acquirers of real property rights according to affiliation to different cultural environment.
Variables
Sum of squares df Mean square
F
p
tax measures
***
87.102
1
87.102
94.067
0.000
housing policy
***
47.796
1
47.796
41.938
0.000
regulatory measures
***
37.764
1
37.764
40.59
0.000
increased offer of real properties
***
138.583
1
138.583
148.194
0.000
price trend on the market
***
13.332
1
13.332
17.786
0.000
economic situation during past months
*
2.92
1
2.92
5.243
0.022
economic situation in future months
***
11.753
1
11.753
19.857
0.000
***
20.973
1
20.973
27.809
0.000
financial situation during past months
financial situation in future months
0.447
1
0.447
0.582
0.446
*
3.382
1
3.382
4.032
0.045
unemployment
perfect time for the purchase
***
46.243
1
46.243
45.365
0.000
Notes: * difference is statistically significant (p<0.05); ** difference is statistically significant (p<0.01);
*** difference is statistically significant (p<0.001).
As pointed out by Adair et al. (2006), the most important factors in the development of land
and real property market are adequate and quality market data and the opportunity to properly
present or interpret them. Real property tax is one of the oldest public revenues. This tax is
unpopular throughout the world and often criticised as it is more noticeable and different from
the other taxes, such as tax on income and value added tax (Bevc, 1997). The major problem
with this tax is determining the taxable amount. By adopting the Real Property Mass-Appraisal
Act (Ur. l. RS, No. 50/2006), in Slovenia the barrier to implementation of the Civil Tax Act (Ur.
l. RS, No. 36/1988) has been eliminated. Based on the acts mentioned, in Slovenia real property
act is established, however according to oltes (2009), it cannot function effectively and
successfully until exact records are established and the situation of real property entries in the
land register is regulated. As indicated by Cirman (2007), in Slovenia the affordability of
privately owned apartments is in general relatively low. To our question whether the countrys
main lever on the real property market is legislation, tritof Brus (2009) answers yes. In her
opinion, among more positive effects is the fact that the access to the real property records
register for the real property market enables searching, checking and exporting all submitted
information about made sale, purchase and rental legal businesses (except personal information
of contracting parties), which is undoubtedly helpful when forming prices, advertising and
marketing.
Considering the fact that Slovene participants have low expectations about expected
regulatory measures of the country in the following five years, we can assume that Slovenia by
adopting acts in the field of real property (sustainability housing) does not achieve effects that
would lead to increased confidence of potential real property buyers. Everything mentioned is
also associated with the expressed difference in the participants' expectations regarding changes
in the country's economic situation in the past and future months. Slovene participants believe
that the country's economic position in the past six months was better (average accordance rate
= 2.13. In his survey, Bradeko (2003) confirms the key findings, trends and relationships taken
from the European Central Bank study where he points out the correlation of growth of real
prices of real properties and real GDP growth as well as the population's earnings. This does not
imply that changes in GDP trend affect the real property price trend directly and in advance but
means that GPD trend is one of the most influential factors affecting the housing prices
(Punder, 2009). The positive correlation between annual gross domestic product per capita and
average number of real property transactions is also confirmed by the survey on real property
market activities in Slovenia in the period 20002006 conducted by Drobne et al. (2009).
According to the test results, there is a positive linear correlation between analysed variables
with the correlation coefficient 0.7 (risk 1%).
384

In 2007, Slovenia was characterised by extremely high economic growth which slowed down
in 2008 and then towards the end of 2008 a fall of economic activity measured by the growth of
gross domestic product was already registered. According to Kajer (2009), this affected the
labour market and resulted in substantial changes in wage movement, compared to 2007. In
Slovenia, the unemployment rate has substantially increased in the past two years, which is
probably expressed in the expectations of our participants who have lower expectations as
regards the unemployment rate change in the future six months.
5 CONCLUSION
A contemporary building must answer to a number of demands and therefore must be designed
accordingly. Energy efficient family houses generally provide residents a high quality of living
comfort, thus thermal comfort, daylight and air quality ((Praznik, et al., 2014). The building
designed today should be able to accommodate various uncertainties in the future so that it will
not become prematurely obsolete. Building sustainability with the integration of three
sustainability pillars and lifecycle thinking is following this logic (Mu, 2014). With society
turning increasingly to sustainable development, sharper demands are being made concerning
energy efficiency and other properties that mean reductions in the negative effects of the
building on the environment and people. This means that architects must have a suitably
adapted solution already in the early design phase, as this has the greatest influence on the final
result (Markelj, et al., 2014).
In the article we researched the expectations of potential real property acquirers regard to
attitude to sustainable housing and development of the environment. We wanted to establish
whether participants express statistically significant differences considering external
expectations. As external expectations we listed participants' expectations in terms of governing
the housing policy, tax measures of the country, regulatory measures of the country, increased
offer of real properties and price trends on the real property market, changes in the economic
position, financial situation of potential buyers, unemployment rate in the country and the
perfect time to purchase real property.
As the main instrument for measuring the participants' satisfaction and expectation we used a
questionnaire that we formed within a broader survey currently being conducted in Slovenia.
By using the questionnaire some reliable information were obtained and statistically analysed.
One-way analyses of variance were conducted.
According to the results, Slovene participants have higher expectations as regards the
increased real property offer on the market, economic position in the past months and the
perfect time to purchase real property. Japanese participants have higher expectations as regards
the housing policy, tax measures, regulatory measures, positive real property price trends in
future months, economic position in future months and unemployment. Low expectation of
Slovene participants in terms of personal financial situation, however, show the increased
number of those who have in comparison to others less resources (as for example money,
information, connections and various skills) and are thus poorly prepared for competing on a
market. For them, different measures performed by the country to help households in dealing
with risk circumstances are highly significant Considering the fact that the countrys main lever
on the real property market is legislation, the expectations of the participants in our research
show that in Slovenia higher consumers confidence should be acquired in this field.
The article concludes that it is essential to target resources at enforcing building regulations,
providing sufficient social and affordable housing as well as the social infrastructure required
for sustainable communities, adequate management and maintenance, and retrofitting the
unsustainable housing constructed in the past. Barriers to achieving sustainable housing include
the lack of a shared vision of sustainable housing, inadequate building regulations and noncompliance with existing regulations, limited knowledge and expertise in green building
methods, negative perceptions of higher density housing, poor quality designs, negative
attitudes to social mix, an emphasis on demolition, a failure to recognize the need for social
regeneration and limited resources. As refers Lux and Sunerga (2014) the reasons for the limited
success of new social housing policies are attributed to broader historical and institutional
factors, such as the privatization trap, the decentralization paradox, the impact of the

385
informal economy and a strong socialist legacy in housing policies. These findings contribute to
the study of how post-socialist housing systems emerged, and reveal how short-term policies
can produce long-term structural change and can become a barrier to effective and sustainable
social housing policies.
However, this article contends that housing is an underdeveloped indicator and calls for more
attention to be paid to the importance of aspects of housing for sustainable development.
Housing policies have passed through many permutations in the last 50 years, based on
differing, even conflicting, approaches that, if we were totally truthful, have not really solved
the housing problems faced by the majority of the world's population (Choguill, 2007). Current
policies and programs focused on technical interventions to improve energy efficiency will have
limited reach and impact. Instead, it is suggested, among other interventions, that policies to
reduce the environmental impact of housing should be reframed around and positioned to
address the mundane practices of everyday life (Judson, Maller, 2014).
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387
Economic Housing Cooperatives (CHE`s) in Matosinhos: legacy

and promises (1974-1990)
M. R. Mesquita
Faculty of Architecture and Arts, University Lusada Norte, Porto, Portugal
ABSTRACT: The Program of Economic Housing Cooperatives (CHE`s), created by the

Portuguese Government in 1974 was widely accepted in our country, with grater expression to
the end of the 1990s, most notably in the territories of the main urbanized cities and was made
an appreciable number of housing cooperatives in a movement that brought together the
national institutions, through the direct support of the counties, the leaders of these
organizations, banking, architects, construction companies and whole lot of extended families
who have found in this Program the financing solution for access to the house long claimed. It is
estimated that by the early of the 1970s there was a deficit of 600.000 homes in Portugal which
penalized those who were on the housing market margin, dominated by the private sector. The
process was organized from the starting point, with few directives of the Former Housing Fund
(FFH), with an amazing capacity for dialogue of all stakeholders, joined by a question addressed
to the population and the need of establishing strict criteria of urban practices that could change
the urban landscape of the most depressed city areas. Dialogue and participation of the residents
was a complete originality for a country characterized by a chronic centralism and dirigisme.
This element ensured the solidness and consistency of a movement that has developed and
produced a set of solutions that today we could consider with social interest. Today, as well, we
might add a close view of concepts related to sustainability, which at the time would be
addressed but in terms of rationality, fairness of proposals, considering such important aspects
as the quality of construction, controlled costs and strict meeting budgets, participated
architectural projects, functionally care spaces, using materials in construction that would
ensure durability, including social facilities and exterior spaces that should be designed as an
approach to the creation of new centralities, inserting the new sets in conjunction with the more
consolidated urban areas.
1 INTRODUCTION
The CHE`s, born with this designation in 1974 by the management of the FFH, represents an
important initiative for the country that will bring together a significant number of efforts with a
single aim: ensuring a consistent supply of housing at lower costs for members who were
associated around the cooperatives helped to found, the government contributing to the
financing and the availability of terrain; families purchasing homes tend to the cost price.
This step represents the culmination of a long way of trying to implement this model of
organization of the economy and the housing sector. Seen as a potential solution, many have
believed in this approach and in this model that the new Regime in good time decided to take as
part of a housing policy, involving families through management participation. Also on the
assumption that the market should be regulated, it has its shortcomings and, therefore, depends
on the support and the state regulation.
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In a few years it was possible to start watching the results of a lot of planning that was done
with great value of the counties and the social cooperative effort, so many years after it was up
creating a very positive view of generated dynamics, the impact of projects and works in space
and territory of the counties benefited: Greater Porto, Greater Lisbon, Setubal and Funchal. If
primarily it was given some preferences to quantitative aspects of the program(s) for reasons
that we understand by the urgency to address the enormous shortage of qualified dwellings
among controlled costs, next and with more consistently it has been given greater importance to
the feature of the projects, involving demanding standards in terms of architecture projects,
resolution of urban spaces and building support facilities to these sets, designing the necessary
urbanity for the territories submitted in a process of transformation.
A preliminary study, although not systematic, requires that we look to the case of Matosinhos
region as a large scale intervention, involving several parishes and numerous housing
cooperatives, integrated into qualified architectural sets. That, in turn, will designing and
building the territory with particular requirement of the morphological point of view, promoting
the expansion of less central urban areas, making city fabric with planning concerns, also
highlighting aspects related to the design, giving place to the organization of neighborhoods, on
the way to the construction of isolated blocks, built on empty, discontinuous and just functional
sets. By the contrary, was given priority into solutions to design the public exterior spaces with
usefulness, reinforcing the use of the street as participating space, beside a demand stated
relationship between the private domestic domain with street spaces, stage of neighborhood
events into an easy and natural ownership.
2 BIBLIOGRAFIC SELECTION CRITERIA
The criteria that guided the selection of articles and publications necessary for the critical
review of the subject under study was the importance that has been attributed to these authors,
references in their areas of knowledge. Therefore, in this matter are more complementary than
divergent. It was purpose provide an assembly of different sensitivities to the contextualization
but also to promote a comprehensive reflection with different contributions, conciliators of the
importance of the Cooperative Movement and its impact on the affordable housing sector,
especially in the period following the Portuguese Revolution of April 1974.
3 THE PROBLEM: CRITICAL DISCUSSION
3.1 The demand for housing at the end of 1800s
The second half of the nineteenth century in Portugal, with some delay behind the more
developed European countries, marks a period of a growing demand for housing in the main
urban areas of Lisbon and Porto. The phenomenon is known and emerges from the deep
division that will increase at that time between the rural interior and the urban coastline, that one
in the process of industrialization, with some economic growth as a result of the dynamic
transformation of its economic and social structure. To get an idea of the scale of these changes
in relation to the city of Porto and according to Pinto (2011: 5) "the increase of the population
nearly doubles in 36 years (1864-1900), with the massive arrival of people essentially from the
north of Portugal, who were fleeing hunger and poverty".
These profound changes taking place in a political and social environment throughout
Europe, contaminating the decisions taken in each nation, will be installing over a long period,
exerting on the cities of Lisbon and Porto, in the national case, a strong demographic pressure
and demand for housing units. As in this issue matter, it would be useful to understand what
kind of answers will be found to solve the problem of worker housing, or more generally for the
most disadvantaged classes: the rural exodus greatly extends a type working-class and workers
without great resources, vulnerable to disease and without social support.
Arise at this time, a number of initiatives emanating from civil society that will organize in
order to find solutions for this most unprotected population. Thus was born philanthropy as

389
organized action with clear objectives and covering the many aspects in which the vulnerability
of people most was felt.
3.2 The Economic Housing Cooperatives in the context of housing policies XX century
Some facts are needed to understand how emerged the cooperative housing as part of the
dwelling problem, proposing a sharing model of savings, intended for the construction of
housing units. If by the end of the nineteenth century the building of workers' housing was
essentially in the hands of those who held the urban land property, the landlords, who set up a
business network based on real estate rents at the expense of the basic needs of the
impoverished population, last century, in turn, is marked by an intervention in this sector almost
exclusively public, involving a number of organizations for decades are happening but always
by national initiative, centered on the nation's government and, later on, with some initiatives
that the local authorities called for you.
It has been on the beginning of 1900s who take place the first steps towards the development
of what later would device of affordable housing policies. One of the reference portuguese
researchers in the field found a designation to alias the various types of economic housing, that
is, according Coelho (2009: 57) "this assembly would form what it refers to as social housing
(HIS) consisting of all dwellings promoted under controlled costs [name emerged in 1984 under
the National Housing Institute (INH) work], designed and built in Portugal from 1918" (2009:
58). Therefore, it is considered appropriate the classification proposed for the three main periods
of promoting economic housing in Portugal, according to the researcher, can be synthesized
with this formulation, also taking into account the number of homes built:
(i) between 1918/1933 (the promotion began basically in 1933) and 1972, a period marked
essentially by 24 years of coordinated promotion by the Economic Housing Federation
of Welfare Funds, but developed on a regional basis: about 58,000 dwellings.
(ii) between 1972 and 1984, a period marked by about 12 years of FFH activity, which
centralized the promotion: about 52.00 dwellings.
(iii) between 1984 and 2008, a period marked by 23 years of INH activity, who led a
promotion that was, however, extremely diverse and spread by many direct promoters
(local authorities, cooperatives and companies): about 130,000 dwellings (...). (Coelho,
2009: 59).
Whatever name we use, it seems clear that the cooperative housing (promoted initiatives from
cooperative associations, created for this purpose) should be placed in this housing program of
"social interest "name that should be more associated with a social policy of housing (and not a
social housing policy)" as indicated Coelho (2009: 57).
The housing cooperatives exists in Portugal since the late nineteenth century. The picture that
can be done on the dynamics of creation of such cooperatives until 1974 is that at least the
happened initiatives in a very slow manner and spaced in time, without strategy, without any
significant result that influence the total number of dwellings which were built under the social
housing programs. According (Matos 1994: 20), "the number of housing cooperatives born until
1930 in Portugal was sixteen and until 1900, only accounted two. Between 1900 and 1930 will
be seen, by the number of established housing cooperatives, fourteen, the sector dynamics is
still in its infancy, distributing the same around Lisbon and Porto. In 1945, coinciding with the
end of the Second World War, there will be a movement in order to promote these forms of free
association with the expansion of the industry in the country and an urban growth.
The response of the housing cooperative sector was not what we might expect from it in
terms of its contribution to the creation of social housing for the most supplies classes, but also
could not be otherwise because, as wrote Matos (1994: 19) "these cooperatives essentially
worked like real estate agencies in which partners paid out monthly until they reach the limit of
its construction class, when he acquired the right to build their homes. At this stage, not yet
entered the state as funder and promoter of these initiatives, particularly in the support to the
acquisition of terrains or conceding special credit fees. The cooperatives and other private
entities with intervention on the sector of construction of workers or social houses were
observed with suspicion because free enterprise in the field of social housing was in
contradiction with the new ideology of the Estado Novo, as defined Pereira (2012: 22) "was
based on a top-down management and the social discipline patronizing service. From this
390

point, we can deduce that in this period of almost-seventy years these initiatives would
ultimately considered for classes with the ability to generate some kind of savings because, even
in the quotas regime, the effort would be relevant. Or, in other words, in an economic
perspective, but also sociological, existing housing cooperatives in those years clearly intended
for the middle class, does not having, as synthesizes Tavares (2009: 2) "no one social
expression.
Beside not being an objective for this paper identify the policies and all programs
implemented in Portugal until 25th April 1974, and later on, in order to provide the territory of
affordable housing those alone do not could do it, it`s important to underline the enormous
backwardness of the country on the construction of low cost houses, taking Ferreira (2011) to
refer thus to the crisis has long-undisguised:
The legacy of the former non democratic regime can be characterized briefly:
deficit of around six hundred thousand housing; aged and lacked housing stock of
infrastructures and basic services; spread of illegal settlements and illegal
construction; a weak housing construction sector, trapped in the engages of
property developers and land ownership; and a bureaucratic and inefficient urban
supervision.
3.3 The housing crisis in Portugal after 25th April 1974. The Cooperative Movement
It is in this much bureaucratized and deregulated framework that arrives to 1974, leaving
Portugal a regime crisis, which was involved in overseas conflicts, not allowing the government
to be able in proceeding with the modernizers efforts tested in the period baptized Marcelista
Era. According to Ferreira (2011), in an eloquent synthesis:
It has been formed in that period one characteristically dual housing market: on
the one hand, a legal sector - predominantly private and speculative producing
almost exclusively for the luxury market, inaccessible to supply 70% of the
population; on the other hand, a clandestine sector responding to the needs and
economic capacities of the population with a certain degree of solvency (...).
With the advent of democracy, with the need to change the previous policy, although the
Development Plans launched between 1965 and 1973 have helped to increase new investments
in the promotion of housing, adding a certain social pressure, with reclaim capacity, turn on
visible this brutal reality that spreading around the big cities. All this would require the state
action and the first governments to take responsibility for the "debacle" of this sector. It would
be inevitable that the first measures had a distinctly ideological braid and that is how the
solutions that will implement, some almost experimentally, as was the case of the Local Support
Outpatient Service (SAAL)1 will surely have statist substance but not necessarily centralist.
Precisely this revolutionary new political context, after April 1974, with a socialist nature, has
taken the conditions that would be created has helped stimulate the associativism that, according
to Matos (1994: 20) "led to the expansion of the number of housing cooperatives slightly all
over the country".
We saw earlier that the first cooperatives established in Portugal date from the late nineteenth
century. In this regard, it should be added that these initiatives do not occur-separately because
they come from a wider movement, called Cooperative Movement,
"having born from the ideal of cooperativism and this comes from the set of ideas
and equal experiences, philanthropic and union of the nineteenth century, linked to
emancipation and defense of the working class and small producers, along with
utopian and community ideas." (Cabrita, 2001: 87).
The contribution of the Social Democracy that was getting strength in Europe since the
twentieth century, "carving a path between state socialism and liberal capitalism", according to
advocates Cabrita (2001: 87) "would be decisive for the expansion of cooperativism asserting
itself as highly flexible model to fit with various socio-economic policies, extending to such

391
diverse activities such as agriculture, finance, housing, social services and education and many
others.
Cabrita detects some internal contradictions in the Cooperative Movement, one of them
related to the visible conflict of benefits between what matters to the cooperative and the
community ideal of which it is part. But despite this difficulty in reconciling often conflicting
interests that may be Paiva (1996: 65) reports that the new Cooperative Code explicitly what the
previous none clarified, as follows:
The seven principles, approved at the Alliance Manchester Congress of 1995,
showing how should govern cooperatives: (1) voluntary and open membership; (2)
democratic management by the members; (3) economic participation of members;
(4) self-autonomy and independence; (5) education, training and information; (6)
intercoopera tion; (7) interest in the community.
These points, listed here, are a unity of principles that guide the activities of the cooperative
sector, whatever the sector we can talk. It is this shape of organization, which combines
economic activity directly to its beneficiaries, oriented to the community interest, which should
always be valued, as business people, not ceasing to be actual even in the face of what will
watching in terms of economic direction and organization of societies, imposing on the same
logic of "market" with difficulty be defined satisfactory regulatory levels. On this matter we
might conclude, then, that the cooperative system has the rule to assemble the needs, interests
and perspectives of the cooperators - beginning and end of the cooperative activity. Proceeding,
as writes Paiva (1996: 63) in his Estudo de Caracterizao das Cooperativas de Habitao em
Portugal2 "cooperators are the main actors of the cooperative process, either acting alone or
participating in groups, more or less structured, but always enjoying a double social and
economic quality: while users are producers they also are owners of a collective enterprise.
It matter`s, therefore, highlight the qualities of the model of participatory management
organization, applicable to various sectors of the economy, relying on the assumption of a
collaboration or partnership between the public and the private sectors, key to the success of its
operation. If it isn`t also incompatible with a liberal or market economy, the success of so many
good examples landed in the local and national economies seems to be increased as more
planned, efficient and demanding the commitment of nations towards their citizens, to safeguard
of the public interest. As questions Silva (1997: 369) in an article in establishing differences
between public-private partnerships in housing policies in Portugal and in the United Kingdom,
"it appears that in Portugal, in the case of housing cooperatives, is asymmetrical
relationship public-private, getting these heavily dependent on the conditions
offered by the government: without dependence on public authorities, will the
cooperative organizations be able to promote social housing?"
Most likely not. There were not in the past, also will certainly not be in the future. But it is
also true that the state, as the sole promoter of housing, was not able to create and promote
coherent housing policy with an effective translation on the ground. Thinking of the number of
homes built in the requests of the country's needs, also thinking in the architectural and urban
solutions, in a territorial and social integration.
On the other hand, as stated the Minister of Solidarity and Social Security3 on 26/05/1996 at
Reflection Day on Housing Cooperatives promoted by the Institute Antnio Srgio of the
Cooperative Sector (INSCOOP)4 "the housing concern is one of the sectors where it is widely
demonstrated that the market is unable of itself to promote solutions that answer to the needs of
all population". He added that this "is an area where most clearly highlights the need to
creatively combine the operation of the market, the regulatory role of the state and an active role
in development of public policy".
3.4 The importance of CHE`s between 1974 and 1990
The year of 1974 is thus a key year for the country by interrupting a long period of governance
would leave Portugal isolated diplomatically and economically, despite some opening have
392

given in some industry sectors having turned, thanks to investment, into the exportation. This is
the consequence of the integration of Portugal in the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA)5
in 1959, allowing an economic growth that served to pacify for a while the country. At the same
time a few signs of development emerged.
The legislation adopted shortly after the April 25th, for the majority of cooperatives, defined
the principles of its functioning, especially based on a democratic basis, required to opening the
new members and the election of representatives to the governing positions.
"Alongside existing cooperatives, would now be born the housing cooperatives
with a social nature, called CHE`s, created by Decree-Law 730/74 and 737/74,
under a moderate social model, as opposed to the more radical occupations
movements made by neighborhood associations and SAAL (...), completing the
nation's action in the field of social housing (Matos 1994: 20).
The public housing policies effectively gave a strong impetus to cooperative associations in
the housing field through loans granted by the former FFH with interest rate subsidies for the
construction, acquisition or houses repairs. In fact, in this public Institute would be created, until
their extinction, a sector to support CHE`s with the granting of state support, such as tax breaks,
subsidized and repayable credits (covering 85% to 95% of the total construction costs,
according to the income level of co-workers) and access to public land. By contrast, as noted by
Ferreira (2011) "the transaction of social positions are conditioned as well the alienation of
houses" in order to prevent speculative movements, favoring the establishment of tendentiously
durable links between the owner, the house and the location of dwellings.
According to Article n 2, paragraph 1 of the Legal Regime of Housing Cooperatives
(Decree-Law No. 502/99 of 19 November), "are housing and construction cooperatives whose
main purpose the promotion, construction or acquisition of houses for living, addressed to the
members, as well as their maintenance, repair or remodeling." And more, in the same Article
n2, paragraph 2,
"is also purpose of these cooperatives contribute to the improvement of the spaces
in which they live, promoting the treatment of the surrounding areas to the projects
for which they are responsible, including recreational areas and ensuring the
maintenance permanent good habitability of buildings."
The CHE`s are, summary, membership organizations that promote the construction of
housing at controlled costs, since supported by public funding, can be the same in possession of
the property, if this one is collective, transferred to the cooperator only your use (housing
rights). However, the most frequent modality in Portugal has been the private property where
the transmission of houses to cooperators is done through the contract of purchase and sale
agreement, according to which the cooperative transmits to the membership the real right of
housing.
It is appropriate, in the context of the knowledge presented, making the defense of one of the
public programs that stimulate the construction of housing at controlled costs, mention the
importance of that for the different agents that in him would involve, with a view to sustainable
development. Ferreira (2011) adds same as:
In the FFH was created a team of young technical staff, competent and
motivated, which fomented and supported the establishment of housing
cooperatives throughout the country; was promoted training and boosted
intercooperative organization; was designed and implemented methodologies and
instruments for how to execute the programs; they actively supported cooperatives
in elaborating the legal statutes, in the selection of properties, in the preparation of
projects and tenders for the works.
The period corresponding to a great evolutionary increase in the number of new CHE`s goes
from 1976 to 1978, as shown by the figures presented by Matos (1994: 21): "this triennium
emerged 160 cooperatives that take advantage the new legal regime and strong support provided

393
by the sector of cooperatives of the former FFH". From 1978, with the economic crisis that has
become rare real estate loans, joining the governmental instability that characterized this phase
of national life, would be extinct FFH (1982) and the number of new cooperatives reduced
considerably over the previous three years. In 1982 it was published another legal regime that
will replace the previous one and in 1984 was born the National Housing Institute (INH), which
are conferred in the field to program funding and projects. Together, these two factors act as a
further incentive to the creation of CHE`s and until 1991 the increase was always up. From
1992 reverses this tendency and the balance of new affordable housing cooperatives is negative,
explained by two factors, according to Paiva (1996: 82), "difficulty of obtaining properties and
credit onerous constraints to the purchase of homes".
These dates settled, in fact, significant periods that strongly conditioned this movement, in
such a way that Matos (1994: 23) arguments that "until 1984 ends what we could call the first
phase of the housing cooperative movement - the movement of the start-up phase ". And more
adds that "from here will only survive the cooperatives that can carry on the various crises that
will affect the housing sector". Also according to the author, the numbers alone gathered
indicate that CHE`s in the 80s, "were responsible for the construction of 10% of homes built in
the country, representing in turn 70% of homes built to under housing programs at controlled
costs (Matos 1994: 23). In her opinion, these years were the golden years for housing
cooperatives, which justifies this classification with the numbers above and considering the
entire period studied by itself until 1994.
Also Coelho (nd: 91) refers the decade of 1974 to 1984 as being the period of the golden
years of cooperative sets of economic housing. In the same article he listed well the context
aspects, both political and planning layout organization, the importance of the Movement
Cooperative and forms of association born and greatly facilitated the implementation of projects
in the ground. No less important, as he refers, would be the play by many of CHE`s in
architectural projects drawn up according to quality criteria "covering the scale of dwellings,
constructions and integration of sets in urban areas in transformation."
3.5 Notes for a differentiated housing: promotion, participation and construction
Moving forward in this strong connection idea of promoting cooperative housing and the order
of architectural projects to offices that offered guarantee well thought out solutions, the good
examples and good practices that characterize many of these housing estates actually had a
strong ally on the task of providing these projects in a spatial quality that recognizes them. We
are talking about architecture as an inseparable component of these actions. And architects,
many of them with skills, who found in the cooperative sector not only an opportunity to make
proposals and develop methodologies that otherwise and in other contexts would haven`t had no
real existence. This is of supreme importance that in the solutions investigated, given the
specific nature of the order and atypical character that characterizes these customers, not having
to be subject to the dictatorship of the market or to the conventions and stereotypes of real estate
developer. It should be added that many of the architects who were involved in these projects
and at this stage were the same as integrated teams SAAL program, this one extinct at 1976,
was an important laboratory where tested methodologies, processes and solutions linked to
inhabit and the problems of social housing.
An important part of cooperative dwellings would be built on vacant land on the outskirts of
urban areas, mainly because it was where there was a greater availability of properties for this
purpose and with lower prices. So, they were formed for the authorities in Portugal an
opportunity to carry out controlled expansion of the urban fabric with minimum guarantees,
offered by designers teams involved, but not only these, being these areas capable with the
quality of urban life, often contrasting with the surrounding areas.
A look closer to the constructed reality, stand out two dimensions that characterize many of
these sets, having mostly been adopted the solution intended to multi-family buildings:
(i)
the importance of the renewal of housing typologies as a feature of not only with the
housing improvement in general but also experimentation undertaken in many
architectural projects at the level of functional and space solutions, but also
constructive and the influence they were been taking on other projects, especially in
the private sector;

394
(ii)
the other element that stands out in these sets is the importance that the design of
public space acquires in many solutions, often projected on a way that involves the
built forms, architectural languages, materials and general access (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Exterior view of access - CHE As Sete Bicas, Barranha, Matosinhos (1988) Arq J.Teixeira de
Sousa..
Cooperatives in Portugal were allowed to build typology of dwellings from T0 to the T5, with
gross areas by dwelling also defined by law. "The dominant types are the T2 and T3 followed
by T4, mainly for young couples with one or two children at most, being few in number, among
the members of the cooperatives, the larger families" (Matos 1994: 30). These homes are
attributed to the cooperators at cost, although the CHE can add to the operating costs resulting
from the sums of different factors, a percentage for compulsory reservation of construction that
cannot exceed 10% of that amount.
Coellho in the article already cited Sobre os anos dourados dos conjuntos cooperativos de
habitao econmica 1974-19846 reproduced an extract from the report of the Housing
Programme for CHE Habitovar, Ovar (1976/1982)7 that has all the relevance and is an
essential mark of work process that would be integrated in order to solve people`s problems, but
also the problems of the discipline itself:
The architect / user dialogue when it is not committed by either of the players,
the attitude of the technician is who know it all or in the position that population do
know what they want, it is crucial to the positive results of the projects. (...) The
dialogue with the inhabitants of Habitovar withdrew conclusions on the batch
occupation, the types to be used (courtyard house band one and two floors and
collective housing), the internal organization of the houses, the organization of the
surrounding space and the equipment to control (Coelho, nd: 99).
Further on, one of the points that Coelho holds the inventory of important and projective
aspects that marked this period refers to it as follows:

395
The consideration that has always existed equipment and local services, well
embedded into the housing built and outside urban areas and neighborhoods,
emphasizing this characteristic has contributed to the difference between private
initiative promotions and the projects built by the cooperative movement (Coelho,
nd: 105).
Most of these sets would not be limited exclusively to residential areas and, as already noted
Matos (1994: 30)
"they were accompanied by recreational areas for sports, such as playing fields or
swimming pools, playgrounds." But also, as she adds immediately, "(...) shopping
areas, nurseries and gardens for children, giving these urbanizations a unique urban
quality of life, the result of social concerns that characterize the Cooperative
Movement, contrasting with areas engaging " (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. Playground view- CHE Gente do Amanh, Senhora da Hora, Matosinhos (1985) Arq J. Pulido
Valente..
In the words of M. Correia Fernandes8, em Anos 80. As Cooperativas de Habitao e o

Desenho da Cidade: A Senhora da Hora em Matosinhos, cited by por Coelho (n.d.:107), wrote
the first one:
Concerning all this is possible to talk about some cases. Notable in its way (...)
manners of causing the context and trying to force the appearance of the city (...),
link them (...) to be strong images, committed, with identity. Separate them having
very different results. Predisposes, however, always, to ensure spatial, visual and
functional continuities trying to ensure, first, its own autonomy and self-sufficiency
while neighborhoods - that is the concept that always serves them as reference (...).
Matosinhos is stated as a paradigmatic case that associates "housing typology, more as an
objective to force close neighborhoods relationships than to exalt the relationship with the
396

building island, isolated, detached from the city fabric, as many times occurred in the standard
real estate. (Coelho, n.d.: 104) The importance of Matosinhos for the statement of the
Cooperative Movement, in this aspect of the social housing sector, not only stands out for the
quality of reference that deserve many of the projects here were built but also the expression of
this will which manifests itself in numbers, accounting in the period 1977-1994, as indicated by
Matos (1994: 27) "a total of 4612 homes built." By comparison and in relation with to two other
counties where more was built in the same period of time, "at Porto were built in 2793
dwellings and 2402 at Maia".
The cooperatives units of this period, in general, are thus characterized by an established
balance between, on one hand, the architectural quality of its buildings and cost control. And,
secondly, the solutions which were obtained are treated with the future inhabitants.
4 CONCLUSION
The CHE`s, being created with this designation in 1974, established by Decree-Law and a legal
regime itself, greatly strengthened the role of a set of entities that were organized in the
following decades, in order to sustain this response as a valid and sustainable promise for those
who could not access the home purchase under normal market conditions. In 1996, responsible
for the Federation of Economic Housing Cooperatives (FENACHE), Guilherme Vilaverde9,
repeated an idea that, according to the same, there is much that had to be expressed that
cooperatives could contribute to solving the housing deficit with annual promotion from 10% to
15% of the country's production of dwellings. The model of organization and financing to
support housing construction at controlled costs, involving the public authorities and individuals
that are associated for a common goal, it was stated from a remarkable planning work that
quickly was contributing to the urbanization of those urban areas where different projects are
been edifying.
The challenge for the coming years will be to reinforce the role of the Cooperative Movement
as a strong ally of a supported housing promotion policy, more regulated, looking to the past
and for that very good was done in this sector, promoting the positive aspects and resolving the
negatives. Matosinhos is always present as an example to follow both in the aspects of
organization, planning and urban strategy for the resolution of growth and consolidation of the
city, supporting the construction of a number of the dwellings needed given the demand that
never cease to exist. That is, continuing to try to make the city with housing but increasingly
adding to this equation the components of physical sustainability, economic and social
sustainability with innovation proposals associated with constructive solutions.
The Cooperative Movement has not been extinguished, the sector linked to the promotion and
construction of housing at controlled costs haven`t the expression of the past, for many reasons
that cannot be analyzed within this paper. This observation does not remove credits to an
experience that also was never intended to be effective as a set of proposals integrating a
passing plan, dated and taking advantage of opportunities merely circumstantial. What is
considered valid for a certain period of history may not have the same relevance for the present
or even for the solutions to equate in the face of a future increasingly uncertain time. But we
cannot ignore the existence of a large variety of works and an entire response program to the
housing deficit of economic dwellings, using a model based on cooperativism, just because the
economic situation, attached with policy choices aimed at the sector, pushing cooperatives for a
kind of "dead end". The way to plan, promote, build and integrate populations around the
challenge of building the house, own or lease, should continue to be a goal of the state and
society, united in a common purpose and in accordance with solutions preferably sustainable.
The cooperative housing can continue to be a reference model and an effective solution to the
identified problem, taking into account what good has been done already, integrating other
responses that naturally should go adjusting to the new needs and the social and economic
framework that much has changed. The model of participation and involvement of people, the
focus on well thought out architectural solutions, the ongoing concern with the issues of
territory, are all aspects that housing cooperatives knew honor and that will make sure if there is
a legal framework and a set of advantages that ensure the viability of projects.

397
ENDNOTES
1
SAAL - Local Support Outpatient Service. Extinct on 27th October 1976 by ministerial order, was
created in August 1974 by the Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Development at the time,
Arq. Nuno Portas. The program was only started in 1975 and was intended to assist the Neighborhood
Associations that had formed in the processes to support the construction of homes.
2
Characterization Study of Housing Cooperatives in Portugal. Work coordinated by Flvio Paiva and
presented at the Reflection Day on Housing Cooperatives promoted by INSCOOP on 06/26/2016
3
Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, responsible at the time for supervision of INSCOOP.
4
INSCOOP Instituto Antnio Srgio do Sector Cooperativo. Public Institute established by DecreeLaw n 902/76 of 31 December to support the cooperative sector. Extinct on 7 October 2009, later
gave rise to Antnio Srgio Cooperative for Social Economy (CASES).
5
EFTA - European Free Trade Association, founded on 4th January 1960. Portugal was a founding
member and remained there until the accession to the European Economic Community in 1986.
6
Above the golden years of cooperative sets of affordable housing 1974-1984 is an article which
identifies a period of great activity in this sector and where it is made a public defense of the building
work, giving relief to the particular case of Matosinhos.
7
Cooperative Habitovar, Ovar. Project by Pedro Ramalho, Alcino Soutinho, Bernardo Ferro and
Rolando Torgo. Approximate dates of study / construction: 1976-1982.
8
Manuel Correia Fernandes, was born in 1941 in Espinho. Architect and university teacher at the Faculty
of Architecture of the University of Porto until 2009. Author of extensive work and built with several
publications and articles in the field of Architecture and Urban Rehabilitation.
9
He participated in the FENACHE foundation in 1979, elected National Director in 1984 and chairs its
Board since 1991. Speech on 29/06/1996 under the Reflection Day on Housing Cooperatives promoted
by INSCOOP and the FENACHE.
REFERENCES
Cabrita, A. Reis 2001. Cooperativismo Habitacional na Europa. Primeras Jornadas Vivienda Cooperativa
en Iberoamrica, 83-110. Cartagena de ndias.
Coelho, A. B. 2009. Sobre a primeira fase da habitao de interesse social (HIS), entre 1919 e 1972.
Risco Revista de Pesquisa em Arquitetura e Urbanismo, 57-79. S. Paulo.
Coelho, A. B. (n.d.). Sobre os anos dourados dos conjuntos cooperativos de habitao econmica 19741984: 91-109. Lisboa.
Coelho, A. B. & Coelho, P. B. 2009. Habitao de Interesse Social em Portugal 1988-2005. Lisboa:
Livros Horizonte.
Dirio da Repblica, 19-11-1999, I Srie-A, n270: 8233-8237.
Ferreira, A. F. 2011. Anos 1970/1980 Do Fundo de Fomento da Habitao ao Instituto Nacional de
Habitao. Lisboa. Available at: fonsecaferreira.pt/discurso-directo.html [Accessed on May 2016].
Matos, F. L. 1994/95. Habitao Cooperativa no Grande Porto (1974/94). Revista da Faculdade de Letras
Geografia I Srie, Vol. X/XI: 19-38. Porto.
Paiva, F. 1997. Estudo de Caracterizao das Cooperativas de Habitao em Portugal. Lisboa: INSCOOP.
Pereira, V. B. & Queirs, J. 2012. Na modesta cidadezinha Gnese e estruturao de um bairro de casas
econmicas do Porto (Amial, 1938-2010). Porto: Afrontamento (eds.).
Pinto, J. R. 2011/2012. A expanso (sub)urbana no Porto Romntico. O caso da Freguesia do Bonfim.
Percursos e Ideias Revista Cientfica do ISCET, 3-20. Porto.
Silva, C. N. 1999. Parcerias Pblico-Privadas nas Polticas de Habitao em Portugal e no Reino Unido.
Lisboa: 363-371. Colibri (eds) e Ass. Portuguesa de Gegrafos.
Tavares, M. 2009. Casa Prottipo: afirmao de um caminho experimental em Arquitectura. Resdomus
Grupo I&D Atlas da Casa CEAU, 1-17 Porto.
398

Chapter 6
Housing in disaster and conflict scenarios

Chapter 6: Housing in disaster and conflict scenarios
401
Refugee city an emerging and distinct form of urbanism

A. Dantas
Brisbane, Australia
ABSTRACT: This paper approaches the topic of refugee camps from an urban perspective. It
argues that this type of settlement, which is planned and established for the short-term care of
forcibly displaced people, is emerging as a distinct form of urbanism. The phenomenon is being
prompted by the protracted refugee situation worldwide, which is considerably increasing the
lifespan and size of the camps, turning them into permanent settlements. Uncontrolled human
population growth, coupled with adverse environmental changes is contributing to a worsening
situation, by exacerbating mass migration. The paper explores the process by which refugee
camps are morphing into cities and identifies their particular urban characteristics. It also
examines repercussions of the lack of prospect pertaining to their longevity, and consequent
paucity of attributes often found in urban agglomerations. It is hoped that this study will
contribute to widening the debate on the future of this new form of urbanism.
1 INTRODUCTION THE PRESENT SCALE OF THE SITUATION

This paper sets out to make an argument for recognizing a new and distinct urban typology that
is emerging in rapidly growing refugee camps, many of which will transform themselves into
permanent cities. A few statistics may help give some perspective.
In 2015, 60 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide, the highest number since
World War II. As a result, the number and scale of refugee camps are growing at an alarming
rate (Edwards, 2014). This unprecedented situation is described by Antnio Guterres, the High
Commissioner for Refugees, as follows:
We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global
forced displacement is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before (UNHCR 2014, p.3).
Approximately two-thirds of the forcibly displaced are internally displaced persons (IDPs),
while almost one-third (19.5 million) are refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) considers IDPs as ousted people who remain uprooted within their own
country, whilst refugees leave their country of origin or habitual residence, in search of shelter.
At present, there are 6 million refugees living in camps. UNHCR has mandate over 4.5
million, in hundreds of camps spread through more than 30 countries in various continents
(UNHCR, 2015). The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
(UNRWA) has mandate over 1.5 million, living in 58 recognized camps in the Middle East
(UNRWA, 2016).

402
There are refugee settlements more than a half-century old, as evidenced by Palestinian
camps established in the late 1940s and 1950s. Some have the population of a city, like Zaatari
camp in Jordan, which had, at its peak, more than 200,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth
largest city in the country. The refugee complex of Dadaab, established in 1991 is the third
largest city in Kenya with almost 400,000 residents, larger than the city of Zurich,
Switzerland. In terms of area, Nakivale camp in Uganda has the same geographical size as the
city of Kolkata in India (UNHCR 2014).
2 BACKGROUND
Refugee camps are normally established very rapidly. Here, large populations of displaced
people are brought together, often in remote locations with limited infrastructure and resources,
and are accommodated in temporary shelters. The resulting settlements are generally planned
for the short-term care, following guidelines compiled in the manual UNHCR Handbook for
Emergencies.
Suitable, well-selected sites and soundly planned refugee settlements are
essential from the early stages of a refugee emergency as they are life-saving and
alleviate hardship. It is crucial to plan and manage an emergency response
effectively by undertaking participatory assessment with groups of affected
population (UNHCR 2013, p.206).
Yet, in spite of emphasizing the importance of the participation of refugees in the planning
and running of the camps, the handbooks guidelines focus predominantly on technical aspects,
based largely on military precedents. Compounding the problem, it is generally difficult to
gather relevant information from refugees during the planning phase, due to time restrictions. It
is equally challenging to obtain feedback after they are settled.
2.1 Problems identified in refugee camps
The approaches used in setting up and managing refugee camps have been in place for decades,
but they never envisaged these settlements becoming permanent communities. Realistic
assessments of their likely duration are seldom made. Thus, the consequences of natural growth
are inaccurately factored into the planning. A unique problem in the camps, exacerbated when
their duration is extended to a permanent status, is the chronic shortage of employment
opportunities for disproportionately large youth populations.
As the planning of these settlements rests on interim, rather than long-lasting solutions, the
strategies currently employed are no longer sustainable. Inevitably, severe stresses and misery
arise from inadequacy of infrastructure, lack of water and sanitation, overcrowding, extreme
high pollution and environmental degradation (Figure 1), poor housing conditions, and absence
of green areas and open spaces (UNRWA, 2016). These adverse factors bring inordinately high
levels of physical and psychological health problems, contributing to insecurity, desperation and
radicalization.
Alienating consequences of the lack of involvement of the refugees themselves in the genesis
of camps is not only evident in the regimented and standardized layouts of camps but more
crucially in the neglect of culturally specific sensitivities in their organization. Hence, camp
residents invariably try to change their environment, in order to adapt spaces to their own
cultural values, and to achieve a sense of security. These initiatives that seek empowerment
often give rise to frictions between residents and the organizations responsible for managing the
camps. While administrators and local government representatives strive to control the
environment, keeping it as rigid and temporary as possible, refugees try to take ownership of it
by changing shelters and the surroundings, including modifications in the camp layout. (Dantas,
2015)
The difficulties mentioned above clearly point to overly narrow sets of concerns, when
establishing goals for settlements likely to persist beyond an immediate emergency. The
development of strategies that respond to the particular conditions of the camps is vital for their

403
advancement. However, these strategies can only be developed once the process by which
camps consolidate and evolve into informal cities is understood.
Figure 1. Rubbish around Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya.
3 CONSOLIDATION OF CAMPS INTO PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS

Palestinian camps have persisted for a long time, some for over 50 years, due to the unresolved
situation between Palestine and Israel. Most other camps though, until recently have not lasted
that long because the causes of their existence ceased after a certain time. For instance,
Vietnamese refugee camps closed, practically in their totality after the end of the Vietnam War.
However, the protracted refugee situation worldwide has increased the lifespan of the camps,
recently reaching an alarming average of 17 years, a figure that clearly suggests a trend towards
permanence.
UNHCR defines a protracted refugee situation as 25,000 or more refugees from the same
nationality being in exile for five years or more in a given asylum country. It is estimated that
6.4 million refugees fell under this category in 2014, in 33 distinct protracted situations
(UNHCR 2015). Figure 2 shows that the majority of the refugee situations worldwide last for 20
years or more.
Figure 2. Protracted refugee situations by duration Source: UNHCR.

404
3.1 Factors contributing to the consolidation of refugee camps

Contributing causes to the consolidation of the camps are not only rooted in temporary events,
such as wars and other conflicts, but also in long-lasting factors, such as uncontrolled human
population growth and unavailability of more permanent resettlements options.
According to a report from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United
Nations (UNDESA), the world population has grown by approximately 1 billion in the span of
the last 12 years and is projected to increase by another billion within the next 11 years
(UNDESA, 2015). More people will mean higher consumption of food and water, rise in
construction of buildings and roads, and consequently less native environment and natural
resources.
The population growth in developing countries is significantly higher than in developed ones,
as shown in Figure 3. The 48 least developed countries have, as a whole, the fastest growth.
This increase in population is contributing to less resource per capita, eventually driving people
to places where there are more abundant resources, and economy is more prosperous. Some
immigrants who do not succeed in their attempt to reach countries in better economic and
resource situations end up in refugee camps or asylum processing centres.
Figure 3. World population, 1750 2050 Source: World Bank.
Other long-lasting factors contributing to the consolidation of refugee camps are climate
change and environmental degradation. These events can drive refugees either straight to camps
or to urban areas. The migration to cities due to depletion and degradation of resources coupled
with climate change events, such as drought or flooding inevitably brings stress to these areas,
generating conflicts and consequently mass migration. A study from a research group at
Stanford University determined that a rise in global temperature is related to statistically
significant increases in the frequency of conflicts. Examples of this phenomenon can be
observed in Nigeria, Sudan and Syria. The paper Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and
implications of the recent Syrian drought, (Kelly et al., 2015) concludes that drought, while not
the sole reason, was a major cause of the crisis in that country.
In a speech at Stanford University in October 2015, Susan Rice, United States National
Security Advisor stated that climate change is the greatest long-term challenge to humankind.
A change in climate makes it harder for farmers to grow their crops, fishermen
to catch enough fish, herders to tend their livestock. It makes harder for countries
to feed their people; and humans like every other species on the planet scatter when
their environment can no longer sustain them. As the earth heats up, many
countries will experience growing competition for reduced food and water, and
rather than stay and starve, people will fight for their survival. All those

405
consequences are of course exacerbated in fragile developed states that are least
equipped to handle the strain on their resources.
Environmental refugees, such as residents of low-lying coastal lands fated to flood due to the
rising of the oceans will, in the near future, account for millions of displaced people worldwide.
The phenomenon is already happening in Bangladesh where climate migration is driving an
increasing number of people to its cities. Those displaced will not be able to return to their
homes for an indefinite time. The consequences of a mass migration event in an over-populated
country like Bangladesh, with approximately 160 million inhabitants, can prove to be
catastrophic.
3.2 Repercussion of the consolidation of refugee camps
Climate change and uncontrolled population growth are complex phenomena that will linger for
a considerable time, contributing to the longevity of refugee camps. Several studies, such as the
thesis Structures for the Displaced: Service and Identity in Refugee Settlements (Kennedy,
2008) make clear that the planning of refugee camps must take a long-term perspective. The
particular circumstance in which they are consolidating is contributing to the emergence of a
unique type of community with enough size and population to be considered as urban
settlements, and catalyzing for the surge of new cities.
4 REFUGEE CAMPS AS URBAN REALMS
In general, cities are permanent, dense built-up areas with a name, defined boundaries, and a
certain social and administrative structure. Their main physical elements comprise circulation,
open areas and buildings, whose features are dictated by geographic, economic and sociocultural conditions (Cheers, 2010).
To a degree, many cities attributes can be easily identified in those refugee camps that have
evolved into permanent settlements. Their initial form/layout is greatly influenced by
conventional urban planning strategies, such as grid systems. They also have, on a smaller scale,
similar key infrastructure to any large human settlement, such as roads, power, water and
sewage systems, and even public transport. Regarding building typologies, camps and cities
have comparable built artefacts, such as residential, administrative and commercial structures,
schools and hospitals, often zoned as in conventional urban areas.
Like cities, camps are dynamic entities; product of many minds and hands. They are
continuously evolving. Wider streets attract commerce (Fig. 4); shelters are progressively
modified, revealing the taste, aspirations and needs of their occupants, often resulting in density
increases over time in certain areas. These man-made habitats provide a context for social
development, but they also incite problems, such as stress, violence and social inequity. In
essence, refugee camps mimic cities as spaces for human occupation. Unfortunately these
settlements lack some attributes normally found in urban agglomeration.
Figure 4. High Street in Zaatari camp, Jordan, known as Champs Elysees.
406

5 DISTINCT URBAN FEATURES OF REFUGEE CAMPS

Despite having many similarities to cities, refugee camps also have many distinct features. For
instance, five phases in their development have been identified: contingency, emergency,
transition, sustainability and integration (Ennead, 2016). The first two phases are unique to
refugee camps. Cities are not usually created as a contingency plan nor do they arise in response
to emergency situations. They are either deliberated in advance, in the case of planned cities, or
developed gradually. Other inherent characteristics of refugee camps are:
5.1 Absence of tradition or formal rules and regulations
Historic patterns, as well as cycles of development and/or decline, and local traditions provide
valuable identity to settlements (Scheer, 2010). In refugee camps, historic patterns are
nonexistent, and cultural values imprinted in building artefacts are few and far between. Due to
their swift start and rapid growth, camps do not have precedents to draw upon, or contextual
demand because there is no defined context. Formal rules and regulations, so greatly applied in
built-up areas, in order to compel urban coherence are fairly colloquial in camps because they
do not have formal representative governments, only detached administrations.
5.2 Unique urban fabric development
Most cities develop, in due course, a static urban fabric, in which changes in layout happen by
small increments (Scheer, 2010). Refugee camps quite often follow a reversed path, developing
over the years an elastic fabric. In the camps initial design, sections encapsulate grids of streets
that delineate blocks subdivided into lots. One of the purposes of this system of sections and
grids is to facilitate the control of refugees by the camps administrators. The shortcoming of
this system lies in the fact that many refugees come from traditional settlements, seemingly
disordered and without discernable pattern. Urban planning strategies, such as grid layouts are
too foreign for them. As camps develop, residents progressively seek to modify the fabric,
incorporating a more organic form by moving shelters into more familiar irregular
arrangements. The awareness to the surroundings provides a feeling of security. Moreover, by
doing so refugees accomplish a sense of ownership, taking partial responsibility for the creation
of their own environment. The result is a symbiotic layout. The fabric is partially influenced by
the initial planned grid and partially by the input of refugees.
5.3 Poor permeability
Cities are generally very permeable, with ample network of roads and streets, and various
entry/exit points. Camps, on the other hand usually have one main point of access, which
functions as the sites gateway. This system allows the control of movement of people and
goods. Camps also have a limited number of roads, and streets are narrower than in average
cities. Circulation of vehicles is rather sporadic. The main way to move around is on foot,
through alleys and narrow pathways.
5.4 Rigid boundaries and increasing density
In contrast to cities, refugee camps generally have rigid boundaries. Space limitation coupled
with the impossibility of expansion contributes to an ever-increasing density. With no room to
grow and limited scrutiny, refugees tend to take over public areas, such as pathways or any open
space available. Once these spaces are occupied, growth inevitably expands vertically. This
increase in density is in discordance with the current trend in cities in general, where built-up
area density has persistently declined over the last century (Angel et al., 2011).

407
Figure 5. Comparison between camps and cities density
5.5 Deficiency of legibility or identity

Building typologies make a big contribution to the characterization of cities. Their variety is of
great assistance in cityscape legibility, a crucial quality for environment structuring and
identification (Lynch, 1960). In refugee camps though, there is a lack of visual diversity due to a
great repetitiveness. In these settlements, the variety in size and type of dwelling, which
constitute the majority of their buildings, is very limited. Moreover, many building typologies
found in cities, such as banks, libraries, petrol stations, museums and transport terminals are
absent in camps. The lack of significant artificial or natural landmarks in camps, such as
monumental buildings, squares, large avenues or rivers and lakes contributes to very dull
environments. Samey landscapes have negative impact in peoples senses (Scheer, 2010), and
with refugees it is no different. They try constantly to add their imprint to the built environment,
however, the effects of their actions are much more subtle than in ordinary urban developments.
An example of this context can be observed in Dadaab, Kenya where the majority of the shelters
still have very similar appearance.
5.6 Limitation of real estate ownership
The disparity of real estate ownership in camps is less significant than in cities, which often
have greater variety in land and dwelling sizes and values. In refugee camps, administrators
endeavor to promote impartiality. One of the ways to achieve that is by distributing space
according to refugee family size. UNHCR standard for floor space determines 3.5m2 per person
for settlements in warm climate and 4.5m2 to 5.5m2 per person for cold climate or urban
situation (UNHCR 2013). The only way to acquire more space is by increasing the number of
family members. As camps offer less opportunity for acquisition of wealth than in formal
settlements, there is less diversity of financial power among refugees. Some positive
consequences of this scenario are less social inequity and a stronger community spirit.
6 SIGNS OF EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF CAMPS AS FORMAL CITIES
UNHCR considers that the implementation of refugee camps to accommodate displaced people
is far from ideal. For the UN Refugee Agency, the best solution would be to integrate them into
established communities. However the countries that receive the majority of the refugees are
reaching their intake limit. In 2013, Australia implemented tough asylum policies, which send
refugees who try to reach its shores to processing centres in third countries. European countries
408

are increasing border control in order to contain mass migration. Kenya announced in May 2016
that intends to close Dadaab refugee complex.
As a result of the current situation there is significant speculation about the necessity of
creating formal refugee cities. Kilian Kleinschmidt, who worked for 25 years for UNHCR in
several refugee camps worldwide and coordinated Zaatari camp in Jordan until 2015 stated in an
interview for Dezeen Magazine in November 2015 that refugee camps are cities of tomorrow
and that governments should stop thinking about them as temporary places.
In March 2016, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of the Republic of Turkey, a country
that currently houses 2.7 million Syrian refugees, proposed the construction of a new city in
Northern Syria to house part of the millions of refugees who had to abandon their homes
because of civil war. According to Mr. Erdogan, the city would have an area of 4,500km2, a
similar size to large urban agglomerations in the USA. Infrastructure would be built with
support of the international community.
In its concluding statement, the G7 Summit May 2016 in Japan highlighted the need for an
increase in support to the most affected host countries, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Kenya,
through the development of means to respond to the crisis with long-term actions, including
technical advice on infrastructure.
We recognize that there is a need for tools that assist countries in providing
sustainable livelihoods for refugees and other displaced persons, as well as their
host communities, through financing and technical advice exploring options to
develop a long-term crisis response initiative in support of sustainable growth, vital
infrastructure and social cohesion Further, we support UN-led efforts to
strengthen the long-term capacity and effectiveness of the international system to
respond to humanitarian crisis
Ideas are starting to surpass conjecture and drawing board discussions. Hi-Tect Corporation,
a not for profit organization based in California, USA, which promotes building solutions for
reconstruction in areas susceptible to natural disaster is in advanced stages of a project that aims
to build refugee cities in Canada and wherever it finds receptivity. According to its founder,
Jacques Poirier, the companys tested concepts for natural disaster prone areas are so close to
what camps require that he decided to focus its mission on planning refugee towns of the future.
7 RAMIFICATIONS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF REFUGEE CITIES
Refugee camps are the only option for millions of displaced people, especially the most
vulnerable like women, children, elderly and the disabled. It is therefore critical to ensure that
these places can provide a safe and sustainable environment where people can live with dignity.
Some refugee camps may never develop to the level of a city, however, as the trend persists and
they become permanent settlements, proper planning will help them to offer an acceptable
future for their residents.
The accessibility to properly planned camps may not only benefit refugees, but also have a
positive impact on cities of regions close to conflicts and challenging environments. It can help
these places to achieve sustainability by avoiding a possible increase in population from an
unforeseen mass migration. Easy camp accessibility can also decrease the distance traveled by
displaced people, thus avoiding the need for journeys through third countries. Staying closer to
their homeland will afford better opportunity for them either to return to their homes or resettle
in a more familiar environment. Where refugees have the opportunity to migrate to developed
countries, their integration into a new society may be less traumatic if they are not carrying all
the physical and mental scars of living for a length period in an unsafe and insalubrious
environment. Pressure for swift transfers would be reduced, giving welcoming countries the
necessary time to prepare refugees for life in a new environment.

409
8 CONCLUSIONS
The facts and figures presented in this paper show that our worldwide society, brought about by
globalization is witnessing the emergence of a universally unprecedented refugee situation, as a
consequence of current environmental, socio-economic and geopolitical upheavals. The data
also gives a strong indication that refugee camps are no longer a temporary affair. Nevertheless,
they are still not considered as viable and durable solution. Their planning does not point in the
direction of urban continuity and sustainability, contradicting the current reality.
The growing number of displaced people coupled with the resistance of developed countries
to accommodate them is leaving no other alternative but the acceptance of durable camps as
plausible alternatives. It is time to reconsider the idea and embrace them as valid forms of
permanent settlement, a new form of urbanism.
The sustainability of camps will come with better planning, which can only occur if their
permanent nature is taken into consideration. This means not only continuous provision of food,
water, power and security, but also of alternatives for economic development; a fundamental
aspect of urban design that promotes self-reliance, but that unfortunately has been missing in the
planning of refugee camps.
Another aspect missing in the development of camps is a significant input from refugees. The
consideration of cultural factors in the planning phase is of vital importance. For instances, in
regions such as South America and West Africa, public and private realms tend to overlap,
whilst in other regions such as the Middle East and Central Asia, protection of privacy is more
important than protection from the elements of the environment (Kennedy, 2008). Aspects like
these can have great influence in the design of new settlements, as well as in the reconfiguration
of old ones.
Planners and administrators should focus more on collaboration rather than restriction of
refugees. They will profit more from guidance than control, which does not promote selfreliance, one of the goals proposed by UNHCR Handbook.
At present, urban planning focuses mainly on formal cities. However, a new and neglected
form of urbanization has been gradually evolving in refugee camps throughout the world. These
kinds of settlements are yet unrecognized forms of urbanism as they fall into the gap between
planned and informally developed urban areas, such as slums. A better understanding of their
patterns of evolution can contribute to the development of approaches that could mitigate some
of the negative aspects of the transition, from temporary camps to permanent settlements.
Refugee cities may indeed represent a new dimension in urbanization; therefore they should
be taken into more serious consideration. Their lack of recognition as truly urban entities only
limits the possibility of attainment of a better quality of life for their inhabitants. These
settlements will have a much better chance to offer a proper living environment if considered as
true distinctive forms of urbanism.
If there is to be a new urbanism it will not be based on the twin fantasies of
order and omnipotence; it will be the staging of uncertainty; it will no longer be
concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but with the
irrigation of territories with potential; it will no longer aim for stable configurations
but for the creation of enabling fields that accommodate processes that refuse to be
crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer be about meticulous definition,
the imposition of limits, but about expanding notions, denying boundaries, not
about separating and identifying entities, but about discovering unnameable
hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the city but with the manipulation of
infrastructure for endless intensifications and diversifications, shortcuts and
redistributions the reinvention of psychological space. Since the urban is now
pervasive, urbanism will never again be about the new only about the more and
the modified. It will not be about the civilized, but about underdevelopment.
(Rem Koolhaas 1995, pp. 959-971)
410

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411
Household risk management and social protection: case study of

Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam
S. Lee
University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
ABSTRACT: People living in developing countries are more vulnerable to disaster risks. As the
combined effects of socio-economic development and climate change are expected to aggravate
future risks, building disaster resilience is essential for ensuring sustainable development and
maintaining economic gains made thus far by the region or nation. Vietnam is one of the top ten
nations in the world that is expected to bear the worst damages brought about by climate change
(World Bank, 2007). Vietnam faces the pervasive threat of long-term climate change and
extreme disasters by the changing composition of the atmosphere (Kelly, Hoang, & Tran, 2001;
Tran & Nguyen, 1999). The number of floods and typhoons has escalated significantly in recent
years and this makes it even more difficult to forecast their frequency, severity, and direction
(Ministry of National Resources Environment [MoNRE], 2008). This study aims to document
the actual experiences of households and communities in the Thua Thien Hue province of
central Vietnam. The way households prepare, respond, and cope with a weather disaster and
achieve a long-term resilience depends on local knowledge and adaptation options available in
the community. It is critical to look at the countrys social protection systems, such as policy
interventions, as well as collective efforts carried out in risk management processes to mitigate
the adverse effects of weather shocks to income and the welfare of affected communities. The
study employs both quantitative and qualitative research approaches to conceptualize household
resilience to natural disasters. Primary data is collected from a field study of four communes in
Thua Thien Hue province as case studies.
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
Recent studies show that the number of people exposed to climate hazards has risen by 114%
worldwide between 1970 and 2012 (United Nations International Strategy of Disaster Reduction
[UNISDR], 2011). While the whole world is affected, the effects are most clearly visible in
developing countries and perceived as a great threat to sustainable development and poverty
reduction. While the level of vulnerability differs across countries, regions, communities, and
households due to variation in the degree of exposure and adaptation capacity, households with
low socioeconomic status, which are less capable of preparing for possible threats from natural
disasters in the community, are particularly inhibited from handling a crisis and maintaining the
current level of living (Nguyen, 2011). Scarce resources in many ways, such as income
shortage, lack of daily necessities, and lack of assets for urgent cases, can significantly decrease
their socioeconomic conditions and livelihood systems. Besides, there are limits and barriers for
the poor that restrict their ability to address negative impacts, such as limited access to credit,
social safety nets, information, and opportunities for alternative livelihoods. In sum, the
412

conditions that make people poor create constraints that prevent them from restoring general
wellbeing after a shock (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations [FAO],
2008).
While the whole world is affected by climate change, the effects are clearly visible in the
central region of Vietnam. While an estimated 80-90% of Vietnams population is significantly
affected by all types of natural hazard (Vietnam-Government, 2007), the proportion of the
affected people is perceived to be the highest in the central region, due to a significant
escalation in the number of strong typhoons and floods in past decades (Phong & Tinh, 2010).
Thua Thien Hue province is one of the most dynamically developed region of Central Vietnam,
bordered on the east by the East Sea and on the west by Lao PDR (Laos). Being home to over
1.15 million people, this province has an area of 5,063km2 and is divided into nine
administrative districts. Because the majority of population lives on the coastal plain within
128km of the coastline, most of the provinces infrastructure and industry are developed in the
coastal plain (Hue Statistics Office, 2012). Like many other provinces in Vietnam, various types
of disasters occur in Thua Thien Hue in the annual cycle. However, the impact of the events are
more serious due to the natural characteristics of its topography and the dependence of the
economy upon natural resources (The et al., 2010).
Figure 1. Map of Vietnam.
Figure 2. Map of Thua Thien Hue in central Vietnam.
The topography of Thua Thien Hue is classified into three main types: the delta region, the
coastal and lagoon region, and the mountainous region (The & Adhikari, 2015). The delta
region is considered a low-lying area where the main livelihood is agricultural production. The
region is typically exposed to annual floods. People in the coastal and lagoon region are largely
dependent on fishery, aquaculture, and agricultural production and this region is highly
susceptible to typhoons, floods and sea-level rise (Shaw, 2006; The & Tinh, 2015). People
living in the upland and mountainous region mainly engage in agricultural production such as
paddy crop, animals, and forestry resources. This region has been severely affected particularly
by storms, whirlwinds, and severe cold. For instance, the Xangsane typhoon in 2006 damaged a
total of 12 hectares of the forest and 35 hectares of agricultural lands, destroying 1000 out of
4500 ha of rubber plantations in the province (Zoleta-Nantes, 2007). The Xangsane typhoon
caused property damages in the amount of 450,000,000 VND (approximately USD 20,200 in
2016).
Due to the regions sloping topography, severe and destructive floods and typhoons occur
very frequently in this province throughout the year. By the end of 21st century, the total annual
precipitation and average annual temperature in this province is predicted to rise up to 7.7% and

413
2.8oC, respectively, against the 1980-1999 baseline (IPCC, 2007). This is the highest rise in
temperature compared with other regions in Vietnam. The sea level is predicted to also rise by
13-22cm, along with which the risk of saline intrusion will also rise (IMHEN, 2008). Such
climate-related changes will, in turn, harm living conditions and economic production, placing
further hardship on local people, especially poor households in lagoon and coastal areas. While
further impoverishment and famine status of the poor is expected, at the same time those
households just above the poverty line may also drop back into poverty. On this ground,
proposing solutions to minimize the adverse impacts of floods and typhoons on the local people,
especially the poor is a very imminent issue.
Understanding peoples vulnerability to natural disaster, particularly flooding and heavy
storms is complex, because this depends on both socioeconomic and biophysical characteristics
of the region that determine the capacity to cope and recover from it (Naumann et al., 2013).
Vulnerability is defined in many ways and it has different meanings when used in different
disciplines and contexts (Adger, 2006; Brooks et al., 2005; Fssel, 2007). In this paper,
vulnerability is defined as the potential of people to be killed, injured, or harmed by the direct
or indirect impact of disasters and identified by wide gaps among people in accessibility to
resources and capacity to reduce risk associated with poverty and sociocultural stratification as
the main cause. Given that the vulnerability of individuals depends on the society where they
belong, which in turn depends on several factors such as economic development, policy,
technology, population, land use patterns, diversity of economic base and cultural composition
(Naumann et al., 2013; Wilhite & Svoboda, 2007), the degree of exposure and vulnerability of
individuals can be significantly influenced by the protection capacity of the larger society to
combat natural hazards. While a lack of capacity to prepare for, mitigate, and respond to
disasters remains a major burden, especially for developing countries, development of capacitybuilding activities by local government, NGOs, and local communities could significantly
contribute to preventing and minimizing the worst impacts of climate change to the community.
This study intends to document the actual experiences of households in the flood and
typhoon-prone areas of Thua Thien Hue province and investigate the role of social protection as
a tool for disaster risk management and impact mitigation. The study attempts to answer the
following questions, with an aim to draw policy insights and recommendations for improving
protection measures and adaptive management for households and local governments to floods
and typhoons.
1) How vulnerable are the community and households in the selected disaster-prone
areas?
2) What are the levels of awareness, perception, and preparedness of households and
governments toward disaster events?
3) What adaptation and coping mechanisms are adopted by the community and
households?
4) What are the social protection programs provided by the local government, NGOs,
and mass organizations, and how effective are they in reducing the risks of natural
disasters?
2 RESEARCH METHODS
Focus group methodology is considered to be an appropriate method for data collection for
qualitative studies. Wilson (1997) and Morgan (1993) describe focus group interviews as a
time-efficient means to collect a wide range of opinions that could be used to inform and
validate the study design. Usually, a focus group is composed of a small number of people
(usually 5-12) from the target population for a particular study or project (Barbour & Kitzinger,
1999; Frey & Fontana, 1993), and generally those participants know each other very well
(Krueger, 1993; Krueger & Casey, 2000). Experts in focus group methodology warn that
researchers must be aware that the discussions may be influenced by the history group members
share as well as present and future interactions in which participants may be involved. Since the
participants in this study most likely have some familiarity with one another by living in the
same place for a long time, these issues were considered when analyzing the obtained
information.
414

Generally, it is recommended that participants should be homogeneous in composition,

because diverse identities or backgrounds might otherwise impede the free flow of discussion
(Krueger, 1993; Krueger & Casey, 2000; Morgan, 1997; Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990).
Diversity in group composition may lead to one group member being unduly influenced by
anothers position, and in this respect the group should be composed of those similar to each
other. While similarity can be defined differently based on the nature of the research being
conducted, in this study, the similarity of focus group participants was delineated as those who
lived in flood- or typhoon-prone areas, facing the risk of natural hazards.
The group provides an avenue to gain information on participants views, attitudes, beliefs,
responses, motivations, and perceptions on a topic, so it helps the researcher to fully understand
personal and ongoing aspects of participants experiences (Keegan & Powney, 1987). In this
study, focus groups were organized with household representatives in selected communes. With
support from commune staff, about six to ten villagers from poor, non-poor, and better-off
households were selected for each discussion and members of common interest groups such as
the Womens Union and Youth Union were also encouraged to be involved in the discussion.
These discussions were organized to ensure the active participation of village heads and women
in selected communes. However, people with authority such as members of local governments
were not allowed to participate in the FGDs to avoid unduly influencing the discussions or
views of the FGD participants.
In order to validate information discussed in the focus groups and hold more-in-depth
investigation of the topic, individual interviews followed. The interviews focused more on
personal information, such as property values, financial status, and social network, which may
have been uncomfortable to discuss and made participants less truthful in a group setting. These
results were later converted to numerical data. The use of both focus groups and individual
interviews provided an opportunity to validate responses and gain greater depth of reality.
The study was conducted in four communes in the Thua Thien Hue province. These areas
were purposefully selected because they have experienced either floods or typhoons frequently
in the past decades. The study communes are Quang Thai, Quang An, Huong Phong, and Huong
Giang in the Thua Thien Hue province. Focus group discussions were undertaken with 6-8
households from each commune, and follow-up individual interviews were complemented by
participant observation and interviews with key informants at the provincial, district, and
commune level, INGO and NGO staff, and informal talk with academics and other researchers
in the area in order to provide the social, economic, political, and cultural context needed to
correctly interpret the data. The location of the four communes are marked with stars on the
following map.
Figure 3. Map of Thua Thien Hue province by districts (location of study areas are marked with stars).

415
Table 1. Number of participants by districts and communes.

No. of participants
Districts
Communes
Quang Dien
Quang Thai
8
Quang Dien
Quang An
6
Huong Tra
Huong Phong
6
Nam Dong
Huong Giang
7
Total
27
The purpose of the key informant interviews was to examine what is available and what
works in terms of flood and typhoon risk management and prevention and income security, as
well as their engagement and experiences with those living in disaster-prone areas. Interviews
with key informants who were knowledgeable about the local area were used to collect
information about key historical flood coping strategies and community policies to reduce flood
vulnerability and perceptions of flood prone areas. Key informants helped review how useful
local social protection programs have been in mitigating the risks and creating an enabling
environment for adaptation practices, as well as what challenges and constraints are found in the
process.
3 RESULT
Local people are aware of the severity and impacts of disasters on their life and livelihoods. As
they suffer economic loss from natural hazards every year, they adapt to weather changes based
on their experiences in coping with disasters and learn to accept some degree of risk through
many years of experiences and become smarter about how to survive nature. While everyone
predicted that future floods and typhoons were likely to be more frequent, the representatives
from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) and Womens Union
(WU) said that intensity of risk would be less given that there have been no major disasters in
Thua Thien Hue province since the catastrophic 1999 flood and the Typhoon Xangsane in 2006.
On the other hand, the representatives from the Department of Natural Disaster Control and
Prevention, Nordic Assistance to Vietnam (NAV), and the World Bank said that it was very
difficult to forecast, due to irregular weather patterns during the past ten years. However,
everyone believed that natural disasters would continue to be a serious issue over the coming
decades.
In order to increase local peoples awareness and knowledge of climate change as well as
generating united power in community, national projects such as the Community Awareness
Raising Project (Project 1002) for Vietnam has been developed with financial support from
European Union Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department (ECHO) to consolidate
capacity and systems for national-, provincial-, and district-level community-based disaster risk
reduction action in Vietnam (Red Cross, 2015). The project is playing a critical role in raising
knowledge for local communes and relevant government authorities about climate change and
disaster preparedness through talks, meetings, and other activities. In addition, several projects
in coordination with international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) such as NAV, Red
Cross, Development Workshop France (DWF), the Japan International Cooperation Agency
(JICA), and Save the Children have worked to enhance local peoples understanding of disaster
risks in the local context (DARD, personal communication, October 28, 2015).
The findings of FGD analysis confirmed that floods and typhoons have a negative impact on
household welfare. Recurrent disasters cause damage to property, assets, houses, crops and
livelihood activities every year, and most households lack the ability to maintain the current
level of welfare (e.g., jobs, food, health, education, house, etc.) due to substantial income loss.
The affected households cut down on expenses for food, health care, and childrens education
due to high recovery costs which can be as high as 50% was put at serious risk, fishing activities
especially mobile fishing, mostly practiced by the poorest fishers became most vulnerable due
to its high exposure and sensitivity to climate changes.
It is evident that in the case of disasters, most of the material damages have affected
buildings, roads, bridges, and power services, etc. Many studies reported (e.g., Palliyaguru &

416
Amaratunga, 2008) that the consequences of a disaster can be lessened if it occurs in a place
where people are well protected, whereas the consequences can be very high in a poorly
protected settings, highlighting the role of construction professionals for providing essential
construction advice and practices for disaster resistance. By eliminating unsafe construction
conditions, potential risks can be minimized (Pathirage, Amaratunga, Haigh, & Baldry, 2008).
While a large proportion of houses get collapsed or totally destroyed, the same household
tends to lose their homes, assets and livelihoods, increasing their vulnerability to the next
disaster event. Most households, mainly poor households spend a significant portion of the
family budget to rebuild their homes using the same unsafe designs (ADPC, 2007). This was
confirmed by poor households in all FGDs that their homes were repaired or even rebuilt three
to five times due to natural disasters. While all participants reported that they realized the
importance of strengthening their house as a tool to be more resilient to future events, they have
to carefully consider whether or not to use limited monetary resources for housing construction
or renovation. One of the participants in the Huong Phong commune said,
In the past, whenever we heard of floods or even just right at the beginning of
flood season, my family stored a lot of food, rice, and sauces in case of prolonged
inundation, sometimes up to a week. But last year, we instead repaired the cracks
or weak points of our house to prevent any risk. The problem is we dont always
have enough money. Last year we had to borrow from our relatives living in a
different commune.
Figure 4. Local residents response regarding types of roof materials.
In order to assess the quality of residential housing, participants were asked, during
individual interviews, about the types of materials used in the housing structure, particularly the
roof and walls. Figures 3 and 4 show the main materials used for residential housing in the
study areas. Based on field observation, many houses with concrete and brick tiles seem to have
a higher foundation from the ground level while houses with other materials do have a
foundation at the same height as the ground. Nearly 50% of the participants have brick tiles for
roof; and 30% used cement and brick/stone for walls, which are considered relatively strong.
However, this does not suggest that people in the study areas are completely safe from a
disaster.

417
Figure 5. Local residents response regarding types of wall materials.
In central Vietnam, one of the most important housing construction projects in terms of
disaster resilience is managed by Development Workshop France (DWF), an international
NGO. According to the President of DWF (personal communication, 29 September, 2015),
before the introduction of Doi Moi policy in 1986, people had no perception of safe housing
and thus most people in rural areas of Central Vietnam lived in temporary houses built with
bamboo, thatch, or mixed materials. Those were very weak and thus easily destroyed when a
flood or typhoon occurred. Very few of these houses were built in a manner that would enable
them to resist strong winds and rain, and as a result, the large investment in time and money that
people made was highly vulnerable to floods and typhoons.
However, in recent years, the Vietnamese government had made great efforts in a project to
eradicate weak houses. The government, in partnership with DWF, undertook actions to help
families and communities to pay more attention to better-quality and safer construction
techniques to strengthen existing houses, and developed a safer environment that contributed to
poverty reduction (Worldhabitatawards.org, 2008). DWF assisted the provincial committee for
Flood and Storm Control and the Department of Construction to establish multi-year action
plans for damage prevention (personal communication, 29 September, 2015). DWF trained local
building brigades to improve the general quality of building and to develop skills in disaster
resistant construction. Now those trained workers work on local construction programs, and act
as building advisers to people in the community.
3.1 Risk management and recovery
After floods or typhoon occur, all mass organizations such as the Farmers Association,
Womens Union, Youth Union, Veterans Association, Agriculture Cooperative, and the
Vietnam Red Cross all take part in the recovery activities for repairing houses and
infrastructure, cleaning up the environment, and replacing losses (DARD, personal
communication, 28 October, 2015). In particular, the Youth Union mobilizes young people to
assist in the clean-up following disasters. The leaders of the village have an overview of all the
activities undertaken by different organizations and assistance directed to the village. In the
process, frequent village meetings are held, including the leader of Youth Union and other local
organizations such as the Red Cross in order to decide on the work distribution and share
knowledge to support each other. Therefore, during the disaster, the role of the village leader is
more important to build the capacity to protect and supply available resources from the
community and achieve fast recovery (Youth Union, personal communication, October 26,
2015).
According to the leader of Youth Union (personal communication, October 26, 2015), in
general, individual households receive less support and often they have to deal with the risk
themselves with self-mobilized resources through banks or relatives. Social programs within the
community are limited and not yet sufficiently developed, therefore many households
experience more difficulty in recovering. Those that lack manpower before the impact are
418

among the most vulnerable of the community. Often, these are poor households consisting of
elderly people only due to migration of young people to larger cities in search of work. In such
cases, coping strategies are limited and depend on the return or help of migrated family
members to those who stayed behind.
Vietnam Red Cross Society (VNRC) is another important organization that has been playing
a critical role in response efforts. VNRC is a member of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front, an
active member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (IFRC), and carries
out activities throughout the whole country (Red Cross, 2015). When a flood and/or typhoon
arrives, the VNRC headquarters respond quickly and effectively by deploying provincial
disaster response teams to affected communities and by assessing the situation and coordinating
with authorities to provide emergency relief aid. Then the provincial disaster response teams
step in to evacuate the local residents and distribute relief stock and emergency household kits
as well as assist residents in repairing their houses. In fact, the Red Cross has been involved in
every step of the response process including rescue, evacuation, relief, assessment of damage,
and rehabilitation measures (Red Cross, 2015).
A major immediate recovery action taken by participants tends to focus on repairing damaged
houses through the elevation of structures and contents in order to secure a shelter for household
members. On this ground, low-income households need to spend a considerable amount of their
income on housing repairs after an annual natural hazard. According to the participants, it is
common that people fall into debt after annual disasters because they borrow money from all
possible sources (e.g., relatives, neighbors, friends, and banks). When the participants were
asked how they had paid for the cost of repairs or replacements, and whether any assistance was
available in the recovery process, they claimed that everything was paid out of their own pocket
first. Whether or not they were eligible for external support was determined later.
Usually, rescue, relief, and rehabilitation after disasters is not incorporated in the official
responsibility of these mass organizations. However, they are willing to take part in disaster
relief. In addition, these mass organizations along with other organizations conduct campaigns
to collect monetary and in-kind donations nation-wide. In order to disseminate information and
raise awareness of climate change issues to communities and people, the role of these mass
organizations is critical. In short, the mass organizations and other stakeholders in natural
disaster mitigation and risk reduction processes act as key agents.
Despite discomfort and difficulties after a disaster event, these impacts may be mitigated
through the lending system in Vietnam. The participants stated that they received loans mainly
from two sources: the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) and the Vietnam Bank for
Agriculture and Rural Development (VBARD). The VBARD lends money to those who want to
do business, develop husbandry, or purchase working equipment, whereas the VBSP mainly
targets poor people. The basic mission of the VBSP is to provide access to financial services to
people in rural areas with low interests, so as to narrow the gap that has emerged during the
rapid economic growth of recent years and thereby alleviate poverty (Izumida, 2003). In this
regard, when financial support can come from many different sources, such as relatives and
neighbors, many people tend to borrow money from the VBSP because of its low interest rates
and absence of a mortgage requirement. However, the participants in the focus groups said the
VBSP usually lends very small loans (microloans) of less than 20,000,000 VND (equivalent to
USD 890).
The Womens Union plays a critical role in mobilizing money for women. It makes contracts
with the VBSP from the central down to the commune level to disburse capital and provide
chances to poor women so that they can get access to loans. Presently, the Womens Union at
the provincial level is managing over 1,000 million VND from the VBSP as loans for poor
women in the whole province, including the mountainous districts of Nam Dong and A Luoi
and the seashore districts. The poor households are surely the targets, and these households use
the loans for their children to go to school and/or undergo vocational training (Womens Union,
personal communication, 29 October, 2015).
While all mass organizations such as the Farmers Association, Womens Union, Youth
Union, Veterans Association, Agriculture Cooperative, and the Vietnam Red Cross all take part
in recovery activities, the Womens Union in this particular province is distinct from that of
other provinces, due to their cooperation with nuns. The province has more than 1,000 Buddhist
nuns and more than 500 Catholic nuns. The Womens Union in Thua Thien Hue province

419
coordinates with the Nun Board to communicate with local people to raise awareness and build
up a climate change response network. For the nuns to provide proper assistance to the local
people, the Womens Union provides training courses on first aid and emergency aid for nuns
(Womens Union, personal communication, 29 October, 2015). In many cases, people think
they receive help from the religious group, not from the Womens Union.
3.2 Role of social capital
Social capital plays a beneficial role in helping affected individuals to cope and recover from
natural disasters (Aldrich, 2011). Social capital functions as a bond that links people with
similar social-demographic features in close geographic proximity (Rufat et al., 2015). As social
capital acts as implicit insurance, giving affected households a network they can turn to for
emotional and financial support, the more social capital the community possesses, the better it is
able to cope with a disaster.
Social capital was evident among participants in all focus groups, with all participants stating
that in their village, everyone knows everyone else and they are willing to help each other in an
emergency. The village and commune leaders as well as organizations at the commune level
mobilize people and organize mutual support to assist those affected and to repair house and
livelihood tools, as well as to provide immediate needs such as a shelter, food, and clothes. As a
matter of fact, the bond of relatives and neighbors in the locality plays a very important role,
especially to poor households, in dealing with the impact of disasters.
Figure 6. Social support received during previous disaster event.
During individual interviews, each participant was asked to identify all sources of support
they received during the most recent disaster event. The highest number of participants chose
local government (22.22%) and relatives inside the locality (21.37%), followed by NGOs
(19.66%), relatives outside the community (12.82%), neighbors (12.82%), and religious leaders
(11.11%) for their sources of help (see Fig. 5). While the local government was chosen most
frequently, many participants claimed that assistance they get from the government, NGOs, or
anyone else is insignificant. They usually receive a very small amount of money, rice, blankets,
fish sources, and other cooking spices. In general, these kinds of support are not monetarily
valuable, worth no more than 200,000 VND (equivalent to USD $9) per person. It is indeed
very little help.
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Figure 7. Types of social support.
While people must recover from disaster largely on their own, the problem gets more serious
if the family is not classified as extremely poor or poor. One of the better-off participants in
the Huong Phong commune said that his family has never received any support in the past,
while people who are considered poor with kids under 18 years old receive help from the
government and charities. While the commune leader revealed that there are no households that
are wealthy enough to be classified as rich in the area, if the household is a bit better off
than the rest living in the commune, then they are no longer eligible for government services or
any other services.
The participants were also asked about what types of support they received. Most said
money and food as seen in figure 6. Usually, support from the government and NGOs was
provided in the form of financial help, and it was mostly used to purchase materials to repair
their houses or tools for their work, so they could return to their normal state of living. But it
was their own responsibility as individuals or as a community to repair what had been damaged.
Next to tangible support, what the affected households most needed was a large force of labor to
repair damaged properties. Families and neighbors volunteered their unskilled labor to help
reconstruct homes. Most of these residents are farmers or fisherman without much knowledge of
construction. Technical construction guidance is provided by INGOs such as Save the Children,
Development Work France, and the Red Cross, but it is very limited since these organizations
cover large areas in the county with limited manpower and resources. As a matter of fact, social
capital, particularly the bond between relatives and neighbors in the locality, plays a very
important role for the affected households, especially for the poor households, when dealing
with the adverse effects of floods and typhoons.
4 CONCLUSION
Issues and constraints in the social protection and risk management undertaken by households
and local governments surfaced during the focus group discussion and key informant
interviews. Households and communities in Thua Thien Hue province have different adaptation
strategies and coping mechanisms to climate-induced disasters, depending on the vulnerability
and capacity of households to deal with such disasters. Their vulnerabiltiy depends on a
combination of factors that determine peoples livelihoods and life risks. Since the 1990s, local
governments and mass organizations have made substantial efforts toward reducing loss of lives
and poverty, and reinvestment in repairing houses by assisting poor households in accessing
financial aid, as well as enhancing understanding of climate change and disaster preparedness in
local communities. However, many key informants expressed their concern over current social
protection policies and new initiatives being concentrated on response actions, rather than on
long-term strategic planning and pro-active measures. The rehabilitation and disaster relief
operations were the most common activities undertaken by the government units immediately

421
after recent disaster and these were limited only to the construction of damaged houses and
provision of temporary needs such as food, clothing, and money for affected households.
In other words, while emergency response activities such as warning systems, immediate
financial aid, and disaster relief operations may have improved a lot and assisted many people,
such response systems are not yet equipped to provide more resilient and long-term responses to
reduce the risk of events. While the provision of financial assistance to households would
enhance their recovery capacity in the short-term, this cannot be the ultimate solution to
promote sustainable livelihoods and sources of income. Not being able to address the
fundamental problem, people continue to feel neglected, less benefited, and that the government
does little for them. In addition, due to relatively easy access to financial loans, people use loans
as disaster insurance and rely on them as a response strategy rather than trying to organize
collective efforts and activities within the community, with limited success. Hence, a more
effective pro-active approach involving affected households and the surrounding community is
necessary to cope with disaster situations and improve alternative livelihood options.
According to the local authorities from both DARD and DNCP, the fundamental problem is
that there is not enough money. Due to the lack of financial and human resources, many disaster
risk management plans are made yearly, rather than for the long term. In fact, what is really
needed in Vietnam at this stage is more concerted intervention, such as funding and technology
transfer from the international community, so in turn, the local government and communities
can invest more in resources for long-term and inclusive projects. Rather than assisting those
who are repeatedly in trouble, the government should focus its efforts on making disaster
prevention and mitigation programs in disaster-prone areas before people fall back into critical
conditions due to disasters.
It is understood that local governments should take advice and consultation from construction
professionals in order to build risk-resistant infrastructure and apply risk-compliant building
codes and regulations appropriate especially to the needs of low income households. Disasterresilient housing will provide natural buffers to mitigate floods, storm surges, and other hazards
and help people return to normal life quickly by reducing the unnecessary costs of natural
disasters. This being said, INGOs that have a goal of providing safe shelter and permanent
housing should maintain partnerships with the local government and get involved in all phases
of the disaster risk management including reconstruction, planning, prevention, and mitigation
in order to create a more sustainable environment.
As for achieving sustainable livelihoods, there are many things local people can do without
money or social protection policies. Since households learn their adaptation measures from
several years of experience, their indigenous knowledge should be stressed as a key source of
adaption strategy and improved through communication among communities. According to a
representative of World Bank (World Bank, October 28, 2015), a series of seminars on postdisaster recovery planning, risk financing, and disaster risk management for learning and
knowledge sharing were held by the World Bank (World Bank, 2009). The seminars
emphasized the importance of sharing experiences and successful practices and consolidating
lessons learned among policy makers and practitioners for further scaling-up of CBDRM
implementation. In 2009, the central government, in addition to national strategies, allocated a
budget for implementation of CBDRM in 10,000 communes (World Bank, personal
communication, 28 October, 2015). In order to mitigate shocks to income as much as possible,
this program emphasized what people do before a disaster comes. If they are better prepared,
they can limit and reduce damages. People in the commune should encourage the exchange of
ideas and experiences among households and communes about developing and implementing
disaster prevention activities and promote transfer of community-based skills from one
commune to another.
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425
The role of reversible solutions for post-disaster temporary

housing
D. V. Monteiro, D. Flix & A. Feio
University Lusada Norte, CITAD, Vila Nova de Famalico, Portugal
ABSTRACT: Disasters caused by natural hazards frequently result in great numbers of

homeless, thus requiring temporary housing for these population until the conclusion of
reconstruction, which may last years. In spite of their importance, few attention has been given
during design phase of units for planning the outcome of temporary housing after their vacancy,
resulting in common environmental and economic issues that include: (i) environmental impact
on the used locations; (ii) high degradation levels of units that became permanent; (iii)
permanent storage of materials collected after disassembling the units; (iv) and great costs
regarding the whole process. To overcome these problems, reversibility applied to the design of
units enables their components to be disassembled and reused, extending their lifecycle and thus
improving their viability. Within this context, this paper presents a set of advantages and
strategies regarding reversible solutions in order to enhance the environmental and economic
sustainability of temporary housing.
1 INTRODUCTION
One of the most notable consequences of disasters resultant from natural hazards, is the
destruction of housing buildings (Barenstein, 2006). Due to this, a great amount of population
become homeless and vulnerable to various types of physical and emotional hazards, sometimes
leading to an increased number of deaths (Flix, et al., 2014) as well as long-term psychological
traumas (Caia, et al., 2010). In such scenarios, temporary accommodation plays a crucial role in
the overall post-disaster response, as it provides homeless people with minimum living
conditions, protection to external factors such as the weather, and conditions to recover
emotionally, as well as it is important to the progress of reconstruction programs.
Post-disaster temporary accommodation has been, however, subject to many frequent
problems that result in unsuccessful outcomes. Such problems include delays in the provision of
temporary housing units and selection of adequate lands to settle them, failure of their design to
protect against the weather or to adapt to local culture, as well as sustainability issues regarding
environmental impact and cost of the units (Flix, et al., 2013a). These sustainability problems
are some of the most common in post-disaster context, and one of their main causes is the lack
of strategic planning for long-term outcomes of units, most times resulting in unusable and
wasteful components that have negative impacts to the environment.
In order to ensure a more environmental and financially sustainable approach to long-term
outcomes of temporary housing, this research addresses reversibility and its advantages to this
process when planned during the design phase of units. When using this strategy, it is planned
for the components of units to be easily disassembled and reused in more adequate functions for
each individual lifecycle, thus improving the sustainability of the process.
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The study uses literature review regarding post-disaster scenarios in order to firstly analyze
the context and most common problems of temporary accommodations. Then it proceeds to
introduce reversibility within this context and study its advantages to overcome most of the
problems mentioned before, ultimately concluding with strategies to benefit from reversible
systems and therefore enhancing the environmental and financial sustainability of the whole
process. Lastly, this study only takes into account temporary housing units with fabricated
elements instead of units built directly with raw materials that are subject to various techniques.
This is the case of constructions made from earth, such as adobe, as these may be easily
dissolved back to its original physical state.
2 DISASTERS AND TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATION
Disasters caused by natural hazards are events that frequently result in severe human, building
environment and socio-economic consequences. Over the last few decades these types of
disasters have grown considerably, affecting up to 2.6 billion people in the planet according to
World Bank (Fan, 2012). One of the most important consequences of these events is the
destruction of buildings, mainly housing (Barenstein, 2006). This results in of the most common
issues of post-disaster scenarios: homelessness.
Becoming homeless is, most importantly, a stage of vulnerability that exposes people to risk
factors, such as weather, diseases and unsafety. During the days that follow a disaster, these
vulnerabilities may result in an increase of mortality and morbidity (Ashmore, et al., 2003), that
ultimately leads to a second disaster. Besides the previous physical vulnerabilities, losing a
home also represents a loss of privacy, sense of adeptness to cultural standards and social living,
as well as the identity and dignity that a home provides (Flix, et al., 2013b; Barakat, 2003),
adding up to one of the primary reasons for post-disaster stress disorders, depressions, or other
enduring hazards to mental health (Caia, et al., 2010). Due to this, it is crucial for survival to
provide homeless people with temporary accommodation (United Nations, 2008).
Temporary accommodation units (TA) are structures built to rehouse disaster victims during
the post-disaster phase until the end of reconstruction. The term is described by Johnson (2007a)
to categorize all three of Quarantelli (1995) stages for post-disaster sheltering, namely:
emergency shelter, temporary shelter, and temporary housing. In these, the author describes a
series of characteristics that are set to gradually ensure the homeless population with conditions
to return to daily activities and routines, regaining a sense of normality to life (Flix, et al.,
2014). An emergency shelter is established for the first days after the disaster in order to quickly
shelter people from external factors and provide them with the minimum conditions of life and
hygiene, however, usually at the expense of some privacy and a sense of ownership of space, as
this type of shelter is frequently established in collective areas, like public pavilions. In
temporary shelter and housing, the homeless population is usually granted an independent
family space in order to regain a sense of privacy, dignity and normality to life. The temporary
shelter, frequently a tent, is provided within the first days after the disaster, in order to rehouse
the population for a period of weeks. This stage is followed by the temporary housing (TH)
which must last for a period of months or years until the reconstruction phase is finished,
granting conditions to regain regular daily activities and household responsibilities. In order to
respond to the urgency and precariousness the of post-disaster scenario, these types of TA are
usually described to require simple, affordable and easily acquirable, transportable and
assembled structures. Ultimately, due to these requirements, duration, and overall costs of units,
the temporary housing process is responsible for most of all TA problems.
3 PROBLEMS IN POST-DISASTER TEMPORARY HOUSING
In spite of their importance, temporary housing programs have registered several problems and
inadequate results (Flix, et al., 2013a). Some of their most common issues are related to the
design of the unit, such as failure to protect against the local weather (Johnson, 2007a), or
inadequacy of units to cultural and social standards of the population (Gokhale & Gulahane,

427
2010). These problems often result in population rejecting or abandoning their TH units (Flix,
et al., 2014; Johnson, 2007a).
Logistically, some of the first and also common setbacks to emerge after a disaster, are the
delays in provision of temporary housing units and their materials. This can also be linked to
decisions regarding the design of units, like materials used and dimension of their elements, as
well as to logistics of acquisition and transportation.
Other frequent problems are related to the locations of the temporary housing units, that due
to a lack of available land or decisions taken under pressure, may result in problems such as
unsafe terrains (Omidvar, et al., 2013) and locations far from essential services (Johnson,
2007a), or even from the original homes of the affected people, which may lead to an increase
of depressions and ultimately, even suicides (ibidem). The lack of available locations for TH is
particularly notorious in urban areas due to higher building density (Killing, 2011; IASC, 2010),
a circumstance that may lead to a need for renting private land. In fact, there have been
examples of this approach. In both Turkey and Colombia, after the earthquakes of 1999, local
governments had the need to rent private lands to settle the temporary housing units (Johnson,
2007a). However, land owners in Colombia had demanded that within three years after the
beginning of the process, the lands were to be returned to their original state, rid of waste or
residual infrastructures (ibidem).
This type of environmental damage left in the aftermath of the TH process, represents a
common issue in post-disaster scenarios as well, as many lands are left with various forms of
waste and debris that may be dangerous to both the environment and the people, and therefore
must be managed (Arslan & Cosgun, 2007). This is frequently the case for residual foundations
and basic infrastructures (Flix, et al., 2014). An example of this type of situations occurred in
Turkey after the earthquake of 1999. Temporary housing units were established on the outskirts
of the city where it was necessary to build new infrastructures and services. The reconstruction
lasted several years, and between 2003 and 2005, most of the people had been rehoused in
permanent houses, leading the government to start shutting down the TH process for a
subsequent removal of the units. However, there were registered several traces of non-functional
basic infrastructures on the land (Johnson, 2007a; Johnson, 2007b) (Fig. 1), and actions to
demolish infrastructures as well as to clean temporary housing sites may require great financial
investments (Bektas, 2004).
Along with removal and cleaning operations, a temporary housing unit may, in some cases,
be as costly as a permanent house (Johnson, 2007a). This represents a problem as well, because
the investment made for TH programs is too high in relation to their lifespan and may inevitably
seem to be an unsustainable solution (Johnson, 2008), leading to some strategies that support
rapid reconstruction with fewest possible investment made to sheltering (UNDRO, 1982). On
the other hand, as the reconstruction phase may last between 6 months to 3 years or more, TH is
not only necessary for people to recover from the disaster and return to normal activities and
household responsibilities (Johnson, 2002), but is also beneficial for reconstruction work, since
it provides more time for planning and developing mitigating solutions in order to decrease local
vulnerabilities for future natural hazards (Johnson, 2008).
Figure 1. Environmental impact of temporary housing in Turkey after the earthquake of 1999. (source:
Johnson, 2007b).
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Besides this, temporary housing processes tend to last longer than what was originally
expected, and some units even become permanent (Flix, et al., 2013a; Johnson, 2002). This
results in a vulnerability state for their residents, because in spite of being planned to last a few
years, TH units are not planned to become permanent and consequently have no conditions for
it.
Lastly, whilst this may be true for whole units, some materials used in TH may have a much
longer lifespan than their planned period of usage (Johnson, 2008). However, due to lack of
sustainable planning and strategic design, these materials often become unusable after
disassembling the units, resulting in several examples of materials or even whole TH units being
stored indefinitely (Bologna, 2004). Providing a solution to easily reuse these elements, may be
essential to develop sustainable temporary housing processes (Johnson, 2008) both in terms of
the environment and economics, with fewer resources spent or left unusable, as well as reduced
environmental impact caused by the temporary housing units. However, there is a lack of
planning for a second life of these units and their parts that have been neglected in past TA
processes, leading to temporary housing to become obsolete and problematic (ibidem).
4 REVERSIBLE SYSTEMS IN POST-DISASTER CONTEXT
According to some the problems discussed above, it can be concluded that long-term outcomes
of temporary housing units and their materials are greatly related to environmental and financial
problems of TA processes. These results have been in fact problematic, and are caused by a lack
of strategic design for sustainable outcomes of the units once the TA process is over (Johnson,
2008). Therefore, it is necessary to implement sustainable strategies to the design of temporary
housing units that effectively solve most of these problems in an environmental approach.
Regarding that end, reversible systems have several advantages towards a sustainable strategy
for the long-term outcomes of TH units.
The reversibility in post-disaster context represents a reverse process of deconstruction, in
which the lands, materials and all technical factors involving TH are considered resources,
with independent life cycles that go beyond temporary use, and are made available to be reintegrated back in the environment or re-integrated into another production cycle (Bologna,
2004). Considering this, one of the main objectives of reversible systems to temporary housing
units, is to achieve the ability to dismantle structures with minimal damage to their parts, in
order to assemble the same structure in another location afterwards, reuse their parts separately
in other projects, or be recycled. This must be planned during the design phase of the TH units,
so all elements are integrated in the building through addition instead of subtraction, avoiding
significant modifications or damage to the parts that may render them useless after being
disassembled, and connected by placing them together instead of using cohesive actions, thus
ensuring reversibility to the joints (Bologna, 2004). Besides this, the constructions should be
simple to avoid difficulties when dismantling units, as it happens when these have several
complicated details (Arslan & Cosgun, 2007). Moreover, considering that TH are often built
with standard elements such as metallic and wooden panels, the design phase should plan to
maintain as much as possible the integrity, morphology and dimensions of most standard sized
elements (Bologna, 2004), by avoiding cuts and other changes that would afterwards make it
more difficult to reuse those parts in other buildings. Elements with standard dimensions should
be a priority to maintain, if there is a goal to reuse these in other instances. Therefore, the
reversibility approach in TH allows for a design planning that takes into account the
deterioration period of their parts, instead of limiting the duration of the unit to its destination
use when there is a lack of further applications (Grasso, 2006).
Reversible systems have in fact been used in some temporary accommodation solutions, most
notably the paper log houses and paper emergency shelters (Fig. 2) from the architect Shigeru
Ban (http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/works), that besides having easily acquirable and
transportable environmental friendly materials, also have separate elements to connect the
structure that can be simply dismantled. The first solution also uses ordinary objects such as
crates to support the TH above the ground without the need to bury any other type of foundation
that could have lasting impacts of the land.

429
Figure 2. Left Paper Emergency Shelter for UNHCR, 1999. Right Paper Log House Kobe, 1995.
(source: http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com).
5 ADVANTAGES AND STRATEGIES OF REVERSIBILITY FOR TEMPORARY

HOUSING
Using reversible systems in post-disaster temporary housing not only has advantages to the
overall TA process, but also presents solutions to various problems previously mentioned.
Their benefits start to be noticeable during the TA process, as the provision of a shelter
should be considered a process, not a goal (Gokhale & Gulahane, 2010). This may be applied to
all temporary accommodation phases, and in regards to units, it represents the need for these to
gradually adapt to the needs of the population within the process of emotional recovery and
return to normal life activities. Because of this, it is only natural that during that process,
families have a need to adapt the TA to their necessities, whether this is a storage area for
salvaged belongings, or another room for a new family member. Unfortunately, to accomplish
this, people frequently build increases or modify the TH themselves, without any adequate
skills, professional aid or even safe construction systems, which results in unsafe structures
(Flix, et al., 2013b). Due to this, TH should be flexible and have the ability to easily change
according to the needs of people (Flix, et al., 2014). Reversibility may allow for certain
elements of the unit to be easily disassembled and reassembled in other layouts, as well as to
connect other parts in order to expand the TH units. Therefore, reversible systems may be
beneficial in adapting units to the needs of people, contributing as well to the flexibility and
versatility of TH.
The overall lifecycle costs of temporary housing may be reduced if the units are recycled,
sold or reused (Johnson, 2007a). Then, in order to achieve sustainability for this process, units
should have the ability to be used again in a second life (Johnson, 2008). Designing TH with
reversible systems allows for individual parts to be easily removed or substituted with the
purpose of adapting the unit to new functions after the TA process is over, as well as for the
whole structures to be disassembled and reassembled again in other locations more appropriate
for the new function. These second life scenarios for TH units may be of interest to the
population, such as schools, community buildings, and even rental of homes for low-income
families. This strategy was used after the earthquakes of 1999 in Turkey, where some TH units
were disassembled and reconstructed on different locations with new functions such as schools
and sports centers (Johnson, 2008). As a result, the great investments that are needed to provide
TH and are sometimes regarded as problems in relation to their period of use, are now supported
by the plan to reuse the units with other functions after the TA process is finished, therefore
returning a small part of these investments. Besides the financial arguments to this strategy,
adding a second life to units also represents a valuable resource for recovering communities
(Johnson, 2008), and the reversible systems also add the advantage of simplifying maintenance
works, due to the ability of easily removing individual elements.
Temporary housing units may also be fully disassembled in order to use separate elements in
other structures. By allowing each part to be reused individually, this reversibility strategy
prevents the indefinite storage of elements, and is then beneficial for a more sustainable
430

approach that accounts for fewer waste being left to degrade in the environment. In addition, by
using this strategy, each component can also be evaluated separately regarding its lifecycle and
the best use to be given or structure to be adapted into, until an eventual recycling process.
However, dismantling temporary housing may be at least as costly as the construction process
(Arslan & Cosgun, 2007) and regardless of second life uses, the energy spent in both
construction and deconstruction processes cannot be returned (Bologna, 2004). It is due to this
factor, that TH unit design should account for simple structural and connection systems that
besides enabling units to be assembled faster, also facilitate easier disassembling processes with
fewer energy and resource consumption. Lastly, to fully take advantage of these strategies to
reuse whole units or separate parts as a second life, there also needs to be a strategic planning
for all possible outcomes, that considers community needs as well (Johnson, 2008).
Regarding the foundations of TH units, a major part of the problems of environmental
damage to the land are the result of elements such as concrete foundations and sanitation
infrastructures that are prone to leave, or be, residual waste into the land. This was the case in
Duzce and Marmara after the earthquakes of Turkey in 1999 (Arslan & Cosgun, 2007). Due to
this, there needs to be a planning for this type of waste management, in particular with
dismantlement of units (ibidem). Strategies using reversible systems may include wooden stakes
that are more easily removed or resistant elements that are placed above the ground to support
the unit and elevated them to avoid burying most of the sanitation and plumbing infrastructures,
which would, in such case, be connected between the units and the ground. By applying these
systems, foundations and basic infrastructures can be removed without significant impact to the
lands, therefore returning them to their original state. This has three notable advantages in
relation to recurring problems of TA processes: (i) the environmental problems caused by the
TH units are significantly reduced; (ii) due to this, fewer financial resources are needed to clean
the lands of any type of waste; (iii) and lastly, by guarantying a faster and easier strategy to
return lands back to their original state, it may be logistically simpler and easier to negotiate and
acquire private lands for the duration of the TA process. Particularly in urban areas, this last
advantage may allow for local governments to acquire most lands to settle the units in fewer
days, which also reduces delays of TA provision for homeless people.
Infrastructures can also be categorized by two types: permanent and temporary. The first
represents all basic and essential infrastructures, such as primary water and drainage, sewer
systems and provision of power; whilst the second represents all temporary components of the
TH, such as the unit itself and all temporary components that connect the unit to permanent
infrastructures (Bologna, 2006). By planning and establishing permanent infrastructures in the
selected TH areas during a pre-disaster period, places then become ready to quickly be adapted
to settle TH units once a disaster occurs (ibidem). This means that during the emergency phase
there will be fewer need to establish new permanent infrastructures, and instead these will be
ready to be directly connected to temporary infrastructure, thus fastening the whole TH process.
However, it also means that investment will have to be made during pre-disaster period. This
may be justifiable with two major arguments: the first is that the area may also be given uses
with permanent infrastructures before the disaster occurs, such as recreational parks and parking
lots (Bologna, 2006; Chandler, 2007); the second is that once TA process is over, these places
can and should be returned to their pre-disaster state (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005; Chandler, 2007),
in this case by simply removing the temporary infrastructures and once again using the
permanent ones to assume the same type of public uses as before. By doing so, local populations
are able to use or to benefit from these systems, which is ideal (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005).
Therefore, instead of only being used during the TA process, the investment made to permanent
infrastructure extends to the area itself and to all uses that may be given in both pre-disaster and
post-disaster period.
6 CONCLUSION
Some of the most frequent problems of temporary accommodation processes are regarding to
environmental and financial sustainability, which are mainly caused by the lack of strategic
planning to long-term outcomes of units. By analyzing these issues and studying the role of
reversibility within temporary housing processes, it was then concluded that strategies based on

431
this concept have several advantages to decrease or solve these problems, mainly by ensuring
second life uses for both temporary housing units and their components, as well as cleaning
the lands of debris and waste resultant from this process. As such, both environmental and
financial sustainability of these processes can be improved with a reversibility approach.
Ultimately, reversibility strategies manage to consider both temporary housing units and their
areas as resources, that besides having the planned use during temporary accommodation
process, also have strategies of reuse beyond this phase and even before a disaster occurs.
Regarding temporary housing units and their parts, this enables for a careful approach to the
lifecycle of each component and its use, in order to prevent wasteful actions and storage of
unusable materials. The lands previously occupied by temporary housing, may also return to
their original state where only planned interventions such as permanent infrastructure prevail,
thus avoiding waste and debris on the land that are responsible for the environmental impacts.
Lastly, the second life strategies are also beneficial to the financial viability of the whole
process, as well as to the local community in a pre-disaster period and beyond the temporary
accommodation process.
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Arslan, H. & Cosgun, N. 2007. The Evaluation of Temporary Earthquake Houses Dismantling Process in
the Context of Building Waste Management. Kocaeli. International Earthquake Symposium Kocaeli,
2007.
Ashmore, J. et al.. 2003. Diversity and Adaptation of Shelters in Transitional Settlements for IDPs in
Afghanistan. Disasters.
Barakat, S. 2003. Housing reconstruction after conflict and disaster. Humanitarian Practice Network,
Issue 43.
Barenstein, J. D. 2006. Housing reconstruction in post-earthquake Guajarat. Humanitarian Practice
Network, March. Issue 54.
Bektas, E. 2004. A post-disaster dilemma: Temporary Settlements in Dzce City, Turkey. s.l.: Erasmus
University Rotterdam, IHS.
Bologna, R. 2004. Transitional housing for emergencies: Temporariness and reversibility of the building
process.
Bologna, R. 2006. Strategic planning of emergency areas for transitional settlement. 2006 International
Conference and Student Competition on post-disaster reconstruction Meeting stakeholder interests.
Florence: Firenze university press.
Caia, G., Ventimiglia, F. & Maass, A. 2010. Container vs. Dacha: The psychological effects of temporary
housing characteristics on earthquake survivors. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 60-66.
Chandler, P. 2007. Environmental Factors Influencing the Siting of Temporary Housing in Orleans
Parish. Louisiana: The Department of Environmental Studies, Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State
University and Agricultural and Mechanical College.
Corsellis, T. & Vitale, A. 2005. Transitional Settlement for Displaced Population. Cambridge: Oxfam.
Fan, L. 2012. Shelter strategies, humanitarian praxis and critical urban theory in post-crisis
reconstruction. Disaster, 36.
Flix, D., Branco, J. M. & Feio, A. 2013a. Temporary housing after disasters: A state of the art survey.
Habitat International, 40, pp. 136-141.
Flix, D., Feio, A., Branco, J. & Machado, J. 2013b. The role of spontaneous construction for postdisaster housing. In Cruz (ed.), Structures and Architecture: Concepts, Applications and Challenges
(pp. 937-944), Taylor & Francis Group, London.
Flix, D., Monteiro, D., Branco, J. M., Bologna, R. & Feio, A. 2014. The role of temporary
accommodation buildings for post-disaster housing reconstruction. Journal of Housing and the Built
Environment, December.
Gokhale, V. & Gulahane, K. 2010. Design criteria for temporary shelters for disaster mitigation in India.
i-Rec. International Conference and Student Competition on post-disaster reconstruction.
Grasso, M. R. 2006. Reversibility for Sustainability in Emergency Interventions. Florence, i-Rec.
International Conference and Student Competition on post-disaster reconstruction, "Meeting
stakeholder interests".
IASC, Inter-Agency Standing Committee. 2010. Final strategy for meeting humanitarian challenges in
urban areas. Geneva: United Nations.
Johnson, C. 2002. What's the big deal about temporary housing? Planning considerations for temporary
accommodation after disasters: Example of the 1999 Turkish Earthquakes. Faculty of Environmental
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Design, University of Montreal.

Johnson, C. 2007a. Strategic planning for post-disaster temporary housing. Disasters, 31, 435-458.
Johnson, C. 2007b. Impacts of prefabricated temporary housing after disasters: 1999 earthquakes in
Turkey. Habitat International, 31, 3652.
Johnson, C. 2008. Strategies for the Reuse of Temporary Housing. In Urban Transformation. Berlin:
Ruby Press, pp. 323-331.
Killing, A. 2011. Towards a wider process of sheltering: the role of urban design in humanitarian
response. Oxford: Brookes University.
Omidvar, B., Baradaran-Shoraka, M. & Nojavan, M. 2013. Temporary site selection and decision making
methods: a case study of Tehran, Iran. Disasters.
Quarantelli, E. 1995. Patterns of sheltering and housing in US disasters. Disaster Prevention and
Management, 4, 43-53.
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Shelter Centre.
Chapter 7
Refurbishment and upgrading of residential buildings

Chapter 7: Refurbishment and upgrading of residential buildings
435
Using BIM to streamline the energy renovation processes of

residential buildings during the early design stages
J. P. Carvalho, S. M. Silva & R. Mateus
Department of Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Minho, Guimares, Portugal
ABSTRACT: The existing European building stock is responsible for 40% of total energy
consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. In order to reduce these values,
the European Union (EU) has been strengthening and updating the regulations which define the
minimum energy requirements for buildings. Therefore, Member States started to increase their
energy requirements for buildings, with the purpose to raise their efficiency, reduce their
emissions and energy needs, making them more sustainable at the energy level. The renovation
of the existing buildings, especially those designed before the first thermal codes is an essential
step to achieving the EU proposed targets, due to their low energy performance. Thus, the
energy renovation of existing buildings, combined with other sustainable design practices, is a
priority to reduce EU's energy dependency and carbon emissions. On this context, this study
aims at presenting the energy renovation of a Portuguese dwelling, built in the late 60s, using a
Building Information Modelling (BIM) approach during the design phase. BIM methodology
was used to perform an energy analysis of a case study, in order to discuss the advantages of
this approach at identifying the best energy renovation scenario. From this study, it was possible
to verify that the main added value of the BIM is that it can streamline the designers' decision
making by improving better integrating between different design areas, saving time and money
during the design stages and therefore promoting the better efficiency of the building stock.
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
The European Union (EU) building stock is responsible for 40% of the total energy
consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions. On the past years, sustainable buildings had
an increase importance in the construction industry, with owners and regulations demanding for
better and efficient buildings. Therefore, the EU has been strengthening and updating the
regulations which define the minimum energy requirements for buildings in order to reduce the
energy dependence and carbon emissions from the Member States (Konstantinou and Knaack,
2011, Almeida, Ferreira, et al., 2013, Bragana, Mateus et al., 2013).
More than 80% of the existing buildings in Europe were built before 1990 (Gkgr, 2015)
(most of them before the firsts thermal regulations low energy performance) and for that
reason, it is essential to think in energy renovation as a possible way to reduce those values and
achieve EU goals and, at the same time, increase their value in the real estate market (Sousa,
Silva et al., 2012).
In addition, studies show that the environmental impact of life cycle extension of a building is
less than demolishing and building again (Konstantinou and Knaack, 2011). The renovation of
residential buildings provides a considerable potential for energy conservation and further
436

sustainable benefits (Konstantinou and Knaack, 2011). A real reduction of emissions in the
building sector can be achieved only by acting on the existing stock (Galante and Pasetti, 2012).
The most effective decisions related to the sustainable design of a building can be made in
the early design and preconstruction stages (Azhar and Brown, 2009), so it is necessary to
find a way to intervene in the mentioned stage. The Building Information Modeling (BIM) may
become an important tool on the renovation process because it allows multi-disciplinary
information to be superimposed within one model, it creates an opportunity for sustainability
measures and performance analyses to be performed throughout the design process (Azhar
and Brown, 2009). In fact, BIM could lead to several benefits on the energy renovation practice
like supporting decision making at an early stage of the project, improve stakeholders
collaboration, reduce time, save money and develop better and efficient buildings.
Despite the increasingly importance and use of BIM in the construction industry and the
proved benefits provided, this methodology is more popular for new buildings, but it is feasible
to be used in renovation projects and it has not reached its full potential yet (Gkgr, 2015).
This leads to the conclusion that the real potential for sustainable building and CO2 reduction
lies in the management of the existing residential building stock (Mickaityte, Zavadskas et al.,
2008) and due to the complexity of this kind of operation the use of BIM become an essential
tool to develop better and sustainable buildings.
Based on this context, this paper aims at discussing the contribution of the BIM
methodologies to support the decisions related to the energy renovation processes during the
early design stages. It is discussed the state-of-art of BIM integration in the sustainable
renovation process and also the added value provided. As an example, a case study is introduced
to demonstrate how BIM can be integrated and its benefits in the early design phase.
1.2 Energy efficiency and rehabilitation
As the society is growing and developing, it is natural that an increase exist in the occupants
comfort demand and energy consumption. The main reasons which lead to an energy
consumption increase are directly related with the building weak performance and with the
irrational use of energy (ADENE, 2016a, Horta, 2012, Cardoso, 2013).
Is essential to think about energy efficiency for a sustainable development and this means to
optimize the energy use without compromising the indoor environmental quality, through the
use of efficient technologies and passive and active construction solutions (Horta, 2012,
Machado, 2014).
Among the most significant advantages for the society and environment, it should be
highlighted the reduced building operation costs, the increase of energy production from
renewable sources and the use of less amount of natural resources (Lamberts, Dutra et al.,
1997).
The energy renovation allows buildings to have a better thermal quality and also increase the
comfort conditions of users, in order to reduce energy needs for heating, cooling, ventilation and
lighting, supporting the country to achieve the EU goals (ENERGIA, 2004).
The main aspects affecting the thermal performance of a building are (ENERGIA, 2004):
x Insufficient thermal insulation in the building envelope;
x Thermal bridges in the building envelope;
x The presence of moisture;
x Lower thermal performance of glazed areas and doors;
x Lack of appropriate shading devices;
x Uncontrolled ventilation;
x Inadequate behavior of the occupants.
To overtake these aspects, first, it is necessary to improve the thermal insulation of the
building envelope, control the air infiltrations and integrate renewable energy systems. In a
second phase, building users must get aware of the correct behavior to adopt to operate the
building at an efficient level.
Despite the fact, that 71.1% of the Portuguese residential building stock do not need any kind
of structural or aesthetics renovation, they are still responsible for 17.7% of the global energy
consumption in the county, mainly because most of the Portuguese building stock were built
before the implementation of the first national thermal regulation, in 1991 (INE, 2013, Costa,

437
Bragana, et al., 2014). Therefore, there is a need to renovate these buildings with the aim to
improve their habitability, indoor environmental quality and performance, becoming essential to
think in energy rehabilitation as a possible and feasible solution (INE/DGEG, 2011).
1.3 Building Information Modeling (BIM)
Construction projects are becoming more difficult and complex. In order to improve the
lifecycle of the built environment, there is a need to automate and modernize the construction
processes. This was the main reason for the development of the Building Information Modeling
(BIM). In the last years there is an increasingly demand by project owners for this kind of
processes and, in some countries, like the UK, a standard that requires the use of BIM in all the
public projects is in force since the beginning of 2016 (Bryde, Broquetas, et al., 2013).
On the construction industry, BIM presents itself as the most recent method for developing
projects, taking the place of the typical CAD 2D and 3D.
Actually, there are different definitions of the BIM concept and methodology. The BIM
Handbook (Eastman, Eastman, et al., 2011) presents BIM as a
paradigm change that will have far-reaching impacts and benefits, not only for
those in the construction industry but for society at-large, as better buildings are
built that consume fewer materials and require less labor and capital resources
and that operate more efficiently.
BIM is a set of policies, processes and technologies which create a work methodology to
manage the design and project data in a digital format during all the construction lifecycle on a
virtual model, which contains all the building physical and functional characteristics (Lino,
Azenha, et al., 2012, Azenha, 2014).
The essence of BIM lies in sharing information. When compared with the traditional
approach (Fig. 1), which is a sequential and disorganized method with lack of information
sharing, the BIM model allows to all stakeholders to work individually but, always connected to
a central model, which contains all the information from all design disciplines. This allow the
designers to quickly identify incompatibilities and errors, facilitating decision-making and
reducing time and costs (Bryde, Broquetas, et al., 2013).
Figure 1. Traditional methodology vs BIM methodology (Azenha, 2014).
Applied to a construction project, this methodology results on a virtual model named

Building Information Model that contains all the properties and characteristics of the project.
This model can be made through an object-oriented parametric modelling. In a simple way, it
can be characterized by the objects (columns, beams, ducts, etc.) modelling, which contains
438

their specific properties and they parametrically relate with each other, in other words,
parameters are defined to characterize the relationship between objects. This model must be
made with a certain Level of Development (LOD), as stated before starting the shaping, so the
model can be enough detailed (amount and type of information) to perform the desired
operations (Azenha, 2014). To perform a sustainable design analysis the required LOD needed
is significantly low (Ceranic, Dean et al., 2016).
The compatibility and information sharing between different disciplines models can be
performed directly via extensions, which usually happens when the softwares used belong to
the same company. When such a connection is not possible, it is possible to use the Industry
Foundation Class (IFC) protocol, developed by BuildingSMART, which is characterized by
being a kind of standardized universal sharing format, making it possible to exchange
information between different computer programs (e.g. the IFC can be used to export a
structural model made in Tekla Structures to the architectural model held in Revit).
The BIM model can be use through all the building lifecycle stages and in several areas, like
visualization and documentation, construction management, planning costs, maintenance,
building operation, programming, analysis, detailed design, logistics, demolition, among others.
(Dispenza, 2016).
Currently, despite the advantages of using BIM, only 36% of the Western Europe
construction companies use this methodology (Azhar and Brown, 2009). This fact can be
justified by the difficulty to adapt new business processes in a company, in particular, to fight
against the resistance to change from the traditional processes, largely due to the lack of
knowledge by the project teams. Other possible reasons are related to the high investment costs
in purchasing new software and training the company staff, which indirectly leads to a
productivity loss during the adaptation process. Restrictions on interoperability between
programs and the lack of standardization can also have a negative contribute in BIM
implementation (Azenha, 2014).
1.4 BIM applied to sustainability and rehabilitation
Given the need of the construction industry to respond to the increased demand for more
sustainable buildings, several processes and technologies have been developed with the aim to
save energy and reduce CO2 emissions (Motawa and Carter, 2013). Among them, is BIM
methodology that, through a virtual model, at an early stage of the project, allows to check the
energy use, perform thermal analysis, identify solar patterns, between other sustainable
measures, in order to assess the best solutions to implement (Motawa and Carter, 2013).
Rehabilitation of the existing building stock could be an optimal solution to reduce the energy
demand of buildings and their CO2 emissions. BIM stands as a possible mean to works
management and decision making assessment, due to their capacity to coordinate all the
information needed for the diagnosis of the building and the planning of rehabilitation works.
(Lagela, Daz-Vilario, et al., 2013).
In 2009, Hardin (Hardin, 2009) has defined three main areas of sustainable design directly
related with BIM Material selection and use, site selection and management and systems
analysis. In 2008, other aspects where BIM can support sustainable design were established by
Krygiel and Nies (2008) and they are listed below:
x Building Orientation analyze building orientation in order to reduce energy costs;
x Building massing study the building form and optimize building envelope;
x Daylight analysis;
x Water harvesting reduce freshwater needs;
x Energy modeling reduce energy needs, by performing energy analysis, and analyze
renewable energy options;
x Sustainable materials reduce material needs and use recycled materials.
The main advantage of BIM applied to sustainability is the interoperability between modeling
and thermal analysis softwares that allows to perform a wide range of studies which consider
several important parameters (Azhar, Carlton et al., 2011).
The use of BIM with the purpose of designing and managing sustainable buildings, can
represent 20% savings of the construction value during the lifecycle (Azhar and Brown, 2009).

439
When assessing the BIM advantages on the renovation processes, it is possible to identify
most of the advantages that result from the use of this process in new constructions.
Nevertheless, the use of BIM is more common on new construction than in the renovation
processes most due to the fact that owners are not aware of BIM benefits in the renovation
process and the lack of studies in the field, contributing to the lack of knowledge in this type of
operations (Gkgr, 2015). The main advantages of using BIM in the design of new or
renovated buildings are (Clemente and Cachadinha, 2012, Gkgr, 2015):
x Generate precise drawings at any stage of the project, saving the time spent drawing
them by hand;
x Automated and accurate cost and quantities estimating;
x Prototyping and energy simulation;
x Reduce resources use;
x Managing waste on the renovation site as support for organizing logistics, separating
waste types and structuring material handling.
x Conflicts and collisions detection at an early design phase;
x Project modifications automatically updated in all drawings;
x Facilitate LEAN techniques implementation, since it is required a strict coordination
between stakeholders;
x Support collaboration, coordination and planning of construction activities.
Despite these general advantages of using BIM, there are other benefits of using it in the
renovation process. Fontan (2016), applied BIM to a renovation and rehabilitation project,
exploring the use of renovation status filters, simplifying the identification of the several stages
of the operation. There were used 5 type of renovation status filters: Existing plan, demolition
plan, after demolition, new construction and planned status. Figure 2, shows the application of
some of the listed filters and how they can help on visualization and documentation.
Figure 2. Renovation filters. Existing plan, after demolition, new construction (Fontan, 2016).
Considering all of the benefits on both areas and the complexity of renovation projects it is
consistent to say that BIM can be an essential tool to achieve better and sustainable buildings,
helping to get environmental performance certificates, supporting decision making, optimizing
time and costs.
2 METHODOLOGY
In order to evaluate some of the BIM benefits through the rehabilitation process, a Portuguese
dwelling with a poor energy performance was chosen. The dwelling was built in the late 60s,
before the entrance into force of the first Portuguese thermal regulation, so it has a high-energy
demand, most due to the fact that there is no thermal insulation in the building envelope.
To integrate the renovation process into a BIM approach, all the processes must be
connected. In other words, this means that the dwelling virtual model must be the same through
all the softwares used (both modeling and analysis softwares). Therefore, a virtual model was
created on Revit and after exported to Green Building Studio and DesignBuilder by IFC and/or
gbXML format. These softwares were chosen by their potential capabilities and interoperability
between each other.
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In order to improve the dwelling performance, a set of measures were suggested from the
introduction of thermal insulation and the replacement of the old glazing and frames, to the
purpose of efficient mechanical and renewable systems. For simplification, it was only analyzed
the interventions on the building envelope. Two solutions to improve the passive performance
of the building at this level were defined: i) the use of an External Thermal Insulation
Composite System (ETICS); and ii) the use of a ventilated faade, as alternative. For each
solution, 3 sub-solutions with different insulation thickness were analyzed. Therefore, seven
different virtual models (1 base model + 6 renovation scenarios models) were developed and
analyzed in Green Building Studio and DesignBuilder.
After the modulation, the base model and all the alternative renovation models were analyzed
and the results regarding energy savings were compared.
3 CASE STUDY
The chosen dwelling was built in the late 60s, with 1 floor, with a total area of 90m2 has 3
bedrooms, as presented in Figure 3. The total glazed area is 6.3m2 (7% of the floor area) and all
the windows have single glass and aluminum frames.
Figure 3. Dwelling floor plan and construction details.
Regarding the construction details, they are also represented on Figure 3. The external walls
are single pane walls made up of 15cm thick hollow bricks, plastered on both sides. The pitched
roof has a wooden structure, and ceramic tiles, the horizontal slab is a lightweight beam and pot
slab, plastered on the ceiling. The ground floor is made on concrete and finished in parquet.
The six renovation solutions defined are presented in Table 1. The materials characteristics
are reference values for Portugal (Pina dos Santos and Matias 2009) and the thickness was
based on the energy efficient guides from ADENE (ADENE, 2016b, ADENE, 2016c).
Table 1. Characterization of the intervention solutions.
Exterior walls
Floor slab
ETICS System with 4cm
EPS insulation,
6cm
4cm
primary and plaster
8cm
for finishing
XPS thermal
Ventilated faade
4cm
insulation
with XPS thermal
6cm
insulation and
6cm
laminated
8cm
plasterboard
Roof slab
XPS thermal
insulation over
the horizontal
slab, keeping the
ceramic tile
Glazed areas
4cm
6cm
Double glass
with a low
emissivity film
and PVC frame

441
In order to perform an accurate simulation, it is necessary to detail the BIM model with some
parameters needed for the simulation software. After the architectural modulation (Fig. 4), the
materials characteristics are defined (density and thermal conductivity), the exact project
location is set (the climatic data used was from Porto weather station) and spaces or rooms need
to be created. The information regarding the spaces use, like ventilation, lighting or number of
occupants is defined. This information must be set for every indoor space. At the end, before
exporting the model, the energy settings (building type, building service, project phase, etc.)
must be adjusted to the reality.
Figure 4. Dwelling BIM model.
After this step, the base model was exported to Green Building Studio (GBS) and
DesignBuilder (DB) in order to assess the energy needs of the dwelling.
The results for the base model are presented in Table 2. The illumination and domestic
equipments energy needs were kept constant for all simulations. The comfort temperatures
were set in 23C for the cooling season and 18C for the heating season.
Table 2. Base model energy needs.

GBS
DB
Annual Heating Needs (kWh/m2)
52.75
43.92
GBS
DB
Annual Cooling Needs (kWh/m2)
5.11
3.66
Tables 3 and 4 show the total results for the annual heating and cooling needs of the 6
proposed renovation scenarios, the annual savings and differences compared with the base
model. The results show that is possible to reduce at least 50%, up to over than 60% of those
needs, only by acting on the building envelope. The advantage of BIM in this process was the
quickly and easily process of editing and simulate the different models in the project phase. This
way, it was possible to assess which one is the best scenario and the savings that result from
different options taken at an early stage of the project. Therefore, it was possible to save time
and make a supported decision about the solution to select.
The differences between the results in each software may be justified by different calculation
methods and/or differences on some consider parameters (Green Building Studio is a web-based
software, so many of the parameters cannot be simply modified).
442

Table 3. Proposed solutions energy needs and savings - Green Building Studio (EW Exterior Walls; HE
Horizontal Elements).
Solution 1 - ETICS
Solution 2 Ventilated Faade
Annual
Difference
Difference
Annual
Annual
Heating and
Annual
compared
compared
Heating and
Savings
Cooling
Savings
with base
with base
Cooling Needs
()
Needs
()
2
model (%)
model (%)
(kWh/m )
(kWh/m2)
EW: 4cm
24.99
506.3
-56.8
22.64
542.5
-60.9
HE: 4cm
EW: 6cm
22.69
541.7
-60.8
21.32
562.5
-63.1
HE: 4cm
EW: 8cm
21.36
561.9
-63.1
20.53
574.8
-64.5
HE: 4cm
EW: 4cm
22.96
537.4
-60.3
20.70
572.3
-64.2
HE: 6cm
EW: 6cm
20.75
571.4
-64.1
19.55
590
-66.2
HE: 6cm
EW: 8cm
19.49
590.8
-66.3
18.62
604.3
-67.8
HE: 6cm
The presented energy analysis results are concerning the general results but the softwares
allow to study each envelope element, in order to assess which are the most critical elements
and the ones that should be intervened.
Regarding renewable energies, Green Building Studio has an optimal tool to evaluate and
calculate the renewable energy potential. Based on the roof area, energy cost and investment
costs, it estimates how much energy the dwelling is able to produce during the year. In order to
have an accurate estimation, the location and orientation of the model must be precise.
Concerning DesignBuilder, it allows to estimate the solar thermal potential. For the current case
of study, the application of 50m2 (half of the roof) of PV panels would result on an energy
production over than 100kWh/m2/year, which is enough to support the dwelling energy needs.
Also on Green Building Studio, it is possible to calculate the water use in the dwelling and
also assess the water savings potential, for example, by implementing a rainwater harvesting
system. The information needed for this tool is the number of occupants, the number of water
devices, the irrigation area and the annual rainfall. For the present case, a rainwater harvesting
was considered, with a catchment area of 100m2, leading to savings around of 100/year on the
water bill.
Table 4. Proposed solutions energy needs and savings DesignBuilder.
Solution 1 - ETICS
Solution 2 Ventilated Faade
Annual
Difference
Difference
Annual
Annual
Heating and
Annual
compared
compared
Heating and
Savings
Cooling
Savings
with base
with base
Cooling Needs
()
Needs
()
2
model (%)
model (%)
(kWh/m )
(kWh/m2)
EW: 4cm
23.96
363.8
-49.6
21.73
398.2
-54.3
HE: 4cm
EW: 6cm
21.73
398.2
-54.3
20.73
413.6
-56.4
HE: 4cm
EW: 8cm
20.40
418.6
-57.1
19.84
427.2
-58.3
HE: 4cm
EW: 4cm
22.60
384.8
-52.5
20.52
416.8
-56.9
HE: 6cm
EW: 6cm
20.49
417.2
-56.9
19.34
435.0
-59.4
HE: 6cm
EW: 8cm
19.23
436.6
-59.6
18.48
448.2
-61.2
HE: 6cm

443
Daylight analysis can also be performed, both in Revit and DesignBuilder, and the results
show that the existing glazed areas are not enough to provide an adequate daylight. Only one of
the bedrooms (that has 2 windows) presents acceptable daylight values.
DesignBuilder also allows the definition of the best practice, which recommends best
practice values for some factors like lightning, walls insulation, glazed areas, etc.
5 CONCLUSIONS
This paper has the purpose of discussing the benefits of using the BIM methodology on an
energy renovation operation to improve the efficiency of a case study.
In order to achieve these objectives, one modulation and two analysis softwares were used,
Revit to create the BIM model and Green Building Studio and DesignBuilder to perform energy
analysis. Regarding Revit, the software has several potentialities when used on the BIM context.
Despite that, this software it is not so focused on energy analysis because many of the needed
parameters are not fully developed, creating an opportunity to improve. Even so, on the recent
years, it has been witnessed an increasing concern by the software developers to improve and
create tools to assess this issue.
Regarding the thermal analysis software, despite the differences between them, a supported
comparison was performed. Because Green Building Studio is a web-based program (internet
access is needed), it was very difficult to define some of the important parameters, change the
analysis period and find the most adequate characteristics from the data base (not fully
developed). Despite that, the software has some interesting tools like the water use simulation,
the renewable energy tool and more comprehensive weather stations data base. DesignBuilder is
already a well-known analysis software in the industry with the EnergyPlus simulation interface
and a large data-base. Nevertheless, there are some constrains regarding the use of
DesignBuilder, like the lack of weather data, the necessity of having a product license or the
need to know about many other parameters that can influence the simulation.
Completed the simulation and analysis process it was possible to achieve some conclusions
regarding the added value of using BIM in the energy renovation processes:
x To understand the impacts of thermal insulation on the different elements of the
building envelope in order to define the optimal renovation scenario;
x To analyze the most suitable renovation scenario, supported by energy and long term
economic analysis;
x To study the possible integration of renewable energy and water use reduction
systems;
x To assess the carbon emissions reduction potential;
x To calculate the quantity of materials and to estimate the life-cycle cost;
x To produce a complete building prototype and detailed drawings of construction
elements.
The integration of the BIM methodology appears to be more advantageous during the design
phase, allowing to quickly compare the several scenarios under analysis for the building,
predicting the energy consumption, the water consumption, estimating cost, analyzing solar
thermal and photovoltaic harvesting potential and assessing compliance with regulatory
requirements. Therefore, BIM is an excellent tool that can help architects and engineers in
choosing the best solutions to achieve the proposed goals at a preliminary stage, without
spending too much time and money. Due to all benefits that the BIM methodology provides,
this can become in a short term, a key tool to achieve better and sustainable buildings.
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Impact of bionic facades on a sustainable refurbishment of highrise apartment buildings

A. Hammer
Designing and energy-optimized Design, University of Applied Sciences Mainz, Germany
ABSTRACT: A transformation-process of 5 identical high-rise buildings that form an urban

quarter built in the early 1960s in Mainz [Germany], will be displayed on the basis of three
students designs for one of the buildings in an exemplary way in this paper. Step by step this
refurbishment proposal will show the transitional change into a future smart city environment.
Energy- sustainability and energy- autonomy were the driving instruments that triggered this
architecture design course in the summer term of 2014 at the Frankfurt University, in which this
design process has been critically accompanied and evaluated for a small class of international
students which had to develop an overall energy strategy, by pushing the design to a plus-energy
building and by incorporating one specific bionic aspect into the design of the building skin.
This refurbishment exercise was also done to prove that costs of operations could be highly
diminished. In order to make life a bit more easy for them several bionic ideas and bionic
principles that have been already researched [e.g. solar ivy TM, flectofin TM or hygroskin TM]
were given to them and the class was asked to experiment with these ideas using various models
and doing hand-sketching especially for developing an understanding to integrate bendable
photovoltaic thin film elements that would act and react to the climatic alterations of the day and
so being part of a hybrid, kinetic faade system that might change the future.
Figure 1a. Open status.

Credits: H. Dittmar.
Figure 1b. Principle in nature [clover].
Figure 1c. Closed status.

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1 INTRODUCTION
Surely the project design task was obviously not the usual program for a 5th semester students
design course in the bachelor- degree program, but as the class was joined by a few, very
dedicated students, the challenge was visibly accepted and all tried hard to incorporate a
stunning and convincing energy-strategy with an unconventional use of photovoltaic [pv] thinfilm cells into the building skin [Hammer, 2016]. The architecture design-proposals show their
bionic approach and their struggle to balance the users needs and communication with the
facades and the technical and constructive requirements of the two bionic systems they finally
focused on for that specific shading device. With the goal to minimize the very high running
costs of that building, which makes approximately 9.-/sqm net usable area, the approach given,
was to replace the facades that are in very bad condition and in strong need of repair.
Retrofitting new lightweight facades [one possible solution suggests an ETFE-membranecushion-Faade] with low costs of operation and additionally energy-collecting tool was
therefore very obvious. Above all the main aim of these case studies was to show the versatility
in architectural expression when engaging in such new aspects as energy-generating skin,
kinetic constructions and bionic working principles. From the point of view of modern
architecture it can be stated that this class was successful at the end, in proving this demand.
2 THE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS THE ADAPTABLE SKIN
2.1 Basic restrictions and focusing goal
As there were, undoubtedly given, the restricting parameters of the 14 storey-high, existing
high-rise-building, the first step of the design had to process the task to what extent parts of the
structure could be altered or removed. The second step into this architectural research study on
the building facades was done by explicitly collecting weather and climate data as well as doing
research on natural sources available for the site.
Having closely looked at and discussed natural parameters worth to exploit at this specific
urban site and using the building itself as an energy supplying factor, an energy-strategy for
every single design was individually developed and added by a main bionic principle [solar ivy
or flectofin] on the faade. The principle and its constructive elements had to allow the
possibility for further attachment or improvement as a natural energy collecting device. Most of
the design-researchers were heading for the exploitation and use of solar power within these
elements of the building shell, for example designing the case study towards a plus-energy
building or heading within the design frame for a low-heated and non-cooled, active building.
In order to verify and evaluate an acceptable approach, a specific research procedure made up
of a 4- step development- strategy was established to meet the limitations of his specific
design, e.g. power outcome with regard to element sizes, rotation angles towards the sun [during
winter and summer time], of the facades less oriented towards the sun. The integration of the
roof surfaces for energy-generation via pv-cells, was naturally assumed in all designs, but in
order to maintain the focus on those parts of the faade that are always much harder to
implement with regard to user interference and transparency| opacity issues, a detailed planning
of the roof was neglected. By giving focus onto the facades of all 4 cardinal directions, the
students had to undergo a process of refinement including the question for the main parameters
that the chosen faade has to work for and what the initial output and target will be. Posterior
energetic calculations on ONE of the designs [the design by the Lithuanian Student Ugne
Neverbickaite was chosen], had shown a significant surplus on electrical power, which has been
outlined in my recent paper,
as we can clearly see in the tables listed, there is a significant difference in the
energy outcome between FIRSTLY a conventional treatment of pv-adaption with
solar-panels on the roof ONLY [total energy output: 87.500 kWh/a] see table-A;
SECONDLY the pv-adaption of thin-film cells on the flectofin-faade [total energy
output: 186.000 kWh/a] see table-B and THIRDLY the pv-adaptation of mono- or

447
polycrystalline cells on the flectofin-faade [total energy output: 444.000 kWh/a]

[Hammer, 2016].
Figure 2. Faade of existing high-rise building and floorplan showing possible alterations on structure.
Credits: M. Mller.

448
2.2 Two different ways of how to treat the bionic inspired skin
Although taken in consideration one primary bionic principle, it became very obvious right from
the beginning that simplification was needed; the bio-mechanism system was completely
converted to a shading device in front of the building faade, rather than treating the whole
faade. Having a closer look on the high-rise studies we can realize, that mainly two different
bionic approaches were taken by the students.
1) solar ivyTM a bionic principle that was directly derived from the ivy-plant and their
imitation of the photosynthesis effect by implementation of pv-thin-film cells onto the
artificial leaves surfaces. A pre-commercial development for the building sector was
initiated by SMIT-New York, with Solar Ivy being a customizable system for
renewable energy generation, that mimics the form of ivy and its relationship with the
environment [S.M.I.T., 2011].
Figure 3. Solar Ivy faade: design-proposal by Marcus Mller for the new high-rise-skin. Credits: M.
Mller.
2) flectofinTM a bionic principle that has been adapted and transformed from the
Bird-of-Paradise-Flower [strelizia reginae]. A pre-commercial development for the

449
building sector was initiated and a prototype being built by ITKE-University Stuttgart
| Albert-Ludwigs- University of Freiburg | ITV-Denkendorf | Clauss-Markisen. This
research study has won the International Bionic Award 2012 and the Techtextil
Innovation Prize 2011 and will be the bionic principle which this scientific research
will focus on, mainly. The adaptability of Flectofin is based on elastic deflection.
The advantage of replacing local and susceptible hinges with elastic deformation is in
the fusion of all mechanical elements within an all-in-one pliable component
[Knippers et al., 2012]. Strategies to apply bendable thin-film pv-modules onto these
textile wings or flaps, opaque or translucent and with different shapes and sizes,
need to be researched in detail. Very important will be the aspect that the materials
work together in their behavior to bend likewise, comparable to a bi-metal material.
As the sun-light hits the pv-modules and the hinge-less flaps [made of a mixture of
carbon textiles and layers of synthetic resins], the increasing temperature on the
surface starts to curl the flaps and makes the photovoltaic-modules expose
themselves more and more directly and unobstructed to the sun [see Fig. 4].
Figure 4. Flectofin faade: design-proposal by Ugne Neverbickaite for the new high-rise-skin. Credits:
U.Neverbickaite.
450

Whereas the Mller-design [see Figs. 5+6] had completely taken into consideration and as
a design-driving force the solar-ivy-principle, we can clearly see the manifestation within the
faade design of a rather unusual and unique way to treat opaque, transparent and translucent
parts [see Fig. 3]. The density of the single leaves can be arranged personally which gives the
architect a large scope of variable solutions [Hammer, 2014]. Moreover it is also realizable
that this bionic principle does not offer the options of flexibility towards a changing climate and
weather situation and so has to be accepted as a rather static device. Still unsolved in case of fire
alert is the problem of electrical tension and voltage during fire-fighting efforts.
Figure 5. Solar Ivy: faade- design by M. Mller.

Credits: M. Mller.
Figure 6. Solar Ivy: interior perspective new

design. Credits: M. Mller.
Figure 7. Flectofin: faade-design by

Neverbickaite. Credits: U.Neverbickaite.
U.
Figure 8. Flectofin: interior perspective new

design. Credits: U.Neverbickaite.

451
All other students, Neverbickaite [see Figs. 7+8] and Dittmar [see Fig.9+10], established
their designs on the flectofin-principle, a hingeless, continuously deformable folding
mechanism with which it is possible to change the orientation of a two-dimensional component
gradually [VDI, 2015] and added an energy collecting pv-system onto the sun-facing surface
of each flapping mechanism-element [see Figs. 4+11]. The power collection would also work
on dusky days, because the output and efficiency of the thin-film-pv-modules is working on a
wide range of climatic conditions. An electrical induced manual override gives the opportunity
to accomplish human user behavior. A nithinol-wire gaze interwoven into the flaps [see fig.
14], works as a kind of resistor and because of its electrical conductibility, which starts to build
up an internal constraint when targeted by sun rays, the flaps steadily change their state of
condition from completely open to finally completely closed [see Fig. 1 a-c]. And having
reached this last position, the full shading for the space behind is completed overheating is
absolutely minimized and the parallel work of collecting solar energy is at its peak.
Figure 9. Flectofin: design by H. Dittmarcompletely closed status. Credits: H. Dittmar.
Figure 10. Flectofin: interior perspective for new design. Credits: H. Dittmar.
452

2.3 Two different actuation methods for flectofin-flaps and strategy for pv-cell adaptation
There are currently two different ways of actuation. Both methods have evolved from the
principle actuation method [see Figs. 11+12] that was developed for the first mock-up of
flectofin. The first strategy at that time was to create stress to the backbone of the flectofinflaps [see Fig.11] by a linear motoric device, producing a hub of 5-10cm in order to activate the
bending movement of the flaps with a deflection of about 5cm in the middle of the backbone.
Figure 11. Flectofin-actuation: backbone

stress. Credits: A. Hammer, H. Berndhuser, C.
Hhne & I. Pertack.
Figure 12.
Detail of backbone. Credits: A.
Hammer, H. Berndhuser, C. Hhne & I. Pertack.
2.3.1 Actuation Strategy-I - the pneumatic cushion

As the principle actuation strategy would be very costly and not at all low in maintenance, the
ITV-Denkendorf [Institute of Textile Technology and Process Engineering] and the Stuttgart
University have started to undergo a new research path for an actuation method. They are
currently researching on a pneumatic cushion strategy which would inflate air into small,
stretched cushions building up a force that would be strong enough to activate the backbone [see
Fig.13] to bend and hence induce a further bending movement in the flaps. There has been some
mock-up testing with this new method and it seems that this is a very promising research-path to
follow with regard to actuation.
Figure 13. Flectofin-actuation: pneumatic induced stress to backbone. Credits: A. Hammer, H.

Berndhuser, C. Hhne & I. Pertack.
2.3.2 Actuation Strategy-II smart material thermally or electrically induced constraint

This second strategy is at current a more theoretical approach, but nevertheless very intriguing
when it comes to develop a low-tech system, that is naturally working, that neednt have to be

453
maintained and that can be communicated with, by an individual, manual override (electricalimpulse). The method would assume that the flap-sheets will be built up with some sort of
bimetallic [smart material] device that makes the flaps bend on higher or lower temperatures.
This could be done by Nithinol-wires [Dynalloy Inc., USA] which could be interwoven with the
carbon-fibre-textiles or with other smart materials that need to be found and assumed to be
worth trying for this kind of duty.
Figure 14. FlectoCollect: flap with pv-distribution and Nithinol actuation- proposal by A. Hammer.
Credits: A. Hammer, H. Berndhuser, C. Hhne & I. Pertack.
2.3.3 PV-Cell distribution and the choice of cells

As the driving factors will be the efficiency of the cells for all weather situations
and the bendability, that means the flexibility of the material to follow the kinetic
movement of the flaps, we rather incline to concentrate the research work on the
solar thin-film pv-technology. But as the solar industry can prove small patches of
0.5mm thick layers of mono- or polycrystalline- pv-cells mounted on small
sheets [sizing 7-12cm in both directions], linking them together to work as a big
panel, the choice for this latter option is made very easy for the output of the solar
induced energy can be assumed at an efficiency- rate of about 14-16%, rather than
5-9% when choosing the thin-film-technology [Hammer, 2016].
The basic layout of the pv-units consists of a lining up of parallel arranged solar-cells. Each
strip with a 12cm width and an intermediate spacing of 3cm would then create a 15cm axial grid
in one direction.
With an efficient distribution on the triangular flap-shape [triangular shape with approx. 1,5m
length on all sides] it would be possible to reach a maximum collecting area of about nearly
80% of the whole flap surface. The wiring of all stripes on one flap as well as the adding up of
all flaps within a module [6 flaps for the hexagonal and 8 flaps for the octagonal module] could
be done within the frame [carbon-fibre or aluminium construction] of the module. The phase
change components of each level and faade-side should be arranged within the central BMZ
[fire-alarming centre] on ground level in order to shut down the single-pv-strands by the firefighters in case of an alarm.
454

This is still one of the strongest disadvantages regarding the pv-cell adaptation on faade
elements, because the fire protection and fire-fighting efforts are clearly in contradiction to the
current building regulations. Currently the AGBF [Arbeitsgemeinschaft der
Berufsfeuerwehren union for fire-fighting brigades] tries to establish a kind of guideline that
is applicable within the borders of Germany. This process is right in the middle of being worked
out. [Hammer, 2016] Another disadvantage can be seen with regard to energy storage [batterytechnology], which is still not capable to store the necessary amount of the surplus energy in an
economic way. Therefore a fortiori more improvement of smart metering within the urban
electrical grid is of absolute significance.
2.4 Impact on economic and sociocultural aspects
Reviving an urban quarter for accommodation with means of sustainable [low operation costs
and use of natural sources] improvements like new bionic facades and sophisticated energyconcepts, it can be pointed out, that inhabitants will not only appreciate the advantages, the
reduced costs for maintenance but also will actively take part in a transformation process
towards a more balanced way of living and working. The pursued goal to transfer the
refurbished building into a plus-energy building seems strong enough to create a neighbourhood
network in energy, in communication and in respect, which will also strengthen an economic
understanding of people for waste-management and sensible treatment of the given resources.
3 CONCLUSION
This case study was intended to prove the feasibility of new materials (carbon-fibre flaps), new
technologies (bionic-flectofin-flaps) and the adaptation of power generating pv-cells into the
facades creating architecturally satisfying and convincing designs. Moreover as a step forward
into the near future we learn that this kind of urban treatment gives a great variety of
possibilities to bio-inspired living. The new high-rise-building will then offer green-gardening
on roof tops, e-bikers garage and shops with adjoining power-chargers, sophisticated HVACconcepts and with the new bionic faade-system a powerful building element to supply all these
areas with the necessary amount of green energy. At present it is not yet possible to finally
conclude with to what actuation method will be the most practical and economical. However,
supposing that a one-medium-system [electrical medium for power and communication] is
much more powerful and less affected by maintenance than a pneumatic actuation system or an
actuation method with linear motoric devices, a strong vote towards the actuation-method by
smart material electrically induced constraint can be made. As a result of the energetic
calculations we can come to the conclusion that these kind of new buildings are fully capable to
support other buildings in their surrounding with a surplus of energy. Above all the displayed
shading device asks for the development of lightweight facades in the future, as proposed with
the ETFE-membrane systems that are already available on the market.
REFERENCES
Hammer, A. 2014. Feasibility studies of photovoltaic and bionic aspects of future energy-generating
building skins. Conference proceedings of the 9th Energy Forum on Advanced Building Skins,
Bresannone, Italy, S.6.
Hammer, A. 2016a. Climate-adaptive building shells for plus-energy buildings, designed on bionic
principles. Conference proceedings of the ICSAUD-Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, S.1.
Hammer, A. 2016b. Power-collecting and climate-responsive, bionic faade-shading-system for plusenergy-buildings. Conference proceedings of the International Conference PowerSkins, Munich,
Germany, S.3-4 und S.8.
Knippers, et al. 2012. flectofinTM: A Hinge-less Flapping Mechanism Inspired by Nature. University
Stuttgart, International Bionic-Award 2012, Germany, S. 1.
Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology [S.M.I.T.]. 2011. Solar IvyTM. Brooklyn, New York, USA.
Verein Deutscher Ingenieure [VDI]: 6226 Blatt-1. 2015. BIONIK-Architektur, Ingenieurbau,
Industriedesign; Grundlagen. Berlin Beuth-Verlag, S. 23.

455
Architectural membranes on building refurbishment - contribution

to functional performance and sustainability
P. Mendona & M. Macieira
Lab2PT, School of Architecture, University of Minho, Guimares, Portugal
ABSTRACT: The use of building technologies that are environmentally more respectful is a
growing concern in building design and construction. Considering its lightness, resilience and
flexibility, membranes are becoming inevitable solutions in specific contexts of existing
buildings refurbishment. A few millimetres membrane can be a self-supporting material and a
selective sunlight filter capable of absorbing or reflecting the ultraviolet or infrared light
whenever needed. These are some of the advantages of architectural membranes, but they can
also be used to support thermal or acoustic insulation materials, as well as non-conventional
thermal mass, such as phase change materials, in order to increase functional performance.
Considering that in Portugal most of rehabilitation interventions are extensions (68.2%), this
study presents a comparison between a membrane sunspace and the conventional sunspaces
commonly used in the refurbishment of Portos bourgeois houses. Supported by previous
studies from the first author the results analyses highlight an accurate overview on membrane
material performance, in view to comfort requirements and sustainability of existing buildings.
1 INTRODUCTION
The European Directive 2010/31/EU, also known as 20- 20-20 refers explicitly to nearly zeroenergy buildings, building envelopes, major renovations and optimal cost level and in general to
building sector and its impacts on the natural environment. Within this framework, membrane
building technologies can also be related to comfort and energy efficiency parameters, such as:
thermal insulation, natural lighting, shading, acoustic control, ventilation and solar energy
capture. They can even contribute to achieve positive energy buildings, with a growing number
of photovoltaic integrated membrane solutions available in the market.
In this paper is presented a case study related with functional refurbishment of Portuguese
existing buildings using extension interventions that perform as sunspaces. There are several
existent sunspace design options that in this study are compared with an alternative one in
membrane material. A model sunspace for a XIXth Century Porto residential building typology
(Bourgeois house) was considered in order to be possible to compare these solutions. Energy
plus simulation program was used for the thermal performance analysis. These were also
evaluated under some other environmental and economic parameters related with construction
and maintenance phases.

456
1.1 Sunspaces over the centuries

During centuries, sunspaces have been used as climate control spaces for growing vegetation. A
Botanical Garden appeared for the first time in Pisa, in 1543, and soon this type of structure
spread all over Europe (Tresider et al, 1986). A winter garden was an attribute of aristocracy
extravagance; a necessary good for social integration of important individuals (Patricio et al,
1998).
During the Industrial Revolution, the development of glass and iron industries convey to a
widespread of sunspaces across the United Kingdom, reaching the general population,
disregarding their social background. Only in the eighties of the XXth century sunspaces began
to be widely associated with energy savings and thermal comfort for housing buildings, as these
allow a controlled transition between the inside and the outside environments. Nowadays,
sunspaces become to be used also as liveable spaces, such as in the renowned works of Lacaton
and Vassal (El Croquis, 2015).
1.2 Reference sunspaces in Portugal extensions interventions
In Portugal, the integration of sunspaces in the initial architectural design phase is scarce. The
reason for this is related with the fact that summer in Portugal is warm and winter is not severe.
However, sunspaces appear frequently as solar passive additions to existing buildings; some
examples of it can be found among traditional, conventional and contemporary architecture
(Fig. 1). Gonalves et al (1998) refer that sunspaces in Portugal present the following common
features: single south oriented glazing and high glazing to floor surface ratio (between 60% and
250%).
a)
c)
d)
b)
e)
f)
Figure 1. Examples of added sunspaces in Portugal: a) traditional in Porto (Bonfim); b) mix of
traditional and conventional in Porto (S); c) and d) traditional in Valena do Minho; e) and f)
contemporary in Porto (Cedofeita).

457
2 MEMBRANES FOR BUILDING REFURBISHMENT

Membrane building technologies could be preferred to conventional ones if being lightweight or
ephemeral is a special requirement, for example when renovating an existing building or in
protecting an archaeological site. One of the most promising contemporary membrane material
used in functional building refurbishments is ETFE. The Munich's municipal waste
management department building is an example of how it makes possible to change the
appearance of old buildings facades in addition with the improvement of climate control.
Figure 2 shows some recent examples of rehabilitation interventions with membranes in
Portugal; these constitute extensions of existing buildings with the aim of improving their
performances using vertical blinds in PVC crystal membrane. This is a much cheaper solution
than ETFE, but still transparent and with some of its functional properties (although presenting
lower durability and requiring more maintenance).
Figure 2. Examples of building extensions with PVC membrane - sunspaces (Graa & Mendes Lda.,
2016).
2.1 Extension interventions

According to Douglas (2006) the decision to enlarge a building is influenced by the need to
make it more efficient (satisfying short-medium term needs of the occupants) and sustainable
(meeting occupant and society needs as a whole). Douglas (2006) refers that at the conception
of extension works the following aspects should be considered: 1) economic considerations; 2)
time (duration of the extension works, staged works, temporary protection of the site); 3)
constructive aspects to the correct integration on existing building (checking soil conditions,
access, connection solutions to the existing building and deconstruction potential of the
extension); 4) disorder (finding solutions that minimize noise and release of waste derived from
the extension operations and relocation of occupants).
According to Portuguese Statistics Institute (INE, 2014) 68% of refurbishment interventions
are extensions (Fig. 3). A sunspace is an example of horizontal extension used for functional
refurbishments. From a study carried out by the second author it could be concluded that,
among 63 identified refurbishment works with membranes, 49% corresponds to extension
interventions (Fig. 4).
Figure 3. Percentage weight of rehabilitation works by

type of intervention (adapted from INE, 2014).
Figure 4. Types of rehabilitation interventions

with membrane materials.
458

3 CASE STUDY THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF A MEMBRANE SUNSPACE FOR

FUNCTIONAL REFURBISHMENT OF A XIXTH CENTURY PORTO HOUSE
3.1 Aims
The present paper aims to assess through a case study analysis, if a membrane solution could be
preferred to common glass in sunspaces for XIXth century houses functional refurbishment,
regarding thermal retrofitting purposes, economic and environmental impact aspects.
Perhaps the most important property of transparent membranes is its reduced self-weight
achieved due to its minimal thickness and density when compared with that of glazing
materials of equivalent thermal, optical and structural performance (Table 2). When combined
with the structural efficiency, which results from the materials use in pure tension to resist
applied loads, its low self-weight allows larger spans and reduces, or even eliminates, the need
for secondary support structures, with consequent impact on the weight of primary structures
and the energy required to manufacture, transport and installation. The option for membranes
can also lead to lighter frames.
Table 1. Relevant properties of some translucent and transparent materials (adapted from Mendona
2010).
Thermal
Embodied
Visible light
Self
Durability
resistance
Energy
transmission weight
(years)
(vertical plan)
(%)
(kg/m2) (kWh/m2)
(m2.C/W)
Clear glass 6mm
85%
14.40
73.6
0.16
+60
Idem double 6(10)6mm
70%
28.80
147.2
0.35
+60
Polycarbonate Clear panel
83%
2.00
**48.4
0.32
+25
10mm
Crystal PVC foil (1mm)
85%
1.20
***28,2
0.17
15-25
PVC coated polyester (0.5mm)
26%
0.84
**18.3
0.17
15-25
PTFE coated fiberglass
21%
0.81
**14.4
0,17
+25
ETFE 0.2mm (1710kg/m2)
95%
0.34
4.83
0.16
+25
*R.E. Shaeffer; ** Deduced values by Mendona (2005) (considering just the embodied energy to make
the two components of the material and excluding manufacture); *** Monticelli (2009).
3.2 Design considerations

The residential sector represents approximately 17% of the final energy consumption in
Portugal, with nearly 25% of it being due to HVAC systems (Aelenei et al, 2013).
Approximately 65% of the residential building stock is built before the implementation of the
first Portuguese building code and most of it displaying poor energy performance. Therefore,
according to Mendona (2005) the use of attached sunspaces in these buildings is very attractive
given the great solar potential of Portugal and the economic advantages that these systems offer
when compared to traditional retrofitting approaches based on the use of thermal insulation.
Attached sunspaces have been successfully used in retrofitting existing buildings with poor
energy performance, as in most of the Portuguese territory the heating needs are higher than the
cooling needs, especially in the northern regions. Taking as reference a previous study by
Aelenei et al (2013) for the Porto climate zone, the sunspaces definition should take into
account the following recommendations: 1) south facing orientation; (2) operable vents located
at the top and inner shading devices with high reflectance in order to overcome overheating
problems.
3.3 Porto climate
The Porto climate drives the decision making to design the alternative membrane sunspace for
the existing building. Hence, it is worth to mention the local climate conditions. The main
climatic features of Porto city are shown in Table 3.

459
Table 2. Main climatic features of the Porto city (REH, 2013).

Parameters
Data
Climatic winter zone
I2
Heating degree days (C days)
1610
6.7
Conventional heating period (months)
Climatic summer zone
V1
2
Incident radiation in a south oriented glazing (kWh/m . month)
93
30
Outside air temperature in project (C)
9
Mean daily thermal amplitude (C)*
* Difference between minimum and maximum temperature for each day averaged for the hottest month of
cooling season.
3.4 Existing building

The reference for this study was an existing building that represents a typical Portos bourgeois
House of the XIXth century (Fig. 4). Its envelope is confined by two other residential buildings
with analogous characteristics and also considered with occupation. The depth and width of the
building is approximately 14.5m and 5.5m respectively; it has a useful pavement area of approx.
250 square meters (83m2 for each floor) and a ceiling height of 3.10 meters.
1,3 m
14,5 m
5,5 m
Groundfloor plan
1st plan
2nd plan
Figure 5. Plans and southern faade of the case study, taken as reference - existing building.
The envelope technical data of the reference building is described at Table 4. It presents
exterior facades oriented to north (main) and south (back) made of structural masonry granite
stone walls (single layer), wooden floors and wooden frame windows. Both north and south
facades have single-glazed operable windows with interior wood shutters. The roof presents
four slopes with wood structure covered by ceramic roof tiles.
Table 3. Envelope technical data of existing building (to calculate the energy demands).
Elements
Existing solution
External walls (facade)
U= 2.90 W/(m2.C)
Roof (with non-useful attic)
U= 3.80 W/(m2.C)
U= 4.70 W/(m2.C); gt winter= 0.70*; gt summer= 0.85*
Glazing (main faade)
U= 3.70 W/(m2.C); gt winter= 0.70*; gt summer= 0.46*
Glazing (posterior faade)
Electric boiler with 50mm of insulation; =0,90; without collectors
AQS system
Thermal inertia
medium
*gT dimensionless.
3.5 Sunspaces design options

At the present study the sunspace is seen as a horizontal extension of the existing building on its
back facade. Four types of sunspace were analysed (Fig. 5): (A) Traditional sunspace in glass
windows with wood frames and opaque areas made in wattle and daub system covered with

460
corrugated metal sheets; (B) Conventional sunspace composed by single glazing with
aluminium frames and opaque brick wall; (C) Contemporary sunspace with full double glazing
with aluminium frames; (D) Alternative with roller blind in crystal clear PVC single membrane.
The faade considered for this study is south-oriented, with the geometrical characteristics
shown in Figure 5 and Table 5. The height of sunspace was considered to be similar to that of
the existing adjacent rooms h = 3.10m. In order to achieve occupants privacy, it is possible to
add a screen (open mesh factor higher than 15%) in each sunspace design without
compromising significantly the thermal performance. Table 5 presents the main characteristics
of the sunspaces design options in study.
(A) Traditional
(B) Conventional
(C) Contemporary
(D) Alternative in membrane
Figure 6. Southern facade with the different sunspace design options in study.
Table 4. Characterization of the different sunspace design options in study.

(C) Contemporary
(B)
(A) Traditional
approach
Conventional
Single clear
Double clear
Single clear
blown glass
glass: 4mm, 6mm,
glass 6mm
3mm thick
4mm.
thick
% opaque faade area
70
54
17
% transparent area
30
46
83
Frame material
wood
aluminium
aluminium
2
2
Self-weight
36.40 kg/m
70.17 kg/m
27.30 kg/m2
2
2
Glass
1.85 kg/m
7.50 kg/m
24.90 kg/m2
Membrane
62.67 kg/m2
2.40 kg/m2
Opaque wall + frames
34.55 kg/m2
(D) Alternative in
Membrane
Crystal clear PVC
2mm thick
7
93
Aluminium
2.45 kg/m2
0.65 kg/m2
1.80 kg/m2
The alternative sunspace building technology adopts a system based on roller blind in crystal
clear PVC membrane; it has lateral guides including a zip with spring and snap fastening system
in order to hermetically close sunspace area for protection from wind and rain. The existent
connection door can be opened to allow heat to penetrate into the adjacent sunspaces
compartment by convection (Fig. 6) if increased energy savings in the heating season are
envisaged.

461
Granite wall
Roller blind
in Crystal PVC membrane
Roller shading membrane
with high reflectance
Existing wood shutter

door that opens or close
to regulate the flux of
hot air from sunspace.
Existing wood door

with simple blown
clear glass 3mm
Existing metal rail
exterior
sunspace
interior
(A)
(B)
(C)
Figure 7. (A) Roller blind (Graa & Mendes Lda., 2016); (B) Section of the membrane sunspace with
the existing opaque wood shutters; (C) Plan with the wood shutters.
3.6 Methodology
For this study a fraction occupying the intermediate floor of the building was considered (Fig.
4). Nominal Energy Needs before and after the implementation of each sunspace design options
were calculated. It was concluded that there were almost no cooling needs in summer - N
summer between 1.4kWh/year (sunspace A) and 7.59kWh/year (without sunspace). The
envelope side walls were considered adiabatic as the dwelling is located in a row house between
other thermally conditioned buildings.
In order to study energetic performance of an attached-sunspace applied to an existing
residential building in Porto climate context, simulations have been performed using the
dynamic simulation software EnergyPlus. The simulations were performed for a single
thermally conditioned zone with the sunspace implemented into EnergyPlus as a different
thermal zone. All building surfaces were modelled explicitly, including internal partition walls.
The thermal behaviour of the building model with the sunspace attached was simulated for an
entire year, assuming set point temperatures of 18C and 25C for the calculation of the energy
needs for heating and cooling, respectively. In all simulations, the values of internal heat gains
and ventilation rates around the year were considered equal to 4W/m2 and 0.6 h-1, respectively.
The heating system considered was an Electric radiator with a coefficient of performance (COP)
of 1. It was considered that the existent shading devices (wood shutters) would be closed
whenever there is no solar radiation incidence.
3.7 Results and discussion
As it can be seen on Table 5, the implementation of a sunspace can allow energy needs
reduction between 48 and 61%. In another study carried out by Aelenei et al (2013), regarding
winter performance in a Porto conventional hollow brick masonry building, the potential for
energy savings using sunspaces can even reach 70%. The cooling needs were despised because
they are very small and therefore there is no tradition of using air conditioning equipment for
cooling in Porto housing buildings.
Nominal
Conditions for
dwelling
Table 5. Energy needs of the four case studies into final energy [kWh/year].
N winter
N summer
kWh/year
kWh/year
without sunspace
4607.87
7.59
with sunspace (A)
2380.35
1.4
with sunspace (B)
2049.81
5.46
with sunspace (C)
1794.04
6.05
with sunspace (D)
2061.53
7.03
N annual
kWh/year
4615.46
2381.75
2055.27
1800.09
2068.56
%
Reduction
48
55
61
55
462

4 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS AND ENERGY COST ASSESSMENTS

4.1 Inventory
This study aims to compare the four sunspace design options described before; at Table 6 it is
presented the material inventory for each one.
Table 6. Material inventory and environmental impacts of each sunspace design option faade of 13m2 on its production phase.
EE a
GWP b
AP c
COD/ POCP d
Weight
Materials used
[kg]
[kWh]
[g.103]
[g]
[g]
(A) Traditional
Single glass (3mm thick)
24.05
122.90
13.68
1058.20
48.10
Timber (local treated pine)
143.00
25.74
16.59
143.00
143.00
73.32
713.40
40.84
219.96
293.28
Corrugated metal sheet
219.77
230.75
58.24
659.30
439.53
Gypsum
Total
460.14
1092.79
129.35
2080.46
923.91
(B) Conventional
Single glass (6mm thick)
97.50
498.23
55.48
4290.00
195.00
Aluminium (commercial 30%
21.71
965.66
241.02
1302.60
2583.49
recycled)
Hollow clay brick (11cm) +
780.00
1240.20
304.20
2184.00
13260.00
cement mortar
Total
899.21
2704.09
600.70
7776.60
16038.49
(C) Contemporary
Double glass
323.70
1654.11
368.37
28485.60
1294.80
31.20
1387.78
346.38
1872.00
3712.80
recycled)
Total
354.90
3041.88
714.75
30357.60
5007.60
(D) Alternative membrane
5.20
231.30
57.73
312.00
618.80
recycled)
8.45
181.68
11.83
109.85
4.23
Calendared PVC crystal foil
Total
13.65
412.97
69.56
421.85
623.03
a
EE (Embodied Energy);
b
GWP (Global Warming Potential) in equivalent CO2 grams;
c
AP (Acidification Potential) in equivalent CO2 grams;
d
COD (Chemical Oxygen Depletion) and POCP (Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential) in equivalent
NOx grams.
4.2 Results and discussion

The environmental impact assessment of a building faade component can be made through
several indicators, presented on Table 6; the functional unit is one square meter of facade. In
order to compare the environmental impact framework (production and construction phase) of
each sunspace design option, it was considered the data presented in each materials
Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), Berge (1999) and Mendona (2005). The
environmental impacts associated with transportation have been assessed based on the weight of
materials, neglecting its volume.
As we can conclude from the analysis of Figure 7 and Table 7, the best solution in terms of
environmental impact indicators is the Alternative in membrane (D), the worst solutions are the
Conventional (B) and the Contemporary (C). The alternative membrane (D) sunspace weights
38% of the second lightest design solution in analysis (C). The energy saved by recycling
instead of processing new material is much higher in plastics (88%) than in glass (only 5%)
(Mumma, 1995). The low melting point of PVC makes the process of recycling the roller
blinds foils proposed for the alternative sunspace design very inexpensive and low
environmentally impacting (Mendona, 2005), while recycling float glass is a more energy

463
demanding process and does not allow the reintroduction of the material in the same quality
(only by downcycling).
Weight
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
COD/
POCP
EE
(A) Traditional
(B) Conventional
(C) Contemporary
(D) Alternative membrane
AP
GWP
Figure 8. Sunspace design options comparison in terms of environmental impacts in production and
construction phases (percentage values). The overall best solution presents the lower polygon area and the
lower value for each indicator.
The comparative cost analysis presented on Table 8 shows that the membrane solution is the
most economical in terms of initial construction and maintenance costs, but also when
considering the total cost in lifespan. The only parameter in which the membrane solution is not
the cheapest is related with the operating energy cost in this parameter the best solution was
the sunspace C (contemporary). The life span considered was 60 years despising inflation. The
operating costs were considered just for the heating season, in a 18C base temperature using
electric wall radiators.
Table 7. Energy costs in a 60 years life span for the dwelling with the different sunspace options.
Operating energy consumption in 60 years
Sunspace design
Embodied Energy
(kWh)
life span (kWh)
options
(A)
1092.79
142905.00
(B)
2704.09
123316.20
(C)
3041.88
108005.40
(D)
412.97
124113.60
Table 8. Economic costs in a 60 years life span for the dwelling with the different sunspace options.
Sunspace
Operating energy
Construction cost b Maintenance cost in
Total cost in
design
cost in life span a
()
lifespan ()
lifespan ()
()
options
(A)
23350.68
1529.24
1470.16
26350.08
(B)
20149.87
1800.55
1509.55
23459.97
(C)
17648.08
5120.75
855.14
23623.97
(D)
20280.16
487.50
390.00
21157.66
a
It was considered an electricity cost of 0.1634/kWh based on EDP (2016).
b
Values obtained from market suppliers and installer consulting, Manso et al (2004), Cype (2016).
c
Unlike other sunspace options, the (D) option do not need auxiliary equipment to construction phase and
maintenance, as scaffoldings.
d
Due to its vertical application, soiling behaviour is minimized - decreasing maintenance cleaning costs.
464

5 CONCLUSIONS
Architectural membranes are recently applied as vertical cladding systems in new or retrofitting
practices of existing buildings. The increasing importance given today to the environmental
compatibility leads designers to combine both the use of energy efficient materials and the
technical solutions that try to maximize material savings.
This study presents an insight into membrane solutions for building refurbishment; pointing out
its advantages and limitations from functional, environmental and economic point of view.
The alternative sunspace design option in membrane constitute a passive solar system which
can be easily and profitably employed in buildings refurbishment, due to the ease with which it
can be integrated into the existing building structure.
Glass is being applied in all types of sunspaces, so architects and engineers take it for granted
that glass has to be used. However, a major weakness of glass is its weight and cost, specially
associated with the framing systems and accessories. In the contemporary solution, considering
a glass area of 13m2 in the faade, 323kg of glass and 31kg of aluminium are needed. The
alternative membrane solution only uses 8.5kg of PVC foil and 5.2kg of aluminium. The fact
that membrane sunspace option requires less substructure, changes the architectural approach giving more freedom to design options, with a consequently reduction of environmental
impacts.
Results were examined from a building technologys point of view production, construction
and maintenance phases, even considering the periodical substitution of the material due to its
lower expected life, the membrane solution still presents lower environmental impact indicators
and reduced cost than the other solutions analysed.
The comparison of the energy demand values obtained for heating and cooling season and
annually in each sunspace design option, with the corresponding values of the building without
the sunspace (taken as reference), has revealed that the membrane solution is worst, specially
due to its lower insulation and air tightness. Firstly, the most efficient system in terms of heating
and cooling needs was the contemporary design option with 61% of annual energy savings in
relation with the dwelling without sunspace. However, the alternative design option in
membrane can still achieve a significant energy saving (55%) for the existing building; it is a
6% difference for the best solution in this parameter, but the initial investment with construction
cost is 1/10th. In all the environmental impact indicators analysed, the membrane sunspace
option also shows that this solution is much more sustainable (86% less than the glass solution
in terms of Embodied Energy). The difference is so great that even considering the periodical
substitution of the membrane, it is still considerably less impacting.
Even with the increasing evolution that membrane materials achieved in the recent past, there
is still a long way to go through, before these can be accepted and can be considered as
sustainable, especially regarding social and cultural resistance when it regards to housing. These
systems allow buildings to be adaptable in order to remain updated within the contemporary
framework of sustainability.
ACKNOWLDGMENTS
The first author wish to thank the financial support from the Project UID/AUR/04509/2013 by FCTMEC
by national funding and, when applicable, FEDER co-financing under the new PT2020 partnership
agreement. The second author wish to thank FCT (Fundao para a Cincia e Tecnologia Portugal) MCTES, POCH program - European Union and ESF (European Social Fund) for supporting the research
fellowship with the reference SFRH/BD/104891/2014.
REFERENCES
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466


467
Post-occupancy evaluations of the adaptable housing in Japan

K. Minami
Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan
ABSTRACT: We had more than four million units shortage of housing in Japan in mid 194os,
many public housing were built but the quality of those housing was low and need to be rebuilt
once we enjoyed the economic growth. That resulted in the statistically short life of Japanese
housing. The average years to be rebuilt of housing in Japan used to be almost 30 years, our
government and private sectors started the research and development projects to design and
build longer life housing with adaptability in time, such as KEP (Kodan experimental housing
project) and CHS (Century housing project). I with my graduate students have been researching
the outcomes of those experimental projects to examine the attempted adaptability have worked
or not in these thirty years after people live in. Our government has established the long life
housing law in 2009 based on the continuous efforts to make the life of the Japanese housing
longer with adaptability in time. We need to overcome the labor shortage in construction sector
in Japan by improving its relatively lower productivity. The infill needs to be as simple as
furniture, easily to be built on site and can be replaced easily be the residents and users. The
ideas of Open Building will fit in our future.
1 A POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION OF LAYOUT CHANGES MADE TO KEP

(KODAN EXPERIMENTAL HOUSING PROJECT) ADAPTABLE HOUSING BUILT IN
1982
1.1 Research purposes
The author investigated the Tsurumaki -3 housing estate of Tama New Town, a suburb of
Tokyo. It was the first undertaking of the KEP (Kodan Experimental-housing Project) which the
Japanese Housing Corporation started in 1973 in order to research and develop flexibility and
adaptability for housing. Since the 1970's, multifamily housing in Japan has been focusing on
quality more than quantity. The most important object of our research is to investigate how
residents have adopted the design concepts to suit their individual needs and how they have
adapted their living environments to changes in their lifestyles over time by remodeling rooms
and changing the position of partitions, especially that of KEP movable partitioning system
(Figs. 1, 2). In the Tsurumaki -3 estate, there are 192 units in four-story flats and 29 units in
two-story terrace houses to own. This paper reports on the survey of the four-story flats that was
implemented in 2005 and 2014.

468
1.2 Research methods

First, we developed a questionnaire survey for the residents. We took pictures of the interior
layouts of units when we were allowed to do so. We asked the residents if they had altered the
room arrangement by changing the position of the KEP movable partitioning system or by using
a conventional partitioning system. Similar investigations were performed in 1982 (just after the
completion of the estate) and in 1995 (Hatsumi, 1991; Housing and Urban Development
Corporation, Japan, 1996). We analyzed the transformation of the room layout of each unit
through more than 30 years by comparing the results of the studies made in 1982, 1995, 2005
and 2014.
1.3 Results of the survey
There are three main types of plans for units in the estate: A, B and C. Type A can be
subdivided into types A1 - A3, Type B into types B1 - B5 and Type C into types C1 - C4, for a
total of 12 types of units. Type C units are not equipped with the KEP movable partitioning
system. Figures 1 and 2 show the plans and the location of the movable partitioning system in
A3 and B4 type of unit.
Residents have been aging and families maturing in the estate. Residents interest in
permanent occupancy was changing during the survey period. The residents seem to have
become more willing to live in their units as long as possible as they aged. As they have aged,
their interest in permanent occupancy has increased to the point where 67% of the residents in
2014 wish to live in their units permanently.
1.4 Changes in the room arrangement
Both the KEP movable partitioning system and a conventional remodeling system were used to
make changes in the room arrangement. Residents of 51% (33 /65) of Type A units and 59% (19
/32) of Type B units have made at least some room layout changes. On the other hand, only 8%
(6/72) of residents of Type C units (which do not have the movable partitioning system of the A
and B units), have made room layout changes. In most cases, the room layout has been changed
in order to make the living room or private room larger and it has been residents whose children
have left home who have made the layout changes. By 2005, the children of many households in
the estate had already moved out. The KEP system, which allows a living room or a private
room to be enlarged by moving the partitioning wall and/or partitioning storage walls separating
two rooms, has been adapted well to the changing needs of residents.
As children grew, and when they left home, many families used the KEP partitioning system
to adjust the room arrangements to fit the changes in their lifestyles. The KEP system appears to
have worked the way it was planned to more than thirty years ago. Some of the residents told us
that some of the mechanical parts of the movable partitioning system had become rusted and did
not work well enough for them to move and/or reinstall by themselves. There were also
residents who thought the sound insulation performance of the movable partitions was not good
enough because of the joints between the partitions. They did not think it would be worthwhile
to sacrifice the sound insulation performance of the partitions for the sake of movable partitions
that would likely be used only once in 10 years. The residents experiences and comments
suggest important topics for us to research further.
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Figure 2. Layout Changes of KEP B4 Type housing unit.
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Figure 3. Infill Renovation at KEP housing.

Index for Figure 3:
W: Toilet, Wash room. B: Bath. K: Kitchen. L: Piping.
S: More storage, Less storage.
I: Replacing flooring, Replacing tatami, Repapering sliding door, Windows, 4 Recovering wall,
Ceiling, Interior finishing.
Bf: Removing level difference,
P: Removing partition, Installing partition, Removing Japanese room.
F: Comprehensive renovation of exclusive use areas.
O: Water heater.
470

Figure 3 shows a history of renovation works in each dwelling unit from 1982 to 2014
entered by year period. Each row shows the dwelling unit renovation history of one household.
The white part shows residency period, and the black part shows the periods when the surveyed
household did not occupy the complex. In years indicated by the symbol "", renovation work
was done, and the letters of the alphabet in the table indicates the contents of renovation works.
2 LONG-TERM OCCUPANCY RECORDS AND INFILL RENOVATION OF HOUSING
DESIGNED BASED ON THE CENTURY HOUSING SYSTEM
2.1 Research purposes
In the 1970s, the total number of dwelling units in Japan began to exceed the number of
households, changing the aim of research and development from supplying a large number of
homes to improving their quality and meeting diverse residential needs. At the time, many
dwellings did not fully satisfy residential and daily life needs due to the change of the family
structure and lifestyles. The durability of interior finishing and equipment (fit-outs) were shorter
than the durability of the base buildings, and the failure to perform appropriate maintenance
became social problems. To overcome these challenges, the Ministry of Construction started the
Century Housing System (below, "CHS") as a certification system in 1986 following the
research and development of KEP.
The Century Housing System Guidebook (Century Housing System Promotion Council,
1997) stipulated the following guidelines as basic standards for CHS certification.
[1] Base buildings have long-term durability.
[2] To maintain them after construction, inspections are easy to carry out.
[3] The floor plan, interior finishing and equipment (fit-outs) are replaceable.
[4] The interior finishing and walls of the dwelling can be repaired, renewed, replaced, or
moved easily without impacting other parts.
[5] Building drawings are provided to appropriately inform residents of the
characteristics of CHS housing.
[6] The above can be done for a long period of time.
This research is aimed to obtain knowledge that will contribute to prolonging the lifetime of
multi-family dwelling units by surveying changes in lifestyles in multi-family dwelling units
constructed based on the concept of CHS and the state of infill renovations and by analyzing the
changeability and renewability etc. of interior finishing and equipment intended to be achieved
by CHS.
2.2 Research methods
2.2.1 Investigation method
Few ongoing investigations of long-term occupation have been done (Minami, 2007; Minami,
2010; Minami, 2013), because while their importance has been pointed out, it is difficult to
continuously investigate the object of the investigation for several decades. This research
attempts to investigate and analyze change of lifestyle of each household that is an object of the
investigation from the start of occupation until the present time using questionnaires or by
conducting interviews. Because these methods do not permit investigation of households that
have moved out and rely upon the memories of respondents, it is necessary to take great care to
ensure the accuracy of the investigation results, but this approach was adopted assuming it is
one realistic investigation method for clarifying long-term occupation.
During this investigation, the questionnaire survey was done by distributing multiple
dwelling unit floor plan diagrams to occupants, and asking them to enter the present lifestyle
and past ways they occupied the interior of their dwelling unit. The dwelling unit floor plans
were used to investigate the changing history of occupation accompanying change of the
composition of the family, their evaluations of their living environment, history of infill
renovations, plans for future renovations, and their awareness of CHS. Also, based on responses

471
to the questionnaires interview survey was conducted of households which agreed to be

interviewed.
The questionnaire survey was conducted from September 21, 2013 until October 5, 2013. The
questionnaires were placed in the residents' mailboxes. They were distributed to 228 of 234
homes, and responses were received from 58 homes. This is a response rate of 25.4%. Six
homes did not receive questionnaires because of the long-term absence of the household head.
The interviews were conducted from September 28, 2013 until November 16, 2013 in 14
homes.
Investigations of the Management Association Board of Directors, residents' association, and
the management association members were accompanied by interviews with the management
company. Other interviews were conducted at the companies that designed and constructed the
multi-family dwelling units, and their related companies which are in charge of renovation work
of the said dwelling units. The companies that designed and constructed the housing provided
design drawings and documents etc. concerning CHS. The results of the survey were reported to
the technologists who had initially been in charge of designing the building and equipment, and
views concerning the evaluation of CHS were exchanged with these technologists.
2.2.2 Objects of the investigation
The objects of the investigation are Complex E, Building A in a private condominium complex
in Chiba Prefecture. Complex E consists of seven residential buildings, but CHS was adopted
only in Building A. Complex E is close to a JR (Japan Railways) station, educational and
medical facilities, and public facilities, and access to the center of Tokyo by train is convenient,
making it an extremely convenient location.
2.2.3 Characteristics of CHS in Building A of Complex E
The following are characteristics of CHS in Building A of Complex E that was investigated
(partially corrected based on the CHS planning document (HASEKO Corporation a, 1985;
HASEKO Corporation b, 1985) prepared by the designer).
x The base building protection to deal with the deterioration and its thermal insulation
are improved to ensure its physical durability.
x Columns and beams protrude outside (out-frame).
x The interior dimension of the building frame uses 300mm single grid modules.
x It adopted a highly changeable interior finishing wood-working system.
x Interior partition, ceiling, and floor fittings are ceiling- and floor-propense. Mounting
walls are all double walls.
x Ceilings are all double ceilings. In principle all are ceiling-propense.
x Pipe shafts are installed facing to common corridors. These are repaired and renewed
from outside.
x Pipes (drainage pipes, cold water pipes, hot water pipes, and gas pipes) are installed
in the light courts. (They are not installed in some dwelling units).
x Wet areas are placed on the common corridor sides of dwelling units.
x Cold and hot water supply, gas, and drainage pipes are installed in the double floors
of the corridors, washstand rooms, and toilets.
x Ducts, heating use hot water pipes, and electric cables are installed between the
double ceilings.
x In principle, switches and electric power plugs are not installed in movable partitions.
x Inspection ports are installed according to purpose in concealed parts of exclusive use
areas.
x Basic repair plans are enacted for each component of the private use area according
to their service lifetimes. (30 year cycles).
x Annual repair plans are enacted for common use areas.
The multi-family housing that is the object of the investigation was built by applying the
CHS concept to an SRC structure condominium apartment building with which the company
that designed and constructed it had previous experience. Not all features that were the goals of
CHS at that time were realized. The company in charge of its design and execution had, until
then, not installed equipment pipes in the building frame, and had installed equipment
472

inspection ports based on floor planning that concentrated wet parts, and used conventional
general purpose methods of equipment work which it had used in the past.
According to design documents for Building A of Complex E, the floor height and ceiling
height etc. were as follows. The floors of the corridors, toilets, and washstand rooms are double
floors to accommodate under-floor pipes. The floors of the corridors are 70mm and the floors of
toilets and washstand rooms are 170mm higher than in other habitable rooms. In multi-family
dwellings designed in recent years, generally the frame slabs of wet areas are lowered to form
double floors where the under-floor pipes are installed to meet the barrier-free requirements, but
when the multi-family building that was investigated was designed, concern for barrier free was
not widespread, so only the wet areas and corridors where pipes are installed have double floors,
forming floor level differences at the boundaries between the wet areas and corridors, and other
habitable rooms.
x Floor height of standard floors: 2,850mm Floor slab thickness of ordinary parts:
200mm
x LDK, western rooms, and Japanese rooms ceiling height: 2,550mm
x Depth of ceiling of the above habitable rooms: 100mm
x (Including finishing thickness, and substrate thickness)
x Ceiling height of corridors: 2,330mm
x Double floor height of corridors: 70mm
x Ceiling height of toilets and washstand rooms: 2,230mm
x Double-floor height of toilets and washstand rooms: 170mm.
2.3 Attributes of residents
As the attributes of the 58 households that answered the questionnaire, most household heads
were in their 60s at 27.6% (16 out of 58). Households led by household heads 60 years of age or
older accounted for 60.3% of all households (35/58 households). The average age of household
heads is 62.8 years. The youngest household head was 32 and the oldest was 92.
Males led 54 of the total of 58 households. White color workers and other working people
were heads of 31 of the 58 households. Percentages of all residents in age cohorts were 17.1%
in their sixties (28/164), followed by 15.9% in their fifties (26/164). The most common number
of household members was two, accounting for about 40%.
Half of the questionnaire respondents were 29 households who had occupied their unit for 20
or more years. Most households had occupied their units for 25 years or more, at 37.9% (23/58).
The average number of years of occupancy of households surveyed was 17.5 years.
2.4 Changing lifestyle
"Changing lifestyle" refers to change of the lifestyle of the residents themselves and actions they
take to satisfy new residential demands in response to changes of the family's life stages or the
family's circumstances. For example, changing a room formerly used as children's bedroom into
a storeroom after the children become independent.
Of the surveyed households, 16/58 (25.9%) changed their lifestyle. The average number of
times these households changed their lifestyle was 1.94 times. The household that changed most
often changed its lifestyle 4 times in 27 years.
Most of the changes of lifestyle were done because of "the children's independence": 16 out
of 31 times (51.6%). Because of "children maturing" was the reason in 6 cases, "birth of a child"
in 3 cases, sharing by families" in 2 cases, and "death in the family" in 1 case. The background
to these trends is the fact that in Complex E, many households moved in after their children
were born and grown up to a certain extent.

473
Figure 4. Layout Changes of CHS housing units.
2.5 Renovation of the dwelling units

2.5.1 State of performance of dwelling unit renovation
"Dwelling unit renovation" means doing renovations to deal with the deterioration of interior
finishing or equipment inside a dwelling unit, and to do partial renovation of space inside a
dwelling unit to meet new habitation needs.
Of the 58 households surveyed, 47 households (82.8%) had experienced the renovations of
their dwelling units. The average number of times these households renovated their dwelling
units was 1.75 times. But the renovation of multiple places at the same time was counted as one
renovation.
Wet area renovation was the commonest type of dwelling unit renovation at 55 cases among
128 cases (43.0%), mainly because of deterioration over time. Renovation work also included
19 toilet and washstand room renovations, 11 kitchen renovations, and 22 bath room
renovations. As dwelling unit renovations related to changeability of the floor plan, which is a
feature of CHS, "floor plan change" and "complete renovation" were done 23 times, and
"increasing or decreasing storage space was done 9 times.
2.5.2 Using habitable rooms after changing the floor plan during dwelling unit renovation
Changing the floor plan during dwelling unit renovation is categorized as three kinds:
"removing a partition wall", "adding a new partition wall", and "moving a partition wall."
Partition walls were removed 10 times, moved 7 times, but only added 2 times.
The renovation, "removing a partition wall", was done 8 times by removing the partition wall
between habitable rooms and living rooms in order to widen living rooms. The renovation,
"adding a new partition wall", was done 2 times by adding a partition wall in a relatively wide
habitable room inside the dwelling unit in order to obtain a bedroom. The renovation, "moving a
partition wall", was done 5 times, by reducing the size of an infrequently used room in order to
expand a bedroom or private room. In such cases, Japanese rooms were often made smaller, and
used as a western-style room or as a walk-in closet. This was done twice in each case.
2.5.3 History of renovation of dwelling units
Figure 5 shows a history of renovation works in each dwelling unit from 1987 to 2013 entered
by year period. Each row shows the dwelling unit renovation history of one household. The
white part shows residency period, and the black part shows the periods when the surveyed
household did not occupy the complex. In 1999 and 2013, large-scale repairs of common areas
474

were carried out, and in 2006, water supply pipe renewal work was done in common areas. In
years indicated by the symbol "", renovation work was done, and the letters of the alphabet in
the table indicates the contents of renovation works.
Figure 5 shows that renovation work can be broadly categorized into two trends. One is
renovation works done when a household moved into a used dwelling unit. As reasons for
renovation works, many answered that the reason was deterioration over time, or to adapt their
dwelling units to match their own taste. One more is renovation work done in response to
deterioration of equipment and machinery or change of lifestyles by households that have lived
in the dwelling unit for a relatively long period of time, often done in recent 10 years. This
renovation work included renovation of bath rooms, toilets, kitchens, etc. and other wet areas
done mainly because of deterioration over time. Type 15 note 2) components (estimated service
lifetimes of 12 to 25 years) in Building A are:
1) kitchen cabinets that are kitchen components,
2) walls and ceilings of bath units (but floors are Type 30 and bath tubs are Type 8), and
3) wash stands,
4) air exhaust ducts, and
5) heating system terminal equipment and radiators.
Figure 5 shows that from the 12th year after occupancy in 1998 to the 25th year after
occupancy in 2011, many renovations of kitchens, bath units, washstand rooms, toilets, and
other dwelling equipment and machinery were carried out.
Figure 5. Infill Renovation at CHS housing (Indexes for Fig. 5 are same as Fig. 4).

475
3 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS OF INFILL SYSTEM OF JAPANESE HOUSING

Three companies, Nomura Real Estate, one of the largest developers in Japan, Haseko, design
and build more than quarter of new condominium in Metropolitan Tokyo and Bridgestone, a big
chemical company developed a zero slope drainage system for kitchen of the condominium
units. The Architectural Institute of Japan has established a technical guideline for zero slope
drainage system for the engineer which support the application of this system widely (AIJ,
2016). Three companies are continuing the research and development that allows the freedom of
the positions for bathroom and laundry machine. The zero slope drainage piping system gives
more freedom in the planning of units of new condominium and also the refurbishment of
existing housing.
Mitsui Real Estate has begun to sell condominium housing in which infill can be installed
and moved freely in each unit like furniture. The bathroom units and toilet are fixed but the
other space is free for the residents to plan. The first apartment in Akabane-nishi developed by
Mitsui Real Estate constructed by Haseko Corporation is not recognized to be qualified to the
technical guidelines of the Act for Promotion of Long-Life Quality Housing. The apartment is
located in casual residential areas in the north of Tokyo and most of the units are under 80 sq.
meters in order to make the price to be affordable for many people. To be qualified as the long
life housing, the price for each unit become higher. The developer, Mitsui Real Estate who
knows very well about the law seems to have decided not to invest too much to make the house
for sale to have high durability than expected by the owners. Instead they provided the
economical housing for ordinary income families.
The position of the kitchen has seven places to be chosen. There are three conduits on the
floor to connect piping and wiring. They managed to develop an exhaust system which clean the
exhausts of cooking and return a cleaned air to the room. It is required to ask professional
engineers to change the position of the kitchen not because of the requirement of laws nor the
necessity of technical works but because to prevent the miss connecting and incomplete
connecting of piping by the residents. The mechanical lever system for the movable cabinet is
similar to the previous system like those used at the KEP Tsurumaki-3 Estate in 1982 and at the
Flex court Yoshida in Osaka built in 1996.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Because we are in short of the construction labors, the development of the infill system that
could be installed by non-skilled labors is needed. Haseko cooperation is starting to use the
prefabricated toilet unit for their new apartments to reduce the on-site works. Urban
Renaissance Agency (UR), which owns more than 700 thousand units of condominium housing
for rent needs to refurbish their old units and are exploring many experiments to renovate their
housing stock. Last year UR worked together with IKEA to refurbish some of their units in
Tachikawa Saiwaicho housing estate. The attempts to invite new residents to old existing
housing are keen topic in Japan.
We need to overcome the labor shortage in construction sector in Japan by improving its
relatively lower productivity. The author thinks it becomes more important to design and build
the structure of building which requires less skilled labors. The configuration of structure
elements must be simple. The robots that work in the construction sites are not easy to be
developed. So the simple structure in which robots can work will be welcomed. At the same
time, the infill of those buildings needs to be as simple as furniture, easily to be built on site and
can be replaced easily by the residents and users.
The infill system for housing must be adaptable for changing lifestyles of the residents and
must be easily fit and removed. It may be used not only for the condominium but also for the
detached houses, which is larger market in Japan. The author will carefully examine the
characteristics of the future infill market in Japan to find the most attractive infill for the
residents and also for the housing industries based on the researches of the post occupancy
evaluation of the existing housing like KEP and CHS. The ideas of Open Building which
respect the adaptability in time will fit in our future.
476

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Prof. Manabu Hatsumi of the Tokyo University of Science for his kindness to
allow us to continue his preceding researches. I thank my former students Mr. Ishimi Yasuhiro,
Miss Mamiko Takuda, Mr. Ryotarou Maruyama and Miss Saori Yoshida who worked with me
for these research. I wish to thank most the residents of the units of housing who kindly took
their times to answer our questions.
ENDNOTES
1) This paper is based and modified on the LONG-TERM OCCUPANCY RECORDS AND INFILL
RENOVATION OF HOUSING DESIGNED BASED ON THE CENTURY HOUSING SYSTEM
published and presented by the author at the Future of Open Building Conference 2015, ETH Zurich.
2) Service lifetimes were set for each component and the mutual impacts were studied to set anticipated
lifetimes: Type 04: 3 to 6 years, Type 08: 6 to 12 years, Type 15: 12 to 25 years, Type 30: 25 to 50
years, and Type 60: 50 to 100 years.
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Century Housing System Promotion Council. 1997. Century Housing System Guidebook.
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HASEKO Corporation. 1985b. HK C.H.S. Guidebook.
Hatsumi, M. 1991. Research on responding to individuality in residential planning. Housing Research
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Housing and Urban Development Corporation, Japan. 1996. Report on Survey of history of occupancy of
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Minami, K. 2013. Reusing the multi-family housing stock in the mature society, Special edition on the
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Collected Planning Papers, No. 621, 29-36.

477
Improving energy performance of homes: coping with general

investment behaviours
N. Nieboer
OTB Research for the Built Environment, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft
University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT: Compared to the private rental and the owner-occupied sector, the non-profit
rental sector in the Netherlands is expected to have relatively large possibilities for deep
interventions in the housing stock. Nevertheless, recent findings from a monitor containing
around 1.5 million homes in the Dutch non-profit rental sector show that the improvement of the
energy performance of the respective homes is mostly carried out in small steps: in many of the
improved dwellings only one single measure is applied, and deep energy renovations are rare.
Advocators of such renovations nevertheless believe that these are the most appropriate way to
substantially reducing energy consumption and argue that the developments and proliferation of
energy renovation concepts is the best way forward. Others, however, do not see this as realistic
and argue that reality forces us to proceed on the path of small interventions. This study sheds
more light on this debate from the way in which housing providers conceive and implement
their portfolio and asset management strategies. From these investment policies, it seeks
explanations for the dominance of the small interventions and investigates the room for a more
concentrated allocation of budget resources. To this end, housing providers with different
energy investment policies are selected and interviewed.
1 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND RESEARCH QUESTION

Since the implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), energy
efficiency is a matter of great concern in the Dutch non-profit rental housing sector. This shift
was not only stimulated by European policy, but also by national political pressures on the
sector to show a higher degree of social performance. In 2008 Aedes, the national umbrella
organisation for housing associations (which almost exclusively own the non-profit housing
stock in the country), the Ministry of Housing and Woonbond, the national tenants union,
signed a covenant in which, among others, a 20% reduction on the total gas consumption in the
non-profit housing sector over the years 2008-2018 was agreed.
In 2012 the 2008 covenant was repealed. The covenant that came in place (and that is still in
force) is stricter and makes use of the Energy Index (Energie-Index), a unit that denotes the
energy performance of a building according to the official Dutch calculation method. The value
range of this unit approximately ranges between 0 and 4, in which 0 is energy neutral and 4 is
extremely energy inefficient. The 2012 covenant states that in 2020 the average Energy Index of
all homes of the Dutch housing associations must be 1.25, which is within the bands of energy
performance rate B. In the Netherlands categories ranging from A++ (very high energy
performance) to G (very low energy performance) are used. Rate B can thus be seen as a
relatively high standard.
In the 2008 covenant it was also agreed that Aedes would develop a database to monitor the
improvement of the energy performance of the Dutch non-profit rental housing stock. This

478
monitor has been called SHAERE (Sociale Huursector Audit en Evaluatie van Resultaten
Energiebesparing in English: Social Rented Sector Audit and Evaluation of Energy Saving
Results). Since 2010, when the monitor became operational, housing associations report their
stock to Aedes in the beginning of each calendar year accounting for the situation on December
31st of the previous year (e.g. in the beginning of 2015 for December 31st, 2014). Housing
associations are not obliged to participate in the monitor, so the number of homes for which data
are available varies from year to year. Nevertheless, the monitor covers each year a large part of
the sector, approximately 50-60%.
Results from the monitor show that the improvement of the energy performance of the nonprofit rental housing stock is too slow to attain the agreed level in 2020. If the current
improvement pace would continue until 2020, the Energy Index will be 1.41 by then (see linear
projection in Fig. 1).
2,00
1,90
1,80
EnergyIndex
1,70
1,60
1,50
EnergyIndex
1,40
targetEnergyIndexfor2020
1,30
lineartrendEnergyIndex
1,20
1,10
1,00
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018
2020
year
Figure 1. Development of the average Energy Index in the Dutch non-profit housing sector, 2010-2020.
Sources: Aedes (2014) and Filippidou et al. (forthcoming).
Results from the monitor also show that many homes have been improved in a relatively
short period. In the years 2011, 2012 and 2013, 35.5% of the homes have undergone an
improvement of the energy performance (Filippidou et al., 2015).
70
Percentageofdwellings
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0
>3
Numberofmeasuresperdwelling
Figure 2. Number of measures per dwelling in the Dutch non-profit housing sector, from the end of 2010
to the end of 2013. Source: calculations on SHAERE by OTB, Delft University of Technology.

479
At the same time, however, deep energy renovations are rare and most improvements are
small. In half of the improved dwellings, only one single measure is applied. In only 3% of the
homes more than three measures are applied (see Fig. 2). The low adoption of deep energy
retrofits goes hand in hand with a domination of conventional measures, an outcome that is, by
the way, not unique for the Netherlands, but has also been found in a recent study in the UK
social housing sector (Swan et al., 2013).
Advocators of deep renovations plea for a radical change of this situation of small
improvements. They argue that deep renovations are the most appropriate (if not the only) way
to substantially reducing energy consumption and that the developments and proliferation of
energy renovation concepts is the best way forward. Others, however, do not see this as realistic
and argue that reality forces us to proceed on the path of small interventions. This study sheds
more light on this debate from the way in which housing providers conceive and implement
their portfolio and asset management strategies. From these investment policies, it seeks
explanations for the dominance of the small interventions and investigates the room for a more
concentrated allocation of budget resources. The main research question is: to what extent can
the number of energy measures per dwelling be explained from the general portfolio and asset
management strategies of Dutch housing associations?
The paper is structured as follows. In the following section, we go into general developments
regarding investment planning in the Dutch non-profit housing sector in the last 20 to 30 years,
which have shown considerable changes. In this section we also deal with the possible
investment categories in which energy investments are usually included. In section 3, the
research method is described. In section 4, the results are presented. In section 5, finally,
conclusions are drawn.
2 INVESTMENT PLANNING: SOME BACKGROUND
2.1 Developments in the last decades
Investments in dwellings in the Dutch non-profit housing sector were highly regulated by the
government in the first decades after the Second World War. Until the 1980s, public loans and
subsidies were available for new building and renovation, and maintenance budgets were
regulated. This changed in the 1990s, when the sector was financially liberalised and individual
housing associations had, in financial terms, to stand on their own two feet (Priemus et al.,
1999; Priemus, 2001), entailing an considerably increased need for the development of an own
portfolio and asset management. This need was further increased by the fact that Dutch housing
associations had, compared to most other counterparts in Europe, a large policy autonomy with
respect to government supervision and sale possibilities (Gruis et al., 2009) and was dependent
on sales to cross subsidize social investments. Another factor was that, partly due to increasing
real estate prices in the 1990s and early 2000s, the economic conditions for more market-based
activities were very favourable. Most housing embarked on extensive redevelopment schemes to
modernize their portfolio, thereby making use of internal cross subsidisation through sales and
gains from commercial activities (Milligan et al., 2012). The favourable financial position of the
sector also gave rise to political discussions about the social performance of the sector, which
was said to be too low given its financial means. The national covenants, mentioned in section
1, to bring the housing stock to a relatively high energy performance level, can be seen as a
result of this debate.
Remarkably, the covenants were agreed in a time when investments in the modernisation of
the housing stock had been severely reduced as a consequence of the global financial crisis
(BZK, 2015). This means that, compared to pre-crisis years, a smaller part of the energy
improvement of the housing stock could be gained in demolition and new building, and a bigger
part had to be gained by improvements in the existing stock. In recent years, the context for the
housing associations also dramatically changed because of national regulations following
political mistrust towards the sector (Boelhouwer & Priemus, 2014). Social activities are no
longer exempted from tax since 2008; a new property tax is in force since 2013. In addition, the
new Housing Act, adopted in March 2015, implies a strong focus on the provision of affordable
housing for low-income households and many restrictions on other activities, e.g. restriction of

480
the budget for liveability issues, limitations on the development of real estate for noncommercial purposes (schools, community buildings, public libraries, reception centres etc.) and
an obligation to obtain a consent from (among others) the local authority for activities that the
European Commission does not regard as a Service of General Economic Interest (Aedes,
2015). Energy investments are not directly affected by these new regulations, but can be
indirectly affected because these measures reduce the room for investments in general.
2.2 Investment categories
Unlike institutional real estate investors, non-profit housing providers mostly perform portfolio,
asset and property management themselves. Although the execution of new building and
renovation work is nearly always outsourced and although this is often also true for the vast
majority of maintenance works in the Netherlands (Straub & van Mossel, 2007) and also
elsewhere (see e.g. Lam, 2008), the preparation and planning of these works is mostly carried
out in-house. Straub (2012: 188) states that maintenance services of (non-profit) housing
providers are usually divided into three managerial processes, namely:
1. Planned (preventive) maintenance: activities scheduled at regular intervals;
2. Reactive maintenance: realised on residents initiatives (complaints), often
after breakdowns (also called responsive maintenance or daily maintenance);
and
3. Void repairs: maintenance realised in between tenancy periods.
In addition to these processes, improvement projects can be mentioned, in which not only
deficits or gaps with the original standards are solved, but also an addition to the original
standard is realized (Straub, 2012: 187). Renovation is a prominent example of this type of
projects. Earlier studies in the Netherlands have indicated that energy investments are notably
included in renovations, planned preventive maintenance and, to a smaller extent, void repairs
(Nieboer et al., 2012). In the next two sections, we will return to these combinations of energy
investments with other investments.
3 METHOD
For the study 12 housing associations have been selected and interviewed. It was chosen for
interviews, because this research method gives room for expressing the underlying opinions,
views and contexts for the decisions on energy investments. From an earlier study, held in 2012
(Nieboer et al., 2013a,b), we expected that a big minority of all housing associations had not
formulated an energy investment policy, which makes it plausible that these organisations did
not have many own experiences about various ways to invest in the energy performance of their
stock, and were therefore less appropriate as respondents for this research. For this reason, we
did not apply a random selection, but selected housing associations from which we expected
more advanced energy investment policies. We chose them among the members of an existing
platform on technical management and also from a group of housing associations that,
according to an own telephonic investigation done in 2012, had improved the energy
performance of a relatively big share of their housing portfolio. We selected both organisations
that had carried out deep renovations and organisations that had not, in order to ensure that
housing associations with different energy investment policies were represented. At each
organisation, we spoke with persons which were responsible for the implementation of energy
policies into investment planning, for example heads of real estate planning. The topics in the
interviews were:
x the energy policies and ambitions of the respective organisation;
x the types of investment (notably renovation, planned preventive maintenance, void
repairs and possible separate investment flows) in which the energy investments are
included;
x the room for selective deep renovations.
The interviews took place in October 2015; one interview was conducted in November 2015.

481
4 RESULTS
All 12 interviewed housing associations have policy aims regarding the energy performance of
their housing stock. Table 1 presents these aims.
Table 1. Aims of the interviewed housing associations regarding the energy performance of their housing
stock.
Number of housing
Aims
associations
interviewed*
Average energy performance label B for the whole portfolio
4
Average energy performance label C for the whole portfolio
1
Improve at least x dwellings by at least 3 label categories or improve them to
1
energy performance label B
30% of the dwellings will have energy performance label A of B
1
1
At least energy performance label C after an intervention
4
Phase out dwellings labelled E, F and G
Phase out dwellings labelled F and G
3
1
Reduce CO2 emission by 25%
* Because the housing associations can have multiple aims, the sum of the number of housing
associations in the table is higher than the number of housing associations interviewed.
Phasing out the most inefficient homes is relatively popular among the interviewed housing
associations: 7 out of the 12 housing associations aim at this. Also relatively often mentioned (4
times) is to attain an average label B for their housing stock. With this aim the respective
housing associations apply the national covenant agreement of an average label B for the
national stock directly to themselves. Some housing associations, however, stated that they had
lower targets (such as an average of label C), because their financial means would be
insufficient. The years in which the aims have to be attained vary between 2018 and 2025.
Except from the replacement of boilers and so-called open heating installations (e.g.
geysers, gas heaters), energy investments are hardly executed separately, but nearly always
combined with other more or less planned forms of investment. The moments at which the
interviewed housing associations take measures to improve the energy performance of their
homes is presented in table 2.
Table 2. Moments for energy investments as mentioned by the interviewed housing associations.
Investment types
Planned preventive maintenance
Refurbishment / renovation
Void repair
At a natural moment of replacement
Number of housing
associations interviewed*
9
10
5
all 12
* Because the housing associations include their energy investments in different investment types, the
sum of the number of housing associations in the table is higher than the number of housing associations
interviewed.
Most interviewed housing associations combine energy investments with renovations

(mentioned by 10 of the 12 selected organisations) and planned preventive maintenance
(mentioned 9 times). Combination with void repairs has also been mentioned, but less often (5
times).
It is important to note that housing associations can be highly selective in the measures that
they take: building elements are usually replaced at the end of their lifespan, meaning that early
write-off hardly takes place, even if this would result in a notable improvement of the energy
performance. So, unlike table 2 could suggest, natural moments of replacement must rather be
482

seen as a criterion for selecting measures than as an additional investment type. Especially this
is an important explanation for the small number of measures per dwelling.
The interviewed housing associations think different about including deep energy
renovations. In general, these investments are not very popular. Eight of the interviewed
housing associations have not included these renovations in their investment planning. The most
important reason given is that the costs are high. These housing associations feel that a
disproportional part of the available budget would be spent on a few housing estates and besides
on only one quality aspect. Other arguments brought forward are the uncertain energy savings
(in terms of both demand and money), and the risk of wrong use of installations by tenants due
to the unfamiliarity with these devices.
The other four housing associations argue that different homes are and also should be treated
differently, and that deep energy renovations can be executed if the technical and market
prospects of the respective dwellings allow this. These organisations carry out experiments with
zero-energy renovations or plan to do so in the near future. It must be added, however, that most
of these projects have an experimental character and the number of homes involved is only a
small share of the total portfolio. It is possible that we witness here an innovation that is still in
its early days and that is awaiting its breakthrough, but although the interviews confirm the early
days of the innovation, they do not show signs of a massive uptake.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The regular investment practice seems to be a good explanation factor for the overall picture of
small steps in the improvement of the energy performance of the non-profit housing stock in the
Netherlands. Most interviewed housing associations combine energy investments with planned
preventive maintenance and around half of them do this with void repairs, but these two
investment types are not very suitable for large-scale investments. Renovations are, but they
rarely take place, too little to have a serious impact on the average number of measures per
dwelling. Although many housing associations are, in their official policies, inclined to make
big steps forward in the (average) energy performance of their stock, they seem to strongly
dislike early write-offs and additional investment schemes. In practice, energy investments have
to be fit in regular investment schemes and have to follow general decision criteria such as the
lifespan of the respective building element and the market position of the respective dwelling. In
this approach, the main choice is not between many small interventions or selective deep
renovations, because all housing associations broadly invest in their portfolio. The question
which divides the housing associations is rather: which investment room is available for deep
retrofits as well?
The current investment practice of the interviewed housing associations shows little room for
acceleration of energy performance improvement in the non-profit housing stock on the short
term. Deep renovations are mostly seen as innovations, which could be suitable for individual
experiments, but not (yet) for wide application. This may change when this kind of renovations
will be more generally recognised, but to date this is not the case. It would be helpful that zeroenergy renovations, which are still in their infancy, but are developing rapidly, will continue to
follow the current trend of decreasing expenses. However, it must be admitted that even then,
(pre)financing of the measures remains a barrier for investments (e.g. Sorrell et al., 2004). For
this reason, a step-by-step renovation (see e.g. Enseling & Greiff, 2004) could be more
practical, although this approach bears the risk of preventing further improvements. Further
research is needed to assess the size of this risk and the efficiency of the step-by-step approach
compared to other approaches.
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the main points. Version August 2015]. The Hague: Aedes.

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and political changes. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 29 (2), 221-235.
BZK. 2015. Staat van de woningmarkt. Jaarrapportage 2015 [State of the housing market. Yearly report
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Enseling, A. & Greiff, R. 2004. Refurbishing Older Housing Step-by-Step: Results of a Study on Current
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Filippidou, F., Nieboer, N. & Visscher, H. (forthcoming). Energy efficiency measures implemented in the
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Gruis, V., Tsenkova, S. & Nieboer, N. (eds.). 2009. Management of privatised housing; international
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towards an energy-efficient stock]. Renda (1), 30-35.
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Priemus, H., Dieleman, F. M. & Clapham, D. 1999. Recent Developments in Social Housing
Management. Netherlands Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 14 (3), 211-223.
Sorrell, S., OMalley, E., Schleich, J. & Scott, S. (eds.). 2004. The Economics of Energy Efficiency;
Barriers to Cost-Effective Investment. Northampton (Massachusetts): Edward Elgar Publishing.
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Wachter, & H. Lovell (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home, Vol. 4, Oxford:
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485
The progress of energy renovations in the housing stock in the

Netherlands
H. Visscher
OTB-Research for the Built Environment, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft
University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT: The ambitions for energy reductions to be realised in the built environment are
huge. The existing housing stock covers a major share of energy use and is seen as high
potential to contribute to the savings. This should be realised in the first place by reducing the
energy demand for heating by renovation of the existing stock and bring the dwellings to a
higher energy performance standard. The targets, policies and programmes are already applied
for several years now and the question arises of what progress can be seen in renovation
activities and energy saving results. This paper is based on data on improvement rates of the
Dutch non-profit housing sector and insights in the relation with actual energy reduction. It
shows that the renovation progress is limited and that the actual energy reduction is less than is
expected according to theoretical models. Furthermore, the paper presents some promising
innovative approaches to realise nearly zero energy renovated residential buildings.
1 INTRODUCTION
Climate change mitigation is maybe the most important driver for the ambitions to reduce the
use of fossil fuels. There are also other reasons for implementing energy efficiency policies in
the EU and its Member States. These include the wish to diminish the dependency on fuel
imports, the increasing costs and the fact that fuel resources are limited. The European building
sector is responsible for about 40% of the total primary energy consumption. To reduce this
share, the European Commission (EC) has introduced the Energy Performance of Buildings
Directive, the EPBD (2010/31/EC) and the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED 2012/27/EU).
These frameworks require Member States to develop energy performance regulations for new
buildings, a system of energy performance certificates for all existing buildings and policy
programmes that support actions to reach the goals like building only Nearly Zero Energy
Buildings (NZEB) by 2020 and realizing an almost carbon neutral building stock by 2050.
Formulating ambitions and sharpening regulations are relatively easy to do. Technical solutions
are currently available to realise the NZEB standard in building projects and more and more
projects of this kind are being build. However, there is quite some evidence that the mainstream
of building projects do not have the expected energy performance in practice. What is perhaps
even more important in this respect is that the focus predominantly should be on the existing
building stock. About 75% of the buildings that will make up the housing stock in 2050 have
already been built today. For this purpose it is of importance to consider if the energy
performance certificates give reliable information and contribute to the energy saving goals.
486

This paper presents some insights in the implementation of energy regulations and policies in
the Netherlands and the effects on actual reduction of CO2 emissions and the progress of
renovation ambitions in the housing stock. Section 2 presents the effects of Energy regulations
for new dwellings. In section 3 the relation between modelled energy use according to the labels
for existing housing and the actual energy use are described. Section 4 presents the progress of
energy renovations in the social housing stock. This all leads to some conclusions about the
challenges and required innovations for the housing stock to meet the formulated energy
reduction ambitions in section 5.
2 THE REALISATION OF REQUIRED ENERGY PERFORMANCES FOR NEW
HOUSING IN PRACTICE
In 1995 energy performance regulations for space heating of newly built constructions were
introduced in the Netherlands. It consist of a standard (norm) for the calculation method which
is called the Energy Performance Norm. The standard results in a non-dimensional figure called
the Energy Performance Coefficient (not to be confused with the Energy Performance
Certificate for existing buildings, described in section 3). Every few years the level of this
Energy Performance Coefficient was decreased, representing a lower energy use demand. In
2020 new dwellings must be energy neutral according to the EPBD. Since the introduction of
the energy performance regulations only a few studies were carried out to assess the effect of
the regulations on the actual energy use. Two studies found no statistical correlation between
the energy performance coefficient level and the actual energy use per dwelling or per square
meter. Analysis of the WoON (2009) survey, (that was carried out on behalf of the Dutch
government in 2006 containing a representative sample of 5000 dwellings), also found no
correlation between the different levels of the energy performance coefficient and the actual
energy use per dwelling and per square meter. Guerra Santin (2009, 2010) compared the actual
and expected energy consumptions for 313 Dutch dwellings, built after 1996. The method
included an analysis of the original Energy Performance Coefficient calculations that were
submitted to the municipality as part of the building permit application, a detailed questionnaire
and some day-to-day diarys. These combined approaches generated very detailed and accurate
data of the (intended) physical quality of the dwellings and installations, about the actual energy
use (from the energy bills) and of the households and their behaviour. In energy inefficient
buildings with a high Energy Performance Coefficient, actual energy consumption for heating
was almost two times lower than expected. Whereas in buildings with a high energy efficiency,
the expected and actual energy use are much more similar. Due to the relatively small sample
sizes, the differences between the actual heating energy of buildings with different Energy
Performance Coefficient values were insignificant. Nonetheless the average consumption was
consistently lower in buildings with a lower Energy Performance Coefficient (Fig. 1). Guerra
Santin found that building characteristics (including heating and ventilation installations) were
responsible for 19% to 23% of the variation in energy used in the recently built building stock.
Household characteristics and occupant behaviour seemed to be responsible for 3% to 15% of
the total variance. This is partly the so called rebound effect: if the conditions improve and the
people have the idea that the building is more energy efficient, they become less careful in their
energy use behaviour and for instance use higher temperature settings and wear thinner clothing.
On the basis of this study and other literature one can state that building characteristics,
household characteristics and occupant behaviour altogether are responsible for at most 38% of
the variation on energy consumption of dwellings built after 1995. Therefore at least 62% of the
variation in energy use was unexplained by theoretical performance and behaviour and must be
caused by other reasons.
There are also indications that the gap is related to design and construction faults and that
heating services operate in very different conditions than assumed beforehand. Nieman (2007)
showed that in a sample of 154 dwellings, 25% did not meet the energy performance
requirements in the design phase because of mistakes in the calculations. Nevertheless, the
building permit was issued. In 50% of the dwellings, the realization was not in accordance with
the design. These results comply with other findings about inadequate performance the building

487
industry but also of the building control authorities in the Netherlands and other countries
(Meijer et.al., 2002, 2006, 2008).
Figure 1. Mean and 95% confidence interval for the actual energy consumption (MJ/m2) and expected
energy for heating (MJ/m2) per EPC value Source: Guerra Santin, 2009.
3 THE ENERGY PERFORMANCE CERTIFICATES FOR EXISTING DWELLINGS AND

THE RELATION WITH ACTUAL ENERGY USE
The largest energy saving potential is in the existing building stock. New dwellings add about
one per cent per year to the housing stock in Europe. The most important policy tool required by
the EPBD in the European Member States is the issuing of Energy Performance Certificates (or
EPCs). These EPCs give a hypothecated indication of the required energy to provide a certain
average temperature in the building and depend on physical characteristics of the building. The
certificate has no mandatory implications in the sense that owners could be forced to improve
their buildings to certain levels. Nonetheless it is a crucial instrument for benchmarking and
formulating policy goals. Building owners in all EU Member States have to obtain an EPC for a
building at the moment it is sold or rented out. This is not yet current practice everywhere,
mostly due to lack of enforcement. This especially applies to the private housing stock. In a
research project by Majcen (2013a, 2013b) the actual energy consumption was compared with
the theoretical use according to the EPCs (see Fig. 2).
488

Figure 2. Actual and theoretical gas consumption in Dutch dwellings - per m2 dwelling area. Source:
Majcen et al., 2013a.
This research was based on the Dutch energy labels issued in 2010 - a total of over 340,000
cases with 43 variables (regarding building location and technical characteristics, the properties
of the label itself etc.). This data set was derived from the publicly available database of the
EPCs. This data was, on the basis of the addresses of the households, linked to actual energy use
data. The energy data was provided by the CBS (Statistics Netherlands), which collected this
data from the energy companies. The combined data file was then cleaned by deleting
incomplete or obvious incorrect EPCs. This resulted in 193,856 usable cases. This still large
sample proved to be representative for all housing types and energy label classes.
To understand how the energy label relates to the discrepancies, the gas and electricity
consumption in various label categories were examined and analysed. The actual and theoretical
gas use per dwelling was compared and then analysed per m2 of dwelling (Fig. 2). Little
difference exists between the actual and theoretical energy use calculated per dwellings and per
m2, except the difference in actual gas use between label A and label B. At the level of
individual dwellings, the actual consumption was identical, but at the level of m2 the dwellings
in category A use less gas than dwellings in category B. This may relate directly to the fact that
dwellings in label category A were found to be considerably larger than all other dwellings.
From these figures it is clear that although better labels lead to higher actual gas consumption,
there is a clear difference between the mean theoretical and mean actual gas consumption for
each label. For the most energy-efficient categories (A, A+ and A++) and for category B, Figure
2 shows that the theoretical calculation underestimated the actual annual gas consumption. This
is in contrast to the rest of the categories for which the theoretical calculation largely
overestimated the actual annual gas consumption. This research indicates that the energy label
has some predictive power for the actual gas consumption. However, according to the labels,
dwellings in a better label category should use on average significantly less gas than dwellings
with poorer labels, which is not the case.
4 THE PROGRESS OF ENERGY RENOVATIONS IN THE SOCIAL HOUSING STOCK
The social housing sector in the Netherlands agreed with the government and the national
tenants union to a covenant about energy renovation goals. Most important goal is to reach an
average label B in 2020 for the whole sector, which comprises 2.3 million dwellings (35% of
the total stock). The whole social housing stock is already labelled for many years. Since 2010
most of the stock has a label. Every year AEDES, the national umbrella organisation of the
housing associations, wants to collect the energy label data of all housing associations. Every
year more associates really do so. In 2015 the data of more than 60 % of the whole social

489
housing stock was collected in this way. This database is called SHAERE. Research with the
SHAERE data base enables to show the progress in renovation. Figure 3 demonstrates the label
steps over the years 2010 to 2014. It can be noted that most of the renovations lead to small
improvements. If the current figures are extrapolated to 2020, we can see that the goals of an
average label B will not be reached (see Fig. 4). The label indexes relate the calculation of the
Energy Index, which is for label B 1,25.
The actual domestic energy use is besides the physical characteristics of a dwelling, largely
influenced by the use and behaviour of the tenants. Some preliminary figures demonstrate the
difficulty in forcing reduced energy use by improvements of dwellings. The dwellings with the
worst EPC (G) in practise use far less energy as expected, while the most advanced dwellings
(A) use much more. This is probably due to a combination of the rebound effect and an increase
in comfort level of the dwellings (Majcen et al 2013a, 2013b, 2015) and underperformance of
the buildings and installations. The large difference between theory and practice is called the
performance gap and is recognised in more and more international studies.
Figure 3. Distribution of the energy labels of the non-profit rented housing sector in SHAERE database
(Filippidou, F, et al., 2014).
Figure 4. Development of the EI in the Dutch non-profit housing sector since 2010, (Filippidou, F, et al.,
2015).
5 CONCLUSION
Without any doubt there is a necessity to drastically reduce the use of fossil-fuel energy sources
by reducing the demand for energy and switching from fossil to renewable sources. Buildings
490

account for 40% of Europes energy consumption and three-quarters of the floor area of the
building stock is residential. The targets are clear and the technical solutions are available. Good
insulation and product innovations can reduce the energy demand for heating and cooling for a
large part. The remaining energy demand can be delivered by renewables like sunlight and heat,
district heating, heat pumps, etc. The remaining electricity demand for appliances can in the first
place be reduced by further product innovation and then be provided by photovoltaic panels.
There are no reasons not to apply these solutions in new buildings at a large scale on the short
term. Evaluations of the current practice show however that there is a lot to be gained here. To
improve this situation, it has to be assured that constructions and installations are installed
properly and in such way that they are not vulnerable for unpredictable or misuse by the
occupants. This will set demands on both the construction industry as on the control and
enforcement process (and the parties responsible).
The improvement of the existing building stock forms a big challenge. The potential energy
savings are large, but the barriers to overcome are also high. As stated before, almost three
quarters of the future housing stock (2050) has already been built. Studies show however that it
is hard to increase the rate and depth of energy renovations of the existing stock. Actual energy
(and financial) savings in renovated dwellings stay behind expectations because of rebound
effects. There are important barriers. Many owners believe that the benefits of the measures do
not outweigh the costs. Besides that, the cost of improving the energy performance of a
dwelling does not (proportionally) increase the value of the dwelling.
We are faced with the difficult task to increase the energy renovation pace. The question is
how this process can be accelerated. Maybe there is still room for further smart product
development. Innovative products that that contribute significantly to the reduction of energy
demand, that are cheap, easy to apply and to handle by occupants and users. The fast decrease of
the price of PV cells is promising.
REFERENCES
Filippidou, F., Nieboer, N. & Visscher, H. 2014. The Pace of Energy improvement in the Dutch nonprofit housing stock. In Proceedings of SB 14, World Sustainable Building Conference, Barcelona.
Filippidou, F., Nieboer, N. & Visscher, H. 2015. Energy efficiency measures implemented in the Dutch
non-profit housing sector. ECEEE Conference, France.
Guerra Santin, O. & Itard, L. 2010. Occupant behaviour in residential buildings in the Netherlands:
Determinants and effects on energy consumption for heating. Building Research & Information, 38:3,
318-338.
Guerra Santin, O., Itard, L. & Visscher, H. J. 2009. The Effect of Occupancy and Building Characteristics
on Energy Use for Space and Water Heating in Dutch Residential Stock. Energy and Buildings, 41,
1223-1232.
Majcen, D., Itard, I. & Visscher, H. J. 2013a. Theoretical vs. actual energy consumption of labelled
dwellings in the Netherlands: Discrepancies and policy implications. Energy Policy, 54, 125 136.
Majcen, D., Itard, L. & Visscher, H. J. 2013b. Actual and theoretical gas consumption in Dutch
dwellings: What causes the differences?. Energy Policy, 61, 460-471.
Majcen, D., Itard, L. & Visscher, H. J. 2015. Statistical model of the heating prediction gap in Dutch
dwellings: Relative importance of building, household and behavioural characteristics. Energy and
Buildings, 105, 43-59.
Meijer, F. M. & Visscher, H. J. 2006. Deregulation and privatisation of European building-control
systems. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, Volume 33(4), pp. 491-501.
Meijer, F. M. & Visscher, H. J. 2008. Building regulations from an European perspective. In
Proceedings of COBRA 2008 - The construction and building research conference of the Royal
Institution of Chartered Surveyors, RICS, London.
Meijer, F. M., Visscher, H. J. & Sheridan, L. 2002. Building Regulations in Europe, part I: A Comparison
of systems of building control in eight European countries. Housing and Urban Policy Studies, 23,
Delft, Delft University Press.
Nieman. 2007. Final report Housing quality indoor environment in new built dwellings. Vrom inspectie
Regio Oost, Arnhem.
WoON Energie. 2009. Woononderzoek Nederland, module energie. VROM.
Chapter 8
Comfort, health and safety

Chapter 8: Comfort, health and safety
493
Non invasive indoor air quality control through HVAC systems

cleaning state
M. C. Basile
Struttura di Particolare Rilievo Valorizzazione della Ricerca, CNR Rome, Rome, Italy
V. Bruni
Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo M. Picone, CNR Rome, Rome, Italy
Dip. Scienze di Base e Applicate per lingegneria, University La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
D. De Canditiis & D.Vitulano

Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo M. Picone, CNR Rome, Rome, Italy
F. Buccolini & S. Tagliaferri

Tagliaferri s.r.l., Italy
ABSTRACT: HVAC systems are the largest energy consumers in a building and a clean HVAC
system can get about 11% in energy saving. Moreover, particulate pollution represents one of
the main causes of cancer death and several health damages. This paper presents an innovative
and not invasive procedure for the automatic indoor air quality assessment that depends on
HVAC cleaning conditions. It is based on a mathematical algorithm that processes a few on-site
physical measurements that are acquired by dedicated sensors at suitable locations with a
specific time table. The output of the algorithm is a set of indexes that provide a snapshot of the
system with separated zoom on filters and ducts. The proposed methodology contributes to
optimize both HVAC maintenance procedures and air quality preservation. Robustness,
portability and low implementation costs allow to plan maintenance intervention, limiting it
only when standard HVAC working conditions need to be restored.
1 INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) systems are standard/default
components in private and public buildings because of global climate changes as well as
substantial changes in the living habits, especially in the Western world. However, HVAC
systems need to be properly maintained in order to ensure optimal energy consumption as well
as adequate indoor air quality.
A proper design of a sustainable building involves many factors such as the bioclimatic
approach (orientation, sunshine and shade, natural ventilation), the building envelope insulation
(reduction of energy resources for heating and cooling the living space), the use of renewable
energy sources (biomass, geothermal, photovoltaic, solar thermal, micro wind), and plant
efficiency (reduction in performance equals consumption). The first three requirements have to
be accomplished since the design stage; on the contrary, plants efficiency can be improved also
in already existing buildings. For example, some recent studies (NADCA, 2012) proved that a
clean air conditioning system can provide up to 11% energy saving in a building. It is not a
trivial gain if one considers that about 50% of energy consumption in a building is for HVAC.
In addition, contaminants are responsible for bad HVAC working conditions and contribute to
shorten its life. These are the reasons why the US government is trying to raise awareness and
perhaps, in the future, to force the population to maintain the US plants more efficient, see
(EPA, 2012). Even though also in Europe the owner of the building independently and
individually manages its HVAC system, European governments are becoming more sensitive to
494

the problem as also proved by several actions of the European Commission in promoting new
and innovative solutions also in form of proposals for institutional rules and restrictions
(http://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/topics/energy-efficiency/heating-and-cooling).
The standardization of HVAC maintenance becomes more important if one considers its
influence on indoor air quality. In particular, bad (partial or missing) HVAC maintenance
contributes to bad indoor air quality which, in turn, causes several health damages such as
asthma, allergies, bronchitis and general diseases, which are denoted by Sick Building
Syndrome (EPA, 2009; Sundell et al., 1994). Furthermore, particulate pollution is composed of
microscopic particles (PM10, for example) that are easily absorbed by the organism and
represent one of the main causes of cancer death (Beelen et al, 2014; WHO; 2013). Despite
these clear evidences, indoor air quality did not receive the same institutional attention of
outdoor air quality. For example, even though WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines
indicate a limit for indoor ne dust concentration equal to 10mg/m3, the tolerated limit in EU is
still 25mg/m3. However, despite the lack of institutional laws, there exists a set of private
initiatives (hotels, banks and supermarket chains) oriented to promote the wellness and safety of
their customers and/or employees by means of green smart buildings (SCAP, 2016). One
example is the present work. It consists of a response to a need of the small enterprise
(Tagliaferri s.r.l.), working in the field of HVAC installation and maintenance, which was
interested in finding innovative ways for improving its services and offers to its customers.
However, HVAC maintenance can be expensive and often requires invasive intervention on
the system by specialized maintenance operators. That is why HVAC maintenance actually is
limited to the filters and it often consists of a periodic filters change. Unfortunately, the
presence of dust in the ducts is even more dangerous since it contributes to the proliferation of
bacteria that are dangerous for humans, especially in critical buildings, like hospitals.
The present paper proposes a method for a not invasive monitoring of HVAC system that is
oriented to assess the quality of both filters and air ducts in order to clearly indicate the correct
maintenance intervention. In other words, the proposed method indicates if eventual bad HVAC
working conditions are mainly due to bad filter maintenance (then filters change is required) or
to bad ducts maintenance (then ducts cleaning is necessary). To this aim, except for the data
processing method, it is essential to determine few informative points where to acquire few
significant measures at proper significant time instants.
The present work is then related at least to two specific topics of the Sustainable Housing
2016 conference. It contributes to both building ecology, being an issue related to energy
efficiency, and living condition, being an issue related to indoor air quality.
The paper is organized as follows. The second section describes the mathematical/statistical
methodology, while the third section presents some of its possible uses in buildings having
different size and end use. Finally, the fourth section draws the conclusions.
Figure 1. Scheme of the basic components of an HVAC system.

495
2 THE PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

In this section, we briefly describe the main concepts that have been used in the formulation and
development of the mathematical/ statistical method which stands behind the proposal --technical details can be found at (Basile et al., 2016).
The problem of indoor air quality is not trivial at all since there exists many contaminants that
contribute to alter air quality. In this paper, we focus on particulate pollution, specifically on
thin dust fraction (PM10).
The proposed method mainly relies on the extension of the definition of the removal
efficiency of a filter to the whole HVAC system. The removal efficiency of a filter is defined as

where is PM10 concentration measured in the entering air, while is PM10

concentration measured in the filtered air. Hence, keeping in mind the sketch in Figure 1, the
removal efficiency of HVAC can be defined as follows

where is PM10 concentration measured outside the building, while is PM10

concentration measured inside the building. Since is the sum of PM10 concentration
not retained by the filter, i.e, , and PM10 contained in the air ducts, i.e.
, then we can write
+ .
Hence, it follows

In a working HVAC system previous equation changes with time. In particular, increases
due to filter clogging, increases due to dust sediment while changes according to
meteorological and pollution conditions. Hence, since
, with ,
where is the removal efficiency of the unused filter, the quantity

is a good candidate index for discriminating between filter or ducts failure. In particular, if FCI
(Filter Cleaning Index) is positive, the larger FCI, the worse filter working conditions. On the
contrary, if FCI is negative, ducts have to be checked.
In order to have a reliable and robust estimate of FCI at time t it is necessary to evaluate
involved measures at specific locations and using a proper time table (Wang et al., 2012). A
thorough study oriented to evaluate the robustness of the measures to external factors and
parameters provided the following acquisition points:
- an outdoor point located outside the building and far from the air treatment unit no
more than 10cm;
- an indoor point located at no more than 10cm far away from the air vent of a room
which, in turn, is far enough away from the air treatment unit.

496
The outdoor point captures the air that enters the system. It must not be too far from the air
treatment unit in order to avoid influences of other external factors. The same motivations are
valid for the location of the indoor point. Internal measures can be influenced by inner room
activity and bad cleaning conditions, leading to not consistent predictions.
With regard to the time table, and measurements have to be quite
simultaneous and performed when HVAC is switched on.
Figure 2. Decision tree for the first phase of the proposed methodology.
In order to make FCI more robust and reliable, it is possible to consider the following
quantity:

where is the maximum value for PM10 concentration that is measured when the system is
is the average of PM10 that is sucked in by HVAC ducts

switched on, while
during the switching off period (typically the night). This index (Ducts Cleaning Index) is
informative since, whenever it is positive, it gives a direct measure of the amount of PM10
really contained in the ducts. DCI estimate is delicate and requires special attention to the choice
of the air vent from which gather the measurements and a negative gradient of temperature
between the exterior and the interior of the building in order to promote the chimney effect. The
latter guarantees that dust is sucked in by air ducts --- see (Basile et al., 2016) for details.
Moreover, the sign of DCI gives a direct check of the reliability of the acquisition conditions.
Indeed, if DCI is greater than a given positive tolerance threshold TOLL1, then the procedure
suggests to clean air ducts. On the contrary, a negative value of DCI does not mean clean ducts,
since it depends on the acquisition conditions (for example, open windows, room activity, dirty
room). That is why it is recommended to acquire measures in a clean room where windows are
closed. Hence, with reference to Figure 2, if DCI < 0 it is recommended to check acquisition
conditions and repeat the measure; otherwise FCI index can be analysed. In particular, as
mentioned above, a positive FCI could indicate filters bad working condition; on the contrary, a
negative FCI could indicate not appropriate air ducts cleaning conditions.
With reference to Figure 3, in the first case (positive FCI)
x filters change alarm is triggered if FCI too high (FCI > 2 TOLL2, where TOLL2 is a
proper tolerance threshold);
x filters warning is given if FCI is high but not critical ( TOLL2 FCI2 TOLL2);
finally,
x if FCI is small (FCI < TOLL2), filters maintenance intervention is not required.

497
On the contrary, in the second case (negative FCI) a further index is necessary for assessing
the cleaning state of ducts.
Specifically, RDCI (Refined Ducts Cleaning Index) is defined as follows

.
is the average concentration of PM10 introduced into the building by the

Since
HVAC system, while (1 ,0) is the amount of air which is not retained by the filter,
RDCI quantifies PM10 percentage that the plant transfers to indoor environment. With
reference to Figure 3, the amount of this PM10 percentage is compared with a prefixed
tolerance threshold, namely TOLL3, in order to launch proper alerting signals concerning ducts
cleaning conditions. Specifically,
x if RDCI is very large (RDCI > 2 TOLL3), then alarm is triggered;
x if RDCI is high but not critical (TOLL3 RDCI 2 TOLL3), a warning signal is
provided; finally,
x if RDCI is small, any maintenance intervention on air ducts is required.
Figure 3. Decision tree for the second phase of the proposed methodology.
2.1 Some remarks

2.1.1 Remark 1
PM10 concentration depends on meteorological conditions and is not completely independent of
some physical measurements, such as temperature and humidity (Yusof et al., 2014; Afzali et
al., 2014; Siwek, 2012). The dependence on such parameters and the way this dependence can
be used for making proposed indexes more robust is given in (Basile et al., 2016). What it is
important to stress in this paper is that:
- PM10 measurements also require a simultaneous measure of temperature and
humidity
- proposed indexes can be computed only using measures gathered in stable
meteorological conditions, avoiding windy days. The latter condition also promotes a
better robustness and reliability of PM10 measurement devices.
498

2.1.2 Remark 2
FCI is not constrained to DCI evaluation so that the decision trees in Figures 2 and 3 can also be
used separately. The chain DCI FCI RDCI is recommended in order to make the whole
procedure more robust, reliable and complete.
3 INNOVATIVE SOLUTION FOR GREEN AND SAFE BUILDINGS
The methodology described in the previous section has some nice properties. In particular, it is
- not invasive: it does not alter the standard operation mode of the system. In particular,
it does not require a forced temporal halt of the system;
- flexible: the involved thresholds can be adapted making them more or less severe
according to the type of the building, its end use, climate conditions, geographical
position, local national or regional legislation; this is the reason why they have not be
fixed in the previous paragraph - see (Basile et al., 2016) for specific Italian
thresholds in a public building;
- automatic: data processing does not require users intervention except for at input
level.
In addition, it can be not expensive if the acquisition time and instrumentation needed have a
reduced and affordable cost. With these ingredients it has an immediate commercial fallout if
embedded in an on demand product-service offered by maintenance companies.
The basic solution we propose is to check the HVAC cleaning state through a service which
is performed by an experienced maintenance company that could act at predetermined time
intervals. This procedure is well suited especially for buildings of large size and having public
end use, such as hospitals, offices or large shopping centers. In fact, the not invasive approach
allows the maintenance operator to not interfere with the normal activity of the building. The
main idea of the whole service is given in Figure 4. The operator acquires specific data from the
building in a predetermined lapse of time and specific locations; then these data are sent to a
service center that processes the data by means of the procedure described in the previous
section (Figs. 2 and 3) and provides the snapshot of the plant of a given customer. On the basis
of the output of the processing algorithm, specific maintenance interventions on the plant are
planned and proposed to the customer.
It is obvious that in this scenario it is fundamental to reduce the acquisition time in order to
reduce the cost for the specialized employee; in addition, the less expensive the instrumentation,
the higher the benefit for the company. However, as discussed in the previous section, the
reliability of the proposed methodology is strictly dependent on the acquisition conditions, in
terms of location, time, indoor and outdoor environment. In (Basile et al., 2016) the
mathematical aspect of data processing has been deeply investigated. In this Section we aim at
optimizing acquisition conditions in order to allow a straightforward embedding of the proposed
method in a customer service.
With regard to the instrumentation, the proposed method requires PM10 concentration,
humidity, temperature and, eventually, wind speed; hence, a powders measuring device, a
hygrometer, a thermometer and, eventually,
a wind gauge are required. All these
sensors/devices are now available in the market at very low prices; in addition, they are
definitely not bulky. As a result, the instrumentation needed is portable and cheap. All the
instrumentation must be equipped with a memory card.
For what concerns the acquisition conditions, in the previous section locations have been
precisely set in order to define the alarm indexes in the mathematical model. With regard to
time, an intensive acquisition survey and testing provided the following restrictions in order to
guarantee reliable results:
- at least one hour is necessary for outdoor measures;
- indoor measures used in the definition of FCI can be delayed no more than one hour
with respect to outdoor measures; in addition, they have to be acquired when the
system is switched on;
- , which is used in the definition of DCI, requires at least 15 minutes for being
measured;

499
indoor measures used in the definition of DCI and RDCI are acquired when the
system is off and at least 2 hours are needed.
Based on these constraints, two working days are required for measurements acquisition. In
particular, the recommended and tested scheduling for a building, where HVAC system is
switched on during the night, is the following:
- First day:
x Perform 1 hour for outdoor measurements 2 hours later than HVAC switching on
x Set instrumentation near the selected air vent and start indoor acquisitions
- Second day
x Pick up the instrumentation at least one hour later than HVAC system is switched
on.
This kind of solution has been tested by Tagliaferri s.r.l in its initial prototype version, and
reveals to be easily applicable after a proper training of employees.
It is worth stressing that the maintenance operator is required to carefully check the location
of the air vent used for indoor measurements. In particular, in order to have robust measures, it
is preferable to select air vent located towards the ceiling. This recommendation and care is
fundamental, as Figure 5 shows. It depicts some consecutive indoor measurements made on a
switched on HVAC system. As it can be observed, PM10 concentration reveals a peak at a
certain time of the day. This peak is expected at the switching on of the system after a temporal
halt of some hours, while it is not admissible for the current measure. As a matter of fact, the
peak corresponds to human activity nearby the measurement device, which has been wrongly
put in the middle of the room during the acquisitions.
3.1 Future development
The proposed solution can be improved in several ways. In particular, it can be quite easily and
cheaply adapted to a sustainable housing context. In fact, since acquisition sites are fixed and
since data processing is not expensive, neither in computational terms nor in disk memory
terms, the whole procedure can be integrated in the HVAC system itself. This integration is
possible both in existing and new plants. In fact, the basic requirement consists of installing
three sensors (temperature, humidity and PM10) at least in two specific points of the plant: near
an air vent inside the building and near the air treatment unit outside the building. Due to their
small size, these sensors could also be elegantly hidden by modern and appealing design
elements for aesthetic purposes. Data processing can be done either on site or remotely. In the
first case, HVAC system has to be equipped with a small computing processor; in the second
case, data have to be digitally transmitted to a web server. Finally, two digital lights placed next
to the thermostat or to the management system, could constantly give a snapshot of the system
for both filters and ducts. Each light may have three different colors, as the ones drawn in
Figures 2 and 3: green light is for a good cleaning state, yellow light is for worsening cleaning
conditions, and red light is for critical cleaning conditions.
The proposed integrated system allows a constant monitoring of the HVAC system and
provides further advantages. A first advantage is the improvement of DCI, FCI and RDCI
estimates using more experimental data. A second advantage is the prediction of the response
times of a given HVAC through appropriate mathematical models. This would ensure the
customization of the mathematical model that becomes more and more HVAC-dependent,
adapting to the climate and geographical location of the plant. This customization could further
promote maintenance interventions only when they are really needed, avoiding waste of
resources.
500

Figure 4. Sketch of on demand service based on the proposed methodology.
Figure 5. Daily PM10 indoor measurements performed in a room where the device is erroneously
influenced by the inner activity of the room.

501
4 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper a not invasive and simple method for the diagnosis of the cleaning state of a
heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system has been presented. The proposed
methodology evaluates three cleaning indexes on the basis of measures of fine particles
concentration acquired at specific points of the building and precise time periods. The procedure
returns a snapshot of the healthy state of system components (filters or ducts) and clearly
indicates which component is more responsible for bad HVAC working conditions. The
proposed method is twofold advantageous for building users and owners. On the one hand, it
contributes to guarantees high indoor air quality; on the other, it contributes to have standard
HVAC working conditions with a not negligible energy saving. The development of the method
started in a project partially funded by Provincia di Roma (Technological Promoters for
Innovation, 2011) and involving Tagliaferri srl and the public research institute for the
Applications of Calculus of the National Research Council (IAC-CNR). The method has been
patented in Italy (Patent n. 102013902196398) with PCT extension (PCT/IB2014/064943) with
evaluation without observations. The patent derived from a need of the small enterprise
(Tagliaferri srl) working in the eld of HVAC installation and maintenance. The collaboration
with the scientic institution allowed to formulate an innovative and successful solution, having
high potential development.
In particular, the proposed method has an immediate commercial fallout. In fact, it is usable
by the companies that work in the field of ventilation systems as a product-service, since it is
extremely flexible, automatic, low-cost, and able to provide a complete check of the system. As
a matter of fact, the potential of the proposed method is even greater in a long term and
permanent monitoring of the system. In fact, the mathematical model may be used for predicting
and time scheduling maintenance interventions on ducts and/or filters. This would give a
considerable contribution to the standardization of maintenance procedures. The present
invention would also have a key role in the presence of laws regulating indoor air quality in
both public and private buildings.
REFERENCES
Afzali, A., Rashid, M., Sabariah, B. & Ramli, M. 2014. PM10 pollution: its prediction and meteorological influence in PasirGudang, Johor. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 18.
Basile, M. C., Bruni, V., Buccolini, F., De Canditiis, D., Tagliaferri, S. & Vitulano, D. 2016. Automatic
and Noninvasive Indoor Air Quality Control in HVAC Systems. Journal of Industrial Mathematics,
2016.
Beelen, R., Raaschou-Nielsen, O., Stafoggia, M. et al.. 2014. Effects of long-term exposure to air
pollution on natural-cause mortality: an analysis of 22 European cohorts within the multicenter
ESCAPE project. The Lancet, 383(9919):785-795.
EPA. 2009. Sick Building Syndrome, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Retrieved
2009-02-19.
EPA. 2012. Energy Cost and Indoor Air Quality Project US Environmental Protection Agency. Available
at: https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/indoor-air-quality-and-energy-efficiency.
NADCA. 2012. Energy Research Project Save Energy (and Money): Clean your Heating and Air
Conditioning System. Report Status February 2012.
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Siwek, K. & Osowski, S. 2012. Improving the accuracy of prediction of PM10 pollution by the wavelet
transformation and an ensemble of neural predictors. Engineering Applications of Artificial
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from inner surfaces of straight ventilation ducts. Building and Environment, 53: 119-127.
WHO. 2013. World Health Organization (WHO). IARC: outdoor air pollution a leading environmental
cause of cancer deaths. Tech. Rep., 221,WHO, 2013.
Yusof, N. F. F. M., Ghazali, N. A., Yahaya, A. S., Sansuddin, N. & Al Madhoun, W. 2008. Correlation
of PM10 concentration and weather parameters in conjunction with haze event in Seberang Perai,
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Penang. Proceedings of The International Conference on Construction and Building Technology

(ICCBT 08), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

503
Locked by spatial structures? Spatial resilience in times of ageing

P. De Decker
KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture & Ghent University, AMRP, Belgium
E. Schillebeeckx
KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture & University of Antwerp, Department of Sociology, Belgium
S. Oosterlynck
Department of Sociology, University of Antwerp, Belgium
ABSTRACT: Rapid demographic changes do not only defy our land use practices, but also
challenge the way we have been organizing and structuring our space in the past decades. As a
reaction, international research centres and governmental bodies are urging the nation states and
local communities to increase their spatial resilience. In this paper we examine the resilience of
the Belgian spatial structure when it comes to an ageing population. We do that in four steps.
First we critically analyse resilience thinking. Since the concept has its roots in ecology, it needs
adjustments to be useful for analysing social systems. Following the critique we elaborate on the
concept of resourcefulness. Resourcefulness emphasizes the unequal distribution of resources
within and between communities and focuses on the needs, goals and capabilities of the local
community. In part 3 we formulate criteria necessary to assess the resourcefulness of the spatial
organisation for an ageing population, thereby using an environmental gerontologist frame. This
allows us to draw conclusions about the resilience of the Belgium spatial organisation regarding
its ageing population in the last section of the paper.
1 INTRODUCTION
The ageing of the population and international migration are considered to be two of the most
challenging demographic processes in the industrialized world. It is expected that between 2000
and 2050, the proportion of the world's population over 60 years will double from about 11% to
22% (WHO, 2012). In Europe alone, this number will already be achieved by 2025. When it
comes to international migration flows, it is much more difficult to predict exact numbers due to
unforeseeable conflicts, climate catastrophes and political and economic changes, however the
general believe is that migration numbers will not decrease. Migration and ageing are also
interconnected in the sense that many developed countries will need to raise their immigration
rates in order to be able to deal with the ageing of their population. What is certain is that both
processes entail changes that do not only have a great impact on the use of space in our society,
but also challenge the way we have been organizing and structuring our space in the past
decades.
Meanwhile international research centres and governmental bodies at all policy levels are
urging the nation states and local communities to increase their spatial resilience. Whereas the
focus of many spatial policies used to be on sustainability, resilience now seems to be a leading
objective and guideline for many policy makers in all kinds of policy fields. Resilience thinking
has its roots in ecology, but has in the meantime travelled to a wide range of disciplines,
including urban studies (Pendall, Foster, & Cowell, 2010). While the extension of concepts
across disciplinary boundaries can lead to new insights, it is important to question their
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underlying assumptions and normative issues. Furthermore, until now it has remained unclear
what spatial resilience means for the practice of planning (Wilkinson, 2012). Both resilience
thinking and spatial planning are inclined to focus on the physical aspects of space, whereas the
interaction with the underlying social processes tends to be overlooked. These concerns raise the
following questions: Are crucial aspects missing in the discourse on resilience that call for a
different approach when used in a social and spatial planning context? What is needed to make
our space more resilient for socio-demographic processes?
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we aim to construct a theoretical framework for the
study of social-demographic transitions and its impact on the spatial structure, building on a
critical analysis of the concept of resilience. The second aim of this paper is to explore in what
way the spatial planning practices in Belgium are contributing, or rather impeding, the spatial
resilience of the region towards demographic processes. Hereto we focus on the case of rural
and suburban ageing in the Flemish region and on the case of international migration in the city
of Antwerp, Belgium. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section will discuss the
difficulties that occur when extending resilience to the context of social sciences and sociospatial policy. Here, we will also bring in the concept of resourcefulness as an important
addition to resilience and come up with our own socio-spatial redefinition of (spatial) resilience.
The second section focuses on the spatial planning instruments and methods in Belgium, while
the focus of the third section will be on the cases of migration and ageing in the Flemish region.
Finally we will summarize our arguments and discuss further implications in conclusion.
2 SOCIO SPATIAL RESILIENCE
2.1 The development of a social scientific view on resilience
Central to the social sciences is the human being in its social environment. Even though man
played initially a very limited role within the discourse of resilience the human being was
recognized as partly responsible for changes to the various regional and international
ecosystems this changed in the late 1990s when the Resiliance Alliance
(www.resalliance.org) was created. One of the main goals of the Alliance was to rethink
Hollings ecological resilience discourse (Holling, 1973) so that it could be used as an
overarching framework to study the dynamics between social and ecological systems (Folke,
2006; Cote & Nightingale, 2012). Here, some important questions were raised, namely why can
social systems and ecosystems not be considered equals? And why is it that a social-ecological
system cannot simply be reduced to the sum of social and ecological systems? We will return to
this later.
The theory about SESs (social-ecological systems) is derived from the complex (adaptive)
system theory and start from the idea that social and ecological systems are not independent, but
constantly influencing each other. In addition to resilience, SES thinking has also a strong
affinity with theories relating to the study of robustness, adaptation, vulnerability and
sustainability (Cumming, 2011). Cumming (2011) lists in his book Spatial resilience in socialecological systems numerous examples of SES-theory driven research. The variety of research
topics is striking: from research to altruism among bat populations, investigations of the
apartheid regime in South Africa to the global problems of urban sprawl and suburbanization.
The shift from the study of resilience of ecological systems to resilience of social-ecological
systems coincided with a much broader interpretation of the resilience concept. There was not
only more attention for the interplay between nature and society, but also for the capacity of
adaptation, innovation and learning processes. Change within a system became a crucial aspect
of the new resilience thinking. Complementing Hollings definition of ecological resilience,
Adger (2000, p. 347) defined social resilience as the ability of groups or communities to cope
with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental
change. Social resilience is perceived here as a descriptive concept that relates to the social
elements in society that allow change to happen without endangering the essential functions of
the social-ecological system (Cote & Nightingale, 2012). However, this definition leaves a lot of
important issues unclear. What kind of external disturbances are we dealing with? Who belongs
to the community? How is dealt with unequal access in society to scarce resources and who

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controls the access? And what does this mean for the way the so-called external shocks are
absorbed and for the manner in which the resulting problems and burdens are distributed across
all individuals within the group? Adger (2000) stresses the importance of the institutional
context for social resilience, but does not elaborate on this.
Recently, more and more studies are being conducted where the social resilience of socioecological systems is investigated in relation to socio-spatial and / or demographic challenges
such as ageing in place (Wiles, Wild, Kepa, & Peteru, 2011) and migration (Locke, Adger, &
Kelly, 2000; Adger, Kelly, Winkels, Huy, & Locke, 2002). However, these analyses always
proceed within the context of the current system and stoically hold on to the conceptual
framework of ecology. The question we must ask is whether resilience simply can be transposed
to other disciplines, and more specifically to the social sciences. What about the internal sociocultural relations within the socio-spatial system? The internal power relations remain all too
often overlooked. Although many authors recognize the fact that the positioning of resilience
within the tradition of SES-research was an important step to bridge the gap between social and
ecological sciences, the extension of resilience notions from ecology to social theory and society
stays contested and has some important limitations and caveats (Adger, 2000; Hudson, 2009;
Davoudi, 2010; Cote & Nightingale, 2012; Shaw, 2012; MacKinnon & Derickson, 2013).
Another frequently cited issue is the fact that the terminology of ecology cannot easily be
translated to social analysis. Social systems do not equal ecological systems. Marcuse (1998)
clarifies our argument through his critical remarks about the frequent use of the related concept
'sustainability' outside the ecological movement. Too often it is assumed that sustainability is a
neutral term that is characterized by a widespread consensus (De Decker, 2001; Swyngedouw,
2007). However, this is not necessarily true for all disciplines. Using urban development
programs as an example, Marcuse (1998) illustrates that social spatial policy is riddled with
conflicting visions. This means that policies with a sustainability label are often far from
beneficial for everyone. The implantation of a new urban housing project has always winners
and losers. The concomitant displacement of (often poorer) original residents serves here as a
well-documented example (see for example Slater, 2012). The literal sense of the word does not
provide more clarification. Sustainability means the consolidation of the current situation over
time, which is from a social justice perspective far from desirable. If we understand
sustainability in the strict ecological sense, there will yet be another problem. The call for more
sustainable policies avoids the real question, i.e. who or what is responsible for environmental
challenges such as pollution and degradation. Marcuse calls therefore for a more careful and
thoughtful use of the sustainability concept and emphasizes that, when extended to the social
sciences, sustainability should always be a condition and never an end on its own. Here lies a
clear parallel with the resilience concept. In its original conception resilience can also be
regarded as a conservative concept that has been extended to the social sciences and policies
(Swanstrom, 2008). Unlike in ecological systems, social justice is an important parameter in
social systems. Social justice is about the allocation of scarce resources, the distribution of
burdens and benefits (Morrow, 2008) and the recognition of, and respect for, cultural
differences. This commitment to social justice necessarily implies a transformation of social
relations and structures that are perceived as unjust.
The integration of yet another naturalistic metaphor for the study of social phenomena within
an urban and regional context encounters an additional problem. In ecology, the city is
considered to be a social-ecological independent and ahistorical institution, hereby forgetting
the influence of cross-border capital flows and international politics (Gandy, 2002 in:
MacKinnon & Derickson, 2013). The growing call for a more resilient society that is able to
easily adapt itself to new ecological or socioeconomic challenges tends to neglect questions
concerning the wider socio-political power relations. This is, in our opinion, a fundamental
critique since it can be traced back to the origins of resilience thinking, being the complex
system theory. A social system cannot be easily delineated. Is it even possible to speak of the
social system? And who defines what kind of characteristics the social system should possess
and what thresholds/borders are desirable (Cote & Nightingale, 2012)? The fact remains that we
are not all in the same boat. To achieve social change, the current system should be questioned
and if necessary changed radically. The leading system has indeed a wide range of entrenched
mechanisms of exclusion and inequality that are maintained by socio-political power relations.
The emergence of the Climate Justice Movement that indicts the injustice of climate change and

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the inequities of geographical distribution of hazards and risks serves here as an illustration.
This movement has put for example the unequal exchange in international trade between North
and South and the resulting ecological problems on the political agenda. This led to a growing
call in countries like China and India for a settlement of the ecological debt (Roberts & Parks,
2009). According to Roberts and Parks (2009) both the literature about the ecological debt and
about the unequal exchange between North and South can be situated within the world system
theory. This theory posits that national development cannot be separated from the global system
in which economic and military power is distributed unequally across the world. The large core
countries import raw materials and export finished products and services, while the most
peripheral countries within the world system often entirely depend on the export of their natural
resources, sometimes supplemented by cheap labour. An adjustment of this pattern is virtually
impossible because the great powers have no interest in changing the current economic and
political hierarchies. According to world-systems theorists, this also explains why many
countries in the South are trapped in ecologically unsustainable patterns. The volatility and
periodic collapse of commodity prices are said to encourage poor countries to continually
increase the extraction of resources and sale of their raw materials, often with a shrinking profit
margin. The following citation from the report "Roots of Resilience: Growing the Wealth of the
Poor" (United Nations Development Program, 2008) show that it is not just about the dichotomy
North-South, but also about the (inextricably linked) divide between rich and poor, migrants and
natives:
It is clear that in the coming decades, the rural poor will be tested as the
impacts of climate change manifest. There are no cities in the developing world
large enough or wealthy enough to absorb the migration of the poor who have no
buffer against these dangers and can find no means to adapt. The political and
social instability inherent in such potentially massive movements of people is of
increasing concern to the international community. [] The consequences of not
acting may well test the depths of compassion (World Resources Institute 2008,
cited in: Walker & Cooper, 2011).
The above passage highlights the unequal impact of global warming and climate change,
meanwhile putting the responsibility at the level of the local communities. Welsh (2013) speaks
in this context of a shift in responsibility for possible risks from the state to individuals and
institutions. Moreover, migration (and especially migration of the poor) is viewed as a threat for
which the developed countries should fully prepare themselves. Otherwise, the danger exists
that their sense of solidarity might be tested. Redistribution of resources, or in this case risks,
gives way to an ideology that leans dangerously close to the Darwinian survival of the fittest
(Walker & Cooper, 2011). Since resilience is about adaptation to external disturbances through
an endogenous crisis, it becomes problematic, if not impossible, to formulate critique on the
resilience discourse from within the system. More and more authors therefore are committed to
contribute to the development of a counter-systemic model of thought (and practice) that
transcends systems theory and resilience thinking (MacKinnon & Derickson, 2013, p. 6).
2.2 Resourcefulness
One of these contributions is the alternative approach for resilience by MacKinnon and
Derickson (2013) that is based on the concept of resourcefulness. The authors argue for a
bottom-up approach that mobilizes diverse communities on the basis of local needs and
priorities rather than on the basis of externally imposed goals. They hereby respond to the
frequently cited criticism that states that resilience - just like sustainability - is used by
policymakers as a top-down strategy that reproduces the current socio-spatial relations in
society and puts the final responsibility of external challenges and threats with the urban and
regional communities (cf. 'community resilience'). In short, resourcefulness means that the
emphasis is put on the unequal distribution of resources within and between communities by
focusing on the capabilities of the local community. One of these capabilities that are often
neglected by policymakers is local (or non-technical) knowledge. For a better understanding of
the link between policy and knowledge, the scientific model of 'explicit' knowledge must be

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complemented with local knowledge (Innes, 1990). Knowledge is not only produced by experts,
but is also implicitly present in each member of the community. Innes (1990) argues therefore
for an inclusive, interactive model of knowledge transfer and production.
In summary, we have shown that the alternative perspective of the resilience concept puts a
strong emphasis on the equal distribution of resources among the various groups in society, on
the existing local knowledge, the various bottom-up initiatives and the unequal socio-political
power relations within society. We have warned for the danger of a shift in responsibilities from
the state to individuals, civil society and institutions. The alternative interpretation of resilience
implies finally a shared social responsibility of society for the unequal vulnerability of social
groups and individuals with respect to external shocks, and places hereby social change in the
forefront. On the basis of the critique we propose a socio-spatial redefinition of the concept of
resilience:
Socio-spatial resilience is the capacity of a localized socio-spatial system to
actively respond to changes and shocks. Resilience is anchored in the organization
of the physical space, but also presumes a more equal distribution of resources
amongst local systems ('resourcefulness'). Resourcefulness presupposes a shared
social responsibility of society at various geographic scales for the unequal
vulnerability of social groups and individuals and the spaces we inhabit and use in
relation to changes and shocks (multiscalarity').
3 SPATIAL PLANNING IN BELGIUM
In this section we briefly discuss the Belgian planning system. We will also already explore
some of the inherent characteristics and consequences of the spatial planning methods in
Belgium more specifically in the Flemish region- that may or may not have an impact on the
resilience of space against socio-demographic processes. We will elaborate on that more
through the case of migration and ageing in the next section of this paper.
Although the building permit was introduced in 1946, it is fair to state that until 1962
Belgium had no legislation on spatial planning. This fact caused architect R. Bream to call
Belgium The ugliest country in the world (Braem, 1968). Despite the fact that Belgium did
implement its own spatial planning in 1962, the remains of the lack of spatial planning in the
booming years after WOII until the late 1970s are still visible today. There are several reasons
for the fact that Belgium was all these years deprived of any form of planning infrastructure.
One of the main reasons is that Belgium suffered from a long-standing fusion of business
interests and land property interests. The political interests of landownership in combination
with the great respect for individual property rights was not favourable to planners (Halleux,
Marcinczak, & Van der Krabben, 2012). This great respect for individual property rights is still
very much alive amongst the Belgian population. Belgium is in this sense a very liberal country
where the interests and personal preferences of people are encouraged and easily accepted
(Hofstede, 1980 in: Halleux et al., 2012). The following quote illustrates this:
In Belgium people build themselves. They buy a piece of land and build a house
that they think looks pretty. Whether it fits in the area, forms a unity with the other
buildings, let alone whether the neighbours like it to, no one cares. (Moes, 2014)
In 1962 the first Planning Act was implemented. An important part of the legal instruments in
this act consisted of land use plans. A land use plan is a policy document in which the
government specifies its view on the future spatial planning within a specific area (Albrechts,
1999). The law of 1962 also included a strong hierarchy of plans, where the underlying idea was
that the more you descended down the hierarchy, the more detailed plans you would encounter
(and the smaller the area covered by the plan). The hierarchy of spatial planning in Belgium
according to the first Planning Act is shown in Figure 1. However, most of the spatial plans that
where included in the Planning Act of 1962 were never implemented. This is true for the
National and Regional Plan (red boxes in the figure). Some general destination plans at the level
of the municipalities came about, however the spatial planning in Belgium revolved mainly
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around the Subregional Plans (48 plans in total), the Specific Destination Plans (BPAs) and the
Building and Parcelling permits (grey boxes in the figure).
Figure 1. Spatial hierarchy of planning in Belgium.
It is also important to note that all planning instruments that were introduced in this first
Planning act took effect at the same time. This had some important consequences for the lowest
(and more detailed) plans in the hierarchy (mostly building and parcelling permits), since there
was no framework for assessment or evaluation available (or at least not yet). This explains the
spatial fragmentation in Belgium, because as long as the subregional plans were not yet
approved, all land was basically building land. This is shown on Figure 2. The grey areas are the
then existing building areas. The black spots are the parcelling permits granted in the first five
years after the approval of the 1962 Spatial Planning Act. They are dispersed because of the
absence of a review frame (a plan at a higher level). So nearly all parcelling requests had to be
granted.

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Figure 2. The location of the parcelling permits granted between 1962 and 1967. Source: Van Havre
(1967).
Since the introduction of the first law on spatial planning in Belgium, some changes have
been made. First of all, a new federal constitution was agreed upon, causing Belgium to evolve
from a central state towards a new form of government in which Flanders, Wallonia and
Brussels all received considerable autonomy (Albrechts, 1999). The three political regions
received specific competences in the field of spatial planning in 1980. Since our cases can be
situated in the Flemish region, we will focus solely on the further developments in Flanders.
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However, it is important to note that, partly due to path dependency, many of the spatial
planning tools from the Spatial Planning act of 1962 are still present today. The new Flemish
Spatial planning policy consisted of the Planning Act of 1996, the Structure Plan for Flanders
in 1997 and the Act on Spatial Planning of 1999. The idea was to simplify the planning process.
In order to do so, structure plans, spatial development plans and regulations were drawn up on
every policy level: Flemish, provincial and (sub) municipal.
We can now ask ourselves what the organization of spatial planning in Belgium means for
the resilience of the Belgian spatial structure. We will here give a brief overview of the ways we
believe the spatial planning tools in Belgium may have an influence on its spatial resilience. We
start from the assumption that resilient spaces are adaptable and flexible.
3.1 Subregional plans
In 1966 48 subregional plans were drawn up that covered the entire country. Due to the fact that
by that time most municipalities had not yet drawn up their own local plans, these subregional
plans had implications for both the regional and the local level. Since no national or regional
plan existed, the subregional plans became the highest planning level in Belgium (Albrechts,
1999). With the introduction of the subregional plans every piece of land in Belgium got a fixed
destination. This can be seen in figure 3. The red zones are the residential zones.
Figure 3. Extract from one of the subregional plans in Flanders. Source: GIS-Vlaanderen.
When spatial planning became a competence of the regions in 1980, the goal was to create
new subregional plans for the Flemish region. However this is a very complex, and often also
very expensive, task. For example, when the department of spatial planning wants to change a
plots destination from residential zone (high monetary value) into a zone for nature or
agriculture (lower monetary value) a compensation will be needed.
The planning professionals in Flanders considered the subregional plans as very rigid and
therefore advocated an early transition to structure planning. We however, do not completely
share this view. There are areas within the subregional plans that are particularly inflexible. We
think mainly about open space destinations (nature, agriculture). Because of the subregional
plans hardly any buildings were erected outside the designated zones anymore (houses in nature

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areas for example). However, within the areas that are demarcated as residential areas, the
subregional plans still offer a great amount of flexibility. There are of course all kinds of
regulations, but in principle all functions that support housing (shops, day clinics, small
businesses etc.) are allowed. Especially this last element is an important characteristic of the
subregional plans in favour of resilience against demographic processes. After all, a changing
population implies changing needs. These needs exist of changing housing needs (due to family
expansion, ageing, ) but also changing needs concerning leisure, basic facilities (bakery, post
office), medical care, education, etc. We believe that the subregional plans encompass a certain
degree of flexibility to deal with these changing demographic patterns and needs.
3.2 Specific destination plans (BPAs & RUPs)
The specific destination plans (previously called BPAs, now RUPs) regulates the spatial
planning of a specific area within a certain municipality. Generally these destination plans are
very detailed and contain a lot of regulations. While the parcelling permits (see further) mostly
regulate the housing function, the specific destination plans also regulate the mutual relations of
the different functions: housing, work, leisure, schools, etc. Furthermore, the specific
destination plans contain detailed regulations. This has some important consequences for the
adaptability and flexibility of space, hence for its spatial resilience. Indeed, when an area is
subject to a BPA or RUP, it is very difficult to achieve significant changes in land use. In order
to change the spatial structure and its destination, a new specific destination plan is needed. This
is a very long process where a long political and administrative procedure has to be followed
(including public inquiry and a participation process of the higher authorities). Although the
successor of the BPA, the RUP, was introduced to increase the flexibility in spatial planning, it
does not seem to have succeeded in this. In general, we could conclude that when a subregional
plan is overruled by a specific destination plan (BPA/RUP), the flexibility of spatial planning
decreases.
3.3 Building & parcelling permits
A building permit is needed for the construction of an individual building project, whereas a
parcelling permit seeks to divide one or more pieces of land in multiple lots. A parcelling permit
is always accompanied by a number of regulations that are valid for each lot within the
allotment. The parcelling permit may apply to a very small project (division of one piece of land
in two building plots) or to large housing developments (for hundreds of houses). Parcelling
permits (plan + accompanying regulation) usually contain many details about the location of the
house on the plot, the size of the construction (floor) space, the materials used, the kind of roof,
palisade, Furthermore, these regulations are hard to change, since for each change permission
is needed from the (local) government. Also when more than half of the owners of the other
plots (belonging to the same parcelling) file a complaint against the proposed change to the
parcelling permit, the requested change will be refused. However, it is the Board of Mayor and
Aldermen that has the final say1.
From this short overview it becomes clear that parcelling permits are very inflexible planning
instruments that are hard to change. The fact that these permits can be found more in suburban
and rural areas, for the simple reason that there is still more land to parcel out, means that these
kind of planning instruments are especially a threat to the resilience of communities outside the
cities, communities where the impact of an ageing population is often most strongly felt. We
will elaborate on this more in the next section of this paper.
4 INCREASING THE RESILIENCE OF SPACE TOWARDS DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES

In the first two sections of this paper we have developed a new social scientific perspective on
resilience and illustrated the way spatial planning in Flanders is organized. In this part of the
paper we will briefly explore the way spatial planning methods in Flanders are contributing to,
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or hindering, resilient spaces and communities. We focus consecutively on migration and

ageing.
4.1 Case 1: migration
To explore the way the spatial planning instruments have an influence on the resilience against
migration, we have selected the migrant neighbourhood Antwerpen-Noord in the city of
Antwerp, Belgium. Antwerpen Noord is a neighbourhood situated to the North of the Antwerp
historic city centre (see Fig. 4).
Figure 4. Situating Antwerpen-Noord (Antwerp 2060).
Antwerpen Noord is a densely populated (13.558 inhabitants per square kilometre) and
deprived neighbourhood. The average socio-economic profile of its inhabitants is low. In 2009,
16,3% of its population was unemployed as compared to 9,8% in the city as a whole. The mean
net taxable income per capita in the neighbourhood was 9.988 Euro, while it was 14.350 Euro in
the whole city. The neighbourhood attracts a lot of newcomers to the city. From the 32.678
newcomers to Antwerp in 2011, almost one in six (5.237) arrive in Antwerpen Noord, rising to
one fourth for the non EU arrivals in Antwerp (or 2.521 out of 10.467 non-EU arrivals). The
neighbourhood is quite centrally located, adjacent to the main railway station, and hosts many
local public services, ethnic associations and shops and a large new park (Park Spoor Noord),
which attracts visitors from all over the city. Antwerpen Noord provides (comparatively) cheap
housing and commercial property.
In 2012, the citys spatial planning department developed a spatial destination plan (RUP)
for the area in support of its urban revitalization (see Fig. 5). This plan was rather unique in the
sense that it was based on an elaborate participation process of local inhabitants, paying special
attention to groups easily excluded from these participation exercises (e.g. migrant women)
(Apostel, 2011). Resulting from this participation process, a vision was formulated for the

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neighbourhood, describing the area as a neighbourhood of arrival and encounter, but also as
neighbourhood where people live their lives (Bedrijfseenheid Stadsontwikkeling, 2012).
Figure 5. RUP 2060.
The Spatial destination Plan 2060 (RUP 2060 as it is called), is shaped by the idea that one
needs to approach the area as an arrival neighbourhood and that its resilience is based on
accepting and supporting this spatial function (Bedrijfseenheid Stadsontwikkeling, 2012). In
this context, the spatial planner in question claimed that the less you lay down in regulations
the better. You do not want to make too many rules. Out of enthusiasm you tend to impose a lot
of rules, but this actually works counterproductive.
From the above statement it is clear that the spatial planning department of the city aimed to
create a strategic and mostly flexible planning instrument that does not contain too many
regulations. Indeed, when compared to previous versions of the spatial destination plans for the
area (the BPA) the spatial destination plan RUP 2060 has a less rigid building code. For
example, in the first version of the spatial plan for the area (BPA) from 2005 it was forbidden to
use PVC-windows. However, the use of PVC by ethnic shopkeepers is understandable given
that this is the cheapest option in combination with the low income of many inhabitants. This
injunction was therefore erased in a later stage from the building code to take this specific
characteristic of the neighbourhood in account. The predecessor of the current spatial
destination plan also sought to reduce some unwanted spatial mechanisms, such as the
proliferation of image reducing shops and slum landlords2. With image reducing shops the
spatial planners of the BPA where referring to night shops, call shops, etc. These are shops that
are mostly owned by migrants. The fact that they may serve the needs of (part of) the local
population or may be an attempt of a social group that has less easy access to the formal labour
market to make a living is not taken into account. The current spatial destination plan (RUP
2060) on the contrary, acknowledges the importance of entrepreneurship in the area and wants
to protect the local businesses in the area.
However, when taking a closer look the current spatial destination plan (RUP 2060) is less
flexible than it claims to be and does not always contribute to the neighbourhoods resilience.
We will illustrate this with two examples. The first basic premise of the RUP is to preserve the
diversity of housing types within the neighbourhood. The RUP wants to formulate an answer to
the "increasing trend of improper housing" (RUP - Explanatory note, p 11.). In concrete terms it
is about protecting the one family home and about a tightening of the Building Code in relation
to the other neighbourhoods of the city of Antwerp. The Building Code of the city of Antwerp
prescribes that a house between 90 and 250m with a garden with a minimum of 15m must not
be divided. For the spatial destination plan RUP 2060 this additional requirement expires and
each house between 90 and 250m should not be divided, regardless of the presence of a garden
(see Fig. 6).
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Figure 6. Regulations concerning the subdivision of one familiy homes City of Antwerp vs.
neighbourhood Antwerpen-Noord (as prescribed in its spatial destination plan RUP 2060). Left:
Protecting the one family home according to the Building Code of the city of Antwerp. Right: Protecting
the one family home according the spatial destination plan RUP 2060.
This measure rather seems to threaten the function of arrival neighbourhood, instead of
offering opportunities. A wide range of small (and hence cheaper) housing types (studios, etc.)
are crucial to the success of an arrival area. The spatial planner responsible for the Spatial
Implementation Plan 2060 says herself: That [measure] is clearly to attract more whites.
Maybe that creates gentrification. I am scared of that.
A second example where spatial planning tools seem to decrease, rather than increase the
resilience of the neighbourhood consists of the location policy for trade and the hotel and
catering industry in the spatial destination plan (RUP 2060). This location policy is the second
basis premise of the RUP. Following the BPA, the RUP demarcates residential streets (where
commerce and trade is prohibited, with the exception of the corner buildings) and commercial
streets. The goal of this measure is to protect the residential function of the area. The third basis
premise of the RUP, however, wants to protect the local economy in the neighbourhood by
safeguarding the licensed warehouses and provide for a sufficient amount of commercial streets.
The second and third principle seem to conflict. On the one hand the RUP wants to protect the
commercial function, but on the other hand it strongly regulates the choice of location. This last
regulation makes it very hard for (potential) entrepreneurs in the neighbourhood to start a
business in their own house for example. After all, opening a business on the ground floor of the
house in which one lives is a widely used practice in the arrival area. Moreover, shops and small
businesses in arrival neighbourhoods do not only fulfil a commercial function, they are also
often places of encounter for newly arrived migrants.
To conclude it seems that the spatial destination plan for the neighbourhood AntwerpenNoord departs from two conflicting visions. The first is the protection of the arrival function of
the neighbourhood, the other (more unspoken) premise is the attraction of (white) middle-class
families to the neighbourhood. Even though these premises do not necessary need to conflict,
the accompanying spatial measures are certainly not in favour of the new migrants that arrive in
the neighbourhood. In this sense the RUP creates more rigidness than it claims to and does not
always contribute to the neighbourhoods resilience towards migration.
4.2 Case 2: ageing
Data and maps have shown that ageing in Flanders most strongly occur outside the main cities3
(Schillebeeckx, Oosterlynck, & De Decker, 2014). To explore the way the spatial planning
instruments have an influence on resilience against ageing, we will therefore focus on the case
of rural and suburban ageing in the Flemish region.
Both on the countryside and in urban areas the elderly want to continue living in their own
home and living environment as long as possible. This wish was frequently described in the
literature and is known under the name 'Ageing in Place'. Research also shows that as one gets
older, the neighbourhood gains in importance (Buffel, Demeere, De Donder, & Vert, 2011;

515
Buffel et al., 2014). The fact that most of the seniors do not want to move when they become
older and (might) lose some of their independence, has some important consequences. First of
all Belgium is characterized by sprawl, causing many families to live in remote, usually monofunctional and residential areas (De Decker, Meeus, Schillebeeckx, & Oosterlynck, 2013). The
houses are in general quite large and often not adapted to the needs of people that are becoming
less mobile. Second, the fact that many families live in mono-functional residential
neighbourhoods often means they are highly dependent on their car for basic needs and facilities
such as groceries, leisure, medical care, schools, social activities etc. When their mobility
decreases, as well as their ability to drive the car, these basic services (most often groceries and
care) need to be delivered at home. The policy concerning ageing in Flanders tends to support
the concept of ageing in place and proposes strategies that support the wish of the elderly to
stay in their own home (or neighbourhood) as long as possible.
The question we would like to focus on now is the role of spatial planning instruments in the
above mentioned spatial problems that we can summarize as (1) the inadequacy of the house
and (2) the unsuitable location of the house when it comes to proximity to basic services.
Every piece of land in Flanders receives a fixed destination (residential, agricultural,
industrial ) in its corresponding subregional plan. However, as mentioned earlier (see 2)
many houses in suburban and rural areas are part of a parcelling permit, due to the fact that there
is still more land to parcel out. In order to explore the possibilities, or threats, the parcelling
permits offer we will focus on the possible solutions to the above mentioned spatial problems.
First we will discuss the inadequacy of the house. In order to age qualitatively there is the
possibility of adaptations to the house. This can be simple measures such as moving the bed
room to the ground floor, eliminating barriers, but also more drastic changes such as creating a
two-family home where the children or another young(er) couple can live for mutual support
(e.g. kangaroo housing). However, whereas the first two changes might still be possible within
the regulations linked to the parcelling permit, the second option will not be permitted. The
question is of course also if the residents in those residential neighbourhoods are ready for
concepts of co-housing or a subdivision of their own house. A study about the re-use of the
existing housing stock in the residential neighbourhoods from the 1960s until the 1980s, partly
based on interviews with real estate brokers revealed that the general public is not (yet) open to
the idea (Cneut et al., 2007; Bervoets, 2014).
The second spatial problem we identified is the unsuitable location of the (rural or suburban)
houses when it comes to proximity to basic services. The solution that the government is
pursuing at the moment is bringing care to the individual homes. However, these kind of monofunction residential neighbourhoods tend to increase the spatial and social isolation of the
elderly. When it comes to the needs of the seniors, implantation of care facilities, a community
centre, are very high on the priority list. Again, this is often hampered by parcelling permits
that do not allow other functions than housing. Additional, there is a growing awareness in
Flanders amongst spatial planners that densification is needed. Compact houses may offer a
solution for older people living in way too large houses that are heavily underused. Think about
service flats, assisted living,... but also about apartments that are more centrally located than
most of the large houses in the suburbs. However, this type of more compact housing is still
rather scarce in suburban areas. The following quote from a realtor in Keerbergen (a rich
suburban Flemish town) illustrates this:
"If there were more apartments in this region, the circulation [of residents
moving to another type of house] would go faster. Many stay because they have no
alternative. They lived here for a long time and most want to stay. And when they
must move from a villa of 300m to an apartment of 100 m, that is not possible.
They need to move to Leuven or Mechelen, or abroad. There are not so many of
those super-luxury apartments here (Cneut et al. 2007, own translation)
To be able to densify, the other owners of the lots within the same parcelling unit, need to
give their consent. This is a very complex procedure which does not create flexibility, but rather
stagnation. However, it is also important to note that densification is a very sensitive topic in
Flanders and that most residents do not welcome apartments in their neighbourhood. This
becomes clear from the following quote:

516
"It is more than only the rules and the procedure. The people who are now living
on about 1.000 m came to live there for the sake of the open or semi-detached
houses. To be able to integrate apartments in those areas in an acceptable way is
not so simple. People just do not accept that. But admittedly, it happens already.
They [property developers] are able to avoid the reaction [protest] of the
neighbours through the method of construction." (Cneut et al. 2007, own
translation)
To conclude it seems that parcelling permits are often an obstacle to the resilience of an
ageing community. Implantation of non-residential functions (e.g. health care) or adaptation to
the built environment is hardly feasible. The parcelling permits also impede the creation of
creative solutions (multigenerational co-housing or forms of co-housing with other ageing
peers). This is of course not only due to the regulations of the parcelling permit itself but also to
the complex procedure that needs to be followed when changes are to be made. For every
change, the neighbours need to agree and since densification is mostly shunned, a change is not
easily achieved.
5 DISCUSSION
In this paper we developed a critical analysis of the concept of resilience and used this analysis
as our theoretical framework to study the link between spatial planning tools and sociodemographic changes. We have shown that there is a conceptual confusion due to the ecological
roots of resilience. What is valid for the world of plants and animals is not necessarily valid for
human beings. Additionally, it has been argued that the use of the concept of resilience for the
study of socio-spatial processes is problematic when the asymmetric power relations and the
uneven spread of resources across space are overlooked. Moreover resilience policies are
defined top-down by imposing targets on local communities and tend to shift the responsibility
for possible risks from the state to the individual and local level. On the basis of the critique we
have proposed a socio-spatial redefinition of the concept of resilience.
In the second section of this paper we gave a short overview of the spatial planning
instruments in Belgium and explored their capability to increase or decrease spatial resilience in
the Flemish region. It became clear that there is an important difference between the subregional
plans (mainly land zoning planning practice) and the planning tools at a lower level: the Spatial
destination plans and the Building and Parcelling Permits. Whereas the first surprisingly
provides quite a lot of flexibility, the latter impose too many and too strict regulations that do
not allow a lot of adaptations and are difficult to change.
Focusing on the resilience of the Flemish region against the socio-demographic processes
migration and ageing, we explored the spatial planning tools in practice through the cases of the
migrant neighbourhood Antwerpen-Noord and ageing in suburban and rural Flemish
municipalities. In our first explorative case about migration we have shown that the
implementation of a spatial destination plan (first the BPA, later on the RUP) for the
neighbourhood Antwerpen-Noord arose from the idea that certain undesirable spatial
mechanisms needed to be reduced or at least made more controllable. However, the regulations
that came with it, created a less flexible framework to work with. Furthermore, the RUP did not
seem to have the desirable outcome in the sense that the function of arrival neighbourhood and
the local economy were not completely protected. Our second case started from the
acknowledgment that there are two main spatial problems relating to ageing in suburban
Flanders: the inadequacy of the house and the unsuitable location of the house when it comes to
proximity to basic services. The spatial planning tool that has the most influence in most
suburban areas is the parcelling permit. The case has briefly shown that implantation of nonresidential functions (e.g. health care) or adaptation to the built environment is hardly feasible
when parcelling permits apply. From the above it seems that parcelling permits are often an
obstacle to the needs of the elderly. However we have also seen that this is partly due to the fact
that most residents are opposed to densification and hence block any change to the parcelling
permits.

517
On the basis of both cases, it was shown that spatial planning instruments that tend to impose
too much rules and have a small degree of flexibility and adaptability, often undermine a
neighbourhoods resilience for socio-demographic processes such as ageing and migration.
Even though subregional plans were often criticized for its strong zoning of space and
rigidness, it allows for rather fast responses to changing demographic needs. From this we could
state that it might be interesting to experiment more with what we could call Regulation
Freedom Zones4 However, this does not mean that the government should refrain itself from
intervening. On the contrary, government involvement is required to invest in basic qualities
and needs, such as qualitative education, health care, housing, community centres etc. Further
research could focus on the question what kind of spatial planning instruments are needed in
order to be able to respond to changing demographic processes? What kind of tools can we
develop that guarantee spatial quality but also allow for flexibility and adaptability?
ENDNOTES
1
http://www.ruimtelijkeordening.be/NL/Beleid/Vergunning/Verkavelen/Wijzigenvergundeverkaveling.
www.antwerpen.be.
3
This is partly due to the post-war baby boom generation. Surfing on the virtues of the post-war
economic growth and benefitting from the advantages of the welfare state arrangements, this
generation could afford to become homeowner through the construction of new private suburban
houses (Kesteloot, 2005).
4
Analogue to the Economy Freedom zones in the US : areas of reduced taxes.
2
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519
University students show and tell what they want in

accommodation
N. Ike
University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
ABSTRACT: In the past six decades, student enrolments in Australian universities increased
from 30,000 in 1950 to 1.2 million in 2010, and is projected to continue into 2025 and beyond.
Yet, Australian universities provide accommodation for less than six percent of the nations one
million students. Students housing circumstances impact on their educational success and it is
necessary that students access suitable accommodation during the course of their study. This
study uses photovoice technique to capture students housing requirements by investigating the
features that they like and/or dislike in their accommodation in order to inform suitable student
housing design. The study findings show that space, in concrete (i.e., physical place to retreat
to) and abstract (an avenue to recreate and develop friendship) terms is very important in the
design of student accommodation. Other factors such as the design and size of furnishings and
fittings of kitchen, bathroom, bed and wardrobe improve comfort and usability of the
accommodation. This study provides an important understanding of students housing
requirements and offers valuable insight to individuals, the private sector, and institutions (such
as universities and churches) involved in or intending to develop student accommodation, on
aspects to consider in the design of student housing relating to comfort, health and safety. The
study has broader application to the challenge of accommodating students in other countries as
well.
1 INTRODUCTION
Students are becoming more mobile in their educational pursuits. It is estimated that globally,
between 2000 and 2010, over two million students studied outside of their home country and
this figure is expected to exceed seven million by 2020 (Ernesta, 2015). Major factors that
influence students study choice include, the language of instruction for their intended course,
the quality of education, housing options, global recognition of the degree, visa regulations and
distance from home country, cost of tuition and living expenses (Jones Lang Lasalle, 2012).
Amongst English-speaking countries, the United States (18 %), the United Kingdom (10 %) and
Australia (7 %) are the most popular destinations for students seeking tertiary education outside
of their home country (Australia Bureau of Statistics, 2013, Knight, 2011). Further, Australias
market share has been increasing since 2000 and at present one in every five tertiary students
(22%) is an international student (OECD, 2011). Nonetheless, less than six percent of the total
student population in Australia has access to purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA)
compared to the United Kingdom (24 %) and the United States (42 %). A large number of
students (approximately 70%) access their accommodation outside of university-provided or
affiliated accommodation and are reliant on the private rental market (PRM) (Ernesta, 2015).
Students who access their accommodation through the PRM commonly face a number of issues
relating to the safety and suitability of their accommodation and importantly, lack the pastoral

520
care provided in most PBSA. This is particularly important for students distant from home and
social support networks, who may be unfamiliar with tenancy rules in a new country. Ernesta
(2015 p.2) states that more than 80 percent of student complaints about PRM accommodation
is that, its not suitable and typically unsafe. To further buttress this point, Rowley and
Constable (2014 p.16) state that private rental market lack[s] the benefits of on-campus student
accommodation and there are often safety and security issues, depending upon the location.
Students inability to access suitable accommodation (i.e., safe, secure, and affordable)
impact on their wellbeing. There is ample evidence that attest to the fact that students with
access to settled housing have better educational outcomes than those with less settled housing
(Macintyre, 2003, Monash University, 2014, Pascarella and Terenzini, 2005). Mindful of the
above consequences, Ike et al. (2016 p.1) suggest that it is beneficial for universities (alone or
in partnership with private bodies) to consider student accommodation more seriously. But, it is
counter-productive to increase student housing stock (i.e., new constructions or refurbished
student accommodation) without engaging with the end users (i.e. students) to determine their
needs and requirements. Therefore, this study investigates students accommodation
requirements and suggests housing aspects that should be considered in the design of student
accommodation.
2 METHODS
Fifteen students of the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Australia were recruited to take
part in the study. USC was chosen because it is typical of one of six regional universities in
terms of size, with only 9% of students accommodated in purpose built housing but not
university supplied, and the region is one of most unaffordable in Australia. Participants were
recruited through their classes, as well as the use of informal networking to recruit the desired
cross-section of students. The participants were further grouped based on similar or shared preidentified demographic characteristics (Table 1). Group one comprised five participants in their
first year of study who accessed purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). Group two
comprised four participants in their fourth year of study who lived at home and group three
comprised six participants in post-graduate study who accessed the private rental market
(PRM). The grouping of participants was to allow for similar or conflicting opinions to emerge
based on identified characteristics, as well as to gain different student perspectives given the
heterogeneous student population.
Table 1. Demographic characteristics of participants.

Focus Group
Group 1
(1st year of study)
Group 2
(4th year of study)
Group 3
(Postgraduate
study)
ID
Gender
Type of Student
Level of Study
PT1
PT2
PT3
PT4
PT5
PT6
PT7
PT8
PT9
PT10
PT11
PT12
PT13
PT14
PT15
Female
Male
Female
Male
Female
Female
Male
Male
Female
Female
Male
Female
Female
Female
Female
International
International
International
Domestic
International
Domestic
Domestic
Domestic
Domestic
Domestic
International
Domestic
International
International
International
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Postgraduate
Postgraduate
Postgraduate
Postgraduate
Postgraduate
Postgraduate
Accommodation
Type
PBSA
PBSA
PBSA
PBSA
PBSA
Live at home
Live at home
Live at home
Live at home
Private rental
Private rental
Private rental
Private rental
Private rental
Private rental

521
Data for the study were collected from April 2015 to July 2015 using photovoice (PV)
technique (See appendix 1 for the detailed photovoice guide). Participants were asked to take
photos over a two week period that represent their perspectives according to four themes: (1)
What do you like about your accommodation (2) What do you dislike about your
accommodation (3) What facilities are necessary in student accommodation and (4) What is
your perception about your neighbourhood and neighbours. The first and second themes require
participants to consciously think about their housing circumstances, and in applying the
knowledge of their likes and dislikes, to identify the various facilities that make for suitable
student accommodation (theme three). For the purpose of this paper, findings from themes 1, 2
and 3 are presented below and discussed. At the end of the period, participants sent their photos
to the researcher to be printed. The researcher then held a focus group with each group
separately to discuss the photos and the meanings behind them. The sessions were held at an
agreed location on campus and lasted for an average of 45 minutes to provide opportunity to
explore participants photos in depth as well as provide time for further comments. Consistent
with University ethics approval, permission to audio record the sessions and informed consent
for voluntary participation and use of photos were obtained from each participant and
confidentiality was guaranteed by the researcher. The recordings from the interviews were
transcribed, the participants identity coded for de-identification purpose - the prefix, PT was
assigned to participants and a unique number (1-15) attached to each participant. The data was
imported into Nvivo, a Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) software package to identify themes
and analyse the data. A combination of deductive and inductive approach was used in
developing themes relevant to the study - a process of letting ideas, patterns and concepts
emerge from the interview. The concepts were assigned into nodes and then analysed in order to
find commonalities, differences, patterns and structures. Further, a content analysis was done to
identify key words used frequently by the participants.
3 FINDINGS
Students commented on space, building design, furnishing and fittings in describing their
accommodation. Overall study findings show that space is an important requirement in the
design of student accommodation (Fig. 1) and associated with what participants liked in their
accommodation. A word frequency query in Nvivo on words most used by participants show
that the word space was mentioned a total of 221 times; it was common to hear participants talk
about enough space to enjoy (e.g., lounge, kitchen, outdoor space) and space to get away from
activities and people (e.g., private room, study room).
Figure 1. Space is an important requirement in student housing design. Source: PT5.

522
3.1 Theme one: what students like in their accommodation

3.1.1 Space: To relax, interact and socialize
We sit in the lounge and chat [Fig. 2] so we are not bored in the evenings when we come back;
just chat about our activities or uni work (PT2). I like cooking so this is enough space for me to
cook and some relaxation and everything. This picture [Fig. 3] is my kitchen which is really big,
sometimes we can have two people cooking at the same time. Some other units do not have big
kitchens (PT10). The facilities, like recreation, you can't see it but there's a tennis court just near
there (PT14).
Figure 2.
Figure 3.
3.1.2 Space: Privacy

I think personal space is something, you want to be able to have your privacy (PT9). I love my
door [Fig. 4] because it blocks everyone out, noise, everything, and I can actually get some stuff
done, and it's like I'm away from everything (PT11). My own space where I can shut the door,
and actually get some work done [Figure 5] so it's not just sitting in the lounge (PT15).
Figure 4.
Figure 5.

523
3.2 Theme two: what students dislike in their accommodation

Participants disliked their accommodation based on issues related to building design,
furnishings and fittings.
3.2.1 Building design
The bathroom is just too small, I've got a toilet in there (Fig. 6) and its pretty small. If he
[housemate] wants to take bath and I want to go to toilet it's difficult (PT13). I do not like the
window because it's too small and I dont get to get a good view from the window (PT4). I hate
my study area (Fig. 7), I can't do any school work there, and the sun is on it (PT5).
Figure 6.
Figure 7.
3.2.2 Fittings and furnishings

I dislike the wardrobe as it is really narrow, long and most of my clothes can't fit in (Fig. 8). So
I had to take some of my clothes out and shove [them] in the suitcase (PT1). I wish the rooms
are sound proofed, its noisy and difficult for study, you have to struggle yourself (PT5). The
desk is small, just too small (Fig. 9) thats why I just go to the library (PT2).
Figure 8.
Figure 9.

524
3.3 Theme three: facilities necessary in student accommodation

Facilities considered to be necessary in student accommodation mirrored the findings shown
under themes one and two above related to space and furnishings.
I think the study table, a big desk table to study is necessary for studies (PT8). Ill say a
spacious kitchen to cook and interact with housemates (PT12). Look, I like the bed because it's
bigger, comfortable (Fig. 10) (PT3). Private bathroom is important as when it is not cleaned it
can be a problem, most of the problems I have with my housemate is around the bathroom
(PT2). Air-con and fans, summer can be very hot so a working fan is in order (PT7) (Fig. 11).
Figure 10
Figure 11.
It is worth mentioning that although outdoor space was considered useful for relaxation,
participants stated that recreational facilities (swimming pool, tennis court, gym) are not
necessarily important in student accommodation.
The swimming pool is just there (Fig. 12), I have never used it (PT15). Just having a lounge
room, outdoor area, just somewhere to go and relax (PT6). Some privacy, somewhere to just put
music on, sit out there no one bothers me. You know, to escape, change of scenery with open
space (Fig. 13) (PT11). I [The accommodation] have a volleyball court, most times I dont use
those facilities but I think its good to have them for those who want to use it (PT3).
Figure 11.
Figure 13.

525
4 DISCUSSION
The aim of the study was to investigate students housing requirements to inform suitable
student accommodation design. The findings show that students seek accommodation designed
to promote social interaction amongst housemates while providing the necessary degree of
privacy; referred to by Witte (2003 p.31) as a dialectic process involving both limiting
interaction as well as seeking more contact. These findings are consistent with other
researchers who found that the design of students accommodation should be capable of
stimulating positive intellectual and social outcomes, build lasting relationships that aid
students academic achievement and retention and not be just mere spaces bounded by walls
(Dishno, 2010, Gasser, 2008, Paltridge, 2009). As such, shared and communal spaces such as
lounge rooms and kitchens, should be well-sized to accommodate the occupants of the unit
comfortably, be roomy, and well-ventilated. This complements the fact that students are also in
school to study and require the resources (and space) to carry out their studies comfortably
(comfortable study desk, quiet room/sound proofed walls). Student housing must offer the
student the ability to regulate privacy to become a home and to minimise distractions during
times of intense study. However, large spaces (kitchen, lounge room), private bathrooms, and
bigger furnishings (i.e., bed, wardrobe) impact on the affordability of most student
accommodation which are largely unaffordable without considerable financial support
(Rowley and Constable 2014, p. 27). These tensions need to be taken into consideration in the
design of student accommodation.
A number of options can be pursued to make student accommodation more affordable whilst
still providing students with comfortable and safe accommodation. Given recreational or
sporting facilities were not considered as important by the students in this study, the design of at
least a portion of student accommodation complexes could eliminate provision of non-essential
requirements (such as gym, swimming pool) (Ike, et al., 2016). Many universities already
provide such sporting facilities, which enable interaction with students beyond a single
accommodation complex. In addition, housing that include such facilities might be an option for
those students willing to pay for it.
Another option is to adapt the now defunct National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS),
established by the Australian government in 2008 and ended in 2014. It offered tax incentives
to private and community sectors to provide affordable rental housing at 20 percent below
market price (Australian Government Department of Social Services, 2014). This option can be
used to drive downwards the price point of student accommodation. Further consideration
could be given to concessions and incentives to investors and developers of student housing
through the planning and development system. Strategies might also include reduced
infrastructure charges, provision of land by universities or municipalities in a public-private
partnership model, fast-tracked development assessment and reduction in parking space
requirements. However, any relevant contractual agreement would need to ensure these costs
savings through government concessions and incentives would be passed on to students as
reduced rents (affordable accommodation) rather than as additional profit for the developers and
investors.
5 CONCLUSION
The design of student accommodation should reflect students need for social engagement with
others with whom they share accommodation without undermining their need for private,
individual space. Proper furnishings that enhance students comfort should be provided given
the consideration that housing plays a significant role in individuals health, wellbeing, and
quality of life (Johnson et al., 2009, McDonald and Merlo, 2002, ONeill et al., 2008). Although
this is a small case study at a regional university and the extent to which one can make
generalisations may be limited, it does provide insight into students needs and a basis for future
studies to be carried out to compare students housing requirements in metropolitan cities and
communities in other western countries.
The Australian student housing market is still in the early phase of development compared to
the United Kingdom and United States which are considered to be mature markets.
526

Nevertheless, the sector has started to emerge as a mainstream investment category, attracting
significant interest from investors, developers and private operators (Jones Lang Lasalle, 2012
pg. 4). Macintyre (2003 pg. 117) suggests that there is a growing market for student
accommodation and this market is likely to continue to grow into the foreseeable future. In this
light, this study provides useful insight to university and private developers on the design and
construction of new student housing.
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Gasser, R. 2008. Educational and Retention Benefits of Residence Hall Living. White paper presented at
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APPENDIX 1
What is photovoice (PV)?
Photovoice is an engaging visual research methodology which can be employed in diverse
contexts to elicit community perspectives on issues of local and global relevance. It uses
participants photos which visualise their responses to particular issues as a basis for consensus
building and communication to a wider audience. Photovoice involves asking participants to
take photos around certain themes or questions over a period of time. They then come together
in a group to share and explain their photos in a session similar to a focus group. Selected
images, which are provided with relevant captions, are used in communicating these overall
ideas and responses.
For participants, photovoice can be fun, and give participants an opportunity to express
themselves in new and imaginative ways. It function as an empowering process and has been
found to enhance participants self-esteem and peer status; affirm creativity, brainstorming and
problem-solving abilities; increase credibility by virtue of affiliation and collaboration; increase
local control and autonomy. It can ensure that people are talking about the same topic and
agreement can be established, rather than being assumed, on shared meanings of images. (C.
Baldwin, personal communication, September 13, 2016).
Steps to photovoice guide
1. Hold the first workshop to introduce the research, PV technique and provide general
information. Clarify and answer participants questions, doubts and suggestions arising
from the exercise. At the end of the explanation, participants are given digital cameras (if
they do not have access to one) and will be assessed on their familiarity with the use of
digital cameras and trained about how to take the photos if needed. They will be
requested to take photos that show:
i.
What they like about their accommodation (facilities, amenities, room size, and
location).
ii.
What they dislike about their accommodation (facilities, amenities, room size,
and location).
iii.
The facilities necessary in a student accommodation and
iv.
Their perception about their neighbourhood and neighbours
2. A date is agreed on when to complete the exercise (e.g. two weeks) as well as the date
and time for the final workshop.
3. At the end of the two weeks, participants will drop off the camera or the USB in a
location agreed by all the participants as convenient (or upload photos) for photo
downloading by the researcher.
At the final workshop which will be audio-recorded, the researcher facilitates the participants
in a focus group format to describe why they took the photos, what this implies, and to label the
photos. At this stage, the researcher is listening and watching participants verbal and nonverbal communication, emotive approach, tone of voice, and body language.

529
Residential architecture and atmosphere: what is the impact on

wellbeing and health? - A study on Norra lvstranden,
Gothenburg, Sweden
H. Morichetto
H. Wijk
Institute of Health and Care Sciences, The Sahlgrenska Academy at Gothenburg University, Gothenburg,
Sweden
L. O. Nylander
ABSTRACT: Since current housing situation in Sweden is marked by the need to expand the
housing stock quickly, the debate about quantity vs quality is highly relevant. Healthcare
architecture research shows that the design of the built environment has effects on healing
capacities (Sternberg 2009, Ulrich 1984). To understand the interplay between human being and
built environment, we use the concept of atmosphere, proposed as a way to describe
architectural quality (Pallasmaa, Havik et al 2014, Zumthor 2006). The WHO definition of
health (1948) creates the basis for the understanding of health and as additional framework for
understanding health we use the theory of Salutogenesis (Antonovsky 1991). The study is also
informed by previous research in a pilot case study exploring connections between residential
quality, atmosphere and wellbeing. The aim of this case study in former harbour area Norra
lvstranden in Gothenburg is to illuminate connections between residential architecture quality,
well-being and health. The results can be applied in future residential architecture design
processes.
1 INTRODUCTION
Research within healthcare architecture has shown that how our built environment is designed
effects our healing capacities (Sternberg 2009, Ulrich 1984). However, we still need to explore
how residential architecture influence our wellbeing, in light of the growing knowledge of how
spaces influence our emotions and physical reactions (Sternberg 2009). This case study
recognizes this need, and investigates the architecture of the home and how it effects the
residents sense of wellbeing and health. Current housing situation in Sweden is characterized
by an urgent need to construct more housing. Creating environments that promote wellbeing and
health is both a possibility and a responsibility in the present situation for a society that through
history has strived to improve housing standards and living conditions. Currently, this ambition
is challenged by the need to build quickly at large scale.
To understand the interplay between human being and the built environment, we use the
concept of atmosphere, which has been proposed as a way to describe architectural quality
(Pallasmaa, Havik et al 2014, Zumthor 2006). In a previous study (Morichetto, Wijk, Nylander
2016), this concept was adopted to perform a semantic concept analysis in a residential
architecture context, and the results from that analysis will form a theoretical basis of this
investigation. The study will also be informed by previous research in a pilot case study where
connections between residential quality, atmosphere and wellbeing was explored. Based on
learnings from our ongoing pilot study we aim to develop the new case study on Norra
lvstranden to further explore how the four identified aspects of the residential situation have
530

an influence on the residents self-reported sense of wellbeing and health: (i) Freedom of
engagement and influence of the residential situation, a possibility for variation, (ii) A sense of
care and concern of the architectural design, (iii) Character of the architectural design and (iv)
Architectural design promoting functionality. We will continuously also try the hypothesis if
Atmosphere could be regarded as a protector of wellbeing as well as use the previously
conducted semantic concept analysis of Atmosphere (Morichetto, Wijk, Nylander 2016) to
explore the residents perception of quality of architecture.
We will also include the perspective of Salutogenesis in our understanding of health and
wellbeing. Health and wellbeing as perceived by the participants will be investigated by using
the theories of Antonovsky (1991) as a raster as we interpret conducted interviews. The WHO
definition of health (1948) with its multidimensional approach, acknowledging the individual
experience and health as not just the absence of disease, will also continuously create an
important basis for understanding health.
The aim of this case study is to illuminate the connections between residential architecture,
atmosphere, well-being and health in Norra lvstranden which is a former harbour area in the
centre of Gothenburg, Sweden. Little research has been done on residents own perceptions of
the residential architecture of that area where development started in the 1990s. Adult residents
of the selected projects will be invited to participate to semi-structured interviews, in order to
explore and analyze connections between architecture and health. Perceived quality of
architecture will be investigated through the semantic concept analysis of atmosphere and the
previous pilot study as described above. Health and wellbeing as perceived by the participants,
will be investigated through Antonovskys (1991) theory of Salutogenesis. The WHO definition
of health also constitute an important fundament for understanding health.
The results from the study will contribute to a better understanding of the connections
between residential architecture, wellbeing and health. This knowledge can be applied in future
residential architecture design processes.
2 BACKGROUND
2.1 Understanding health
2.1.1 WHO definition of health
The WHO definition of health (1948) creates the basis for the understanding of health in this
project. Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity. (WHO 1948). The definition has been chosen for its
identification of health as multidimensional where the physical, mental and social dimensions
are all acknowledged. Furthermore the definition recognizes health not only as the absence of
disease as well as health as something individually experienced.
2.1.2 Antonovsky and the theory of Salutogenesis
As an additional framework for understanding health we use the theory of Salutogenesis
(Antonovsky 1991). The term, meaning the origin of health, was originally coined by Aaron
Antonovsky in 1979. The salutogenetic approach could be seen as a complement (LangiusEklf, Sundberg 2014) to the pathogenic perspective which concentrates on factors causing
illness and disease. Instead, the Salutogenetic perspective puts an interest in factors promoting
human health and well-being. According to Antonovsky, health could be seen as a continuum,
where our ability to stay healthy and cope with the stress life inevitably exposes us to, rests on
two important fundaments: our generalized resistance resources (GRR) and our sense of
coherence (SOC). Generalized resistance resources are material standard, education/knowledge,
social support, engagement, cultural stability, preventive attitude, self-identity, genetic factors,
belief/magic/conviction (Langius-Eklf, Sundberg 2014: 55). A sense of coherence is built up
by three different components: Comprehensibility, Manageability and Meaningfulness where
the last component is the most important one according to Antonovsky.
In this project we aim to explore if and how the quality of the residential environment could
be understood through the theory of Salutogenesis. How does the residential environment relate

531
to the building up of General resistance resources and the Sense of Coherence (Antonovsky
1991) for the residents? We will use these theories of Antonovsky as a raster as we interpret
conducted interviews. Previous research (Golembiewski 2010) has suggested that the
salutogenic approach is applicable to architectural design in healthcare architecture. In our study
we aim to explore how the theory of Salutogenesis could be used for understanding promotion
of wellbeing and health in a residential context.
2.2 Atmosphere as a way to understand residential architecture quality?
What do we mean when we speak of architectural quality? It is a question that I
have little difficulty in answering. Quality in architectureis to me when a
building manages to move me. What on earth is it that moves me? How can I get it
into my own work? How do people design things with such a beautiful, natural
presence, things that move me every single time.
One word for it is Atmosphere.
Zumthor (2006)
The concept of atmosphere within architecture has recently gained renewed attention. As
Griffero suggests (2014) we could almost speak of an atmospheric turn, which further
strengthens the possibility of the concept to become a tool to describe and measure quality
within architecture. Could the use of an atmospheric approach even help us better understand
and define architectural qualities that eventually have implications on our sense of wellbeing
and health? And - in a residential architectural context - could the atmospheric approach provide
understandings of how a high quality residential architecture can work as health promotive?
Atmosphere means, in this context, a sensorial and affective quality widespread
in space. It is the particular shade or tone that determines the way one feels his/her
surroundings. Air, ambiance, aura, climate, environment, genius loci, milieu,
mood, numinous, Stimmung, Umwelt all these words are names hiding, in fact,
the founding idea of atmospheres: a vague ens or power, without perceivable and
discrete boundaries, which we meet around us and which affects our lived body
and even involves us.
atmosphericspaces (2016)
According to German philosopher Gernot Bhme (2014) there are atmospheric generators
which could be grouped into three main categories. The first one holds geometric structures
(Bhme, Havik, K. et al 2014:29) and physical constellations (29). He argues that they are
sensed as suggested movement but also as massiveness or loads, and in particular as the
confines or expanse of space of mindful physical presence (29).
The second group he calls the synesthetic one. Synesthetic properties he explains are usually
seen as qualities of the senses that belong to more than one sensory field at once (Bhme,
Havik, K. et al 2014: 29). He argues that this is a highly interesting knowledge to architects:
For what then counts when designing a space is not what properties he seeks to give the
objective space, but what sensitivities he wishes to create for the space as the sphere of mindful
physical presence. (29).
As a third group he identifies social characteristics (Bhme, Havik, K. et al 2014: 29) and
exemplifies this aspect of atmosphere by speaking of the atmosphere of the 1920s, of a lobby
[] or of power (29). He also mentions the indisputable fact that architecture has always with
its buildings created atmospheres of holiness or dominance. (29). He argues that different kinds
of materials are bearers of meanings and that our reading of these are culturally dependent.
As a conclusion he argues that we need to look upon these questions about the mindful
physical presence and the body in a balanced way, not letting one aspect or approach dominate
the other. For truth lies in the interplay between them: between mindful physical presence and
the body, between sensitivity and activity, between the real and reality. (Bhme, Havik, K. et
al 2014: 31).
In a previous study the concept of atmosphere was adopted to perform a semantic concept
analysis in a residential architecture context (Morichetto, Wijk, Nylander 2016). The analysis

532
suggested additional concepts that could be important for describing residential architectural
qualities. Some of those were character, care, concern and modulation (variation). It also
suggested that atmosphere could be regarded as a protector of wellbeing in a residential
environment.
2.3 Pilot case study of a small residential area
In an ongoing pilot case study we explore if and how high quality architecture has an effect on
the residents self-reported sense of wellbeing and health. The residential area which is the
focus of the study was selected because it was developed with the clear ambition to build high
quality residential architecture, using only natural and sustainable building materials. The
architecture is marked by a careful detailing, generic rooms for multifunction purpose and room
sequencing, creating effects such as sightlines and a complexity in the spatial organization that
creates different routes for moving and circulation. The houses also offer different levels of
privacy in relation to the surroundings. Great effort has been put in handling the use of daylight
in an effective and beautiful way. The project was conceived departing from the assumption that
high quality architecture might contribute to the decrease of the ongoing population decline,
attracting people to stay or even move to the community. The project also had the ambition to
embrace existing knowledge about the importance of high quality environments for peoples
sense of wellbeing and health. Thus, this area seemed ideal for the aims of the study. All adult
residents of the 18 houses have been invited to attend semi-structured interviews. So far, 7
people from 5 different households have chosen to attend. The interviews are conducted in their
homes and questions are informed by the previously mentioned understanding of concept of
health as well as the findings from the semantic concept analysis of atmosphere. We also make
drawings of how they have chosen to furniture their home and take photographs. So far, the
interviews indicate qualities on several layers that are important for the residents sense of
wellbeing and health. A voluntary possibility of engagement in and influence of the residential
situation, as well as a possibility for variation within the residential context are identified as
having a positive effect on the residents self-reported sense of wellbeing. We also see that
residents experience that their homes have been designed and constructed with a sense of care
and concern, which affect their wellbeing in a positive way. Furthermore, a specific character
has a positive influence on how the environment is experienced and an architectural design that
promotes functionality and adaptability is important. We also try the hypothesis that
Atmosphere could be regarded as a protector of wellbeing as we analyze the interviews.
2.3.1 Learning from the pilot case study, initial analyses of aspects related to atmosphere that
promote wellbeing
2.3.1.1 Freedom of engagement and influence of the residential situation, a possibility for
variation
Factors on several levels important for a sense of wellbeing start to emerge as interviews are
conducted and analyzed. On an organizational level the interviewees communicate a positive
experience and a feeling of freedom as they are able to influence the closest surroundings to
their home. Because of a liberal approach from the landlord, these rented houses offer a freedom
for the resident to engage in the maintenance of the surrounding areas voluntarily, where a key
is the communication and agreement with your closest neighbors. In parallel to this interviewees
also appreciate not having to do maintenance of the rented house and its closest surrounding.
Some residents have chosen to engage in the maintenance of green areas, expanding their
private zone into the semi-private one. The possibility of engagement is there, if you want it.
Variation and changeability of your residential situation are guiding words as these discussions
appear in the interviews and there seems to be a linkage to a sense of ease and a freedom,
mediating wellbeing in the residential situation.
If you want to create variation (furniture wise) then there is the opportunity for
it. Of course, the rooms are fairly similar although they have slightly different
natural lighting conditions, and it's the same situation (referring to variation)
concerning how you want to use the space outside. X has chosen to make her own

533
garden there and to put up a greenhouse. In that sense this type of living creates a
freedom and a variety of the residential situation. []You could say that you have
the freedom to do other things here compared to if you had stayed down on
"Herrgr'n" (residential area with apartments closer to the center) in a four room
apartment (equally sized) down there, so of course this creates totally different
opportunities for your living, to change the way you live and how you want things
to be. So seen from that perspective, the possibilities for variation are enormous. It
is as you say, if you want to go out and sit by the street, you can do it. So the
freedom of choice is very much about that ... The possibilities for variations are
there, but it's up to you what you want to do of it.
Interviewee 5, man
2.3.1.2 A sense of care and concern
Another level of importance is a sense of concern that the residents can experience in their
houses and the closest surroundings. They express a surprise and gratitude that the project has
been conducted with an awareness of high quality. Aspects put to the fore are the selection of
natural materials and that the constructions is not always done in the cheapest and easiest way.
One example of this is how the wooden wall paneling meets the recessed baseboard. Another
concrete example is the use of windows in two directions in a room, creating a sense of
wellbeing for both children and adults.
Furthermore the interviewees also mention the thick walls, the sloping roof visible from the
inside, the windows, the plan layout, the openness/transparency and the light as important
factors for an environment made with care which has a good atmosphere and where they feel
well.
2.3.1.3 Character
A third level of importance that emerge through the interviews in the pilot study is the character
of the architecture and the importance of a residential situation that relate to the surroundings in
a clear and differentiated way. One interviewee communicate how important the two different
characters of the front- and the back sides are to the experience and functionality of the
house and its surroundings. The two different identities of the front and the back as the
street and the private zone facing the woods, create different opportunities for activity and
rest in a safe environment. Also, important for the feeling of safety is the low intensity of cars,
due to the small size of the residential area as well as the layout and organization of the outside
spaces.
"No, what I think of first is the front and the back, there are two completely
different characters there. (Actually a response to question of variety.) That I think
is an asset. Just talked to someone about it at work, where children can learn to
ride a bike, it's a great neighborhood. This means that there is not so much traffic
and that there is a hard surface there. I think it is a huge asset that it has these two
distinct characters. And then one can understand the idea of the house as the step
in between. It's just the way one moves.
Interviewee 3, man
The characteristics of the materiality inside and outside of the houses also have an impact on
how the residents experience their environment in a positive way.
I think it is modern, but there is still rooted in some sort of tradition. I like that,
the combination of ... it's not top-ber-high-tech modern. But there is some kind of
modern idea about home. And yet it is almost as if you go back and use this
wooden panel, which of course is not so common, I think, I do not know. (referring
to the interior). The outside, it is perhaps more modern then. Zinc roof's very, there
is a tradition of it. It's some kind of combination, between
Interviewee 2, woman

534
This womans experience of the materiality in the house corresponds interestingly to Gernot
Bhmes theory on atmospheric generators as divided in three categories, where social
characteristics category represents one them. He argues that different kinds of materials are
bearers of meanings and that our reading of these are culturally dependent (Bhme, Havik, K. et
al 2014: 29). The use and design of the wooden panel in the interior creates a relation between
historical references and contemporary residential architecture, giving a certain character to the
house which the interviewee observes and finds appealing. The connection to a natural material
(wood), frequently used through history, which in this project has been applied in a
contemporary context does have an importance for the experience of character and creates a
positive feeling for the resident.
2.3.1.4 Architectural design promoting functionality
The plan layout of the houses with fairly equally sized, generic rooms arranged around a central
core that consists of kitchen and living room, support a variation in usage and furnishing. The
interviewees communicate possibilities for changing room functions as a response to a variation
of their needs. The rooms are still identified by the interviewees as having different character in
terms lighting conditions, privacy in relation to the outside as well as to other rooms in the
house. The residents also communicate that there are some rooms particularly nice to use for
certain functions. But that the plan layout with its generic rooms arranged in a non-linear way
open for adaptation to certain needs and allow for change over time.
2.4 Atmosphere- a protector of wellbeing?
It is this sense of tranquility, it is hard to grasp, because it is a feeling when you
come home. But its just that, regardless of time of the year, to come home and
close the door, this silence, the tranquility makes me relax. No matter if I have had
a hard day. That I find very important, because you need to do that, to calm down.
That has also had the effect, probably, that we sleep better, because we relax when
we come home. We appreciate it somehow.
Interviewee 1, man
All these small things together, thats what creates a sense of wellbeing. The
silence, the solid (materials), that you feelevery little piece, just to open a drawer
in the kitchen. That there is a solid feeling. That, like now, the warming sun is
shining through the window in the afternoon. All these small things contribute to a
creation of atmosphere. It works really well here, Yes, you can see for yourself.
Interviewee 1, man
I enjoy intensely being in this environment. It affects my health, my mental
health. Very much. Previously, I have been very negatively influenced by living
where I dont feel happy. To have these plastic carpets, I was thinking of that every
day, when I lived like that. Here I dont have to do it. From that perspective, this is
an enormous quality of life and healwellbeingYes it is the materials and the
feeling that there are no poisonous materials around me and my children and that
there is a high level of the esthetics as well.
Interviewee 2, woman
An additional learning from the semantic analysis was to further explore how Atmosphere can
be seen as a protector of wellbeing. In the interviews in the pilot study, residents communicate
how the residential environment does have a positive effect on their sense of wellbeing. The
feeling that they have in their homes is positive and they describe their home as both tranquil
and a place where they like to be and a place to relax. They describe their residential
environment as a solid constructed house where natural and sustainable materials give a sense of
high quality. There are multiple factors contributing and the overall impression. The feeling of
solid wood in your hand and the nice feeling of the warming sun as it shines through the
window all represent sensorial stimuli contributing to a possibly atmospheric experience.

535
3 METHOD
Based on learnings from our ongoing pilot study we aim to develop the new case study on Norra
lvstranden to further explore how the four different aspects of the residential situation have an
influence on the residents self-reported sense of wellbeing and health: (i) Freedom of
engagement and influence of the residential situation, a possibility for variation, (ii) A sense of
care and concern of the architectural design, (iii) Character of the architectural design and (iv)
Architectural design promoting functionality. We will continuously also try the hypothesis if
Atmosphere could be regarded as a protector of wellbeing as well as use the previously
conducted semantic concept analysis of Atmosphere to explore the residents perception of
quality of architecture.
We will also include the perspective of Salutogenesis in our understanding of health and
wellbeing. Health and wellbeing as perceived by the participants will be investigated by using
the theories of Antonovsky as a raster as we interpret conducted interviews. The WHO
definition of health with its multidimensional approach, acknowledging the individual
experience and health as not just the absence of disease, will also continuously create an
important basis for understanding health.
An application for ethical vetting will be done, since the study will investigate how the
interviewees wellbeing and health is influenced by their residential situation.
4 RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
The overall aim with this research is to explore how the quality of the residential architecture
has effects on the residents wellbeing and health. In an ongoing pilot study we have identified
concepts important for the understanding of the relation between residential architectural
qualities, wellbeing and health. These are: (i) Freedom of engagement and influence of the
residential situation, a possibility for variation, (ii) A sense of care and concern of the
architectural design, (iii) Character of the architectural design and (iv) Architectural design
promoting functionality. We have also identified and will continuously try the hypothesis if
Atmosphere could be regarded as a protector of wellbeing. With the study on Norra lvstranden
we will have the opportunity of more interviewees, a larger sample of study objects as well as a
variety of projects to study. It is assumed that it will enhance the understanding of the relation
between residential architecture and wellbeing and health as well as give a larger degree of
complexity to the understandings.
This knowledge can be applied in future residential architecture design processes and will
provide important arguments for maintaining high quality standards in the design and
construction processes.
REFERENCES
Antonovsky, A. 1991 (1987). Hlsans mysterium. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur.
Golembiewski, J. 2010. Start making sense. Facilities, 28, 100-117.
Griffero, T. 2014. Atmospheres: Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces. Farnham: Ashgate.
Havik, K., Teerds, H. & Tielens, G. (eds.). 2014. Building Atmospheres. OASE, (91).
Langius, A., Bjrvell, H. & Antonovsky, A. 1992. The sense of coherence concept and its relation to
personality traits in Swedish samples. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 6, 3, 165-171.
Langius-Eklf, A. & Sundberg, K. 2014. Knsla av sammanhang. In A-K. Edberg & H. Wijk (ed.),
Omvrdnandens grunder. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 53-72.
Morichetto, H., Wijk, H. & Nylander, O. 2016 Semantic analysis of atmosphere - connections to
residential architecture, wellbeing and health. submitted to scientific journal.
Sternberg, E. 2009. Healing spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being. London: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press.
Ulrich, R. 1984. View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, 224, 420-421.
World
Health
Organization.
1948.
WHO
definition
of
health.
Available
at:
http://www.who.int/about/definition/en/print.html [Accessed on 14 December 2015].
536

Zumthor, P. 2006. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments-Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhuser.

Available at: https://atmosphericspaces.wordpress.com [Downloaded on August 2016].

537
The antimicrobial effect of three different chemicals for the

treatment of straw bales used in housing projects
J. Raamets, S. Kutti, A. Vettik, K. Ilustrumm, T. Rist & M. Ivask
Department of Environmental Protection, Tartu College of Tallinn University of Technology, Tartu,
Estonia
ABSTRACT: The presence and potential inhibition techniques of bacterial and fungal colonies
in straw bales used in green housing was studied in Estonia in 2014. Not only can
microorganisms cause struct3DEural damage to ecologically friendly buildings, they can also
pose as a possible threat to human health. 20 sampling sites were selected, from which samples
were taken from the outer and inner walls. The straw was ground and plated to nutrient agar
plates using the Spread Plate method, from where CFU-s were counted. For the cultivation and
identification of bacteria and fungi, different types of selective media were used. Both the
bacteria and fungi were identified to genus. The most abundant bacterial- and fungal genes
isolated from samples were Streptomyces, Pseudomonas, Aspergillus, Penicillum and
Cladosporium. For the inhibition study two different chemicals and one commercially available
solution was selected. The selected chemicals were borate and sodium hypochlorite, the selected
solution was called Biotol which is produced in Sweden and its chemical composition is a
trade secret. All of the aforementioned chemicals are frequently used in construction, primarily
to conserve wood structures due to their antimicrobial properties. In our study the least effective
of the three was borate, which showed inhibiting properties at the concentration of 3,85g/100ml
and the best inhibiting properties were observed using sodium hypochlorite- inhibition started at
the concentration of 1,5g/100ml. The solution Biotol was more effective than borate, but only
slightly. The inhibiting properties for Biotol started at the concentration of 3,1g/100ml.
Considering the cost of all these chemicals and the needed concentration for inhibition, sodium
hypochlorite would be the best option for treating straw bales before the beginning of
construction.
1 INTRODUCTION
Using straw as a building material is a growing trend in green housing projects through Europe.
In the last few years more than 50 eco-housing projects using straw to insulate houses were
carried out in Estonia alone. Builders of straw bale houses claim that bale buildings reduce
carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. The carbon contained in straw is locked within the
building structure and is therefore not emitted to the atmosphere (Ashour et al, 2011; Goodhew
et al., 2004). Straw bale buildings are also highly energy efficient in terms of both construction
inputs and heating once inhabited, thereby saving energy that would otherwise be sourced
primarily from fossil fuels. In order for straw bale buildings to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,
they need to be sustainable they need to last. The first and foremost concern with straw bale
construction is its durability and construction load bearing. Currently, there is some doubt in the
building industry regarding the ability of straw bale to resist decay in the long-term, particularly
in temperate climates. Since straw mostly consists of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin and
straw-blocks are porous in design, they are prone to degrade over time due to the activity of
538

different microorganisms if sufficient moisture is present. But since straw is a natural composite
material similar to wood consisting of more than 80% of cellulose and hemicellulose and the
remaining 20% is mainly lignin and water soluble components, straw should be a suitable
material for construction (Willcock et al., 2000). Also the fact that straw is poorly degradable in
the fields due to its basic constituents, suggests that it can be efficiently applied in construction.
However, there are still certain micro-organisms that are known for their straw degrading
abilities (Li, 2011). The microbial activity can damage the properties of the straw blocks used
for construction due to their metabolism (Fonty et al., 1999). That can lead to structural
damages and instability in the whole house. The blocks of straw are commonly not treated with
any kind of antimicrobials to prevent this from happening. According to recent research the
most wide-spread microorganisms present on different straw are fungi Neocallimastix frontalis,
which reduce the tensile strength of straw and therefore can be a real problem for straw bale
constructions. Also the cellulolytic bacteria Ruminococcus flavefaciens, whose co-culture with
latter reduces significantly the resistance of shearing (Fonty et al., 1999). In terms of ability to
efficiently degrade cellulose the list of bacteria is quite exhaustive and therefore represents a
threat to straw construction elements (Liu et al., 2010).
The growth of fungi and bacteria can also present a potential health risk due to the forming of
spores and being present in ventilation shafts. The airborne portion of the microorganisms can
induce allergies and even asthma when making their way into the lungs of children and adults
both (Madsen et al, 2010). The potential health risks have never been properly assessed. Even if
the degrading microorganisms are hindered, still the toxic microorganisms may be a real health
concern. The harmfulness of microorganisms comes through different toxins, which are
produced to compete with other species over food supplies. For example, yeasts produce ethanol
from sugar and species of the genus Penicillum produce a well-known antibacterial agent called
penicillin. Even though the vital functions of microorganisms could be more easily limited,
these chemical compounds produced by these microorganisms may be extremely persistent and
toxic causing various health problems like eye irritation, upper respiratory infections, headache,
cold and flu symptoms, nasal and sinus congestion, gastrointestinal complaints (Dorman,
2004). These main health problems are all linked to the most common microorganisms like
Stachybotrys chartarum (indoor mould), Aspergillus, Penicillum, Cladosporium, Ulocladium
proliferating in damp buildings (Kuhn et al., 2003).
The aim of the study was to assess the abundance of fungi and bacteria in the wall of a straw
bale building and whether different kinds of chemical agents have an inhibitory effect on both
bacteria and fungi isolated from straw bale. Also, the most abundant genes of bacteria and fungi
were identified.
2 MATERIAL AND METHODS
2.1 Assessment of bacteria and fungi in the wall of a straw bale building
The assessment of bacteria and fungi present in the straw bale used for construction was carried
out in 2014 in Estonia, near Vrtsjrve. From the inner and outer wall of the building 20 straw
samples were taken, 10 from the outer wall and 10 from the inner wall. The sample straw was
ground and mixed with phosphate-buffered saline. The sample plates were incubated at 32oC
for 72 hours and the colony forming units (CFU) were counted. Selective media for fungi and
bacteria was used.
The fungal media consisted of:
x Agar
15g
x Malt extract
20g
x Chloramphenicol
0,2g
x Deionized water
1000ml
The bacterial media consisted of:
x Agar
15g
x Tryptic Soy Broth
40ml
x Cycloheximide
0,8g in 40ml 90% ethanol solution
x Deionized water
960ml

539
2.2 Identification of the most abundant bacterial and fungal genera

Bacteria and fungi were isolated from untreated straw bales in the walls of the Vrtsjrve testhouse similarity to the assessment test of the abundance of bacteria and fungi. The straw
samples were plated directly to the nutrient agar plates (Fig. 1). The nutrient agar consisted of:
x Agar
15g
x Yeast extract
2g
x Peptone
5g
x NaCl
5g
x Deionized water
1000ml
Both, the fungal and bacterial colonies were recultivated periodically. For the identification
purposes two different types of specific media were used, for bacteria and fungi, as described in
the previous chapter. All types of growth media were autoclaved at 120oC and poured to Petri
dishes to dry overnight. The isolated microorganisms were plated with a spatula on the agar
plates. The cultures were grown on the petri dishes under 32oC. All necessary chemicals and
reagents (Fluka) were purchased from HNK Analsitehnika.
Figure 1. Direct plating of the sample straw.
The identification was performed via sample staining and microscopy. Online databases and
Bergey`s manuals were used.
2.3 Inhibition test of three chemicals against bacteria and fungi
For the inhibition test three chemicals were chosen: boric acid, sodium hypochlorite and the
commercial fungicide Biotol (Eskaro). These chemicals were selected because of their
applicability in construction. The first two may be suitable for ecologically friendly
construction, Biotol was chosen because it is widely used in Estonia. Previously cultivated
agar plates were used. The tests were carried out from november 2013 to march 2014. The
results of the tests carried out are presented in Table 2.
The abundance of fungi is quite usual in a straw harvested two years before the construction.
Bacteria are the primary colonizers of surfaces due to their rapid growth, but are mostly only
able to degrade easily degradable substrates like sugars. Because of the rapid colonizing of
straw, the easily degradable substrates will be exhausted quite quickly and the bacterial
community will decrease. Since fungi are able to degrade more complex substrates like
cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, they will outgrow the bacteria and colonize the surface
instead (Marschner et al., 2011). In two years of time, during which the straw was dried
outdoors, usually the fungal community exceeds the bacterial community due to the lack of
easily degradable substances.
540

The mean value of ten agar plates counted was:

x 562,6 144,5 CFU/per 10g of straw for fungi
x 382,2 50 CFU/per 10g of straw for bacteria.
The fungal genera identified during this study are very common organisms that live in the
soil and are regularly present in homes. Some of the species of these genera have the ability to
produce mycotoxins that can be harmful to human health. The risk to human health depends on
the concentration of spores present in indoor air and the health risks mostly associated with
spores are different kinds of inflammations of the respiratory system, also allergies and asthma.
In the genus of Aspergillus there are 20 species that can be harmful to human health. They are
usually very resistant to environmental conditions and may cause aspergillosis in severe cases.
The risk group is especially people with asthma, small children and people with weakened
immune system (Brakhage, 2005).
The species of the genera Penicillium are the most abundant considering spores in homes and
outdoor air. They are very common and can be found almost everywhere. Some of the species
are also well-known plant pathogens that can decompose cellulose and lignin others can be
opportunistic human pathogens due to the ability to produce mycotoxins. It is also important to
consider the fact that the toxicity of the spores does not decrease even when the mold itself is
already gone. Many people make the mistake of assuming that when they have gotten rid of the
fungus their asthmatic symptoms will disappear. Most of the species of the genus Penicillium
are harmless to people with strong immune systems.
The genus Cladosporium has also very different species, from plant pathogens to human
pathogens. During growth most of the species of this genus produce a very distinctive and
obnoxious odor by what it can be easily identified. The chemical compounds responsible for
this odor are considered toxic. Some species can cause inflammation of eyes and skin besides
the usual inflammation of the respiratory system. Also some species are able to cause
inflammation in wounds and grow under the skin. Fortunately these kinds of inflammations are
quite easily treatable (Bensch et al., 2012).
The bacterial genera identified consisted of Streptomyces and Pseudomonas. Streptomyces is
the biggest genus of the actinobacteria. The genus consists of different species commonly found
in the soil and on decomposing organic matter. Only a few species are able to cause a mild
inflammation of the upper respiratory system, which is easily treatable. Most of the species of
the genus Streptomyces are harmless to human health.
The species of the genus Pseudomonas, on the other hand, can be much more harmful to
human health. The genus itself consists of very different species that can live in soil, in water
and on plants. It also has many species that can be human and animal pathogens. All the species
of this genus are gram-negative and therefore may have a natural resistance against penicillin
and other antibiotics. The most dangerous human pathogen in this genus is considered to be
Pseudomonas aerunginosa which is the main reason for infections treated in hospital (Van
Eldere, 2003).
Table 1. The most abundant bacterial and fungal genera isolated from straw bales.
Aspergillus, Penicillium, Cladosporium
Fungal genera
Bacterial genera
Streptomyces, Pseudomonas
Boric acid is considered to be harmful to bacteria and fungi at the concentration of

1,5g/100ml. In our laboratory tests this hypothesis was not observed. It might be that the
concentrations required to inhibit the fungal and bacterial communities in their natural
environments are lower due to environmental stress. The laboratory tests showed that the
inhibiting properties of boric acid began at the concentration of 3,85g/100ml with the full
inhibition of fungi at the concentration of 4,25g/100ml, which is practically a saturated solution.
Also, boric acid was more effective against fungi and less effective against bacteria. The reasons
for that are yet unknown and further analysis is needed to find the reasons for that. Boric acid
may be effective against fungi and bacteria only if the infection of the straw bales is discovered
early on. It wont have much effect if the community is fully developed. The pre-treatment tests
also showed that some of the bacteria and most of the fungi developed a resistance against boric

541
acid during 4 weeks of incubation. Therefore boric acid can not be recommended as an effective
chemical against micro-organisms.
Sodium hypochlorite did inhibit the growth of all the microorganisms plated at the
concentration of 2g/100ml. The inhibition of the bacterial community began at the concentration
of 1g/100ml already and the inhibition of the fungi at 1,5g/100ml. Sodium hypochlorite proved
also to be the most cost-effective chemical for the treatment against fungi and bacteria, with the
cost of 2,3 euros per litre. Both, the pre- and after-treatment tests showed good inhibition
properties at the concentrations of 1,5g/100ml. Also during 4 weeks of incubation no resistance
against sodium hypochlorite was observed in fungi or bacteria.
For Biotol there were no reference articles about the inhibiting properties against fungi or
bacteria. In this inhibition test Biotol showed good results for bacteria and fungi both, killing all
microorganisms at the concentration of 3,9mg/100ml. The inhibiting properties for all microorganisms were observed at the concentration of 3,1mg/100ml. No resistance against Biotol
during 4 weeks of incubation was observed. Although Biotol showed good inhibition properties,
its downside is the cost, since it is 4 times higher than that of the sodium hypochlorite. But it
can be considered as an alternative in construction or households. Unfortunately it can not be
considered as a possible treatment method in green housing projects since it is considered
environmentally harmful.
Table 2. Inhibiting concentration, affected microorganism and cost of treatment for 3 chemicals.
Sodium hypochlorite
Biotol
Boric acid
Inhibiting concentration, g/100ml
4,25
2,0
3,9
Microorgamisms affected
Fungi
All microorganisms
All microorganisms
Cost of 1 litre,
1,6
2,3
10
4 CONCLUSION
An experiment to determine the inhibitive properties of three chemicals for the inactivation of
the bacterial and fungal populations in a straw bale house was carried out from november 2013
to august 2014. Furthermore, the most abundant genera of bacteria and fungi were identified.
Samples were taken from the walls of a test-house near Vrtsjrve. The tests showed that inside
the walls of the straw bale house fungi were dominant (562,6 144,5 CFU/per 10g of straw)
rather than bacteria (382,2 50 CFU/per 10g of straw). The predominant genera of the identified
fungi were Aspergillus, Penicillium and Cladosporium and the most abundant genera of bacteria
were Streptomyces and Pseudomonas. In both, the genera of bacteria and fungi, there are many
species that can present a health risk for humans, especially for those with allergies, asthma and
weakened immune systems, also children and the elderly people. If there is any suspicion of
fungal infection or constant flu-like symptoms a physician should be consulted as soon as
possible.
The inhibition test showed the best results with sodium hypochlorite and the weakest results
with boric acid. Boric acid had moderate inhibitive properties only as a saturated solution and
even then after 4 weeks of incubation resistance in bacteria and fungi both was observed. With
sodium hypochlorite no resistance occurred. Also, it was found to be the most cost-effective
chemical of the three. Biotol showed also good inhibitory results, but can not be recommended
to be used in ecologically friendly construction projects due to the fact that it is considered
environmentally hazardous. construction projects due to the fact that it is considered
environmentally hazardous.
REFERENCES
Ashour, T., Georg, H. & Wu, W. 2011. Performance of straw bale wall: A case of study. Energy and
Buildings, 43(8), pp. 19601967. 1.
Bensch, K., Braun, U., Groenewald, J. Z. & Crous, P. W. 2012. The genus Cladosporium. Studies in
Mycology, 72, pp. 1401.
542

Brakhage, A. 2005. Systemic fungal infections caused by Aspergillus species: Epidemiology, infection
process and virulence determinants. Current Drug Targets, 6(8), pp. 875886.
Dorman, A. 2004. Investments in Federal Facilities: Asset Management Strategies for the 21st Century.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Fonty, G., Chavarot, M., Lepetit, J., Canistro, J. & Favier, R. 1999. Mechanical resistance of wheat straw
after incubation in cultures of ruminal cellulolytic microorganisms. Animal Feed Science and
Technology, 80(3-4), pp. 297307.
Goodhew, S., Griffiths, R. & Woolley, T. 2004. An investigation of the moisture content in the walls of a
straw-bale building. Building and Environment, 39(12), pp. 14431451.
Kuhn, D. M. & Ghannoum, M. A. 2003. Indoor mold, Toxigenic fungi, and Stachybotrys chartarum:
Infectious disease perspective. Clinical Microbiology Reviews, 16(1), pp. 144172.
Li, P. 2011. Screening of a Composite Microbial System and Its Characteristics of Wheat Straw
Degradation. Agricultural Sciences in China, 10 (10), 1586-1594.
Liu C., Wang X., Wang X., Li P. & Cui Z. 2010. The character of normal temperature straw-rotting
microbial community. Agricultural Sciences in China, 9, pp. 713720.
Madsen, A., M. & Nielsen, S. H. 2010. Airborne endotoxin associated with particles of different sizes and
affected by water content in handled straw. International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental
Health, 213, pp. 278-284.
Marschner, P. Umar, S. & Baumann, K. 2011. The microbial community composition changes rapidly in
the early stages of decomposition of wheat residue. Soil Biology & Biochemistry, 43. pp. 445-451.
Van Eldere, J. 2003. Multicentre surveillance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa susceptibility patterns in
nosocomial infections. J. Antimicrob. Chemother. 51 (2): pp. 347352.
Willcock, J. & Magan, N. 2000. Impact of environmental factors on fungal respiration and dry matter
losses in wheat straw. Journal of stored Products Research, 37 (1), pp. 35-45.
Chapter 9
Affordable housing solutions

Chapter 9: Affordable housing solutions
545
The potential of innovative local building materials in Cameroon

J. F. Asah
Higher Technical Teachers Training College, The University of Buea, Kumba, Cameroon
F. H. Abanda
Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
M. B. Manjia & C. Pettang

Department of Civil Engineering and Urbanism, National Advanced School of Engineering, The
University of Yaound, Yaound, Cameroon
ABSTRACT: Globally, about 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing. In Africa, about
100 million Africans live in slums where shortage of low-income housing in Africa is the most
severe in the world. The severity of the shortage of housing in Africa differs in various regions.
In Cameroon, for example, housing affordability remains a key challenge. Recent studies reveal
that the sustainable construction practice can potentially contribute to addressing the housing
shortages. Furthermore, the use of local building materials has been considered the cornerstone
of sustainable construction that can be used in providing affordable housing. Although the use
of local building materials is not new, sustainable construction is relatively new in Cameroon
and its principles and practices are not yet imbedded in the practice of its construction industry.
The literature reveals that the high cost of imported building materials is a major hindrance
towards the delivery of low-income housing. However, despite the cheapness and availability of
local building materials in Cameroon, its uptake has been very slow. This has been partly due to
the fact that, the potential of local building materials towards the delivery of affordable housing
is still not known. It is against this backdrop that this study aims to investigate the potential of
local building materials that can be used in the provision of affordable housing in Cameroon. In
order to achieve this aim, a desk study will be conducted.
1 BACKGROUND
In the last three decades, Cameroon has been experiencing a surge in population. This increase
has translated into a demand for social facilities and infrastructures including housing.
Unfortunately demand for housing has often outstripped supply leaving Cameroon in an acute
shortage of housing (Nyambod, 2010). The literature reveals that construction materials
contribute up to 65% to the housing construction cost in Cameroon (Pettang, 1997). This is
partly due to the high cost of imported building materials which is a significant barrier towards
the delivery of affordable housing (Uphie, 2009). This is despite the fact that developing
countries are advised by international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) Habitat
and World Bank to reduce their reliance on imported building materials and to develop and use
local building materials which will stimulate its production and use to enable the delivery of
affordable housing (Adebayo, 2002). Like most African countries, Cameroon is being plagued
by two major setbacks that are holding the widespread use of local building materials. On the
one hand, Cameroon lacks advanced institutions and policies in place for adopting sustainable
construction principles and policies that could contribute to the delivery of affordable/lowincome housing (Goebel, 2007). The absence of these policies reduces the chances of local
building materials being chosen as a material of first choice in construction projects. On the
other hand, despite the abundance of the local building materials, the local population lacks
knowledge on the benefits of local building materials in housing projects. A study aimed at
546

identifying the quarries in Cameroon, estimated that the volume of soil from quarries in the
Douala and Yaound towns can exceed 20 million m3 and can construct more than 363 300
types T4 houses, thereby providing more than 1/3 of the need for social housing in both towns
(Tchamba et al., 2012). According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development
(MINHUD) of Cameroon, a T4 house is defined as a dwelling with Gross Floor Area (GFA)
89m2, must contain a kitchen, corridors, lounge and dining room, 3 bedrooms and 2 toilets. It is
against this backdrop that this research aims to investigate the potential of local building
materials in sustainable housing delivery in Cameroon. The study investigates the different
types of local building materials and their benefits in Cameroon. Furthermore, the technology
used in processing and handling local building materials will be discussed. The objectives of
this study are to:
x provide an overview of sustainable construction practice in Cameroon;
x establish the main local building materials and demonstrate their contribution vis--vis
sustainable construction practice in Cameroon;
x establish whether the processing/handling technologies of local building materials in
Cameroon are matured enough.
To achieve these objectives, a desk study approach will be pursued.
2 AN OVERVIEW OF SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITIES IN CAMEROON
The need to provide more sustainable buildings in the developed and developing world is
increasingly becoming a top policy agenda item of most governments. This is partly because of
the role sustainable buildings contribute towards the improvement of the environment and the
fact that the sustainable buildings are more affordable in many developing countries. Despite
these benefits, sustainable construction has still not received sufficient attention in Africa
(Adebayo, 2002). In Cameroon, little attention has been accorded to sustainable construction
practices, although the country is in serious shortage of housing. The number of dwellings
necessary in meeting the urgent needs of the population in the country is estimated to be over
500 000, especially in the urban outskirts (Bernard Krief Consultants, 2007). The demand
increases by 10% every year (Bernard Krief Consultants, 2007). According to the state-owned
housing provider, Socit Immobilire du Cameroun (Cameroon Real Estate Company or SIC),
as of the year 2010, the housing needs stood at nearly one million homes. Of this one million
homes, at least three hundred thousands are required to meet the demand of major cities such as
Douala and Yaound (SIC, 2010). Like in many African countries, the critical issue surrounding
construction activities of any kind in Cameroon is that the construction systems have long been
modelled on the experience of the developed world. Some of these practices include the use of
imported materials and Western construction techniques that may not necessarily meet the
aspirations of local cultures and realities. These practices tend to be too expensive, unaffordable
and un-environmentally-friendly. Recent research indicates a global need for an increase in the
uptake of sustainable buildings in order to overcome the critical housing shortages that are
widespread in many developing countries. Sustainable buildings are environmentally-friendly,
affordable and meet the social and cultural aspirations of the occupants. This recognition is
encapsulated in stacks of international documents like Agenda 21, the Habitat Agenda of 1996
and the Millennium Declaration.
A key aspect of sustainable construction entails the use of local materials that are readily
available. The dependence on imported construction materials implies that these materials are
hauled and distributed as finished products over long distances to be used in construction
projects. This haulage and distribution require expenditure on fossil fuels used in vehicles for
transportation. Transportation of raw and finished building materials contributes significantly
to: the cost of materials, high energy requirements and environmental pollution. The present
mode of production, distribution, and consumption of building materials and existing
construction practices are unsustainable. The materials commonly used in construction today
include bricks, cement, steel, aluminium, plastic products, paint, polished stones, ceramic
products, etc. These materials are energy intensive, often transported over long distances, and
are expensive. Extensive use of these materials can drain significant energy resources and
adversely affect the environment. Thus, local-based techniques that use local materials are being

547
recommended to replace conventional methods of construction. Although these local techniques

are not new, they include the use of traditional materials like mud, straw, bamboo, timber, etc.
which are highly energy efficient especially if they are sourced locally. Examples of their use
are wood from sustainable forests used in timber framed building, mud used in rammed earth
building, and straw used in straw bale building. Other developments include the use of
sustainable building materials such as stabilized mud blocks, rammed earth blocks, mud
concrete blocks, lime-pozzolana cements, and soil-lime plaster. These materials when used in
combination with buildings that have been designed to maximise the benefits of passive heating
and cooling, leads to highly sustainable and affordable buildings. Traditional materials and low
technology like wood reinforced earth and mud blocks have been used in Africa, including
Cameroon, for centuries but are being abandoned due to the advent of steel and reinforced
concrete (Tah, 2006). Local construction techniques which are heavily based on the use of local
materials are being revived in the developed countries while most new developments in Africa
still rely heavily on cement, concrete and steel. There is a need to raise awareness of the merits
of using traditional materials and that there exist local building techniques that can be used in
handling and processing local building materials so as to provide them with the characteristics
to fulfill both structural and aesthetic building requirements.
3 LOCAL BUILDING MATERIALS IN CAMEROON
It is no longer new to argue that building materials play a crucial role in the construction sector
in general and the provision of housing in particular. This point is well summarised by Iweka &
Adebayo (2010) when they note that
Materials have always been the cornerstone of structural quality and durability
of dwellings. Materials as part of the building envelop play a significant role in
ensuring that a building structure is capable of resisting any physical attacks.
Falade and Iweka (2007)
argue that building materials can be categorized into materials for the basic structure,
protective/decoration finishes and materials for fixtures and fittings.
Having reviewed the concepts of sustainable construction and affordability in the preceding
section, an analysis on the various types of local building materials that can be available to
prospective housing developers will be conducted.
3.1 Types of local building materials
To facilitate understating the local building materials will be classified as earth, stone, bamboo
and wood.
Earth is one of those building materials that are readily available everywhere. The material
can be processed in several ways. In Cameroon, for example, the poor communities are
beginning to discover the beneficial thermal comfort and healthy aspects of using earth as a
building material (Fonkeng, 2008). Apart from thermal benefits, earth is said to be completely
recyclable with minimum resource requirements (Tasong, 2006). The importance and awareness
of embodied energy of materials and the global impact of carbon dioxide emissions encourage
the use of low embodied energy materials. The use of earth as a building material minimizes the
dissipation of embodied energy and carbon. A comparative study conducted by Abanda et al.
(2014) revealed that embodied energy and CO2 analysis of mud-brick house is at least 1.5 times
and at least 1.7 times respectively less than that of cement-block house. Consequently, it is not
surprising that the earth has been one of the most essential building materials in the world since
the dawn of mankind. Gundu (1990) argues that ever since mankind first congregated in
villages almost 10 000 years ago, unbaked earth has been one of the principal building materials
used in every continent and over a third of the worlds population still lives in earth houses
today. In the ensuing sections four main types of earth construction materials which are adobe,
rammed earth, compressed earth and musgum commonly used in Cameroon will be examined.
548

Adobe (also known as laterite block) is air/sun-dried brick from mud compressed of
inorganic soil and sand. The soil must have a minimum clay content of 10%; fibre such as straw
may also be added to increase the stability of the blocks. An adobe brick is typically 250 to 300
mm in length and weighs between 13 to 22kg (Allen & Thallon, 2001). The bricks are stacked
one over another and bonded using a mud mortar. Additives such as asphalt and fly ash help to
minimize its susceptibility to moisture while giving it additional strength. As adobe structures
are stacks of mud, they require protection from water, especially rainfall that can wash the
structure away if due precautions are not taken. Some of the steps that can be taken to protect
adobe structures from water attack are placing walls on concrete or stone foundations; using
water-inhibiting additives; plastering adobe walls with stucco; and providing substantial
overhangs (Arayela, 2002). It is also essential that adobe walls are adequately tied using wood
beams at the top and base of the wall. These beams also serve as anchors for the roof trusses.
Modern codes require that in areas with high earthquake risks, adobe walls be reinforced with
horizontal and vertical steel. Although it is slowly losing its popularity to other technologies,
adobe still remains a potential solution to the sub-Sahara Africa housing shortage through the
provision of (eco-friendly) low-cost dwellings.
Rammed earth involves the compacting of moist soil between rigid forms to create
monolithic earth walls with similar properties as those of adobe walls. Allen & Thallon (2001)
note that the soil for rammed earth construction must have about 30% clay and 70% sand and
small gravel, although cement is sometimes added as a stabilizer. When preparing the rammed
earth, it is important to ensure that the moisture content of the wall is just right because if the
mixture is too dry then it will lead to a weak and crumbly wall (Allen & Thallon, 2001). On the
other hand, if the mixture is too wet, it will take too long to dry and harden. The process of
erecting the wall includes raising the form, pouring the earth into the forms and compacting the
mixture either by tempers or pneumatically. This will result into a strong monolithic wall.
Rammed earth is widely used in the majority of African countries including Cameroon
(Lemougna et al., 2011).
Traditionally in Cameroon, earth blocks are obtained when earth is poured into moulds and
compressed manually. The constituents of the earth mix are similar to those of adobe: clay, sand
and additives or stabilizers such as cement or fly ash. However, the manual processing of
compressed earth blocks (CEB) is very slow and constitutes a barrier to its uptake. Thus, the
mechanical technique of processing earth blocks has emerged. The structure of CEBs has been
found to be a lot stronger and more weather-resistant than the traditional adobe structures. CEB
machines are now common in Cameroon (Medjo et al., 2006). An example of a CEB machine is
shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. An example of a CEB brick making machine (Source: Fonkeng (2008)).
The musgum is a tall conical dwelling constructed out of compressed sun-dried mud. This
type of dwelling is quite common with the Musgum, an ethnic group in the Far North region of
Cameroon. Locally it is called cases obus. The dwelling profile is a catenary arch, an ideal

549
mathematical form to bear maximum weight and resist compressive forces with minimal
materials. A photo depicting a sample of a musgum dwelling in the former presidential palace
also known as the Cameroon National Museum is presented in Figure 2.
Figure 2. A sample musgum building in the Cameroon national museum. Source: authors photograph.
Stone is the mineral bedrock of the planet and comes in endless varieties. Igneous stone is
formed by the cooling of liquid magma. Some igneous stones contain air bubbles which make it
a good insulator. Sedimentary stone is formed by the cementing together of sediments resulting
from erosion by wind or water. Sedimentary stone is layered, which allows it to be split into flat
pieces that are stack onto walls as a building material. Round stones are not recommended
because of their inability to bond with any binder easily. Metamorphic stone is igneous or
sedimentary stone that has been altered by heat or pressure. Stone structures have existed since
time immemorial. Stone is the most durable building material that exists and is easy to obtain.
Being a very dense material, it gives plenty of protection to building structures, although
sometimes it can be used purely for decoration purposes (Issa & Al-Darzi, 2007). The best stone
for building is angular, with parallel flat sides as this enhances good bonding. Stone can be used
as is or it can be shaped with tools to preferred dimensions and laid to an individuals pattern
of choice. Stones make an excellent foundation for wall systems. Flat, thin stones like slate can
be used as a roofing material or to make durable floors.
Bamboo is one of the most environmentally-friendly building materials. The material scores
far much higher on environmental sustainability front compared to conventional materials like
concrete, steel and timber. Bamboo has a long history as a flexible, safe and low-cost building
material and is plentiful today in many parts of the world. Bamboos are remarkably fast growing
plants that thrive in a range of difficult climates. Because of its strength, bamboo can be used as
a structural material and its beauty provides an aesthetically-pleasing finish. Bamboos have a
high leaf surface area that makes it very efficient at removing carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere and generating oxygen in its place. Harvesting of bamboo takes place over 3-5 years
as opposed to more than 25 years for softwoods and over 50 years for many hardwoods to
mature. Treated bamboo is a very hard wood that is both lightweight and very desirable, and can
be used in building low-cost houses, fences, bridges, construction of scaffoldings, and they can
also be used as a substitute for steel reinforcing rods in concrete construction.
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Wood is a very important construction material in Cameroon. Its importance and use is partly
due to its abundance in different parts of the country. Wood is mostly used as a main material in
walls and roofs. In some cases, it is used as breathable wooden louvers, shutters, or railings.
Even in construction with modern imported materials, wood is still an important material often
used in temporal purposes (e.g. form work) and in roofs. In practice, wood can be smoked to
deter termites and mold.
Figure 3a. Wood basket-weave shutters. Source:

Stouter (2010).
Figure 3b. Breezy wood louvers for walls in a

church in Yaound, Cameroon. Source: Stouter
(2010).
3.2 Benefits of local construction materials

3.2.1 Benefits of earth construction
One of the main advantages of earth construction is that it is not knowledge intensive; a crew
can quickly learn to make and lay bricks efficiently. This technology represents a New
Economic Perspective on sustainability agenda as it is a bottom-up, value-led innovative
method that follows social and environmental tenets. This vision and practice promotes a new
paradigm, that differs from mainstream construction practices in the developed world in that it
does involve women and children in the building process. The process is suited to individuals
and community self-build, and aims to empower people to create their own low-cost
environmentally-sound shelter.
An average 2000ft2 (185.8m2) house would have around 2315ft2 (215.1m2) of adobe brick
wall and uses around 5120 adobe bricks, using approximately 130 cubic yards (100m3) of raw
materials. A team of four people can make on average 600 adobe bricks per day and lay up
about 250 bricks into the wall in an 8-hour working day. A well-built earth home will
outperform a well-built timber frame home in durability, thermal dynamics, longevity, cost, and
structural integrity.
Earth construction has various other potential advantages. Some of these are fire resistance,
non-toxic and the reduction of low-carbon footprint in housing delivery, production of sufficient
thermal mass, low sound transmission levels, no costly tools, the technique is highly suitable for
owner builders. Others are the ability to hold heat, the non-requirement of skilled personnel as
builders can quickly learn how to make and lay bricks efficiently with ease. The extraction and
production of compressed earth blocks do not need chemical processing and the energy
consumed is therefore very small. The global reduction cost with compressed earth blocks
varying between 3 to 4% from the cement blocks (Tchamba et al., 2012).
3.2.2 Benefits of stone
As already alluded to, stones provide high strength walls used as bearing walls. It has good
thermal insulation and flexible in controlling wall size too. Different colours of stone facilitate
the selection process or identification of the desired colour of the house (Issa & Al-Darzi, 2007).

551
Stone homes last longer thereby reducing the need to harvest new materials. Stones from a local
source will benefit the environment since there will be no transportation, thus no carbon dioxide
(CO2) produced in burnt fuels. Stones do resist wear from wind, rain and ice. They also resist
fading from the sun. In addition, stone is impervious to insect damage and does not rot when
exposed to moisture. Stones do withstand fire, reducing the severity of damage of a home and
cost of repair (Issa & Al-Darzi, 2007).
3.2.3 Benefits of bamboo
In its natural form, bamboo proves more than 20 times as sustainable as the common
conventional building materials such as timber, steel and concrete. One of the key advantages of
bamboo is its weight. Estimated at about 300-400kg/m3 by simetric.co.uk (Timber Sash Winders,
2016), a UK based organisation that provides the weights of various materials, bamboo is one of
the lightest building materials in the world. This attribute also means that transporting bamboo
to the construction site will not produce as much CO2 as other conventional materials do. It is
partly for this reason that bamboo is known to be an environmentally-friendly building material
as the use of cranes is mostly unnecessary. Furthermore, the enormous elasticity of bamboo
makes the material a very suitable building material in earthquake-prone areas. The material is
also fire-resistant due to its high content of silicate acid. Filled with water, bamboo can
withstand temperatures of 400 degrees centigrade while the water cooks inside. When heated up
above 150 degrees centigrade bamboo keeps its shape after it goes cold and can be used for
several construction purposes. Bamboo is a highly elastic vascular bundle (particularly in its
outer zone) that has a high tensile strength. The tensile strength is higher than that of steel but
not possible to construct connections that can transfer these tensile strengths. Bamboo shrinks
more than wood when it loses water. Due to its silicate acid, bamboo is a highly fire-resistant
building material. Its high elasticity makes bamboo a very suitable building material in earth
quake-prone and other endangered areas.
3.2.4 Benefits of wooden construction
Wood is readily available in Cameroon. This ensures any massive scale timber housing projects
will not suffer from the supply of wood. Its abundance is even reflected in the quantity
Cameroon exports timber to many Europe countries including France (Atangana, 1997). Timber
is aesthetically beautifully, light in weight and can be used in multiple functions in a building
depending on its quality level. For example, low quality timber can easily be used for
scaffolding while top quality can be used in timber door and window frames. One major
environmental benefit of timber is that it is recyclable. It is only renewable if the quantity
harvested is re-planted. However, with the current global awareness of sustainable development,
re-afforestation is not a major issue in Cameroon (Schmidt et al., 2011).
Generally, the use of any local building material does correspond to local building traditions,
religious and cultural ways of life. These play a crucial role in driving forward social
sustainability among communities.
On the environmental front, the use of local building materials does offer ecological and
environmental benefits (particularly those based on the use of earth). The use of earth reduces
the quantity of cement used around the world, thereby reducing the amount of CO2 emitted into
the atmosphere and energy used by the construction industry. The largest growth in carbon
emissions is believed to come from electricity generation, transport, manufacturing industries
and building operations (Radhi, 2009). Cement is a product of the calcinations of limestone
(calcium carbonate) and silico-aluminous materials. The production of 1 ton of cement
generates 0.55 tons of CO2 and needs the combustion of carbon fuel into 0.40 tons of CO2
(Davidovits, 1991). The worlds cement generated CO2 was evaluated at 1 billion and 1.8 billion
tons in 1988 and 2000, respectfully (Davidovits, 1991). Considering the trend observed in the
cement market and industry, these CO2 emissions are expected to reach 3.5 billion tons by the
year 2015 (Davidovits, 2008). Furthermore, there is enormous empirical evidence suggesting
that reducing the consumption of cement through the use of local building materials that are
ecologically-friendly such as earth (e.g. CEB, adobe, rammed earth etc.), the environment
would be protected through the reduction of CO2 and energy emissions. The thermal insulation
and thermal mass properties of building materials have been proven to significantly affect the
amount of energy required for heating or cooling and consequently, the total amount of
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electricity used in residential houses (Radhi, 2009). Earth has a high density and valuable
thermal inertia qualities, its walls do allow the storage of solar heat during the day and its slow
release during the night thereby contributing to indoor comfort and reducing electricity
consumption. These walls are also capable of regulating the humidity of indoor air due to their
permeability of water vapour. Their production is in situ with no emissions of greenhouse gases
and without using a high amount of energy (Lemougna et al., 2011). Their materials are ideal
for the promotion of sustainable architecture (architecture designing windows and doors while
taking into account the daily movement of the sun to create a comfortable climate in the house
without resources to expensive air conditioning) (Lemougna et al., 2011).
4 CONCLUSIONS
This paper has presented an in-depth analysis of building materials insofar as they relate to the
provision of low-cost/affordable, sustainable housing in Cameroon. In debating whether to
undertake local building materials or imported building materials, it is always important to take
on board the issue of their benefits particular their sustainability credentials. This paper has
argued that the use of building materials harvested from within the location of the construction
site would bring tremendous cost reductions, thereby potentially reducing the housing backlogs
that are familiar in urban communities in developing countries.
On the environmental frontier, the use of locally-sourced materials is said to be vital in
achieving the goals of sustainable development in general and sustainable construction in
particular. Local building materials are from renewable sources and can thus be exploited by the
present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to use the same
materials.
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New perspective on more sustainable and affordable housing for

lower income group in Turkey - assessing life cycle cost
. Emekci & A. M. Tanyer
Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
ABSTRACT: A building must be sustainable in order to make as little impact as possible on the
natural environments and use energy, water, land and other resources efficiently. However, the
concept of sustainability makes sense when applied by all segments of society. No matter how
sustainable, a building never achieves environmental protection completely, while another
building next to its harms the environment. To ensure environmental protection completely,
especially the low-income group must be included in this situation. Contrary to the popular
belief, sustainability and being economic are not opposed to each other; but are complementary.
As the housing built according to sustainability criteria will not create additional cost in total for
low-income group, it is estimated to reduce total cost. In policies implemented especially in the
lower income group projects, due to the fact that widely only construction cost is taken into
account and maintenance and operating costs of housing are ignored, on the one hand, the
housing producing for low-income group after a while cannot be affordable, on the other hand,
it damages the sustainable environmental goals in terms of issues such as efficiently using
energy, water, land and other resources. In addition, for the reason that the allocated share for
housing expenses increases in total income, one would have to allocate less money for food,
health care and other expenses. This can damage the social sustainability of the society. A
housing project that appealed to the low-income group can contribute a sustainable living by
reducing maintenance and operational costs incurred throughout its life cycle. In this study, the
concept of sustainability will be discussed with long term affordability in the context of lowcost housing in Turkey. The aim of the study is to help developing a transparent, extensive and
systematic research of the commonalities, incompatibilities and tradeoffs between affordability
and sustainability. This study offers general guidelines how produce more sustainable and
affordable housing with using LCC analysis. The study also purposes to contribute to the
housing policy in Turkey to produce more sustainable and affordable housing and to inform
policy makers/decision-makers and occupants in terms of the effectiveness of existing low-cost
housing projects in the long-term maintenance and operational affordability.
1 INTRODUCTION
The importance of the built environment for sustainable development is well highlighted in the
literature (Jones, et al., 2007, UNEP, 2007; Ortiz, et al., 2008). Studies suggest that residential
and commercial building sectors are responsible for more than 40% of primary energy
consumed in OECD countries and this is expected to rise in the coming years (UNEP, 2009).
World Commission on Environment and Development describes sustainable development as
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. It promotes the integration of environmental policies and
development strategies. According to the definition of sustainable development defined by

556
WCED, two concepts can be described. First one is meeting the needs of the poor. Second one
is the ability of future generations to meet their needs. In the developing countries, to provide
social equity, the priority must be given to the essential needs of the worlds poor. In the context
of housing provision, their needs are taken into consideration in terms of sustainability for
future generations.
The housing situation in any country is very important in order to ensure social and economic
stability and also it differs from country to country. The challenges predominantly faced in
urban regions of developing and undeveloped parts of each country may have common features,
but each affects their own unique socio-cultural experiences. In the urban areas, population
continues to grow dramatically. Rapid urbanization leads to the increasing housing demand in
these areas. The government can respond to the problem of urbanization through housing
projects at subsidized sale prices. The housing projects should be affordable for every segment
of society, especially lower income groups. Because, everyone has a fundamental human right
to housing. The rights must be ensured to all people regardless of income or access to economic
resources. Housing cost should be at such a level that the attainment and satisfaction of other
basic needs are not threatened or compromised (De Schutter, 2014). People should not have to
choose buying food and paying housing cost. Lower income group is one of the disadvantaged
groups in the society. Hence, in the study, the disadvantaged group will be considered.
Affordability in housing is often defined by the ratio of purchase price to total household
income (Bujang & Zarin, 2008; Zebardast, 2006). There is an extensive agreement that it is an
increasingly popular issue (Berry, 2003, 2006; Mike Berry, 2006; Yates, et al., 2007). The
variety of reasons such as increasing economic inequality, demographic change, building costs
etc. contribute to this (Berry & Dalton, 2004). In the current situation, the term of affordability
is identified only financial cost. Maintenance and operational costs such as energy and water
utilities are ignored. Therefore its long-term affordability is unclear. According to Fankhauser
and Tepic (2007) a typical lower income household spends a significant part of monthly income
on energy and utility services such as electricity, heating and water. Hence, operational and
maintenance costs incurred by the life cycle of a building must be calculated in the housing
affordability. In Turkey, the affordability issue is critical. In Turkey, the share of spending on
rent or housing payment consists of 1/4 of households spending (TUK, 2015). Besides, in
definitions of housing affordability, important issues such as environmental and social
sustainability of housing are neglected (Mulliner, Smallbone, & Maliene, 2013). A housing
should be not only affordable but also sustainable. Although in the short term, the terms of
affordability and sustainability are perceived as contradictory, in the long term lifetime
affordability and sustainability are complementary. This is required a long term analysis.
Sustainability and housing affordability are the most important concepts in order to provide
social equity and protect environment completely. These important concepts can be measured
simultaneously by means of life cycle thinking methods. Life cycle cost analysis which is one of
these methods has been used in a sustainability context for buildings (BS ISO 15686-5, 2012). It
is defined as the
cost of an asset or its parts throughout its life cycle, while fulfilling the
performance requirements and life cycle costing as the methodology for the
assessment of these costs; methodology for systematic economic evaluation of lifecycle costs over a period of analysis, as defined in the agreed scope (BS ISO
15686-5, 2012).
The study aims to find more sustainable and affordable solution to housing problem for all
segment of society, especially lower income groups in their housing life cycle period. Life cycle
cost analysis is examined as a solution to provide more sustainable and lifetime affordable
housing.
2 SUSTAINABILITY
In an architectural context, sustainability is presented as a term that defines economically
affordable, environmentally healthy, and technologically efficient and high-performance

557
buildings (Edwards, 2005; Steele, 2005; Sassi, 2006; Smith, 2006; Steinfeld, 2006; Williams,
2007; Newman and Jennings, 2008; Vallero and Brasier, 2008).
The main objectives of sustainable architecture are given by U.S. National Institute of
Building Science as
to reduce, or completely avoid depletion of critical resources like energy, water,
and raw materials; prevent environmental degradation caused by facilities and
infrastructure throughout their life cycle; and create built environments that are
livable, comfortable, safe, and productive (WBDG, 2013).
Williams (2007) presents sustainable architecture as a solution that overcomes the economic,
social, and environmental challenges.
3 LOW-COST HOUSING VS AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Housing is an environment where people live and grow. It is an essential need of human that
also protects and act as security identified by Maslow and Max-Neef in human theories of needs
(Hadkins, 2009). According to Yakubu (1980), it is described as a sine qua non of human
living.
According to Meng et al. (2004), low cost housing is described as a type of low profit
commodity housing with government subsidies and policy support to provide decent house for
low-income households. Venter et al. (2004) state that low cost housing is generally taking
place in the urban peripheries on rural areas where land is cheap but costs of infrastructure and
transportation are high. Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOK) defines low
cost housing as a housing option for lower to middle income people (TOK, 1966).
In developing countries, housing provision is one of the major challenges. The problem is
more serious in countries with a high rate of urbanization. The governments respond to the
problem by providing low cost houses to the lower income groups as a basic social need. The
role and importance of low cost housing practices are of great importance to create a sustainable
environment. Because sustainability ensures social equity and it gives priority to the world
poor.
In the recent times, affordable housing has been used as an alternative to term low cost
housing (Gabriel, et al, 2005; Milligan, et al., 2004). But, low-cost housing does not always
mean affordable housing. Like low cost housing, affordable housing is designed for people who
cannot afford to buy or rent housing under market conditions (Needham & Verhage, 1998).
However, low cost housing may not always be affordable.
4 LIFETIME HOUSING AFFORDABILITY
Affordable housing is designed usually to meet the needs of households whose incomes are not
enough to let them access convenient housing in the market without assistance (Milligan, et al,
2004). Basically, public policy indicator of affordability is the percentage of income spent on
housing (Bogdon & Can, 1997; Linneman & Megbolugbe, 1992).
In many countries around the World, measuring of housing affordability has conventionally
been based upon the mortgage repayment capacity. According to U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, it is generally affordable housing, if it constitutes 30 percent or less of household
income. This affordability measuring method is the most common one in many countries around
the World. However, this method does not give the buyer a true indication of the total costs
involved (Smith, 2010). Current policies are in tendency to target construction costs of housing.
However, it can have undesirable effects in the long term. Housing affordability are essentially
short-run indicators. Long term policy perspectives are needed to provide lifetime housing
affordability.

558
5 LIFE CYCLE COST ANALYSIS

Sustainability is on the international agenda and gives direction to the construction sector.
Sustainability covers the three pillars-economic, social and environmental. To assess the
building holistically in terms of sustainability, its entire life cycle has to be taken into account.
In this section, life cycle cost analysis (LCC) as part of a wider sustainability assessment is
investigated.
Life cycle cost analysis can be defined as the method for assessing the economic value of
decisions of a design project. Basically LCC is cradle-to-grave costs. It encompasses all costs of
acquiring, owning, and disposing of a building or building system. Life cycle cost analysis
(LCC) is a method to estimate the total ownership costs (Office of Government Commerce
(OGC), 2003).
Figure 1. Cost breakdown structure (Fabrycky & Blanchard, 1991).
In the construction industry, LCC is used to measure the quantity of whole buildings,
systems, and/or building components and materials costs and observing the happened all the
way through the life cycle (Lindholm & Suomala, 2005; Woodward, 1997). The technique can
be used to inform designers and clients and assist decision-making for building investment
projects (Flanagan, Kendell, Norman, & Robinson, 1987; Glick & Guggemos, 2010; Morrissey
& Horne, 2011; E Sterner, 2002).
Generally, LCC can be specified during the early concept development and design phase of
any project (United Nation Environment Programme (UNEP), 2004). Therefore, the technique
is helpful for predicting total cost of building in the early phase (Bogensttter, 2000; Pulakka &
Sarja, 1999). It can also be enabled to evaluate financial benefits of housing energy efficiency
measures (Moore, et al., 2010; Morrissey & Horne, 2011).
In the UK, Bird (1986) suggests a broader view on LCC. According to him, the aims of the
method is not just reducing the running cost or total cost, main aim is;
to enable clients and building users to know how to obtain value for money in
their own terms, by knowing what these costs are likely to be and whether the
performance obtained warrants particular levels of expenditure.
(Bird, 1986:281).
In literature, publications related to the use of LCC grew in number and scope, a few of them
includes the subject of lower income group. There is a clear gap in this issue. On the other hand,
there is a lack of research and data on the low cost housing and life cycle cost analysis in
Turkey.
6 THE SITUATION IN TURKEY IN TERMS

SUSTAINABILITY AND AFFORDABILITY
OF
LOW
COST
HOUSING,
Provision of low cost housing is one of the major challenges facing developing countries. Like
the other developing countries, it is a priority to Turkey. With the continuous increase of
demand for housing in urban areas, it is worthwhile to discuss producing sustainable and
affordable housing for lower income groups.

559
In Turkey, after the industrialization movement which initiated in the 1950s, a massive
migration from rural areas to urban areas was begun. Housing problems have emerged over time
as a result of this massive migration. The housing needs of the growing population can cause
irregular settlements. These settlements refer to the low cost building. However, the
uncontrolled settlements were orderless, unhealthy, lack of infrastructure and risky in terms of
life. The Turkish policy-makers have begun to discuss this issue after 2000 within the
framework of urban transformation. In 2002, open up to the world and become fully
integrated to the global economic system are proclaimed in the government action plan. With
this plan urban transformation has entered the agenda. The aim of the urban transformation is
creating more attractive and competitive urban centers. Then, the Gecekondu (Slum)
Transformation Projects were put into action with the aim of preventing prevent unhealthy and
ugly urbanization(Government program of the Justice and Development Party, 2004). These
projects have been started by Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOK) in
collaboration with the local governments. So, low cost housing have become more widespread
in Turkey. Low cost housing in Turkey has been provided only by public sector, namely The
Housing Development Administration (TOK). Private sector cannot produce low cost housing
in Turkey.
At end of 2014, Turkeys population is about 77.7 million inhabitants. The annual population
increase speed of the country in 2014 has been realized 13, 3 per thousand (TUK, 2014). The
country population continues to increase and urbanize. Provision of housing is a priority to
Turkey. A great number of houses are built every year in Turkey. Most of them are mass
houses. However, small percentage of the mass housing is low cost housing. At first, the
housing produced for lower income group may seem affordable but, while evaluating their life
cycle periods, they are not affordable for lower income groups whose the maximum income
level cannot exceed to 3200 (TOKI, 2016) or who have a Green Card or receive salary within
the meaning of the Law No. 2022205 or benefiting from the Social Aid and Solidarity
Encouragement Fund within the meaning of the Law No 3294206 or not having been dependent
on any one of the social security institutions (TOKI, 2010). The underlying cause of the
problem is that housing affordability evaluates essentially as a short-run indicator. While total
cost of the housing produced for lower income groups are often perceived as only initial cost,
their maintenance cost and operational cost are not taken into consideration in their life cycle
period. In Turkey, the lifetime housing affordability issue is critical. The share of spending on
rent or housing payment consists of 1/4 of households spending.
Figure 2. Household consumption expenditure by types of expenditure, Turkey (TUK, 2014).
Therefore, low cost housing produced by TOK in Turkey must be discussed in terms of the
long-term operational affordability. In Turkey, systematic, thorough methods and studies of
integrated life cycle costing of housing options are needed. Current policies are in tendency to
target construction costs of housing. However, it can have undesirable effects in the long term.
560

Long term policy perspectives are needed to provide lifetime housing affordability. The study
aims to inform especially policy and decision makers. Because, government is important to be
implemented price reducing precautions. More sustainable and affordable housing can be
produced at same cost or maybe lower cost.
The authors believe that the term sustainability in this study may also mean sustainability for
a nation. A house can be built both sustainable and affordable at a reasonable price. In this
study, the concept of sustainability will be discussed with lifetime affordability. The aim of the
study is to help developing a transparent, extensive and systematic research of the
commonalities, incompatibilities and tradeoffs between affordability and sustainability. Lifetime
housing affordability includes not only initial cost but also operational, maintenance and
disposal costs. Generally, lower income groups can only take into account initial cost, when
they want to buy a new house. They overlook other costs like operational cost such as
electricity, heating, water etc. However a typical low-income household spends a significant
part of monthly income on energy and utility services such as electricity, heating and water
(Fankhauser & Tepic, 2007).
7 NEW PERSPECTIVE ON MORE SUSTAINABLE AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING FOR
LOWER INCOME GROUP
Sustainability is described as a potential pathway to protect environment. However, every
segment of the society must reach sustainability to protect environmental completely. Therefore,
sustainability should be affordable. Life time affordability is very important to especially lower
income groups which have limited income. Life time affordable housing contributes to people's
welfare, especially lower income households. High-cost of housing relative to income leads to
financial difficulty. So, they may not meet other basic needs. One of the mission of the
sustainability is to provide everyone quality of life especially at the grass roots level.
There should be able to link between environmental, social issues and financial
consequences. Because, economic aspects such as housing costs and living cost are very
significant issues for sustainable development of the housing construction sector.
In the low cost housing literature, housing affordability is one of the most important topics.
However, affordability is assessed as a short run indicator. In other words, only initial cost
(construction cost) is taken into consideration. Operational/maintenance costs are often
disregarded, so long term affordability remains uncertain. Whereas studies on housing costs
show that initial cost (construction cost) is only a relatively small percentage of the total cost of
housing (see appendix). Likewise, other some important issues like environmental and social
sustainability of housing are also overlooked especially housing designed for lower income
group. There is no systematic research on the theory, practice and policy implications of
combining these objectives. A housing should be not only affordable but also sustainable.
In policies implemented especially in housing projects for the lower income groups, due to
the fact that widely only construction cost is taken into account and maintenance and operating
costs of housing are ignored, on the one hand the housing producing for lower income groups
after a while cannot be affordable, on the other hand it damages the sustainable environmental
goals in terms of issues such as efficiently using energy, water, land and other resources. In
addition, for the reason that the allocated share for housing expenses increases in total income,
one would have to allocate less money for food, health care and other expenses. This can
damage the social sustainability of the society.
However, there is a general tendency for housing affordability and sustainability to be
opposed choices (e.g. Kellett, 2006, Boardman, et al., 2005, Smith and Jones, 2003). Although
in the short term, the terms of affordability and sustainability are perceived as opposition, in the
long term lifetime affordability and sustainability are complementary. The discussion about
costs and benefits of sustainable housing and effects on housing affordability has been confined
as a choice between affordability and sustainability, two priorities in opposition to one another.
However, for the long term economic, social and environmental sustainability of Turkey,
affordability and sustainability issues are both required.
The aim of the study is to help developing a transparent, extensive and systematic research of
the commonalities, incompatibilities and tradeoffs between affordability and sustainability. The

561
objective of the study is to outline a research approach to enable this broader aim to be
achieved. The study claim that more sustainable and affordable housing can be produced at
same cost or maybe lower cost by considering their life cycle periods. When designed new
housing, if its maintenance cost and operational cost are known and its cost hot spots are
identified, significant saving can be achieved. This can provide not only economic sustainability
but also environment and social sustainability. In terms of environment sustainability, the less
cost means the less pollution, less wasting and also reducing energy demand means reducing
environmental impacts and reducing the dependency on fossil fuels by to reducing energy
demand. Sustainability already offers the limitation of the resources. When analyzing in terms
of social sustainability; if the allocated share for housing expenses increases in total income, one
would have to allocate less money for food, health care and other expenses. This can damage
the social sustainability of the society. A housing project that appealed to low income group can
contribute to a sustainable living by reducing maintenance and operational costs incurred
throughout its life cycle.
Building costs have also risen. So, number of studies related to improve energy and water
consumption have also increased. According to general literature, they indicate that any
construction cost increases due to energy and water efficiency are marginal at around 1% of
build or 0.5% of house cost. Consequently, operating costs are lowered and quickly paying back
the additional build costs. This study offers general guidelines how produce more sustainable
and affordable housing with using LCC analysis. It also offers basic model as following Figure
3.
Figure 3. Life Cycle Costing Model -purposes and target groups.
562

The study also purposes to contribute to the housing policy in Turkey to produce sustainable
affordable housing and to inform policy makers/decision-makers and occupants in terms of the
effectiveness of existing low-cost housing projects in the long-term maintenance and
operational affordability. The study aims to inform especially policy and decision makers.
Because, government is important to be implement price reducing precautions.
The model includes different purposes and target groups. In other words, different parts of the
model are relevant for different users and different aims. While all phases aim to inform the
policy makers and decision makers and to ensure sustainability and lifetime affordability, only
use phase is related to life time affordability regarding occupants. By using LCC based
model, more sustainable and lifetime affordable housing will be produced.
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564
APPENDIX
Summary of assumptions for the key input parameters applied to life-cycle costing (LCC)
models.
Assumed
construction
cost
(as %of lifecycle cost)
Assumed
running
cost
(as %of
life-cycle
cost)
Assumed
discount
rate (%)
6%
94%
7%
42%
58%
5%
Author(s)
(year)
Type of
building
Location
Assumed
lifespan
(years)
Ive (2006)
Commercial
UK
20
Mithraratne
and Vale
(2004)
Residential
NA
PellegriniMasini et
al. (2010)
Residential
NA
25
16%
84%
3.5%
Wong et al.
(2010)
Commercial
Malaysia
60
19%
81%
4-10%
TuhusDubrow
and Krarti
(2010)
Commercial
US
60
34%
66%
5%
Kshirsagar,
El-Gafy, &
Abdelhamid
(2010)
Institutional
NA
38
12%
88%
6%
Wang,Wei,
and Sun
(2014)
Residential
NA
30
31%
69%
NA
100

565
Multi-perspective sustainability analysis of magnesium oxide

structural insulated panel
T. M. Froese, P. Li, D. L. Behar, M. Alijla & A. Chutskoff
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
ABSTRACT: With increasing interest from the construction industry to deliver innovative
solutions for low-cost energy-efficient green housing, Magnesium Oxide Structural Insulated
Panels (MgO SIPs) are being developed as one alternative envelope system for green housing.
Although many benefits have been claimed, little quantitative support can be found. This
research, as a case study of a pilot single family house for First Nations communities using an
MgO SIP envelope system, provides several quantitative analyses such as labor productivity
assessment, life-cycle environmental assessment, cost analysis and thermography quality test,
for the MgO SIP house and other envelope alternatives. A qualitative analysis of the benefits
and challenges found during construction are also examined. The results show that the MgO SIP
panels perform slightly be-low the expected results for traditional construction assemblies in
many of the quantitative assessments, although several advantages are evident in the qualitative
analysis. The results are inconclusive in terms of definitive conclusions regarding the relative
cost and functional performance of the MgO SIPs, but they do help to understand the
implications of this alternative construction techniques.
1 INTRODUCTION
With increasing interest from the construction industry to deliver innovative solutions for lowcost energy-efficient green housing, Magnesium Oxide Structural Insulated Panels (MgO SIPs)
are being developed as one alternative envelope system for green housing. SIPs are an
innovative building system and with a reported production growth of 5.3% in 2013 (SIPA, n.d.).
SIPs are high performance building panels that are prefabricated in controlled factory conditions
and then shipped to and installed on site. MgO SIPs contain MgO sheathing in the panels.
Although many benefits have been claimed for MgO SIPs, little quantitative support is
available. A prototype high performance house was recently constructed using MgO SIPs, and a
number or research studies were conducted to assess multiple perspectives of the MgO SIPs.
The studies address environment impacts, cost, quality, and construction productivity.
1.1 Project background
A full-scale prototype house was constructed on the University of British Columbia (UBC)
Vancouver campus in late 2015 by AYO Smart Home Inc., a company dedicated to provide
high-efficiency, low-cost homes for First Nations community.
The home comprises 2 stories, 3 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms with a total construction area of
1620ft2. The building envelope (foundation walls, ground floor, exterior walls and roof) was
constructed with MgO SIPs. The second floor and roof beams were constructed of dimensional
566

lumber and heavy timber. The MgO SIPs are composted of a rigid insulating core of expanded
polystyrene (EPS), Oriented Strand Board (OSB) interior sheathing and MgO exterior
sheathing. The foam core is recessed to allow for placement of connection plates. It is intended
to ultimately use MgO for all sheathing, but OSB is currently required to meet seismic
requirements.
The panels were manufactured in a plant of TitanWall Inc. of Alberta, shipped to the
construction site, and installed on a prepared concrete foundation. The structural construction
was performed by MAGpro Building Systems Inc., an Alberta based company with extensive
experience installing the TitanWall system. The installation crew consisted of four experienced
MAGpro installers aided by two inexperienced First Nations community members, all of which
remained consistent during the entire two-week duration of SIP construction.
1.2 Methodology
Quantitative analyses were conducted on four aspects: environment impact, cost, quality and
productivity, which are elaborated in the following four sections. Observations and interviews
were used to provide qualitative data. Discussions and suggestions arising from the qualitative
data are included in each of the four sections. Table 1 lists specific methods used.
Table 1. Research Methods.
Productivity
Environment
Quantitative Productivity study
Life-cycle Assessment
Qualitative
Time-lapse observation, Site visits, Interviews
Cost
Cost breakdown
Quality
Thermography
2 LIFE-CYCLE ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

The building sector began to realize its environmental impacts in the 1990s. Two methods are
frequently used to manage these impacts, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Life
Cycle Assessment (LCA). EIA is used to measure the actual impacts of a building or
community on the environment. With standardized principles and frameworks, LCA attempts to
measure non-site-specific potential impacts of building products and components (Crawley &
Aho, 1999). LCA addresses the potential environmental impacts of products and servicesboth
embodied and consumedfrom extraction to final disposal (ISO14040, 2006). Therefore, LCA
was adopted in this research. Numerous LCA software are available in the market. After
comparing a few, GaBi 6 was chosen to conduct the LCA analysis.
The goal of this LCA is to investigate the environmental impacts of MgO SIPs (R-30.5 EPS),
in comparison with traditional SIPs (R-30.5 EPS) and with traditional stick-frame envelope
system (R-30 fiberglass), during the raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, onsite construction, and use phase. Since MgO SIP is a fairly new and uncommon product, the
end-of-life phase recycle rate is unknown; thus the end-of-life phase was excluded from the
LCA.
We assume that all the comparatives have the same cladding, water proof sheathing
membrane, and polyethylene sheet in the same locations, the same post and beam system, and
the same doors and windows, since these are not included in the prefabricated SIPs. Given the
same functions for water, air, and vapor control, the functional unit of the LCA spans exterior
walls, roof, and ground floor for the prototype home with same thermal comfort for a 50-year
lifespan.
The MgO SIPs consist of Magnesium Oxide (MgO) sheathing, Oriented Strand Board (OSB),
Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), and Softwood Dimensional Lumber (2-2u6 studs at 24 spacing
with 2-2u8 top and bottom plates). Screws and glue were also included in the LCA model.
According to the manufacture, the MgO originated from China and was shipped to Vancouver,
transported by rail to Calgary, and then by truck-trailer to the plant in High River. Other
materials are assumed from local suppliers (160km from origin site to the manufacturing plant
via truck-trailer). The transport from the plant in High River to the construction site was via rail.
One fork lift (with arm) was used to lift the panels during construction. The SIP installer said

567
they used 150 liters of diesel in total. In the LCA model, the construction process was modeled
by 125kg diesel input. For the occupancy phase, the average annual electricity usage for space
heating in the prototype house is 735kWh, based on energy simulation results conducted by the
developer.
Although the MgO was from China (MgO SIP 1), deposits of magnesium oxide ore exist in
Canada. Therefore, another scenario (MgO SIP 2) was modeled to consider the case where the
MgO is supplied from domestic sources. MgO SIP 2 is exactly the same as MgO SIP 1, except
that the transportation of MgO from original site to the plant is 800km via rail.
The configuration of traditional SIPs is similar to the MgO SIPs, but there is no MgO
sheathing. For exterior wall and floor panels, there is one more layer of OSB. For all the
panels, one layer of 5/8 Type X Gypsum Wall Board (GWB) is added to provide fire
resistance. We assume that the manufacturing plant for the traditional SIPs comparative is in
Calgary as well, but the materials are all from local suppliers (160 km via truck-trailer). The
transportation from plant to site, the on-site installation and the use phase are the same with the
MgO SIP house.
The stick-frame house model is 2-2u6 studs at 16 o.c (giving 1.5 times the amount of
dimensional lumber as with the SIPs) and R-30 fiberglass (originally 9.5 but compressed into
7.25 cavity, resulting in R-25). There is one layer of 5/8 plywood on the outside and one layer
of 5/8 GWB on the inside. Screws are assumed to be twice the amount of that in the SIPs. All
the materials are local to Vancouver and transported to the construction site by truck-trailer. The
on-site construction of a stick-frame house is more complicated than SIPs construction.
However, according to the SIP installer, the use time of a fork lift in the stick-frame house
construction is close to SIP installation. Therefore, the energy used in stick-frame construction
was considered to be the same as in SIP models. The true R-value of the stick-frame walls was
assumed to be R-20, because non-continuous insulation often exhibits a loss in R-value
performance due to settling insulation, pinching, and degradation (TitanWall, n.d.). The energy
simulation for an R-20 stick-frame house with the same mechanical system suggested an
average annual electricity usage for space heating of 1,306kWh, which was used to model the
use phase.
The LCA results are represented by six indicators from CML 2001, an impact assessment
method proposed by a group of scientists under the lead of CML (Center of Environmental
Science of Leiden University). Four are common indicators across different assessment systems:
Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP),
and Ozone Layer Depletion Potential (ODP). The other two are chosen because they were of
interest for this study: Abiotic Depletion Fossil (ADF) and Human Toxicity Potential (HTP).
Error! Reference source not found. shows the LCA results of the four scenarios (taller bars
indicate a more harmful environmental impact).
Generally, the SIPs have a greater (negative) impact than the stick-frame system in terms of
GWP, AP, EP and ADF because their pre-manufacture leads to long-distance transportation
from plant to construction site and the slack wax as an input for OSB production has large
impacts on AP and EP. With respect to ODP, the fiberglass in stick-frame house has a greater
impact than EPS in SIPs. In addition, the reason that stick-frame performs worse on HTP is
because of plywood processing. The values for EPS and fiberglass show that fiberglass is more
harmful in the common indicators, GWP, AP, EP, and ODP, but less harmful in ADF and HTP.
As for sheathing, plywood is more environmentally friendly than OSB except for HTP.
Comparing the three SIP alternatives, MgO SIP 1 has the most negative impact in terms of
GWP, AP, EP and ADF, but if the MgO was sourced domestically, the impacts can be greatly
reduced to a level close to or lower than traditional SIPs. MgO SIPs sourced domestically
perform better than traditional SIP since they use less OSB. Therefore, efforts to develop
domestic MgO sources could substantially improve the SIPs environmental performance.
These results are subjected to several limitations. The electricity in Vancouver mostly comes
from hydro power, which has relatively low environmental impact. If the house is built in
another city where electricity is generated from coal or natural gas, the energy usage during the
occupancy phase will dominate the influence on GWP and ADF. Then, SIPs will be more
environmentally friendly than stick-frame housing in terms of GWP, ADF, ODP and HTP. In
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addition, SIPs have a great potential for reuse, for instance, by disassembling the house and
rebuilding in another place. Stick-frame house assemblies do not generally achieve a high
degree of material reuse. Furthermore, the MgO SIPs have the potential to reduce additional
exterior cladding and interior finishing and the product continues to evolve. These
environmental benefits were not reflected in the LCA.
Figure 1. Comparison of the environmental impacts of envelope systems.
In summary, while the MgO SIP panels offer several functional benefits, they cannot
currently be shown to be more environmentally friendly than alternatives. The LCA does
suggest modifications that may allow them to achieve this, such as domestic sourcing of the
MgO.
3 COST ANALYSIS
Prefabricated homes encompass two main construction methods: panelized and modular. The
fundamental difference between the two is the prefabricated unit, which for the first are
structural panels and for the second are complete box-like modules including the roof structure
and exterior finishes and which sometimes represent the homes functional units (Elitzer, 2015a;
Chiu, 2012). Both systems have implications that make them valuable alternatives to traditional
construction methods. This analysis compares the costs of panelized vs. modular alternatives.
This assessment analyzed two specific case studies since no appropriate industry-average
prices data could be identified. The first one is the prototype house built with MgO SIPs (further
referred to as Project A-SIP). The second case study is a single family house with similar
characteristics to Project A-SIP but built with prefabricated modules (further referred to as
Project B-MOD). For both projects A-SIP and B-MOD, the actual manufacturing and
construction costs incurred in building the homes were broken down and analyzed to calculate
the total cost of the finished homes per square foot, which is a comparable unit of measure
(Williams, 2008).
As introduced previously, Project A-SIP comprises 2 stories, 3 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms
with a total construction area of 1620ft2. The MgO SIPs offer a high performance envelope
system which provides air tightness, high insulation, and durability. The home also includes
high efficiency appliances and LED lighting, an efficient HVAC system that responds
dynamically to demand and natural cooling, and takes advantage of solar energy and solar heat
with a passive design approach (AYO Smart Home, 2015).

569
Project B-MOD is an actual project for a family living in Bethel, Connecticut, USA. The
home consists of 1 storey, 3 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms with a total area of 1780ft2 (Elitzer,
2015b). The house was built with prefabricated modules, and it acquired the Energy Star
label, which means it operates 30% more efficiently than a typical home. The energy efficient
home includes high performance windows and doors, tight seals on insulation and ducts, and
efficient heating/cooling equipment, lighting fixtures and appliances (Express Modular, 2015).
Project A-SIP and Project B-MOD were compared first to get the unit rates for cost
breakdown items. While the two projects were very similar, they were not identical. Thus, a
hypothetical model, Project A-MOD was developed using the construction methods and costs
from Project B, but adjusting them to the specific features and quantities of Project A.
Some costs were excluded from the analysis, such as land, site preparation, foundation,
taxes, fees and permits since those costs are related to the specific site and they are not
influenced by the construction method.
Table 2 shows the cost breakdown for each project in $ CAD (Canadian dollars) per
square foot. The first item Manufactured elements for Project A-SIP includes production,
delivery and installation of the SIPs, windows, doors, roof, HVAC equipment, hot water
heater and other electrical and mechanical fixtures. The Manufactured elements for Project
B-MOD includes production, delivery and installation of the prefabricated modules which
include all of the above-mentioned. For the item Customization, both projects have similar
custom features such as flooring, better quality doors and windows, upgraded and special
appliances (e.g. range hood). For the third item, On-site interior work, Project A-SIP
includes electrical and mechanical installation and connection, interior and drywall finishing,
and interior/exterior painting; Project B-MOD includes module connection, shipping damages
repair, interior finishing, electrical and mechanical connections and other work performed by
the general contractor. Finally, the item On-site exterior work and utilities represents other
work done on-site involving the traditional construction methods. For Project A-SIP, this
includes concrete, metal and lumber work needed for structural support; for Project BMOD, it involves the addition of a front porch which was already included in Project ASIPs design.
For Project A-MOD, Manufactured elements is exactly the same as for Project B-MOD
because the cost of production, delivery and installation of the prefabricated modules was taken
to be the same in both cases. In the case of Customization, Project A-MOD has a higher cost
per square foot than both Project A-SIP and Project B-MOD because the upgrades that Project
A-SIP has in appliances, insulation, and HVAC equipment (which were included in the
Manufactured elements cost of Project A-SIP) are now treated as customizations or
enhancements relative to the modules as manufactured in the Project B-MOD case. For On-site
interior work, there was a considerable diminution in costs compared with Project A-SIP. The
reason is that the modules already have the mechanical and electrical systems installed and only
have to be connected on site, thus much less workers and time is required (roughly half); the
reason that these on-site interior costs for Project A-MOD are somewhat higher than for Project
B-MOD is that Project A-MOD has 2 stories and Project B-MOD only has 1, which increases
the amount and complexity of the on-site work such as the module connection and shipping
damages repair. Finally, the cost item for On-site exterior work and utilities for Project AMOD represents temporary facilities needed for the general contractor (included in Project ASIP) as well as the front porch which, like Project B-MOD, was included under this cost items
(whereas using panel construction, it was included under manufactured elements in Project ASIP).
Table 2. Cost breakdown for the three projects.
Project A-MOD
Concept
($ CAD/ft2)
Manufactured elements
$ 75.89
Customization
$ 6.17
$ 16.04
On-site interior work
$ 9.83
Other on-site work and utilities
Total
$ 107.92
Project A-SIP
($ CAD/ft2)
$ 74.61
$ 4.75
$ 29.63
$ 7.01
$ 116.00
Project B-MOD
($ CAD/ft2)
$ 75.89
$ 5.84
$ 12.42
$ 9.49
$ 103.64
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The results of the analysis demonstrate that the modular construction method is marginally
more cost-effective, having a total cost per square foot of $107.92 CAD versus the $116.00
CAD for the panelized construction method. This results in a difference of $8.08 CAD per
square foot, which means that Project A-SIP is 7.5% more expensive than Project A-MOD.
The major difference in cost comes from the on-site interior work, where the cost in Project
A-SIP is nearly double of that in Project A-MOD. This is due mainly to the amount of labor and
time for the installation and connection of in a panelized house, whereas in a modular house, the
electrical and mechanical systems were already installed and the trades only had to connect
them. Besides, Project A-SIP also needed drywall and painting work that was included in the
manufactured cost for Project A-MOD.
The panelized house and modular house have similar cost for manufactured elements,
although there are more elements in a module than in a panelthe modules include windows,
doors, bathroom, kitchen appliances, and others.
Although this analysis was able to compare the actual costs for two very similar projects, the
contexts for the projects were quite different (two very different locations, different project
participants, etc.). Thus, the uncertainty associated with the costs attributable to the construction
method alone is likely to be greater than the 7.5% difference in costs found in this study. The
conclusion is that neither approach could be shown to have a clear cost advantage based on
these two case studies, and thus the qualitative advantages and disadvantages of each method
may well govern the final decision.
4 QUALITY ASSESSMENT
Achieving high quality in construction can be challenging. In the construction industry, quality
is defined as meeting the requirements of the designer, constructor, regulatory organizations and
the owner (Arditi & Gunaydin, 1997). Quality Assurance (QA) is a program covering activities
necessary to provide quality in the work to meet the project requirements. It involves
establishing project related policies, procedures, standards, training, guidelines, and system
necessary to produce quality. QA provides protection against quality problems through early
warnings of trouble ahead (Arditi & Gunaydin, 1997). Quality Control (QC) is the specific
implementation of the QA program and related activities. Effective QC reduces the possibility
of changes, mistakes and omissions, which in turn result in fewer conflicts and disputes (Arditi
& Gunaydin, 1997).
In the case of the prototype home, high quality levels were desired to increase the energy
efficiency and the durability of the home. The goal of this quality assessment is to recognize
specific defects and weak points in order to overcome the same issues in the future. Site visits
and thermography test were conducted during the construction of the MgO SIPs to discover
potential problem areas. Then, meetings with the Project Manager, Project Engineer, and the
Architect were held to discuss the causes and the solutions for the identified issues.
Implementing quality tests is one of the most important QC methods. Thermography is a nondestructive quality test that assesses the thermal performance of the building envelope during
the construction process (Taylor et al., 2012). A thermography test was implemented on the
house envelope using an Infrared Camera (FLIR E60) that generates thermographic pictures.
The thermal images show the temperature distribution across the interior or exterior surfaces of
a building envelope. Variations of the surface temperature help identify thermal bridges or air
leakage (Taylor et al., 2012). Error! Reference source not found. shows the air leakage
around the widows frames. The dark purple represents the lower, external temperature, while
the yellow represents the higher, internal room temperature. The weak points around the frames
let the warm air out, resulting a negative impact on the energy efficiency of the house.
Thermal bridges occur in three ways, through: materials with higher thermal conductivity
than the surrounding materials, penetrations of the thermal envelope, and discontinuities or gaps
in the insulation material. Figure 2 shows the thermal bridges between the installed MgO SIPs.
The gaps between the panels were filled with multi spray foam, which is not a thermal
insulation material. The foam conducts heat quickly and results in cooler surface inside, the dark
purple area in Figure 2. Thermal bridge increases heat loss significantly and thus has a negative
impact on the thermal comfort and the overall energy-efficiency of the house. The cooler

571
interior surfaces can also attract condensation and the water can stain the interior finish
(Binggeli, 2003). Condensation will result in indoor air quality problems and building
deterioration.
Figure 2. Thermal Images for the windows (left and center) and roof (right).
The quality assessment identified some problems in the construction resulting from the lack
of quality management. The main problem for the installation of the MgO SIPs is the use of
spray foam instead of thermal insulator in the gaps between the panels. Although MgO SIPs are
manufactured to be air-tight and of high quality, the improper on-site work will reduce the
energy performance. The thermographic testing was done during the SIP construction phase.
Advantages of this timing are that potential problems can be identified early, when it is easier to
remedy any problems. A disadvantage, however, is that it does not assess the final performance
of the assembly. In this case, for example, the exterior roofing system has not yet been applied.
Further testing is required to better understand how the potential issues identified during
construction correspond to final problems upon completion.
Some of the quality management techniques that may help to improve quality which were not
carried out on this project include quality training, quality checklists, and method statements.
5 LABOR PRODUCTIVITY ASSESSMENT
Unlike conventional stick-frame house, SIPs do not require the separate construction of wood
framing, sheathing, and insulation because they are prefabricated in plant. Controlled factory
conditions result in more precise tolerances than field framing and deliver a product that is
dimensionally straight, flat and true. The process results in superior quality, which translates to
more efficient site installation and the need for less skilled laborers on site (SIPA & APA,
2007). Previous studies have attempted to validate the perceived productivity benefits of SIPs
compared to conventional stick-frame systems.
A study prepared by the NAHB Research Center for the U.S Department of Housing and
Urban Development reported that foam core panel walls required 13% less labor-hours than
conventional wood framing; however, foam core panel roofs required 50% more labor-hours
(NAHB Research Center, 1994). Another study conducted by RSMeans was based on the
construction of a two-story, three-bedroom home composed of SIP walls, SIP roof, and SIP
dormers. It was concluded that the labor-hours required to install the walls, roof and dormers
was 45% less than a conventional stick-built home (RSMeans, 2006). Mullens and Arif from
The University of Central Florida conducted a comparative analysis and concluded that SIP
walls required 57% less labor-hours for installation while SIP roofs provided a 70% savings in
labor-hours compared to conventional woof framed methods (Mullens & Arif, 2006).
Productivity varies and depends on the specific case. Therefore, a productivity study was
conducted to aid the project developer in the implementation of MgO SIPs by observing the
construction of the prototype house. Activity sampling techniques were employed to obtain
productivity and labor utilization data while quantity-take off methods were used to generate
productivity data for a theoretical wood-frame alternate.
The method of observation was time-lapse video footage. A camera was placed from an aerial
vantage point which covered the construction site including direct work faces, storage yard, and
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office. Still images of the site, including a date/time stamp, were taken at approximately 8
second intervals and compiled into video footage for later observation and data collection.
The group timing technique (GTT) is a method of activity sampling which involves discrete
observations of crew members activities at a specific, continuous time interval (Thomas &
Daily, 1983). The GTT was utilized to collect data for two parallel purposes: to determine the
labor utilization of each individual crew member and to determine the installation labor
productivity of the SIP system. The GTT is dependent on statistical analysis to ensure the
discrete observations represent the sample as a whole. As a result, the minimum number of
observations required is 1476, leading to a maximum of 5.25 minutes of observation interval.
To simplify the video review process, an interval of 5 minutes was ultimately selected. In order
to evaluate both productivity and labor utilization, two observations for each worker are
required at each time interval: one to identify the structural system being worked on and the
other to define the nature of the work.
The scope of this productivity analysis consists of the SIP panels and all structural lumber
components: columns, shear walls and beams. The structural lumber components are included in
the scope of analysis since they are required for the implementation of the SIP system.
It is anticipated that the productivity varies based on the specific systems being installed due
to differences in installation sequences, processes and accessibility requirements. With this in
mind, the productivity analysis was segmented into the following categories: unloading,
foundation walls, level 1 floor, level 1 walls, level 1 double height walls, level 2 floor, level 2
walls, roof and roof overhang. A detailed quantity survey was performed on the SIP panel shop
drawings to determine the quantity of material installed. To calculate the labor productivity of a
comparable stick-frame home, the quantity-takeoff were combined with the published
productivity rates from RS Means Residential Cost Data (R.S. Means Company, 2012).
Table 3. SIP labor productivity.
Quantity
Actual
System
Installed SIP Labor Hours Labor Productivity
Area (sqft) (labor-hours) (labor-hours/sqft)
Unloading
4,974.86
7.75
0.002
Foundation Walls
265.63
45.66
0.172
1,103.41
93.25
0.085
Level 1 Floor
Level 1 Walls
482.52
60.00
0.124
Level 1 Walls
688.94
127.58
0.185
(Double Height)
488.00
57.91
0.119
Level 2 Floor
Level 2 Walls
607.20
60.00
0.099
Roof
1,339.17
107.50
0.080
Excluded
Excluded
Excluded
Roof (Overhang)
Total
4,974.86
559.67
Optimal
Labor Hours Labor Productivity
(labor-hours) (labor-hours/sqft)
4.42
0.001
26.89
0.101
74.44
0.067
49.23
0.102
96.25
0.140
46.45
47.603
82.432
Excluded
427.75
0.095
0.078
0.062
Excluded
Numerous metrics are available to define the productivity in the construction industry. The
most traditionally definition is the ratio of input to output (Dozzi & AbouRizk, 1993). In this
study, the labor productivity is defined as the ratio of labor-hours to square foot output of SIP
installation. A summary of the productivity analysis is presented in Table 3. The actual
productivity includes all labor-hours regardless of worker activity, and the optimal productivity
removes all ineffective work hours. Table 4 provides a comparison of the case study results to
the results of the stick-frame baseline estimate. From Table 5 we see that compared to the
theoretical wood frame analysis the labor productivity of the SIP panel system was significantly
less across all construction systems.
A blended rate of the actual installation productivity of similar systems, walls, floors and
roofs is presented in Table 5 against the results from previous case studies. Although the
productivity results are highly dependent on the unique nature of each project, a trend in the
table is hard to ignore: the productivity results of the previous three studies are very similar to
each other and as a whole, are significantly greater productivity than that observed in the
prototype project.

573
Table 4. SIP vs. Stick-frame labor productivity comparison.

Prototype house - SIPs
Stick-frame baseline
System
Actual Productivity Optimal Productivity Estimated Productivity
(labor-hours/sqft)
(labor-hours/sqft)
(labor-hours/sqft)
Unloading
0.002
0.001
n/a
Foundation Walls
0.172
0.101
0.099
0.085
0.067
0.053
Level 1 Floor
Level 1 Walls
0.124
0.102
0.039
Level 1 Walls
0.185
0.140
0.057
(Double Height)
0.119
0.095
0.042
Level 2 Floor
Level 2 Walls
0.099
0.078
0.039
Roof
0.080
0.062
0.059
Excluded
Excluded
Excluded
Roof (Overhang)
Table 5. Case study comparison for SIP installation productivity.

RSMeans Study
NAHB Study
AYO Smart Home
Labor Productivity
Labor Productivity
System
Labor Productivity
(labor-hours/sqft)
(labor-hours/sqft)
(labor-hours/sqft)
Walls
0.143
0.018
0.026
Floors
0.085
n/a
n/a
Roofs
0.080
0.029
0.030
SIP Savings
Actual Optimal
n/a
-42%
-37%
-68%
n/a
-2%
-21%
-61%
-69%
-59%
-65%
-61%
-27%
n/a
-56%
-51%
-4%
n/a
Mullens and Arif Study

Labor Productivity
(labor-hours/sqft)
0.022
n/a
0.025
The results show that the installation productivity rate of the SIP panel system and related
structural components on the AYO Smart Home pilot project was significantly lower than a
comparable wood-frame home. The results hold true for both the actual productivity rate which
was, on average, 53% lower than wood-frame construction and the optimal productivity rate,
the rate in which all ineffective time has been removed, at an average of 32% lower than wood
frame.
Through an interview with MAGpro, the SIP panel installer of the AYO Smart Home, some
reasons of the low productivity were discovered:
x Regular and small sized panels were used in the design which reduces productivity by
increasing the amount of splines and framing members which are installed on site.
x Steps were taken to ensure panels were delivered to site, ready to install, however it
was noted that much effort was required to modify the foundation wall panels.
x It was noted that the house was designed prior to consultation with the panel
manufacturer and when contracted the panel manufacturer produced a design to fit the
architectural intent instead of to the optimal performance of the SIP system.
x A crew of 6 was utilized when a crew of 4 would have been sufficient.
The labor utilization factor of the crew was determined to be high at 77% compared to an
industry average of 40%-60%. The high labor utilization factor combined with low productivity
suggests that a significant amount of contributory work was being performed. That is, the
workers were remaining busy but not necessarily performing direct output. It was noted by
MAGpro that the laborers on site were inexperience and primarily there to observe and learn
about the installation process. The inclusion of these laborers may be skewing the results by
driving up the contributory observations. However, a further analysis into the methods,
processes and sequences of the SIP installation is recommended in order to identify
inefficiencies and areas of improvement.
6 CONCLUSION
A prototype house was constructed using MgO SIPs as part of a suite of innovative approaches
to low-cost, high-performance housing. The four assessments described in this paper did not
574

demonstrate clear advantages of the MgO SIPs over more traditional alternatives. The MgO
SIPs performed poorer in LCA compared with traditional SIPs and stick-frame construction; the
cost analysis found that the SIPs to be slightly more expense than a similar modular house; the
thermography testing suggested possible thermal bridging issues along the panel joints; and the
labor productivity assessment showed productivity rates well below published rates for SIP
panels.
Although these assessments do not provide evidence that the MgO SIPs are a better
alternative, they cannot be used to confirm the opposite. The project studied was an initial
prototype, with many lessons learned and significant opportunity for improvement. Further,
there are main expected benefits of the MgO SIP panels that were not captured in these
assessments. The MgO SIPs structure and enclosure were completed within 18 days, which is faster
than traditional methods. Compared to stick-frame house, SIPs are better for winter construction, fire
resistance, saving operation energy cost, etc. (TitanWall n.d.). Compared to modular houses, SIPs are
easier to be transported, need smaller equipment to install, and provide customized levels of
insulation. Among SIPs technologies, MgO has the potential to outperform the alternatives of cement,
gypsum, OSB, plywood, and plastics in terms of resistance to flame, water, mold, and insects.
The assessments described here provided insight into the areas and ways in which the prototype MgO
SIP home failed to out-perform traditional techniques. Additional studies are ongoing to investigate the
energy performance of the prototype, and to develop more cost and resource-efficient techniques.
Finally, a larger-scale pilot installation consisting of 10 to 20 homes is currently in planning. Further
development and assessment help to move towards better solutions for low-cost, high-performance
housing.
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Chiu, S. T.-L. 2012. An analysis on: the potential of prefabricated construction industry.
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577
Success factors & bottlenecks in the transformation of vacant

office buildings into student housing; a tool to support the
decision process in the initiative phase
R. P. Geraedts, H. T. Remy & N. de Kat
Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT: The Dutch office market has a big vacancy problem with a high vacancy rate.
Also can be noticed an increasing shortage for student housing in university cities.
Transformation of vacant office buildings into student housing could be a potential sustainable
solution to partially solve both problems. This research project provides an overview of all
relevant aspects needed for the decision process, especially in the initiative phase of these
transformation projects. The aspects related to transformation into student housing are clustered
in five main themes as a success factor or as a possible bottleneck. Success factors and
bottlenecks that affect this type of transformation have been researched through an extensive
literature survey, expert interviews and three in-depth case studies. The results of this research
have led to a useful tool that assists project developers in the initiative phase to consider the
transformation potential of a specific project. The outcome also allows developers to discuss
relevant aspects and visually convinces other actors involved in this complex process
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Problem framing
With a 17% vacancy rate (Bak, 2015) and another 7 million m2 hidden vacancy (Lokhorst,
2013) the Dutch office market has a real vacancy problem. Recently the growth of the office
stock is slowing, however the usage and the commissioning of the existing stock is also
decreasing due to various reasons (CBS, 2015, DTZ-Zadelhoff, 2015), making the stock supply
increase faster than the demand (Buitelaar, 2015). Transformation is one of the solutions to
solve this vacancy problem.
At the same time a growing shortage in student housing is noticed (Poulus, 2014, Hulle,
2015). Transformation into student housing seems a logical solution for both trends. However
market actors generally do not have the expertise and knowledge of specific transformations and
they often have insufficient knowledge of engineering possibilities, zoning plan possibilities or
the financial feasibility of transformation into student housing. The lack of knowledge of
complex issues makes it difficult to perform transformation research in practice. Possibilities
and completed reference projects are often unknown (Van Roy, 2014, Jobsen, 2015).
578

1.2 Problem
The problem of the continuing vacancy of office buildings on the one hand and the shortage of
student housing on the other hand demand for innovative solutions. Transformation into student
housing seems to have potential in which a project developer can play an important role.
However, this potential is influenced by a large number of aspects. Many recent changes in this
context make it difficult to oversee the scattered information in order to consider the potential.
This creates demand for combining current information, to facilitate the consideration of the
potential for transformation into student housing. The aim of this research is to thoroughly
investigate the aspects that influence the transformation of office buildings into student housing
and apply them in a useful tool for the initiative phase with which the developer could consider
the potential, visualize it and discuss it with other actors involved.
1.3 Methodology
A combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods has been carried out to answer
questions like: What are the success factors and bottlenecks in the transformation into student
housing? How could they be clustered into a limited number of themes in order to be clear and
useful for a project developer? The most influential themes and aspects, as described in the next
paragraph, have been developed by an extensive literature survey, amongst others (Hek, 2004,
Geraedts, 2007, Voordt, 2007, Geraedts, 2014), and documentation studies, amongst others
(Thomsen, 2010, Kences, 2013, Buitenhuis, 2014, Nijnstein, 2014, De Quay, 2015, Kences,
2015, TSH, 2015); by in-depth interviews with 10 experts from practice (directors and project
managers of large Dutch and International project development companies and transformation
specialists); and finally three extensive case studies (De Zusterflat in Delft, De Studio in
Amsterdam and The Student Hotel also in Amsterdam). Based on the results of this research a
tool has been developed with the identified success factors and possible bottlenecks, thus
providing the developer a tool to consider the potential for transformation (Kat, 2016).
2 SUCCESS FACTORS AND BOTTLENECKS
A list of five themes has been developed by the described methodology. Within these themes
many aspects (influenceable and non influencable success factors and bottlenecks) were found
that affect the circumstances of the transformation of vacant office buildings into student
housing from the scope of the developer in the initiative phase. The list starts with theme
Market demand for student housing, which is used as a basis throughout the study to relate to
all other influential aspects: 1. Market demand student housing. 2. Housing preferences. 3.
Finance. 4. Legal. 5. Building & location.
2.1 Theme 1: Market demand student housing
For developers, the market demand for student housing is the most important condition for the
consideration of transformation of vacant buildings into student housing. Of all success factors
and bottlenecks have been investigated what their impact might be on this market demand,
positive or negative. Later in this paper a visual example will be presented of the influence of
the different factors in the decision process. First of all the circumstances for transformation into
student housing appear to become more favourable, particularly because of a growing number
of Dutch students who do not live with their parents anymore, a growing number of
international students in The Netherlands and an expected housing shortage in university cities.
Also, the quality of education and the growing awareness by government and municipalities
create favourable conditions for transformation to student housing. Some aspects seem to be
favourably influential, such as transparency (availability of on line information), ranking (of
universities), cooperation with educational institutes and the use of certain resources (possible
scenarios, available information and decision tools). On the other hand there are potential
bottlenecks found concerning the market demand, suggesting declining growth, like the
introduction of a new student loan system that forces students to stay longer at home, an

579
accelerated negative ranking of universities, transparency of available information and a surplus

or lack of distinction between universities. Theme 1 (Market demand for student housing) can
be subdivided into 22 detailed aspects. Some of these are called influenceable and others noninfluenceable success factors. Finally there also are influenceable bottlenecks. The direction of
the arrow shows the positive or negative effect of the different aspects in the decision quadrant
(see Fig. 1). For a detailed description of the mode of operation with these arrows, see
paragraph 3 (Decision support tool) and paragraph 4 (Example of applying the decision support
tool).
Figure 1. The 22 aspects of Theme 1: Market demand student housing.
Figure 2. The 20 aspects of Theme 2: Changing housing preferences.
580

2.2 Theme 2: Changing student housing preferences

Changing housing preferences affect the market demand. The conditions for the transformation
of vacant real estate to student housing may favourably be affected by a shortage of homes with
private facilities. A large number of found housing preference issues appear to be a modifiable
success factor, including various forms of housing, branding, certain facilities and
complementary services, in particular the 'all inclusive' type of dwellings recently. Some aspects
may influence the circumstances unfavourably, hence not all preferences seem possible to be
met, such as the risk of a change in the housing allowance system, higher investment costs and
the surplus of shared residences and accelerated negative competitiveness (see Fig. 2).
Figure 3. The 48 aspects of Theme 3: Finance.

581
2.3 Theme 3: Finance

Student housing in the Netherlands is becoming more professional due to several aspects, with
which national and international investors strongly become interested. Several aspects seem able
to lower acquisition costs and transformation costs, such as scaling and agreements on asbestos
removal. Certain aspects can positively influence the income, including a minimum surface
area. Other aspects appear to be financial bottlenecks for transformation into student housing,
especially high balance sheet values, certain construction costs, tax remittance, the laborious
creation and competition of student housing (see Fig. 3).
Figure 4. The 34 aspects of Theme 4: Legal.
2.4 Theme 4: Legal

Recent years government and municipalities have significantly changed laws, regulations and
policies in many relevant areas. Also a number of favourable legal changes are expected in the
near future. For developers these legal changes result in organizationally, technically and
financially favourable circumstances for permanent and recently also for temporary
transformation into student housing. The current fiscal policy is a major obstacle for these kinds
of transformations and only stimulates to hold on to the existing office zoning plans.
Uncertainty about the future policy is also a legal bottleneck, both the changing of certain
unfavourable regulations and the maintaining of certain favourable legislation. Some other legal
issues may affect the circumstances unfavourably, such as a protected status of a building, the
marking system for housing and certain building requirements (see Fig. 4).
582

2.5 Theme 5: Building & location

Some aspects may favourably influence the potential for transformation into student housing. At
macro level, the real estate market has changed from a supply driven to a demand driven
market. Current and hidden vacancy is still growing faster than the demand for office space,
among others by the economic crisis, new and more efficient (remote) ways of working,
decreasing office jobs, demographic developments, digitization and the construction of new
office buildings. Certain unfavourable results with other vacancy solutions (for instance
demolition) emphasize the potential of transformation into residential, senior or student housing.
At macro and micro level building and location strongly influence this potential. Buildings at
locations that just offer office functions seem only from a commercial perspective interesting
for transformation combined with a total urban area redevelopment. Mobile (international)
students are more likely to reside outside the city centre. At macro and micro level there is a
large number of measurable functional, technical, cultural and legal aspects available for the
transformation of vacant office buildings to student housing (see Fig. 5). Aspect 26 (Potential
environment) and 27 (Potential location) refer to a separate available instrument to assess the
potential of the transformation of vacant office buildings into housing (Transformation Meter (Geraedts, 2007)).
Figure 5. The 27 aspects of Theme 5: Building & Location.
3 THE DECISION SUPPORT TOOL

With the described influenceable and non-influenceable success factors and bottlenecks, divided
in five main themes, which affect the decision process of the transformation of vacant office
buildings into student housing, a very useful tool has been developed. This tool allows the
developer in the initiative phase to consider the transformation potential of a specific project.
The outcome also allows the developer to visually convey and discuss relevant aspects with
actors involved and compare this with other projects.

583
3.1 Structure of the decision support tool

Basic idea of the decision support tool is to position the market demand for student housing
opposite the supply of student housing. The combination of a positive or negative demand for
and a positive or negative supply of student housing leads to four possible scenarios for
developing the transformation of vacant office buildings into student housing, varying from
most favourable (scenario 1) to most unfavourable (scenario 4) (see Fig. 6). Mapping these
scenarios based on contextual changes (trends) supports the investigation if the current strategy
and expectations are valid (Enserink, 2010). The arrows in this scheme correspond with the
arrows in different directions of all the earlier mentioned success factors and bottlenecks. Based
on these arrows of the corresponding aspects the support tool positions the market demand and
supply in one of the possible scenario quadrants.
Figure 6. Matrix structure of the decision support tool; 4 scenarios are based on the different
combinations of the (decreasing or increasing) demand for and supply of student housing.
4 EXAMPLE OF APPLYING THE DECISION SUPPORT TOOL

Working with the list of success factors, possible obstacles (see Figs. 1 - 5) and the related
arrows that determine the direction in the quadrants, a final position is achieved in the matrix
structure. This position can be used in the initiative phase to estimate the potential for the
transformation of a vacant office building into student housing. This can also be used to
visualize and substantiate this to the other actors involved in the decision process.
Figure 7 shows an example of a totally random number of 8 steps to take to determine the
final position in one of the scenario quadrants. This position can be found in Figure 8 where the
outcome of this little exercise ends within scenario 1. In this scenario the market demand seems
584

to develop favourable. The number of non-resident students within the relevant target group
seems to relatively grow and the comparable market supply of student housing seems to shrink.
This will positively influence the market demand and the transformation of vacant office
buildings into student housing.
Figure 7. Example of the application of the decision support tool; the final position in the scenario
quadrants in this example is determined in 8 steps.
Figure 8. Determination in 8 steps of the final position in the decision support tool; in this random
example the finish is reached after 8 steps in the quadrant with scenario 1: most favourable.
4.1 Using the decision tool

Within the five main themes, from Market demand for student housing to Building &
location, in total 151 aspects could be considered in the developed decision process tool. That
is a great number of aspects to deal with. One suggestion to make the procedure more efficient

585
is to advise the users to start first with the choice of those aspects that they think are the most
important or the most relevant for the specific project and related circumstances (weighting of
aspects). Per project and developer other priorities are possible. A number of 20 to 30 of the
most important aspects seem to work better in the decision process than taking notice of all the
possible aspects. With additional research in practice to the implementation of this tool a
detailed advice can be developed towards the most important and used aspects.
5 CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS
This research project provides an overview of the relevant aspects related to the transformation
of vacant office buildings into student housing, clustered in five themes. Success factors and
bottlenecks that affect the potential of these transformations have been investigated. Through an
extended literature survey, expert interviews and in-depth case studies, many aspects have been
found within these themes. The experts recognized most of the aspects found in the literature
and gave additional input. The results are incorporated into a useful tool that allows the
developer in the initiative phase to consider the transformation potential of a specific project.
The outcome also allows developers to discuss relevant aspects and visually convinces other
actors involved in this complex process.
Transformation to student housing projects remains a local and specific task and there will be
no exact number of aspects that always work the best. There are many overall positive aspects,
such as expanding legislation and investor interest. However there are some notable emerging
issues specific to this market. These are in particular the growth of international students and
credit (study point) mobile students, with related demand for short stay, and the growing
relevance to improve the university ranking.
Furthermore, temporary transformation to student housing has to be adaptable to future
changing demands. Also many unfavourable aspects have been found, particularly the
obstruction by fiscal policy and artificial book values of the buildings concerned. Striking
problems are mainly the introduction of the new student loan system and the future risks related
to rent allowance and ranking competition. More research is needed to know the exact
development of the market demand, the willingness of building owners to devaluate their
buildings and the validation of the instrument by the different actors.
5.1 Recommendations (practice)
Transformation to student housing is a local and specific project. Main recommendation is to
focus on the growth development of international and credit mobile students, including by
offering aid in collaboration with educational institutions to improve ranking, in particular by
developing a strong branding and high quality short stay facilities. It is also recommended to
thoroughly consider temporary transformation to student housing that can absorb multiple risks
with flexibility. Related to bottlenecks it is recommended to monitor the impact of the new
student allowance especially in the near future and to follow the government (fiscal) policy, the
preservation of housing allowance and artificial book values of real estate. Furthermore a
recommendation is to properly map the risks associated with the ranking of local educational
institutions.
Because of the great number of decision aspects, the developer is recommended to
thoroughly use the instrument in initiative phase in accordance with the manual. One suggestion
to make the way of work more efficient is to start first with the choice of the most important
aspects or the most relevant for the specific project and the related circumstances.
586

Figure 9. Examples of successful transformations of vacant office buildings into student housing, used
for the in-depth case studies in this research project. From left to right: Delft, Amsterdam and
Amsterdam.
5.2 Recommendations (research)

The tool should be validated in detail in practice. More quantitative data should be examined
and linked and the recommended actions could be strengthened. Furthermore problems
associated with vacancy, transformation and student housing have been researched for the
Netherlands in only two university cities. Extended research to other university cities is
recommended. Input from the different forecasts and the many contextual changes show that
information about the future demand rarely exists and that further scenario research is needed to
the detailed demand for student housing. In the expert interviews, especially the developers
have been appointed as the main actor. Further research to the vision and opinion of other actors
involved could potentially lead to specific angles for each theme with special attention to the
willingness of devaluation by building owners. Three case studies have been conducted.
Additional relevant cases at other locations may create more insights and connections within the
transformation of vacant office buildings into student housing.
REFERENCES
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Buitelaar, E. & Driessen, C. 2015. "The number of vacant office buildings keeps growing; Het aantal lege
kantoren blijft groeien". NRC.
Buitenhuis, V. 2014. "How do students want to live? Hoe willen studenten wonen?".
CBS. 2015. "Vacancy of office buildings 1991 - 2015; Leegstand van kantoren 1991 - 2015".
De Quay, J. 2015. "Spotlight Student Housing in The Netherlands 2015." 4.
DTZ-Zadelhoff. 2015. The Netherlands Complete - Factsheets office buildings and commercial real estate
Amsterdam.
Enserink, B., Hermans, L., Kwakkel, J., Thissen, W. & Koppenjan, J. 2010. Policy Analysis of
MultiDactor systems. The Hague, Netherlands, Lemma.
Geraedts, R., Remy, H., Hermans, M. & Van Rijn, E. 2014. Adaptive Capacity of Buildings; a
determination method to promote flexible and sustainable construction. UIA 2014 Architecture
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Geraedts, R. & Van der Voordt, T. 2007. The New Transformation Meter; A new evaluation instrument
for matching the market supply of vacant office buildings and the market demand for new homes.
Building Stock Activation, 2007. Tokyo.
Hek, M., Kamstra, J. & Geraedts, R. P. 2004. Transformation Guide; transformation of existing real
estate; Herbestemmingswijzer; herbestemming van bestaand vastgoed. Delft: Publikatieburo
Bouwkunde.
Hulle, R. v. 2015. "National monitor student housing; Landelijke Monitor Studentenhuisvesting".

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Jobsen, P., Visscher, J. & Azaaj, I. 2015. Office transformation and own home construction; (Kantoor)
transformatie en eigenbouw: opinieonderzoek onder gemeenten. The Hague, Ministerie van
Binnenlandse Zaken.
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Kences. 2013. "Facts and trends student housing 2013; Feiten en Trends Studentenhuisvesting 2013".
Kences. 2015. "SSH opens student apartment building Johanna; SSH opent studentencomplex Johanna"
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Lokhorst, J., Remoy, H. & Koppels, P. 2013. "Hidden vacancy; mismatch between demand and supply;
Verborgen leegstand: mismatch tussen vraag en aanbod". Real Estate Research Quarterly 12(3).
Nijnstein, S., Haans, A., Kemperman, A. & Borgers, A. 2014. "Beyond demographics: human value
orientation as a predictor of heterogeneity in student housing preferences". Journal of Housing and the
Built Environment 30(2): 18.
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Studentenhuisvesting. Kences. Delft, ABF Research.
Thomsen, J. & Terje, A. 2010. "Aspects of student housing satisfaction: a quantitative study". Journal of
Housing and the Built Environment, 2010(25): 10.
TSH. 2015. The Student Hotel. Amsterdam, TSH.
Van Roy, N. & Vermeulen, S. 2014. First investigate; after that transformation; Eerst onderzoeken, dan
herbestemmen. Onroerend Erfgoed, Beleidsdomein Ruimtelijke Ordening Woonbeleid en Onroerend
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Voordt, D. J. M. v. d., Geraedts, R. P., Remy, H. & Oudijk, C. 2007. Transformation of office buildings;
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589
Policy options for affordable housing

P. Heywood
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
ABSTRACT: Satisfactory and affordable housing plays a critical role in providing the safe
spaces needed to nurture healthy, prosperous and self-reliant lives. These form the basis of any
sustainable society, and are especially integral to the long-term future of mixed economy
democracies. Because peoples dwellings affect and are affected by so many of their daily
activities, effective policy for their funding, location, construction, acquisition and maintenance
depends on recognizing and activating a very wide spectrum of sectors, programs and actions.
In this presentation, examples and images of individual successes are drawn from across the
world over the last century, to provide insights into promising solutions. These span the wide
policy spectrum that is required to solve one of todays most pressing problems, common to
both developed and developing countries. The presentation considers the three elements of
housing inputs, processes and products. Inputs include funding, land, construction and
regulation; processes involve service provision, home building and community engagement, and
product embrace fulfillment or frustration of human values in provisions of affordable housing.
Worldwide examples span the work of governments, market enterprises, voluntary organisations
and communities. Special attention is paid to achievements and images of post war UK New
Towns, European Social Market Housing policies, informal housing upgrading in South Asian
and Latin American countries, the rise and fall of Mortgage Guarantee schemes in the USA,
partnership schemes between governments NGOs and communities, the role of micro credit in
Bangladesh and elsewhere, community housing recycling schemes in the USA and cooperative
and co-housing schemes in Europe and North America. The twin themes that emerge are the
importance of collaboration and the necessarily multi sectoral nature of affordable housing
policy. Finally an evaluation is made to weigh the social and economic benefits of affordable
housing against the financial and economic costs involved, indicating the lasting contributions
that can result for the sustainability of the social and economic foundations of democratic
societies with mixed economies.
1 THEMES
Satisfactory and affordable housing plays a critical role in providing the safe spaces needed to
nurture healthy, prosperous and self-reliant lives. These form the basis of any sustainable
society, and are especially essential to the long-term future of mixed economy democracies.
Because peoples dwellings affect and reflect so many of their daily activities, effective
policy for their funding, location, construction, and tenure depends on recognizing and
activating a wide spectrum of sectors, programs and actions.
In order to provide insights into promising solutions to pressing housing problems in both
developed and developing countries, this presentation examines a number of individual
examples, drawn from across the world over the last century,
590

2 A WIDE RANGE OF APPROACHES

Successes have been achieved by means of very different approaches. In post World War Two
Britain, new towns designated and funded by the national government were able to rehouse over
a million people from inner city slums, bomb damaged areas and local government waiting lists
swollen by the accommodation needs of post war baby boomers (Cullingworth, 1979). The
parallel and even larger scale of West Germanys Social Market Housing Policy accommodated
over ten million people between 1947 and 1963 in rental and purchase units, built by market
enterprises but regulated and supported by government tax incentives (Denton, Forsayth &
Maclennan, 1968). The USAs equally large post war boom in privately built and owner
occupied suburban dwellings likewise relied on market inducements offered by the mortgage
guarantees of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) (Congress of the United States,
Congress Budget Office, 2010). In Australia, the Commonwealth Governments post Global
Financial Crisis (GFC) affordable housing program applied Keynesian economics in a
successful economic stimulus package which operated from 2008-2013 (Australian Government
2009). By contrast, the affordable high-rise construction directly undertaken by the Singapore
Governments Housing Development Board (HDB) has evolved to house more than 80% of the
city-states population across 26 new towns and estates (HDB, 2016). Non Government
Organisations (NGOs) have also grown to supply increasing proportions of many countries
stocks of affordable housing. Swedish Housing Associations now provide a third of all that
countrys housing completions, combining economy and quality with rapid implementation
(Emanuelsson, 2015; Swedish Cooperative Housing Association, 2016). In the developing
world, collaborative programs of upgrading of informal settlements proved to be no less
important and numerically significant and continue to exert beneficial impacts throughout much
of South Asia and Latin America (Turner, 1977; UN-Habitat, 2003).
3 THE ELEMENTS OF HOUSING
In analysing and evaluating the results of these programs, it is useful to examine the three basic
elements of their inputs, processes and outputs. Inputs include land, funds, construction workers
& firms. Processes involve locating and developing sites, constructing and improving
dwellings, providing physical and social services, and promoting sustainable social & economic
engagement and collaboration. The desired outputs involve providing livable dwellings and
essential services to satisfy basic human values of security, nurture, prosperity and social
cohesion. Such outcomes not only help shape personal learning, social skills and cultural
vitality, but also justify and sustain social civility and consensus-based democratic politics.
Figure 1. The three elements oh Housing Systems.

591
4 THE SECTORS & AGENTS OF PRODUCTION

Logically, everyone in a society participates in the consumption of shelter. Even homeless
people are negatively involved through exclusion. In the mixed economy societies that are
increasingly the norm in the contemporary world, the two major stakeholders are, by definition,
their governments and market enterprises (see Figure 1). Nevertheless, non-government and
citizen-based organisations also play increasingly important roles, reflecting a heritage of
thousands of years. Buddhist and Christian monasteries and almshouses are now joined by
social housing organisations in helping meet the needs of rapidly growing towns and cities. The
roles of individuals, families and communities go back even further - more than 100,000 years to early wickerwork family shelters and cave dwellings (Leakey, 1981). The continuation of
these roles in the current epoch has been celebrated by Henry Thoreau (2010) and passionately
advocated by John Turner in his 1976 book Housing by People.
Figure 2. The 4 main producers & agents.
5 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Both inputs to and outcomes from affordable housing vary sharply among political and
economic regimes. In Table 1 Political Economy of Affordable Housing in its Global Context a
nine-fold classification is proposed based on totalitarian, oligopolistic and representative
political systems and command, mixed and free market economies, with varying exposure to
problems of provision of affordable housing.

592
Table 1. Political economy of affordable housing in its global context.

TOTALITARIAN
OLIGOPOLITAN
POLITICS >
Concentrated centralised
Collusive, negotiated
ECONOMICS
power
power
v
J. Machiavelli & K. Marx G. Orwell & C.W. Mills
Junta Power
Servitude
Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon,
North Korea, Myanmar,
COMMAND
Malaysia, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan,
ECONOMY
Belarus
Turkmenistan,
(Pyramidal power,
& formerly USSR & PRC
K. Marx & I. Lenin
combining politics,
China
A. Hitler & J.
business, military &
(National Socialism &
Schact
religion)
Soviet Economics of 20th
Mao Tze Tung &
Century)
Chou en Lai
Currently 0.2 bill people
approx..
approx..
Pragmatic Hegemony
Lucrative Militarism
Zimbabwe, Democratic
PRC China (post Mao),
MIXED
Republic of Congo,
Thailand, Post US
ECONOMY
Sudan, Somalia, Egypt,
Afghanistan, Ethiopia,
Morocco, Algeria
Peru, Ecuador, Columbia
(Regulation & discipline,
justified by inherited
J.M.Keynes
(State managed balance
and/or manufactured
P. Krugman
of interests)
crises of order)
T. Pinketty
approx..
approx..
Monetised Autocracy
Plutocracy
Saudi Arabia, Abu
Russia, Azerbaijan,
Dhabi, Yemen, Uganda,
Kazakhstan, Tajikstan
FREE MARKET
Burundi, Senegal , Syria,
ECONOMY
(Government
(State power wielded in
manipulated by wealthy
pursuit of financial
property and enterprise
F. Von Hayek ,
interests of ruling elite
owners),
M. Friedmann
approx..

approx..
REPRESENTATIVE
Elected & renewable
power
J.S. Mill & K. Popper
Social Control
Nicaragua, Venezuela ,
Bolivia,
(Strict governmental
controls over national &
global markets)

approx..
Social Market
India, Bangladesh, Japan,
European Community,
USA, Brazil, Argentina,
Chile , Ruanda
(Democratically managed
markets.)
approx..
Hegemonic Democracy
Mexico, Peru, Indonesia,
Philippines, Kenya,
Sri Lanka, Nigeria,
Georgia, Tajikistan,
Turkey etc
(Money managed
democracy)
approx..
For many of these types of political economy, affordable housing is not \a significant issue.
While most totalitarian regimes can readily ordain standardized and easily policed provisions,
free market autocracies are able to ignore problems of affordability altogether by relying on a
combination of the discipline of market and military regimes. Oligopolies, whether militaristic,
pragmatic or plutocratic are in positions to ensure that affordable housing is provided and
occupied on terms financially attractive to the oligopolys providing agencies and agents. In
representative systems which are subject to strong social controls, it is in the interests of
populist governments to ensure that people are adequately and securely housed, while free
market democracies are able to disown public responsibility for such matters of individual
choice as shelter and work.
It is therefore in representative systems with mixed economies that problems of affordability
are likely to be most critical. While their economic forces will be drawn to supply the most
lucrative forms of housing, their democratic political structure will tend to respond to recurrent
demands for affordable housing. For these reasons this paper concentrates on the issues of
affordability as affecting the mixed economy democratic systems which prevail for an estimated
2.7 billion people, as indicated in Table 1, or over a third of the worlds current population.

593
6 ROLES OF PRODUCERS OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Of the four major stakeholders indicated in Figure 2, Governments are the most prominent and
influential. For over 100 years, first Western and then Southern European ones, particularly
those of Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Portugal and Italy, have played increasingly prominent
roles in managing the housing market and setting acceptable housing standards (Denton,
Forsyth and Maclennan,1968; Housing Europe, 2015; Branco and Alves 2016; Cooperative
Housing International, 2016; Cremaschi, 2016). Post war reconstruction following World War
Two accelerated this process. Egalitarian goals of social democracy combined with Keynesian
deficit spending to tackle the urgent needs of European recovery (Donnison and Ungerson,
1982). Similar programs were adopted in some Australian and Canadian states and provinces to
help house migrants, and returning military personnel. Subsequently, partnership schemes
pioneered by the South Australian Housing Trust provided public land for private housing
development to gain contributions of around 10% of affordable new public dwellings in these
schemes (Marsden, 1986, 2011). Such social market policies and partnerships were again
combined in Australias post GFC Economic Stimulus package to enable the voluntary sector to
construct large volumes of affordable housing (Heywood, 2011).
Meanwhile in developing countries, the insensitivity and impracticality of trying to house or
relocate large numbers of urban settlers and squatters in new high rise estates led many
governments to adopt the squatter upgrading policies advocated by John Turner. Publicised in
his influential 1976 book Housing by People, such policies have been widely applied in Latin
America and South Asia, particularly in the great cities of the Indian subcontinent. Led by
Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi, these have enabled millions of Bustee dwellers and squatters to
improve improvised homes in dense districts with productive economies, making use of newly
installed services of sanitation, water, power and public access (UN Habitat, 2003).
The contrasting new-build solution adopted in the small city state of Singapore has also
succeeded, housing over two million people over a period of 40 years in new high rise tower
blocks with well integrated urban services and avoiding the bad quality and poor living
conditions of much of the USSRs tower and slab housing (Bater,1981). In summary, it has
been demonstrated that governments can play large, diverse and successful roles in providing
affordable housing, especially in target setting and managing integration with other key sectors.
Although Market enterprises may prefer to concentrate on luxury and lucrative housing for
the upper and middle classes, they can also play positive and significant roles in providing
affordable housing packages. In Western Europe, North America and Australasia, tax breaks
provide incentives for developers to build and continue renting affordable housing, accepting
government incentives to tackle otherwise intractable housing shortages (Heywood, 2011).
Market construction was also the mainspring of the housing process by which the USA
achieved its current status as a middle class property owning democracy, with over 64% of
families owning their own homes (Filler, 2016). Over a period of 60 years, tens of millions of
mortgage guarantees were provided to large numbers of white and blue collar workers by the
Federal Housing Authority (FHA) through their agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac (US
Department of Housing & Urban Development [HUD], 2016). Though ultimately market
operators abuse of lending and re-possession practices would lead to the 2008 housing collapse
and the subsequent Global Financial Crisis, this could have been avoided by better government
regulation of market practices.
The formative contributions and roles of the Voluntary Sector in developing housing policy
in many parts of the developed world were first developed in Britain and mainland Western
Europe. As early as two hundred years ago, the first Terminating Building Societies were
founded to enable prescribed numbers of members to construct dwellings for each. A century
later, Octavia Hills cooperative Housing Trusts in East London pioneered social housing
associations, which now provide over two million such affordable dwellings. Supported by the
Homes & Communities Agency (HCA) with a 2008-11 triennial budget of 8 billion pounds,
they provide a clear and successful example of inter-sectoral partnership (HCA, 2008). In
Sweden, Housing Associations now provide a third of all new housing and offer tenants a stake
in their homes, which they have the opportunity to sell when they move on. Collectively they
own the dwellings through democratically elected Boards of Directors (JM, 2015).
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In Australia, major programs of affordable housing and suburban infrastructure were

launched to counteract the effects of the GFC. Combining social market mechanisms with
partnership approaches, they started to tackle the countrys historic lack of affordable housing.
Though the Commonwealths offer of funds and tax concessions for construction and renting of
affordable housing was largely ignored by market enterprises, it was taken up enthusiastically
by NGOs, and helped to maintain both the building industry and the nations stock of low cost
housing. One example was the program of the Brisbane Housing Company (BHC), founded in
2002 with initial funding of $50 million from the Queensland State Government and $10
million from Brisbane City Council (BHC, 2016; Heywood, 2011). BHC has sought to mix not
only public, private and charitable funding but also public and private tenancies with dwellings
for sale or rent. In ten years 1,500 units have been built, largely in medium density, medium rise
blocks, and rapidly achieve a total of 5% of all social housing throughout the metropolis. Land
is bought on the open market, or acquired at reduced rates from government. As well as 8-12
storey apartment blocks, innovative schemes have recycled old school classroom blocks to
create compact two bedroomed retirement units with small front and back gardens, illustrated in
the PPTs. In this way, BHC has proved more agile and active than many market enterprise
developers.
In developing nations, where rapidly growing flows of rural-urban migration make voluntary
initiatives even more significant, challenges faced by NGOs have been even greater. By linking
Government policy and infrastructure provision to the direct involvement of local people and
communities, they have helped develop innovative policies. Among the most celebrated and
influential of these have been Micro Credit programs, such as those of the Grameen Bank,
initially in Bangladesh, but now with branches throughout the world (Bornstein, 1992, Yunus,
1998, Grameen Bank, 2016) Small sums, up to the equivalent of $US 3,000, have been lent to
members of over 40,000 groups of penniless local people, supported only by the social
collateral of the trust of their neighbors. These have enabled many to improve their dwellings
and install power and water services, while others have used bank sponsored and locally
produced pre-fabricated components to embark on new home building programs. The
extraordinary achievements of the Grameen Bank and similar Micro Credit organisations have
stimulated the individual initiative of millions of the poorest of the poor to cooperate to
construct or drastically improve their own dwellings. By taking responsibility for their own
shelter, they make possible a policy package where matching contributions from governments,
market enterprises and NGOs can provide essential services of water, power, sanitation and
drainage.
6.1 The roles of communities, families and individuals in developing nations
Such upgrading schemes recognise that while individuals and community groups can often be
assisted to provide or improve their own shelter, public sector intervention is necessary to install
the essentially communal services of clean water, reliable power, effective drainage and healthy
disposal and treatment of sewage. For instance, after the initial failure of clean clearance of
spontaneous settlements and their intended replacement by high rise fringe estates in Kolkata in
the early 1970s, the engineers of the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA,
now the KMDA) switched emphasis to a massive program of Bustee improvement in line
with the National Slum Development Programme (NSDP). This resulted in a 20 years program
to service and upgrade over two million inner city slums and bustees, accommodating five
million people or a third of the citys population. Although a further one million Bustee dwellers
and one million slum dwellers still await improvements to their homes, the achievements of
public-private cooperation remains impressive. Dr Nita Kundu, (2003) writing for the Global
Report on Human Settlements, summarises the need for a wide spectrum of policies involving
local communities as well as government, market and NGOs:
Since slum improvement and poverty eradication require a comprehensive
approach by pulling together different departments, a sense of convergence needs
to be built up. Unfortunately, this is lacking in the Calcutta Metropolitan
Corporation (CMC), As a result the CMC is not in a position to (fully) implement
the National Slum Development Programmes (NDSP). Further slum improvement

595
and poverty eradication under NSDP will require community participation.

Finally, private-public partnerships have been proved to be helpful in solving the
local problems especially in slums and in promoting self help group activities
(UN Habitat, 2003)
In developed countries, where extreme exclusion and lack-lustre responses by governments
and market enterprises may afflict disempowered communities, community based and
cooperative housing schemes have produced some sign posting successes. The account by
Jacqueline Leavitt and Susan Saegert (1990) of the regeneration of near derelict housing in New
Yorks Harlem by its own largely Afro- American communities provides a heartening account
of effective community based remedies. Devastated by decay, discrimination, poverty and
drugs, Harlems dignified and structurally sound old brownstone dwellings were falling apart in
the 1970s and 1980s. Abandoned apartment blocks resumed by New York City were sold
cheaply to co-ops of sitting tenants, often led by community mothers mainly elderly black
women - to shape the process of place making. They conclude that the keys to the success of
this movement, so important to the renaissance of New York, were community spirit and social
bonds
Other heartening instances of the success of such bottom up schemes include co-housing
projects in Europe and North America; the work of sweat equity schemes in many USA cities;
and the considerable, if small scale, achievements of housing cooperatives in towns and cities
throughout the UK. These include the celebrated outcomes of the Coin Street Community
Builders (CSCB, 2016) in Central London.
CSCB has transformed a largely derelict 13 acre (5ha) site into a thriving mixed use
neighbourhood by creating new co-operative homes, shops, galleries, and restaurants, a park and
riverside walkway and sports facilities. CSCB has developed over two hundred well built homes
at affordable rents for people in housing need and new schemes are planned. Four housing cooperatives run the mix of 1- 3 bedroomed flats and 3- 5 bedroomed houses. Income is generated
by organising events and providing community and consultancy services and spaces for shops,
meetings and conferences. By global standards, these may be small-scale achievements, but
they provide significant examples of what can done by communities of determined and
collaborative individuals.
Another rapidly expanding approach is Cohousing, defined as an intentional community of
private homes clustered around shared space. Each family home has traditional amenities with
its own private kitchen. A shared common house normally includes dining area, laundry,
recreational spaces and parking, with walkways, gardens and tool sheds. Growing fast in Europe
with several hundred schemes in each of Denmark, Netherlands and UK, there are also 160 in
25 states in the USA. Most schemes include 10-100 component dwellings. Throughout Europe
and North America, there are estimated to be as many as 50,000 cohousing dwellings. Though
more concerned with lifestyle, ecology and mutual aid, it is well suited to promote affordability.
From co-housing to public housing, there is no shortage of pathways to housing affordability
(Cohousing Association of United States, 2015).
7 SUMMARY OF METHODS FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Given this wide variety of intersecting methods, it is not surprising that collaboration of several
sets of agencies, organisations and individuals is normally required. Table 2, below, therefore
indicates complementary, rather than competing ways, means and policies.
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Table 2. Methods, Agencies & examples for affordable housing.

Agencies involved
Examples
Method
Garden City Associations in Welwyn, Hemel
Hempstead etc.
Voluntary Associations.
UK New Towns- Stevenage etc..
1. Land Assembly
Government Agencies.
Levittown (New York, Pennsylvania & New
Market Enterprises.
Jersey USA).
New York City Property
National & State Governments.
West German Post war reconstruction.
2. Tax Incentives
Market Enterprises.
Australian Economic Stimulus.
Montreal, Vancouver & Toronto: 20%
3.
Inclusionary
affordable housing required in developments of
Zoning- required
Local Governments.
> 200 dwellings.
mix of tenures,
Public Housing Agencies.
Chicago City & Community Land Trust: aim to
types, forms & Non Government Organisations.
develop 10-20% affordable housing in all new
costs
medium and large residential developments.
4.
Collaboration
US Mortgage Guarantees for home purchase:
National, State & Metro
between sectors:
FHA & Federal National Mortgage Association
Governments.
e.g. public funding,
1938- 2008.
Market Enterprises.
mortgage
Levittowns in New York, Pennsylvania & New
NGOs & CBOs.
guarantees,
Jersey.
Communities, Families &
micro
credit,
Grameen Housing.
Individuals
housing coops
Coin Street Community Builders.
Government Departments &
5.
Partnership
Agencies: e.g. UK Home &
UK Housing Associations with HCA.
Schemes between Communities Authority (HCA),
governments
& South Australian Housing Trust
Housing SA with Delfin Developments in
market enterprises
(SAHT).
Golden Grove.
Land Development Companies.
Housing Cooperatives &
Coin Street Community Builders in London
Companies.
6.
Collaborative
Orenco Housing Development Centre in Metro
Housing Development
community- baaed
Portland
Agencies.
action
Arban Housing in Dhaka, Bangladesh
NGOs.
7. Micro Credit
NGOs & CBOs making small
Grameen Housing.
for home building
loans for collaborative new
Mutual la Primera in La Paz.
building
and improvement
8.
Collaboration
Bustee improvement in Kolkata
between
Informal & Squatter settlement
Slum upgrading in Medellin
Governments,
upgrading schemes.
New York Citys Community Households
landlords, NGOs
Programme in Harlem, 1970s & 80s
tenants & squatters
8 EVALUATION BY COSTS & BENEFITS

Table 3 indicates the kinds of cost accruing to each of the major stakeholders in monetary terms,
which is how expenditure is committed and justified, while benefits are assessed in terms of
satisfaction of goals and values, which are the original reasons for the expenditure.

597
Table 3. Evaluation of costs & benefits for Agencies & Stakeholders.

Stake
Costs
Benefits
holder roles
1.Capacity to regulate economy (as
in Australias 2008-13 economic
stimulus);
1.Lost revenue in
2. Improved productivity of
tax concessions.
securely housed families.
Govern
2. Direct
3. Sustainability of housing stock.
ment
expenditure on
4. Inter generational equity of
affordable
reducing costs of housing for
housing programs
under-capitalised younger
generation.
5. Electoral support of large voting
group.
Market
Lower & slower

rates of financial
return.
NGOS &
CBOs
Management &
support costs.
Individ
uals &
families
Personal
contributions of
time, energy and
funds, as in
Microcredit
1.Security of investments in
government partnerships,
2. Predictability of returns.
3. Sustainable schemes.
1.Community Participation.
2. Public reputation, credibility &
status.
3.Capacity for technical innovation.
1. Secure shelter.
2. Enhanced personal productivity
and family health 3. Improved
prospects for community
collaboration, education & well
being
Evaluation
Productive long term

economic & investment
policies with rapid short term
economic benefits and
sustainable long term
economic, social and electoral
returns
Good guaranteed maximum

returns from minimum risks
(Maximin) returns but poor
comparative Minimax
profits (minimum risks from
maximum profits). Requires
cautious capitalism of
Social Market Economy as in
West Germany & Finland .
A challenging but potentially
transformative role, linking
contributions by governments
and communities
Long term reduced housing
costs & increased capacity for
productive investment in
health, education, family life
& personal development
The evaluation shows that while governments financial costs are considerable, they can
expect to reap rewards of immediate and continuing social stability and electoral support,
important to representative democratic systems as well as continuing financial returns from
investments as safe as houses. By ensuring access to affordable housing for the upcoming
generation, which has not yet acquired the capital to invest in medium and high priced market
dwellings, there is also an important gain in inter-generational equity, bringing its own
associated benefits of social and political stability.
Although short-term market returns from affordable housing construction are outstripped by
the gains to be made from building dwellings for the affluent, the long-term investment security
and predictability benefits provided by government partnerships have acquired powerful real
world advantages following the housing-fuelled failures of the GFC.
In many developed countries, such as in Scandinavia and Britain, where non government
organisations supply large volumes of affordable housing, the power of collaboration and
initiative has produced rewards of both financial and political security. Elsewhere, in the
developing world, NGOs have mostly become involved in affordable housing provision as a
secondary activity, to such main ones as micro credit, home based industries, health
improvement and environmental action. However, the enormous scope for NGOs in housing is
demonstrated by the success of Grameen Housing, and schemes sponsored by the Community
Organisation & Development Institute (CODI) in Thailand.
Finally, throughput the developed world, individuals and communities are making use of
unprecedented improvements in literacy, numeracy and electronic communication to collaborate
with governments and NGOs to take housing initiatives into their own hands, in such examples
as the UKs Coin Street Community Builders and the USAs Community Development
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Corporations. In many developing countries, the transformative effects of micro credit provide
crucial impetus to the capacities of individual families and communities to themselves achieve
the financial, physical and social benefits of secure and healthy shelter.
9 CONCLUSIONS
Housing affordability has never been more important nor more achievable, but it cannot be
corralled into a single universal cure solution. Not only does it require conscious collaboration
between all major sectors of organised society- communities, voluntary organisations, market
enterprises and government and its agencies- but it can also exert the widest possible range of
beneficial social and economic consequences throughout these sectors. Governments can both
act themselves and also incentivize and regulate the activities of all three other sets of
stakeholders. Market enterprises can achieve sustainable long-term trading benefits by
combining government incentives with their own efficiencies in cost cutting and agile
inventiveness. NGOs and CBOs can be no less imaginative in applying community and client
based links to develop new forms of collaboration to match identifiable needs with efficiently
applied resources. Finally, individuals and communities can themselves contribute unique local
knowledge, personal energy and resilience to cooperate with each and with other stakeholders to
satisfy their own basic human needs for affordable shelter.
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601
The impacts of cost determinism in architectural foundation

design education: quasi-experiment
S. Lee
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA
ABSTRACT: This research concerns teaching cost as an integral design determinant during
architectural foundation design education. Absence in training for the reality of financial
limitations leads to misunderstanding of expensive houses or projects being examples of quality
and quantity of distinguished architecture in todays construction. While it indicates the lack of
awareness in the inequality of global economy, it also demonstrates the separation of the
academic minds from the worlds around them. This study suggested ways to improve and
strengthen foundation design education with learning objectives focused on fundamental
architectural elements as cost indicators. The result suggested positive changes in students
perception of affordable design. By identifying and understanding solutions to cost conscious
design, students ability to produce better-rounded and appropriate designs was strengthened.
This study would contribute to knowledge about the understanding of cost as integral design
determinant to help young designers produce and appreciate realistic design.
1 INTRODUCTION
Residential architectural projects often address affordable housing in ways closely associated
with cost and the consequences of low-cost designs are often unpleasant and severe.
Unfortunately, general affordable design often results in inferior, ill-equipped, and aesthetically
unappealing projects. People commonly misunderstand that aesthetic value often suffers when
less money is put into the design and the architectural project is designed with an eye on
quantity, not quality (Casselman, 2007, para. 3). This is a misconception, as all projects
associated with material qualities and conditions that rely on economic value.
At the 69th annual Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture meeting, Comerio and
Protzen of University of California at Berkeley raised concerns about the shrinkage of
architectural services. They stated that, the specializations in the profession of architecture is
expanding, nonetheless architectural education no longer bothers to make the economic and
financial problems of buildings its own (Comerio & Chusid, 1982). Yet, it is the social,
economic, and political imperatives that make architecture more than an ordinary building
(Kostof, 1977).
Every year, approximately 27,000 students graduate from accredited architecture schools
(National Architectural Accredited Board [NAAB], 2013). Despite this large number, only a
small number of references and architects are devoted and available to affordable housing
design in the U.S. (Mallach, 2006). Many architects and designers often frown on affordable
housing design, but do not attempt to provide effective solutions to ensure better quality
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designs. Stansfield Smith (1999) stated that the key to a successful architectural profession is
not only that professions ability to represent quality and deliver high standards, but also its
ability to represent the values and aspirations of the society it serves (Standfield Smith, 1999).
The problem may be rooted in an [architectural] educational system (Gellner, 2011, para.
2).
The educational tendency is to separate program from design, conceptual education and
technical education, and university context from the real world (Dutton, 1982). Architectural
educators encourage students to provide unique designs that often result in costly solutions to
hypothetical and real projects because students have an absence in practical training (Gellner,
2011, para. 11). Moreover, the recent tendency in design education is toward shaping signature
architects like Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid, rather than nurturing basic design skills and
architectural contributions to society (Nicol & Pilling, 2000). Therefore, expensive houses or
heroic projects are often examples of the quality and quantity of distinguished architecture in
todays landscape. This viewpoint leads to a lack of awareness in the inequality of the global
economy (Fisher, 2012).
It is the assumption of this study that current architectural foundation design education does
not recognize cost as an integral design determinant. This study is concerned that current
foundation design education does not inform students of the cost aspect of architecture in
producing realizable designs. In addition, current foundation design education understates
modest architectural projects that do not require wealth, yet demonstrate that aesthetically
pleasing, functional, and affordable designs can be achieved. Designers ethical responsibility
extends beyond wealth, and architectural education plays a key role in this transition.
1.1 Definition of terms
1.1.1 Foundation design education
Foundation design education refers to the first- and second-year of undergraduate study in an
architecture school in which educators teach the fundamentals of architectural design. Most
students develop a design process and mold various design skills during foundation design
education. Thus, how-to design with quality aesthetics is taught as well as why-to is cultivated.
During the foundation years students are most open and susceptible to suggestions of
architectural philosophies, ideas, and processes. Therefore, the foundational design courses
provide the opportunity to introduce students to approaches in design with cost as an integral
design determinant.
The first-year design studio courses focus on teaching basics of architectural form, and often
retain an emphasis on abstraction, proportion, and Bauhaus principles of graphic design
(Clayton, 2006). It is where the design students begin to explore materials, geometry, surfaces,
and detailing (Washington University at St. Louis, 2013). In the meantime, the second-year
design studio courses let students incorporate fundamental principles into a building and site.
The second-year design students focus on the relationship of architecture to the landscape and to
the urban environment. In any event, it would be difficult to incorporate the concept of cost in
the first-year design studio projects because abstract forms often exclude context. Hence, the
second-year design studio course would be more appropriate to teach cost conscious design with
small building projects with programmatic context.
1.1.2 Cost indicators
Like cost, indicators are substantive, quantitative, and tangible. Here, the term refers to
quantitative formal and spatial design factors that affect costs in building construction. Based on
fundamental architectural elements, which correspond to building construction, cost indicators
provide a dynamic system for designing and evaluating cost with application to affordable
design. The cost indicators include site, foundation, structural framing, wall, doors and
windows, floor, roof, circulation (steps or stairs), area, materials and finishes, and complexity.
The first eight (8) cost indicators are referenced to physical architectural elements while the
later three (3) cost indicators (area, materials and finishes, and complexity) applies to each cost
indicator ascertaining architectural elements. These (11) cost indicators are used as the

603
instrument for the treatment group to utilize in order to recognize cost efficiency and
effectiveness during their decision making process.
2 METHOD
This research took a place with two (2) second-year architectural design studios at Texas A&M
University in 2015. This quasi-experiment followed a nonequivalent control-group design,
which involved a nonrandom assignment of research participants to one control group and one
treatment group. The research is conducted using a pretestposttest quasi-experimental design
during one (1) semester with second-year architectural design studios for two consecutive
semesters: a control group in Spring 2015 semester and with a treatment group in Fall 2015
semester (see Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Quasi-experimental research design.
Overall, an equal number of thirteen (13) students for each experimental group were enrolled
in the two (2) courses. Each studio lasted fourteen (14) weeks per semester. The course structure
and objectives were different for both the control and treatment groups. It is important to note
that both groups were exposed to an understanding of building elements at the fundamental
level. However, the treatment groups learning objectives were tailored to enhance the students
understanding of cost conscious design in architectural foundation design education. The
learning objectives of the new course are as follows:
x Students will be able to analyze fundamental architectural elements and understand
the craft and construction.
x Students will demonstrate a basic knowledge of typical and innovative materials and
construction methods.
x Students will be able to communicate preliminary cost estimating concepts to
incorporate budget consideration of architectural elements at design-decision making
process (new course only).
x Students will have knowledge of cost indicators as applied to design (new course
only).
While the students in the control group were enrolled in an existing second-year design studio
course, the students in the treatment group were enrolled in the newly developed design studio
course. At the end of the semester, a posttest in the form of a survey were provided to each
group. The pretest-posttest surveys measured the outcome from the experimental intervention
604

with the treatment group and access the students actual ability to apply cost determinism in
design.
3 DISCUSSION
3.1 Pretest and posttest

Based on the attendance and tardiness, only eleven (11) students from the control group
participated in both the pretest and posttest surveys to generate the pretest-posttest comparison.
All thirteen (13) treatment group students participated in both tests causing a difference in the
sample number. The statistical t-test can be still performed with unequal sample numbers;
therefore, the number of students did not influence the t-test (Gall, Borg, & Gall, 1996).
First, the pretest-posttest changes in students perspectives on wealth and its impact on doing
high quality architecture were compared between the two (2) groups. Strong differences
between the control and treatment groups pretest-posttest results were found, particularly in
their perspectives toward wealth. Most students in the control group responded that wealth
sometimes represents high quality products in todays construction. The control groups
perspective on the impact of wealth toward quality design did not change on the posttest.
Initially, the treatment groups responses were similar to that of the control group at the pre-test;
however, their responses changed from sometimes in the pretest to rarely in the posttest
(see Fig. 2).
Figure 2. Pretest posttest difference in the significance of wealth in quality design represented in radar
graphs.
As can be seen in the Figure 2, the research treatment changed students perspectives to
recognize that financial affluence does not necessarily imply high quality design in building
construction. It can be inferred that studying various examples of quality low-cost design
affected the treatment groups perspective on quality design apart from wealth.
Concurrently, the treatment group has acknowledged that awareness in building cost should
begin early, while they also need to build a mindset for its recognition and tools to deal with it.
The majority of students in the control group responded that learning cost can sometimes
influence producing quality low cost design. However, the majority of students in the treatment
group have responded that often awareness in cost will influence developing quality design
(see Fig. 3).

605
Figure 3. Posttest differences in between two groups perspectives of the impact of learning cost to
produce quality design.
When students in the both groups were asked whether learning cost as an integral design
determinant is appropriate at the second-year design studio education level, all (n=13) in the
treatment group marked yes. In the case of the control group (n=11), everyone but one (1)
student indicated yes. This student from the control group commented in the survey that
learning cost would be more appropriate as upper level content and would not be suitable at the
second-year level. As a result, both the control and treatment group indicated that learning cost
as an integral design determinant, is appropriate at the second-year level. It was evident looking
at the treatment groups change in perspective as mentioned above. Budgetary factors are
unavoidable in any real projects, and students have learned the importance of cost awareness to
achieve success of projects through this experience.
While learning cost as an integral design determinant is appropriate, the control group
indicated that it could be either in a form of lecture or design studio course. Evidently, the
control group went through a semester long existing program where they did not gain awareness
in cost. But having benefited from learning it through design studio course, the treatment group
indicated that it should take part in design course (see Fig. 4). In sum, the pretest-posttest
comparison discovered the significant differences in the treatment students attitude toward cost
in architecture, and found that students are susceptible toward learning cost as an integral design
determinant.
Figure 4. Posttest differences in between two groups preference in learning cost in a lecture course or a
design studio course.
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3.2 20K House design

The quasi-experiment discovered the effectiveness of cost as a fundamental design determinant
in foundation design education as well as the impacts of cost indicators in students design by
comparing results from the control and treatment groups. While cost indicators served as the
main instruments driving this experiment and also, used as the evaluation criteria to determine
students awareness in cost, both the control and treatment groups were instructed to design a
small house with a budget of $20,000. Four (4) selected external evaluators: a design instructor,
a construction science professor, an urban planning professor, and a construction manager,
performed evaluation on both the control and treatment groups 20K House designs using an
evaluation matrix based on the cost indicators.
A total of twenty-six (26) different 20K Houses designs were proposed from both the control
group (n=13) and treatment group (n=13). These (26) 20K Houses were individually rated based
on the cost indicators by a group of evaluators representing different disciplines within the rim
of architecture. Their evaluation points were accumulated and mean scores were calculated for
both the control and treatment groups. The evaluators were asked to appropriately scale
construction cost based on the cost indicators provided. A low in the Likert scale matrix
indicates that evaluators found students design decisions as more practical and economic while
a high in the evaluation suggests costly and exorbitant design solution based on the magnitude
of area, complexity, and materials and finishes (see Appendix A). Then, the quantifiable score
of the minimum point of one (1) was given to low and maximum points of five (5) was given
to high as reviewed by the evaluators.
Table 1. the control and treatment groups paired t-test differences in their 20K House design evaluation
scores based on cost indicators.
C.G
T.G
(n=13)
(n=13)
Difference
Cost Indicators
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
df
t-test
p-value
in %
Site
3.153
0.857
2.538
0.548
1.760
0.047
24.24
Foundation
2.557
0.587
2.365
0.262
1.022
0.163
8.13
Structural
3.230
0.450
2.903
0.331
1.914
0.039
11.26
Framing
Wall
3.230
0.461
3.153
0.389
0.470
0.323
2.44
Doors &
3.365
1.087
2.5
1.060
1.904
0.040
34.62
12
Windows
Roof
3.493
0.870
3.211
0.465
0.929
0.185
8.78
Floor
3.096
0.495
2.743
0.445
1.926
0.039
12.85
Circulation
2.288
0.865
2.134
0.440
0.621
0.273
7.21
TOTAL
24.416
3.014
21.551
2.370
2.739
0.009
13.30
Indicators
AVG Indicators
3.052
2.693
Note: The mean score is based on reviewers evaluation of 1=low, 5=high in building cost. Difference of
pretest-posttest between two groups significantly differ with one-sided p < 0.05. The scoring was also
based on the magnitude of complexity, area, and materials and finishes.
The control groups mean score was 3.05 out of five (5) total points, while the mean score for
the treatment group was 2.69 out of five (5) total points. Although both groups mean scores
were in the intermediate range, the statistical analysis showed that the overall mean score for the
control group is 13.3% higher, and presumably 13.3% more expensive than the treatment group
design, and such a difference is considered statistically significant. In addition to the fact that
this result was proven to be statistically significant, the treatment made positive influence on the
students design and perspective toward cost as a fundamental design determinant. As inferred
earlier, the pretest results for both control and treatment groups reflecting their perspectives of
cost and wealth in producing quality design were similar. Nevertheless, it is true that, the
students in the control group were enrolled in sequentially (1) higher level design studio course

607
than the treatment group. Therefore, it can be conjectured that if it both groups were enrolled in
the same level of architectural design course, the difference between the control and treatment
group could have been greater than 13.3%.
Figure 5. Overall 20K housing design evaluation scores based on cost indicators.
However, differences in the individual cost indicators mean scores were not found to be all
significant. The one sided P-values of the evaluation scores indicated significant differences
between the control and treatment groups design on the site, structural framing, doors and
windows, and floor. The highest mean score difference was discovered in the doors and
windows revealing approximately a 34% difference. It was followed by the site with a 24%
difference in the mean scores received. The mean scores of the structural framing and floor were
also calculated, with approximately an 11-12% different between the two (2) groups.
Nevertheless, there was no significant difference in the foundation, wall, roof and circulation in
between the control and treatment groups (see Table 1 and Fig. 5). The lowest mean score
difference was found in the wall, which showed a 2.44% difference between the two (2) groups.
Overall, each cost indicators mean scores in the treatment group were lower than the same
categorical mean scores of the control group.
In summary, the pretest-posttest survey discovered the difference in students attitude toward
cost as an integral design determinant, and identified its appropriateness in the second-year
design studio education. Evaluations by the selected evaluators has discovered the significant
difference in the students 20K House design between the control and treatment groups. Based
on the evaluation using the cost indicators, the doors and windows were the most effective cost
indicator among the eleven (11) indicators.
4 CONCLUSION
This study revealed that the second-year design studio education is the appropriate time to
introduce cost as an integral design determinant. This study developed a new second-year
design course with objectives to introduce and promote cost as an integral design determinant.
Cost indicators were used as a device in this experiment to test and measure the effectiveness of
cost indicators. As a result, this study found the impacts and appropriateness of learning cost as
a fundamental design determinant, compared to the curriculum in existing second-year design
608

studio courses. Using cost indicators as a guide, the treatment group demonstrated cost
conscious and realistic approaches to design the 20K Houses. In addition, this research
determined the effectiveness of each cost indicator. The cost indicators of site, structural
framing, wall, doors and windows, area, materials and finishes, and complexity were more
effective indicators than others, as they were portrayed in students 20K House designs.
REFERENCES
Casselman, B. 2007. High design for low-income housing: Established and rising architects bring
innovation
to
affordability.
The
Wall
Street
Journal.
Available
at:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB119876732563552709 [Accessed on 23 March 2016].
Clayton, M. 2006. Replacing the 1950s Curriculum (White paper). Synthetic Landscapes: Proceedings of
the 25th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture, (pp. 48
52).
Louisville:
University
of
Kentucky.
Available
at:
http://cumincad.architexturez.net/system/files/pdf/acadia06_048.content.pdf [Accessed on 23 March
2016].
Comerio, M. C. & Chusid, J. M (eds.). 1982. Proceedings of the 69th annual meeting of the Association of
Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture.
Fisher, T. 2012. Seeing the world whole. Journal of Architectural Education, 65, 1316.
doi:10.1111/j.1531-314X.2011.01193.x.
Gall, M. D., Borg, W. R. & Gall, J. P. 1996. Educational research: An introduction. Boston, MA:
Longman.
Gellner, A. 2011. August 1. Re: Affordable housing: What do architects know about it? (Web log
message). Available at: http://arrolgellner.blogspot.com/2011/08/affordable-housing-invisibileanswer.html [Accessed on 23 March 2016].
Kostof, S. 1977. The architect: Chapters in the history of the profession. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Mallach, A. 2006. Designing affordable housing. Available at: http://www.nhi.org
/online/issues/books/145.html [Accessed on 23 March 2016].
National Architectural Accrediting Board [NAAB]. 2013. 2014 Conditions for accreditationFirst draft.
Available at: http://www.caad.msstate.edu/caad
_web/sarc/naab_web/pdf/2014%20NAAB%20Conditions%20for%20Accreditation.pdf [Accessed on
23 March 2016].
Stansfield Smith, C. 1999. Review of architectural education. London. England: Royal Institute of British
Architects.
Washington University at St. Louis. 2013. Architecture, Deans Letter Fall 2013. Fox School of Design &
Visual Arts. St. Louis, MO: Author.

APPENDIX A
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610


611
Redesigning a dysfunctional neighborhood to be healthy

E. M. Mazzola
School of Architecture, The University of Notre Dame, Rome, Italy
ABSTRACT: Our current cities are the result of decades of implementation of the so-called
functional city, theorized by the modernist movement after the 1933s CIAM Congress which
had been held on the steamer Patris I (Marseille / Piraeus journey). Still today, when we talk
about urban development, even in the so-called Emerging Countries, we run the risk of being
attracted by the model of the so- called "western world". In fact, we need to learn from our
recent mistakes and from our achievements of the past, in order to re-create a good relationship
between cities and countryside and, (within the cities), between humans and spaces. The big
business link with multinational housing construction must not be ignored. The debate on
"sustainability" is often about energy used in buildings only, while the costs and the harmful
effects of some industrial solutions, presented as sustainable, are always overlooked. How much
does all of this cost? And what does it mean to produce, to transport and to install those
technologies, which are not sustainable when the low-cost oil era ends? The Old World
presents many solutions that have been put aside according to the 1933s Athens Charter. The
authors of that document excluded from their "models" those one of many Mediterranean
Countries millennial cradle of urban culture and simply defined them "wrong". According
to the Athens Charter, those models did not respect the guidelines ("doctrinal points") of the
new cities town-planning i.e. the Functional City linked to addiction to automobiles!
Today, after the socio-economic-environmental disaster of the so-called Functional City, we
can recognize that the functional dream is a dysfunctional nightmare, and we need to act in
order to repair the damages before it is too late! This paper aims to demonstrate that a solution is
possible, simply by recovering the urban-architectural canons that preceded the Modernism era.
The historical archives of Mediterranean cities are full of documents referring to their way of
building until the widespread implementation of Athens Charter. The knowledge of these rules
could open to new ways to operate a sustainable retraining of the cities, especially in the
peripheral areas, devastated by the urbanism of numbers, of zoning and of standards.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is unanimously held that the birth of modernist architecture and urban planning dates from the
4th CIAM held in Athens in August 1933. The Charter that resulted, a result of its authors
wishes, especially of Le Corbusier, became a sort of Bible for architects and lawmakers.
Thus, cities of the whole world over came to lose any possible relationship with that healthy
tradition that had determined their development for thousands of years before it.
That tradition, made up of monumental and minor, noble and vernacular architecture,
depending on climatic, orographic, cultural and religious situations, etc. ensured that every
population developed a sort of architectural and urban planning dialect. Over time, it was able
to refine itself until it was able to define the identity of places and skills of the people and of
612

entire communities and be recognised as belonging to those places. By imposing a single and
therefore depersonalising language of forms and proportions based on hypothetical
mathematical models far removed from true human needs, we have ensured that the cities of the
20th century, and individual examples of architecture within them, have lost any possible
relationship with people, trying to honour a presumably technological civilization in an
increasingly abstruse way.
Today, the result of imposing this modernist vision on the city should force us to consider the
fact that the utopia of the so-called functional city has been a complete failure.
The socio-economic and ecological repercussions of that vision show that the dream of
making the city functional and well-ordered was flawed by an ideology that was completely
senseless.
On the other hand, it is hard to imagine why cities that have been functional for over two
thousand years could no longer be considered fitting models. We probably should have been
less radical in our reasoning, making allowances for cars to be used within cities, but there was
certainly no need to make provision for heavy transport vehicles.
Nor can we accept that cities that have grown and expanded for two thousand years,
respecting their delicate relationship with the countryside, as well as the need to have everything
available, need to be re-planned to fit in with zoning requirements. The separation of functions,
an increase in distances, thinking based on urban grids and absolute rules, basing all
measurements on standard numbers rather than human sized dimensions, has led to large, costly
and unsafe cities as never before. Today it is even more difficult to think of restoring the
relationship between the city and the countryside, and between built-up areas and human beings
within the city, simply because post-1933 regulations were based on those absolute certainties.
In Italy, several urban planning laws were based on these theories. Even today, laws such as
nos. 1150/42, 167/62 and presidential decrees nos. 1404 and 1444/68 prevail. It is hard to think
about changing things if those who legislate continue to think along the lines of those laws, and
especially that ideology. We probably need to start rediscovering a series of norms, codes, and
building regulations that existed before that wretched 1933, study them properly and understand
how they can be adapted to contemporary life, as well cohabit with some recent norms that are
worth taking into consideration, because, as Edmund Burke stated, A healthy civilisation is one
which maintains the relationships with the present, the future and the past. When the past
nourishes and supports time present and the future, a society is advanced.
2 LITTLE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT THE 4TH C.I.A.M
The 4th ciam is unanimously recognised as the beginning of Modernism. What is not known, or
at least not well known, are the details of what actually happened, how and when, and who drew
up the Athens Charter, which the entire urban planning and architectural sector hinges on
today.
More information detailing those events might help us understand who was responsible for
leading us to the current situation. Above all, however, it would help us consider whether it is
right to continue on this path. Both modernists and lovers of tradition complain about the
present situation. Many of them express their feelings and criticise things that do not function in
the functionalist city but no one has been brave enough to document the history of the problem
and name those who were responsible. Perhaps this is because they feared becoming objects of
ridicule, or being condemned for having dared to question the sacred cows of our profession. I
will attempt, therefore, to clear up things, in the hope that it will unite us in reviewing all the
urban planning laws produced following that unfortunate journey in 1933!
On July 29th 1933, the steamer Patris I left from the port of Marseilles for Piraeus. It was not
an ordinary journey, but a floating charrette1 with a double purpose, both real and
metaphoric. The first one was a Marseilles-Athens-Marseilles cruise, but the second was the
quest for a more liveable city that was functional and radiant.
The journey of the 4th International Congress of Modern Architecture ferried its
participants towards the Greek shores, but also towards a functional city, in other words, also
towards their discussions and the final Congress document, or the Charter.

613
It was only to be expected that things had already been decided beforehand. The preparatory
instructions for the congress issued as far back as 1931 read: The Congress has chosen a
materialistic-deductive method over an idealistic-inductive one, as the only possible basis for a
collective activity and as a result to carry out the working Congress [Di Biagi, 1988]. In
addition, we would do well to remember that once on board, the participants found themselves
having to discuss 33 different cities, using charts that had all been prepared on the basis of a
single ideological perspective based on a predetermined method. It goes without saying that this
interpretation, and thus the very strong criticism of the historic city, was merely a given that had
to be ratified, so much so that in addition to the 33 dysfunctional cities, a thirty-fourth, new
city: the FUNCTIONAL CITY was foreseen! [Gerosa, 1978].
Point 71 of the Charter confirms that The cities included in the 4th CIAM all have the same
characteristics of disorder and do not satisfy mans psychological and biological needs2.
In short, as we will see, they wanted to demonstrate the validity of Le Corbusieres theories
from La Ville Contemporaine pour 3 Millions d'Habitants, (Fig. 1) and the Plan Voisine (Fig. 2)
which, once reinforced by the 4th CIAM, would be transformed by Le Corbusier himself into
the Ville Radieuse of 35 and which would be applied to the plans for Amsterdam and
Barcelona during that period. The objective was to transform them into universal rules, that is
rules that would be adopted for all future urban planning to the great joy of the automobile
industry (for example Voisine), which had already promoted those ideas but this would never
be assumed or even suggested by any architectural historian.
Figure 1. 1921-22 Le Corbusier, La Ville Contemporaine pour 3 millions d'habitants.
The Final Resolutions resulting from this work led to drafting the Charter. The chapters
dedicated to the Observations summarised the analytical work that had been carried out and,
quite obviously, denounced the ills of the contemporary city that had to be faced and
resolved; however, the paragraphs that followed looked at ways to Il faut exiger (make a
demand), enunciating the principles that had to be followed in order to achieve a FUNCTIONAL
CITY. Right from its title, this was irrefutable dogma, which was presented as the dictatorial
imposition of a presumably lite group of qualified thinkers.
Confirming the fact that they were looking to justify the judgements and decisions that had
already been made, the Spanish G.A.T.E.P.A.C. (Grupo de Artistas y Tcnicos Espaoles para el
Progreso de la Arquitectura Contempornea) declared in AC:
The importance of the collected documents is extraordinary, perhaps even
more so than the foundation material for the Frankfurt (The minimum dwelling)
and Brussels (Rational Lot Development) Congresses. For the first time, we can
carry out a comparative study of the historical evolution and current state of the
worlds principal cities. [] The urban phenomenon is perfectly clear in these city
plans. These are not merely splashes of colour and the outlines are not mere
squiggles, whether agreeable or not; these plans are expressive, organic ones that

614
can explain the vital phenomena of every city. The analyses of these plans, once
complete, can confirm the urban planning theories of recent years for us.
And as it happens, among the Congress documents, the Barcelona plans presented by
(Fig. 3) were considered a sort of revelation, a true harbinger of the principles
discussed and codified in Athens. The plan for Future Barcelona was seen by Le Corbusier as
a magnificent functional city, a radiant and contemporary city, well positioned where it
belongs, between the sea and the hills.
But it seems that not everything that happened during the Congress went according to plan.
Part of the programme in Athens changed. For example, according to the original programme,
the Congress delegates were to have crossed the Aegean Sea all together for three days but
for some reason they ended up travelling in three separate groups, one towards the Cyclades
Islands, another towards the Argosaronic and Peloponnese islands, and the third went to Delphi.
Some critics have pointed out that this separation in the journey illustrates the diversity in
view points, highlighting disagreements within the 4th CIAM. [Simeoforidis, 1993].
During the return journey to Marseilles, the delegates are also supposed to have drafted a
unified document on the FUNCTIONAL CITY that summarised the preliminary work and the
outcome of the debate that had taken place. In accordance with the objective of the first CIAMs,
the idea was to draft the document in a prescriptive form, with the objective of codifying and
sharing the principles of urban planning and modern architecture, affirming the authoritative
nature of the modernist point of view. But this did not go according to plan either, and this was
because of the difficulty in placating those who were agitated because of the differences of
opinion that surfaced during the Congress. This was confirmed by Giedion, the secretary
himself. At the next Congress he said:
G.A.T.E.P.A.C.
There are two opposing directions within CIAM [...]. One of these chooses a
prudent analysis of facts as a departure point and on this basis it tries to arrive at
a new situation step by step. [...] The second one approaches the problem globally,
with something similar to a birds eye view, and it expresses itself with wide
ranging designs that look forward. [...] [Giedion, 1937].
We also know that at the beginning of the return journey, on board the Patris, after the first
disagreements the Dutch CIAM president, Cornelis van Eesteren attempted to restore order and
proceed to drafting a final document. He stated: Without decisions our work has no meaning.
Decisions are the same as reports [...]. Our reports are the most important thing. It would be
better for the Congress to risk taking the wrong decision, rather than losing our way in endless
analysis.
What was he referring to? From the words of his call to order it is clear that it had not been
possible to come to an agreement.
During the outward journey, a commission had been elected to draft the final resolutions. At
Athens, a questionnaire was distributed, divided into four functions (housing, free time, work,
transport) with an additional part on the historic city. On departure for the return journey, the
different country groups turned in their questionnaires. It was immediately clear that there was
no single position, and thus on the penultimate day of the journey not one but three different
versions of the concluding text were presented to the delegates. The strange coincidence of
the number of versions and the aforementioned number of groups travelling in the Aegean Sea
should be noted! The reasons for disagreement were mainly centred around issues of land
ownership and land patterns [Ischia, 2006] (in other words the things that interest speculators)
and historical heritage. On August 14th, at the end of the Congress, on arrival at the port of
Marseilles, almost all the members of the Commission for the Resolutions remained in the
French city, except for Le Corbusier who left the group. After arriving at a compromise, a
document entitled Communiqu du Congrs divis en trois parties [Di Biagi, 2005] was drawn
up.

615
Figure 2. 1925 Exposition international des arts dcoratifs, Plan Voisin for Paris. The Plan Voisin called
for a radical demolition and reconstruction intervention, involving 240 hectares in the centre of Paris.
The area involved was located along an East - West axis between rue des Pyramides and the circular
Champs Elyses square, Gare St. Lazare and rue de Rivoli. Residential buildings (immeubles-villas)
were to be built on the site, with a commercial area along a secondary axis (northwards from the Seine)
upon which cross-shaped skyscrapers would be located. Only a few monuments would be saved from
demolition (the Louvre, Place Vendome) though often moved from their original location and
surrounded by huge park areas.
As confirmation of the divergences and difficulties, intense correspondence followed [Gerosa

1978], between August and December 33, principally between Le Corbusier and Giedion, in
which they mainly discussed the political dimensions of architects work and their relationship
with political authorities (the need to demand!).
Time passed and Le Corbusier wanted the resolutions to be presented at all costs. The letter
that he wrote to Giedion on August 29th was the clearest proof that disagreement existed. The
proof that everything that had been done was nothing more than an attempt to disguise Le
Corbusiers own theories and present it as something that, in the public opinion, should seem
the consensual result of group work and, by extension, the translation into urban planning of
the shared desire of modern man! This letter is quite disrespectful, and shows the despotic
side of Le Corbusier. Above all, it demonstrates how he wanted (maybe because of his
relationship with the automobile industry lobby) to make a breakthrough into political circles
where decisions are made that turn into laws and urban planning codes:
Listen to me, Giedion: Ive been staring at reality for ten years. I know what
the problem is, what makes people uneasy, where the brakes, the weaknesses and
good intentions are. I know what we should aim at [] whom we should refer to.
Our 4th Congress is an event. Thats all! [] Decisions were taken on the last day
and accepted by everyone. Theyre objective. This is the sensible thing: agreement
on objective ideas. And its ideas that we need to put in front of public opinion.
This is what our Congress lives for. Otherwise it will perish! These objective ideas
will be the truth from 1933 for everyone, in all countries. We must not try to get
out of it. We have responsibilities: architects await us, so do Mayors and ministers:
in short, people who have responsibilities. You dont hold a Congress to say empty
things, but to build [] The time has come. Giedion, the world burns. There is
need for certainties. We are the technicians of modern architecture [] I ask that
the resolutions be published. Their form isnt important to me [Gerosa 1978].
616

Despite this, Le Corbusier published the volume in the name of the French CIAM Group
entitled Urbanisme des CIAM. La Charte dAtne only in 1943, (or maybe 1941 or 42
according to some historians), ten years after the congress. In this way he made the statements
of the 4th CIAM his own, editing them, splitting them into 95 points, and conveniently
commenting each one himself. The work that he had started and ardently fought for from the
time of the Contemporary City in 21, could not have been reworked and codified by anyone
else.
Our knowledge of the way things happened cannot help but cast a shadow on that
presumed communion of thought that he tried to uphold. Then in 1957, a new publication
followed, La Charte dAtnes, whose only author was Le Corbusier ... As Pier Giorgio Gerosa
astutely pointed out The appeal of a collective text in the stars mythological orbit had already
become a fact.
Unfortunately, it was too late to cast doubt on the ideas in that document presented as the
summary of common thought and desire. In the light of world-wide legislation after the 4th
CIAM, and consequently the way in which architecture and urban planning are taught in
universities and put into practice by professionals the world over we need to recognize in Le
Corbusier the figure of an absolute monarch, a new Sun King, who was able (despite the fact
that he never earned a degree in architecture) to subordinate the population of the whole world
to his ideal of the city and of architecture. The Empire of Modernism, with no recognisable
territorial boundaries, can be held to be the largest empire that ever existed in human memory,
and its leader, Le Corbusier, the man who was able to painlessly (if we leave out the psychosocial damage caused by his functional city) impose his hegemony at a planetary level.
It is interesting to note that it was Le Corbusier himself who took the trouble to point out that
The Charter was not the work of an individual but the conclusion reached by
an elite group of builders who were passionately dedicated to the new art of
building, armed with the certainty that the homes of men [...] should be reexamined [...] [Le Corbusier 1950] .
Widening the Charters intellectual origins was useful to give the image of a collective and
shared harmonious thought despite being limited to an elite group of builders regardless
of the wishes of the thoroughly ignorant common mortals who would have then had to live in
those cities.
As confirmation of the serious repercussions that the Charter had on urban planning all over
the world, Sigfried Giedion said in his speech at the 6th CIAM held at Bridgwater in 1947:
Today we know that the Athens Charter, which laid the foundation for modern urban planning
in 1933, had a great influence on legislators [Giedion 1979] .
The following statement of Le Corbusier can shed light on the bias inherent in the work done
in 33: The Athens Charter opens all doors to modern day urban planning. It is an answer to
the existing chaos of cities [Le Corbusier 1950] .
Le Corbusiers rhetoric is evident from the statement he made [Le Corbusier 1943], when it
was decided to hold the 4th C.I.A.M. in Greece (initially, Moscow had been decided on). He
held that holding the Congress in Athens did not mean that it would in any way have any
relationship with the historic city as, by statute, the CIAM did not mean to return to the past,
or to plan and consider a city or architecture that were not contemporary. Thus, he wanted to
negate that past for what it was.
The highly critical vision of the historical layout of the cities discussed by the Congress,
starting with the chart presented by G.A.T.E.P.A.C. of Cerds Plan for Barcelona, shows that the
historical urban grid was already considered extremely unhealthy, confused and harmful for the
future city. The concluding chapters of the CIAM founding Congress at La Sarraz [Syrkus
1978], and the Athens Charter, both dealing with historical heritage were explicit in declaring
CIAMs refusal to transfer to their works the creative principles of other epochs and the social
structures of the past3. Besides, the theorists of Modernism insisted that it was necessary to
Annul history! and use Zeitgeist (the Spirit of Time).

617
Figure 3. Chart presented by g.a.t.e.p.a.c. during the 4th C.I.A.M. Barcelona at the beginning of the
second half of the 19th century. This map specifically indicates the mortality index, and as such is a
useful document to show the need for Engineer Ildefonso Cerds work in adding three roads to the
original urban fabric. The addition of bar graphs to this table at the bottom (summary of data from the
internal area) and the top (summary of data from the external area) made it possible to analyse the
impact that the works proposed by the Catalan engineer (obviously) would have had from the health point
of view.
3 A FEW FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

My criticism is actually nothing new. Even at the 33 Congress, a person very close to Le
Corbusier realised that they were proceeding towards a dead end. The CIAMs own members
had no interest in listening to other architects who were working during those same years using
a modern approach that respected tradition. However, they might at least have taken into
consideration these words of Fernand Lger, a French painter who was Le Corbusiers friend
and a member of the friends of CIAM, in his discourse to architects, in Athens that August of
33 he said:
I think that your heroic epoch has ended []. The clearing up effort is over.
Stop, because you are going over the limit [...]. An lite (group) has followed your
heroic epoch. That is normal. You have built state-of-the-art houses for people.
Instead you want your ideas to spread... the term urban planning to overshadow

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the aesthetic problem. [...] Town planning is social. You have entered a brand
new field, where your pure and radical solutions will have to fight [...] Abandon
this elegant and condescending minority [...] The small average man, the city
dweller in other words, is dizzy [...] you have created an absolutely new
architectural concept. However, from an urban and social viewpoint, you have
gone too fast. If you want to do urban planning, I believe you must forget that you
are artists. Become social [...]. There is a schism between your aesthetic
conception, accepted by a minority, and your urban vision that is in trouble
everywhere because the masses do not understand it. [...] You should have looked
behind you: you would have seen that you have no followers [...]. It is necessary
that men like you carefully observe the men behind you and those at your side and
who expect something, [...]. Put your maps/plans back in your pockets, walk down
the street, and listen to them breathe, make contact, lose yourself in the raw
material, and walk in their dirt and dust [Lger 1933].
Unfortunately, these words came to nothing, because from that moment onwards, the way of
thinking about architecture and urban planning changed forever for the sake of faut exiger!
4 THE IDEA
The historical archives of all Italian cities, like those in every city or town in the Mediterranean
area are packed with documents that can show how construction was done before the advent of
Modernism. During the very same years when people were theorising about the functional
city and creating new theories from nothing, many cities adopted more logical regulations in
order to survive the advent of the automobile. Even large cities, for example Rome and Bari,
approved very interesting Building Regulations. Even the Italian legislation, before the Fascist
era, was extremely advanced in terms of social housing, of labour, of economic and urbanism
[Mazzola 2010]! Many cities, especially in countries that bordered on the Mediterranean Sea
which were left out of the cultural debate because they were considered secondary managed
to resist the advent of modernism for much longer, thanks to their lack of importance. This
condition of cultural delay (obviously with respect to the advent of Modernism) makes it
possible for us to suppose that in those places pre-modern regulations and urban codes existed,
including those passed recently which, as evolutionary logic would suggest, are the natural
evolution of older or ancient ones.
More information about these regulations (from before 33 in Europe, while in North Africa
and the Middle East they could date to the early 50s) could thus open up new avenues for urban
renewal, especially in suburban areas devastated by urban planning based on numbers, zoning
and standards.
Logical evolutionary continuity is a simple concept. Except for the annulment of history
theorised by Modernist ideologists, all historical periods have made good use of their
inheritance and gone on from there. This means that the historicist principle of cataloguing
everything into compartments and putting a label with a date on it cannot be considered valid at
all. On studying the representational arts we can see how works of the early Renaissance blend
with those of the late Medieval period, and then with Mannerist and Baroque art, etc. No-one
woke up one morning declaring today I will create Baroque! This natural passage from one
choice to another, is even more applicable if we look to the principles that oversee the
criterion of co-habitation within a society, so much so that many of the norms that the Italian
Civil Code contains today can be traced back to the ancient ones of Roman Law. And this is just
as valid for the laws that apply to the ART OF BUILDING CITIES. Byzantine (Julian of Ascalon,
531-533) and Arab (Ibn Abd al-Hakam, 767829; Ibn Dinar, 827; Ibn al-Rami in Tunisi, circa
1350) urban planning treatises do in fact exist, such as those studied by Besim Hakim [Hakim
2001]. If correctly studied they show how the whole history of urban planning in the cities of
the Old Continent have never known a dark age. Those documents allow us to establish how
a series of norms from Roman Law were revised during the Byzantine period, only to be revised
again by the Arabs, and finally return to Italy, or be exported to all Islamic countries, before
merging with the architecture of Renaissance cities.

619
During every period, and respecting a series of general rules, all countries, and the regions
and cities within them developed their own architectural and urban planning character based on
their specific needs.
Before the annulment of history theorised at the beginning of the 20th century, no such break
had ever existed.
The objective of our research is to historically reconstruct this pathway which had led from
Rome towards Byzantium and the Middle East to later return to Italy that without a break. At a
world level today, a large group of people from different disciplines have emerged, who agree
on ideas for improving cities, making them sustainable and saving the planet from global
warming.
As examples of what it is possible to do, the followings are series of projects I developed
simply by reusing those norms and tools. These projects demonstrate that, not only the liveable
and sustainable city is possible in terms of built environment, but also a more just society is
possible if we recover the urban-social-economic strategies adopted in Italy until the advent of
the Urban Law 1150/1942 and the following updating of it.
5 TWO EXAMPLES
5.1 Project for replacing the ground-scraper Corviale in Rome (2010)
This project has the purpose to introduce a practical example of replacing the most symbolic
modernist building/district in Rome the social housing complex of Corviale a 1km long
ground-scraper, where nearly 6500 inhabitants live, or better survive, waiting for better living
conditions. The proposal it is a demonstration of how we could replace the ground-scraper with
a human-scale new-traditional district, without a traumatic moving of the inhabitants: indeed it
is shown a way to improve life in the district, to re-launch local economy, to preserve and to
improve both the landscape and the environment, and last but not least, to create some
unexpected great business for local administration.
Figure 4. Satellite view of the present Corviale

and Master Plan for the replacement of it.
Figure 5. Views of the New Corviale.
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Figure 6. New Borgo Corviale Stages of development: in brown is the existing, in red the new
buildings, in yellow the demolitions.

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Figure 7. New Borgo Corviale Diagrams: 1) Gathering Spaces; 2) Pedestrian Circulation; 3) Vehicular
Circulation; 4) Parking.

Figure 8. New Borgo Corviale Diagrams: Land Consumption before and after the intervention.
5.2 Project for the Urban Regeneration of the suburban district ZEN in Palermo (2011)
The Social Housing district Z.E.N. in Palermo, despite being designed by a celebrity architect
Vittorio Gregotti is sadly famous for being the most dangerous and criminogenic
neighbourhood in Italy. In early 2011 I was asked by a group of people in Palermo to develop a
proposal for the replacement of this degraded suburb with a "biophilic" neighbourhood: this
would have to be respectful both of people and environment, thus avoiding the reiteration of the
previous forty years mistakes.
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Figure 9. Satellite view of the present Z.E.N. and Master Plan for the replacement of it.

Figure 10. The New Quarter Z.E.N. completed.
Figure 11. Z.E.N.: In brown internal circulation vehicular and pedestrian, in orange the main
outside roads. The diagram also shows the new
roads necessary to improve the connections.

623
Figure 12. Stages of development: in brown is the existing, in red the new buildings, in yellow the
demolitions.
Figure 13. Vehicular circulation.
Figure 14. Pedestrian circulation, pedestrian

piazzas and public spaces.
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Figure 15. A "permeable" district: pedestrian

circulation and the system of internal courtyards
open to public transit.

Figure 16. A "permeable" district: indication of the

possible lines of public transportation.

Figure 17. The parking system. In dark brown:

public car parks at ground level; in red: private car
parks at ground level; in purple: public and private
underground parking; in yellow: private covered
parking.
Figure 19. The "Main Decumanus" measures 7.47

minutes walk or 623 meters. A sequence of four
piazzas, including the main piazza with the Church
of San Filippo Neri.
Figure 18. Ten Minutes walk, The city of 10

minutes on foot. The circle in the center is the
ideal distance of 833 meters, or that travelled in 10
minutes on foot.
Figure 20. The "Main Cardus" measures 13.28

minutes on foot, or 1107 meters. A sequence of six
piazzas, including the main piazza with the Church
of San Filippo Neri.

Figure 21. The "Cardus of the Street Market

measures 13.19 minutes on foot, or 1099 meters.
Along the axis runs a street market, similar to the
ones of Palermo.
Figure 23. The places of socialization: The city of

children and of elderly. Playgrounds for children
(yellow), areas equipped for the leisure of elderly.
Figure 25. Commercial Activities and Craft: retail

shops (in red) and workshops (in black).
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Figure 22. The various piazzas of the new district

are punctuated with an average 2 minutes walk, or
about 160 meters.
Figure 24. Public, semi-private and private green

spaces.
Figure 26. Diagram of the Extension of the Street

Market.

626
Figure 27. Res Publica: The Buildings of

Education.
Figure 28. Diagram of the sport areas.
Figures 29 and 30. Southern and Northern Sports Centers.
Figure 31. Res Publica The distribution of the

monumental and special buildings throughout the
district.
Figure 32. Res Economica the distribution of

mixed-use residential buildings all over the
neighborhood.

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Figure 33. The balanced distribution of public buildings, as well as of places for socialization, (Res
Publica) throughout a mainly residential urban web (Res Economica), generates the Civitas ... what the
urbanism of the Zoning had never understood.

Figure 34. View of the new Piazza and Church of San Filippo Neri.
Figure 35. View of the Piazza del Mercato.
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Figure 36. Aerial view of the Piazza del Mercato. On the foreground on the left is the Market Loggia.
ENDNOTES
1
This term originated at the Paris cole des Beaux-Arts in the 19th century. The French term charrette
means "carriage" or "cart". Architecture students at the cole des Beaux-Arts were very familiar with
having to work hard, often until the last moment, on their project drawings even while they were
travelling to school in horse drawn carriages ("en charrette ") to show their drawings to their
professors. Later, the use of the word underwent a change and the way it is used now refers
especially among traditional architects to the initial full-immersion phases of a collective design
project.
The tables for the 33 cities were all drawn up using the same analytical criteria, the same scale and a
unified system of colours and symbols. The new plan for Amsterdam, (which was already in the
conclusive stages of planning), was their model (based, in turn, on Le Corbusiers previous theories).
The instructions for different national groups were derived from this Dutch example, in order to make
the material easily comparable and thus show it in a unified way. Directions for exhibiting the
functional city, December 1931.
From the concluding declaration of the founding meeting for CIAM at La Sarraz: The work of
architects is [...] that of finding agreement with the great events of the time and with the great
objectives of the society they belong to and to create their works in conformity with them. Therefore
they refuse to transfer to their works the creative principles of other epochs and the social structures of
the past. Official Declaration, June 28th 1928.
REFERENCES
Di Biagi, P. 1988. Direttive per lesposizione e la pubblicazione: la citt funzionale. La Carta dAtene.
Manifesto e frammento dellurbanistica moderna. Officina, Roma.
Di Biagi, P. 2005. I CIAM verso Atene: spazio abitabile e citt funzionale. Intervento presentato in
occasione del convegno: EL GATCPAC Y SU TIEMPO, poltica, cultura y arquitectura en los aos
treinta V Congreso Internacional DOCOMOMO Ibrico, Barcelona, 26 - 29 October.
Gerosa, P. G. 1978. Antologia di testi e documenti del IV Congresso internazionale di architettura
moderna.
Giedion, S. 1937. Habitations et loisires. Neue Zrcher Zeitung, 3.8.1937.
Giedion, S. 1979. Des architectes se forment eux-mmes. In S. Giedion (Hrsg), Dix ans d'architecture
contemporaine, ditions Girsberger, Zrich 1951, Kraus reprint, Nendeln.
Giedion, S. 1984 (1941). Space, Time and Architecture. The development of a new tradition. Hoepli,
Milan.
Hakim, B. 2001. Julian of Ascalon's Treatise of Construction and Design Rules from Sixth-Century
Palestine. Albuquerqe.
Ischia, U. 2006. La Citt Contemporanea. Padova.
Le Corbusier. 1943. Le groupe CIAM-France. Urbanisme des C.I.A.M. La Charte dAthnes. Plon, Paris.

629
Le Corbusier, 1950. La maison des hommes. Le Groupe CIAM-France. Urbanisme des C.I.A.M. La
Charte dAthnes. Paris.
Lger, F. 1933. Discours aux architectes. Technika Chronika/Annales Techniques, n. 44-45-46.
Mazzola, E. M. 2010. The Sustainable City is Possible (with Preface by Paolo Marconi). Rome: Editrice
GANGEMI.
Simeoforidis, Y. 1993. I giorni del IV CIAM ad Atene: figure, vicende, ripercussioni.
Syrkus H. 1978. 1928-1934 La Sarraz e la Varsavia funzionale. Parametro, n. 70.
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631
Affordable housing solution through the adoption of IBS and

MMC in the Malaysian construction industry
M. F. Mohammad, M. F. Musa & A. S. A. Shukor
Construction Economics and Procurement Research Group, Centre of Studies for Quantity Surveying,
Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Selangor, Malaysia
R. Ahmad & I. Din

IBS Centre, Construction Industry Development Board, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: Affordable housing has always been a global issue whereby the demand from the
very low, low, and moderate-income households cannot be met especially by governments from
developing countries. Affordable housing is also a major problem in Malaysia whereby it is
constantly associated with the issues of cost, quality, and productivity. The main research
focuses on the efforts of the Malaysian construction industry players in working around
innovative Industrialised Building System (IBS) and Modern Method of Construction (MMC)
to address successfully the core issues and challenges related to the Malaysian affordable
housing. Case studies are being carried out to investigate the new IBS, and MMC developed
amongst the five selected organisations in the Malaysian construction industry. The significance
of the study is to highlight to respective public and private stakeholders on how innovative
construction methods such as IBS and MMC can successfully deliver and contribute to
affordable housing solution in Malaysia.
1 INTRODUCTION
Affordable housing is defined as a housing that is appropriate and affordable for the needs for
very low to moderate-income households. Affordable housing needs to meet the basics of
households whose incomes are not adequate to allow them to access appropriate housing in the
property market without assistance. The definition of affordable housing in other countries
might be different and vary (Gopalan & Venkataraman, 2015). Over the last decade, the housing
market has experienced an escalation of house prices, mainly in major cities and caused
inaccessibility to housing. Therefore, the issue of affordable housing is taking center stage
internationally due to the increase of housing price globally.
Housing forms one of the essentials of a human. Maslows Theory Hierarchy of Needs tells
that housing forms the vital primary needs for a human, in addition to job, security, food and
others, at the lowest among the five levels (Aziz et al., 2010). Housing contributes significantly
to the socio-economic development and the wellbeing of communities. It serves as a shelter and
provides a vibrant living environment that will influence and shape human behavior,
productivity, and development.
Affordable housing is essential because it is to ensure that everyone can own a house despite
the increase in housing price, especially for the very low to medium income households.
Affordable housing creates diversity through promoting a variety of demographics and creates
communities with a rich combination of culture, socio-economic circumstance, age, and
education. Furthermore, affordable housing can create jobs and stimulate the local economic
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development. According to Wardrip et al. (2011), affordable housing development increases the
spending and employment in the surrounding economy, that acts as a source of revenue for local
governments, and reduces the likelihood of foreclosure. Affordable housing development can
decrease the commute times and transportation costs especially in the city where the affordable
housing will be strata and transportation/transit oriented development.
Affordable housing is also a major problem in Malaysia whereby it is constantly associated
with the issues of lack of supply, high cost, low quality, and low productivity. The Malaysian
government acknowledged the importance of affordable housing. Thus, the Malaysian
government has drawn various policies to facilitate house ownership. Initiatives are also being
made by the Malaysian housing and construction industry players to address the issues and
challenges related to the Malaysian affordable housing. Innovative and new construction
methods that include IBS and MMC are being explored by the construction industry players as a
solution to the affordable housing issue.
2 AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN MALAYSIA
The lack of an adequate number of affordable housing in Malaysia has been a serious problem
for a very long time. The population of Malaysia has amplified from 21.3 million in 2000 to 30
million people in 2013 with a growth rate of 1.6%. The death and birth rate have reduced over
the years with an increase in the life expectancy from 71 years to higher than 73 years. The
gross domestic product (GDP) has also increased along with the per capita income. The housing
and property prices have also increased by a record margin. In the last five years, the prices
have increased by 12.3% annually in Malaysia.
Currently, there is a 40% difference between the demand for affordable housing and its
supply in Malaysia at the moment. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia Housing
Income Survey 2013 (2013) stated that 80% Malaysians earn less than RM 6,900 per month and
cannot afford houses priced at higher than RM 300,000.
According to the report of National Property Information Centre 2014, only 31.7% of the
total number of housing units built in the year 2012 had a price tag below RM 250,000 (NAPIC,
2014). The escalating income of the middle class is finding it tough to keep pace with the price
hike of housing units that leads to the need for affordable housing becomes more important than
ever before.
Besides the lack of supply of affordable housing, affordable housing in Malaysia faces other
problems that include high housing development cost, low quality and lack of involvement from
the private sector. Moreover, the affordable housing is unsatisfactory to the family occupying in
term of family housing needs, comfort, social, cultural and religion needs (Rahman et al., 2013).
Efforts are being made by the Malaysian government to solve the affordable housing problems
and challenges. Various policies are drawn by the Malaysian government to resolve the
affordable housing issues that include the National Physical Plan, National Housing Plan,
RUMAWIP policy and the Five Years Malaysia Plan including giving new and additional
allocation in the National Budget every year.
The Malaysian government will continue to act as a major role in ensuring the value of
affordable housing by continuing the existing programmes, providing financing facilities,
expanding rental and Rent-to-Own housing programmes. Furthermore, the enrichment of the
role of the private sectors in the Malaysian housing industry looks like a strategic role in
creating an enabling environment to encourage the private sector participation in the
development of affordable housing in Malaysia.
3 HOUSING DEVELOPMENT COST
The most critical issue concerning the successful implementation of affordable housing is the
cost of development. For housing development cost in Malaysia, the following are the four main
components that include (MOHSS, 2015):
a. Land cost;
b. Construction cost (building cost + infrastructure cost);

633
c. Consultants professional fees;

d. Fees or contribution to government agencies.
Ghani Salleh and Meng (1997) has highlighted that the construction cost has been the major
cost for housing development in Malaysia since the late 90s. Construction cost comprises
building cost and infrastructure cost. The study will be focusing on the housing building cost
since the innovative construction method developed by the Malaysian construction industry
players only affects the building cost. Furthermore, building cost contribute a larger or higher
percentage of the overall construction cost compared to the infrastructure cost for a housing
development (MOHSS, 2015). To date, the minimum building cost in Malaysia is 90.00 Ringgit
Malaysia (RM) or 22.17 United State Dollar (USD) per square feet (per sqft) which adopt
conventional or traditional construction method.
The conventional construction method is slow, unproductive, low quality in the end products,
lack of safety and non-environmental friendly (Musa et al., 2014). Thus, it is essential for the
Malaysian construction and housing industry to adopt innovative and new construction
methods. Innovative and modern construction method is productive, deliver high-quality end
products, cost effective and promotes sustainability in the construction environment
(Mohammad, 2013; Musa et al., 2015). Despite the benefits of adopting new technology in the
construction and housing sector, the investors or organisations need to abide the initial and
capital cost of the new technology that might lead to an increase of cost in the construction and
housing sector.
4 THE INTRODUCTION OF IBS AND MODERN METHOD OF CONSTRUCTION
(MMC) IN MALAYSIA
The introduction of new modern method of construction and industrialising the construction
sector in Malaysia began in the early 1960s. The Malaysian government initiated pilot projects
that adopt new construction methods aiming to speed up the delivery time of the project.
(Muhamad Faiz Musa et al., 2015) The Malaysian widely uses the term IBS, to represent
industrialisation and new construction method in the Malaysian construction industry. To date,
there are many industrialisations, off-site manufacturing and modern method of construction
terminologies in the construction industry, but IBS had become a term to represent those
terminologies in the Malaysian construction industry. Even though the introduction of IBS in
Malaysia is over 40 years ago, its acceptance was not extensive, and the IBS application is still
slow. Despite the potential of IBS, the adoption and uptake on IBS in the Malaysian
construction industry are low (Musa et al., 2015).
To promote IBS in the Malaysian construction sector, the Malaysian government and
Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) introduced plans and strategies to encourage
the implementation of IBS. The policies include the introduction of Malaysian Construction
Industry Master Plan 2006-2015 (CIMP 2006-2015) and IBS Roadmap (Muhamad Faiz Musa et
al., 2015). The latest policy to enhance the adoption IBS is through the Malaysian Construction
Industry Transformation Programme 2016-2020 (CITP 2016-2020).
CITP (2015) has highlighted the need to improve the productivity of the Malaysian
construction industry. The enhancement of productivity in the Malaysian construction industry
will be possible through the improvement of human capital development, adoption of
technology and mechanisation and modernization of the construction process that would be
possible through IBS. The advantages to IBS are that it reduces the impact of project orientation
and establishes a factory with a high degree of stability in production and coordination with
subcontractors, suppliers, and designers. Currently, reliable and fast delivery times are regarded
as the most important characteristics of IBS. Competitors implementing conventional
construction, onsite, and project-oriented building are unable to offer these tight time frames
that yield fast returns on investments for clients (Mohammad, 2013; Muhamad Faiz Musa et al.,
2015). Therefore, through CITP it is hoped that the usage of IBS will be widespread and
increased in the Malaysian construction sector. In the current Malaysian context, CIDB has
classified the IBS into six types that are: (CIDB, 2003).
a. IBS Pre-cast concrete system
b. IBS Formwork system

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c.
d.
e.
f.
IBS Steel framing system

IBS Prefabricated timber framing system
IBS Block works system
IBS Innovative system.
5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The aim of the study is to investigate the efforts of the Malaysian construction industry players
in working around with IBS and MMC to address successfully the core issues and challenges
related to the Malaysian affordable housing. Thus, qualitative approaches using case study was
used to achieve the aim of the study. Case studies are being carried out to investigate the new
IBS, and MMC adopted in the five selected organisations in the Malaysian construction
industry. The case studies are houses that had been built using IBS and MMC. Data for the case
studies is collected through the meeting, presentation by the organisations that developed the
IBS or MMC, sites visit, and factories visit. The collected data from the case studies include
images, costing, features; benefits and type of IBS and MMC used. The data is then analysed
using comparative analysis and displayed using a table.
6 CASE STUDIES
There are five case studies for the research. Each case study represents a house built using an
IBS product or MMC by the organisation that developed the IBS product or MMC. All the
houses in the case studies have complied with the minimum requirements outlined in the
Malaysian Uniform Building by-Laws 1984 (UBBL 1984). Malaysian UBBL 1984 is a set of
guideline for building design, requirements, and laws that need to be fulfilled by the designer or
architect in designing a building (UBBL, 1984). The requirements outlined in UBBL 1984
include access, lighting, health, safety, space, ventilation, buildings height, and fire protection
for the building. To achieve the balance between good design, great functionality, and the law,
the architect will need to comprehend the UBBL 1984. Amendments to UBBL 1984 are being
made throughout the years to ensure the validity of UBBL 1984 due to the innovation and new
technology introduced in the building and construction industry.
Buildings drawing or plan submitted to the Local Authority needs to comply with UBBL to
avoid amendments to the drawing or being rejected by the Local Authority. The Local Authority
is responsible for assessing and inspecting the submitted buildings drawing and plan.
Buildings plan comply with UBBL 1984 can proceed to the construction stage. Local Authority
is set up by Malaysian State Government, in consultation with the Ministry of Housing & Local
Government and the Election Commission.
6.1 Case study A
Figure 1. Modular Prefabricated House.

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Case Study A as shown in Figures 1 & 2 is a modular prefabricated house produced using the
modular prefabricated building system or modular construction. Modular prefabricated building
system and modular construction are new in Malaysia. To date, there are only two modular
prefabricated building system manufacturers in Malaysia. Modular prefabricated building
system or modular construction is classified as off-site prefabrication and modern method of
construction and used in developed countries such as US, UK, Japan, European countries and
Australia. Modular house produced is high quality, speed up project schedule, promotes
sustainability, flexible and ease renovation (Musa et al., 2014). The floor area of the house for
case study A is 800sqft. The structure of the modular prefabricated house is made from
lightweight galvanised steel. The faade of the house is made from custom made faade that has
insulation capability produced by the manufacturer. The building cost of the modular
prefabricated house includes the foundation cost RM 75,000. The total construction period of
the modular prefabricated house includes the manufacturing process of the modular units and
site installation is about two weeks.
Figure 2. Modular Prefabricated Building System or Modular Construction. Case Study B.
6.2 Case study B
Figure 3. Shipping Container House.
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Case Study B as in Figure 3 is basically a shipping container house. Building constructed using
shipping containers is globally well-known. The use of shipping containers as a building
material has grown in popularity in the past several years due to their strength, wide availability,
and relatively cheap. Nowadays, house built using shipping containers are seen as more ecofriendly than conventional building materials such as brick and cement. The container house for
Case Study B comprises two units of 40 x 8 x 81/2 shipping containers. The floor area of the
container house is 700sqft. The manufacturer for Case Study B has developed the Modularcraft
system comprises the use of recycled or used shipping containers as the basic building module
combined with the Primer-X. Primer-X is a thermal insulation coating applied to the external
surface of the shipping containers. The important use of the Primer-X on the shipping containers
demonstrates the habitability for human to live inside of shipping containers despite our
equatorial climate. The building cost of the shipping container house is RM 68,000. The total
construction period of the shipping container house includes the refurbishment process of the
shipping containers and site installation is about three to four weeks.
6.3 Case study C
Figure 4. House built using On-Site Monolithic Building System.
Case Study C is a house built using on-site monolithic building system as illustrated in Figure 4.
The monolithic building system is widely recognised as one of the most practical, economically
and technically feasible solutions to the problem of building cost-effective, durable and
earthquake-proof housing on a mass scale, quickly and efficiently. Monolithic building system
or construction requires formworks to shape the concrete into the different structural shapes
needed to carry the building loads (Fig. 5). The form works to create the voids where steel
reinforcing rods are placed followed by filling it with self-levelling concrete in its liquid state,
which is poured creating the structural components such as columns, walls, beams and roof
slabs.
Figure 5. Formwork Installation On-Site.

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The house built for Case Study C is the fastest cast-in-situ reinforced concrete structure
construction method in Malaysia, introduced as FASTBUILD Monolithic Building System. The
floor area of the monolithic house is 890 sqft. Firstly, the aluminium formwork system is
designed according to the building drawings. A custom made selflevelling concrete is then
poured into the formwork once it has been installed, and it is placed at the worksite. When the
entire first floor is completed, the formwork panels are easily removed and manually transferred
to the subsequent floors where the process is repeated until the whole building is constructed.
Repetition is the key to cost efficiency. The structure cost is RM 33,000. The building cost of
the monolithic house for mass production is RM 66, 000. The minimum units of 25 units to be
constructed to achieve the cost saving, repetition usage of the formworks and standardise
building plan. The total construction period of the monolithic house using the system developed
by the manufacturer is about one to two weeks.
6.4 Case study D
Figure 6. House Built Using IBS Steel Framing System.
Case Study D is a house that used IBS steel framing system that adopts the Malaysian housing
features. The system as shown in Figures 6 & 7 is called the Enduro frame Building System.
The technology used for the system is from Australia. The steel framing system can be used in
building, adding a floor, re-roofing or adding light partitions and external claddings. A house of
800 sqft using the Enduro frame Building System only took seven days to be completed. It only
required eight workers. Light weight steel framing combined with its design versatility and
flexibility, means a steel-framed house can be built with minimal site impact. The combination
of the wet wall system using concrete is essential. The concrete is poured on-site using pump
once the light weight steel framings are erected. The building cost for a house of 800 sqft built
using the Enduro frame Building System is RM 64,000. The limitation of the system is it only
cater single storey landed house.
Figure 7. The Erection of the Lightweight Steel Framings into a House.
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6.5 Case study E
Figure 8. House constructed using IBS Innovative System (EPS).
Figures 8 & 9 shows the house for Case Study E which is constructed using 100% recyclable
raw material of EPS (Expanded Polystyrene) panels that has a lightweight characteristic. The
panels are classified under IBS innovative system. The EPS panel consists of a double layered
high tensile wire mesh stitched together with an inner layer of EPS. When sprayed with concrete
on both sides, it will form a solid composite structure that has the rigidity and strength superior
to the conventional brick wall. A temporary support is used to support the panels before the
panels are sprayed with concrete. The house for Case Study E is 1000 sqft and the building cost
is RM 80,000. The construction period for the house in case study E is three to four weeks.
Figure 9. Concrete Spraying Process on the EPS Panels.
The cost of constructing a house is a critical issue in Malaysia. High building cost makes it
difficult to provide affordable housing. Table 1 will be comparing the building cost of every
house built using IBS and MMC as described in the case studies. The building cost of the
conventional construction method per one sqft is set as the cost benchmark of the study. The
benefits, type of IBS/ MMC and features of every case studies and conventional construction
method is also included in Table 1.
Benefits using
the IBS/ MMC
Type of IBS/
MMC used
-Cheap
RM 90.00
(The current
building cost
per one sqft for
conventional
construction
method in
Malaysia)
Building cost
Building cost
per one sqft
House features
Image
RM 97.14
(RM 68000/
700sqft)
Shipping container
construction
-Fast
-High-quality
construction
workmanship of the end
product
Modular
prefabricated
building system
-Fast
-High-quality
construction
workmanship of the
end product
RM 68,000
-700sqft
-3 bedrooms & 2 toilets
RM 93.75
(RM 75000/ 800sqft)
-800sqft
-3 bedrooms & 2
toilets
RM 75,000
IBS innovative
system
-Cost efficient
-Fast
-High-quality
construction
workmanship of the
end product
-Cost efficient
-Fast
-High-quality
construction
workmanship of the
end product
-Cost efficient
-Fast
-High-quality
construction
workmanship of the
end product
RM 80.00
(RM 80000/
1000sqft)
-1000sqft
-3 bedrooms & 2
toilets
RM 80,000
Case Study E
IBS steel framing

system
RM 80.00
(RM 64000/ 800sqft)
-800sqft
-3 bedrooms & 2
toilets
RM 64,000
Case Study D
On-site monolith
building system
RM 74.15
(RM 66000/
890sqft)
-890sqft
-3 bedrooms & 2
toilets
RM 66,000
Table 1. The Comparison between Conventional Construction Method and the Case Studies.
Conventional
Construction
Case Study A
Case Study B
Case Study C
Method

639
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7 FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION

From the data gathered and comparison displayed in Table 1, IBS and MMC can successfully
deliver and contribute to affordable housing solution in Malaysia. Case study C, D, and E had
proven that the IBS and MMC are cheaper and cost efficient compared to conventional
construction method. Case studies C, D, and E building cost per sqft is cheaper compared to the
conventional construction method per sqft that is below RM 90.00. Furthermore, IBS and MMC
used are faster, productive, and produce high-quality end products especially in term of
construction workmanship. Due to excessive dependent on unskilled foreign labours, the
Malaysian construction, housing and building industry faced low-quality construction
workmanship in the industries end products. Case study A and B is slightly expensive
compared to the conventional construction method.
The research has shown that IBS and MMC have all the potentials in addressing and meeting
the solutions to the Malaysian affordable housing issues in term of cost, quality in term of
construction workmanship of the end products, and productivity in the construction sector. It is
hoped that this research will be able to change the perception and encourage the private and
public stakeholders towards IBS and MMC adoption in constructing affordable housing in
Malaysia.
REFERENCES
Aziz, W. N. A. W. A., Hanif, N. R. & Singaravello, K. A. l. 2010. A Study on Affordable Housing within
the Middle Income Households in the Major Cities and Towns in Malaysia. Faculty of Built
Environment. University of Malaya. Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Studies of Urban and Regional Real
Estate (SURE).
CIDB. 2003. IBS Roadmap 2003-2010. Kuala Lumpur.
CITP. 2015. Construction Industry Transformation Programme 2016-2020 (CITP 2016-2020). Kuala
Lumpur: Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB).
DOSM. 2013. Housing Income Survey 2013. Malaysia: The Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM).
Ghani Salleh & Meng, L. L. 1997. Low-cost Housing in Malaysia. Utusan Publications & Distributors
Sdn Bhd.
Gopalan, K. & Venkataraman, M. 2015. Affordable Housing: Policy and practice in India. IIMB
Management Review, 27(2), 129-140.
Mohammad, M. F. 2013. Construction Environment: Adopting IBS Construction Approach Towards
Achieving Sustainable Development. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 85, 8-15. doi:
10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.08.332.
MOHSS. 2015. Housing Development Study for the State of Sarawak. Ministry of Housing State of
Sarawak (MOHSS). Vol. II, pp. 383.
Musa, M. F., Mohammad, M. F., Mahbub, R. & Yusof, M. R. 2014. Enhancing the Quality of Life by
Adopting Sustainable Modular Industrialised Building System (IBS) in the Malaysian Construction
Industry. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 153, 79-89. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.10.043.
Musa, M. F., Mohammad, M. F., Yusof, M. R. & Mahbub, R. 2015. The Way Forward for Industrialised
Building System (IBS) in Malaysia. In gajalakshmis@sps.co.in (ed.), InCIEC 2014, pp. 163-175.
Springer Singapore.
Musa, M. F., Yusof, M. R., Mohammad, M. F. & Mahbub, R. 2014. Characteristics of Modular
Construction: Meeting the Needs of Sustainability and Innovation. Paper presented at the Colloquium
on Humanities, Science and Engineering 2014 (CHUSER 2014), Penang.
NAPIC. 2014. Annual Property Market Report. National Property Information Centre (NAPIC).
Rahman, A. M. A., Abd.Rahim, N. M. S., Al-Obaidi, K. & Mui, M. I. L. Y. 2013. Rethinking the
Malaysian Affordable Housing Design Typology in View of Global Warming Considerations. Journal
of Sustainable Development, 6(7), 134-146.
Uniform Building by-Laws (UBBL). 1984.
Wardrip, K., Williams, L. & Hague, S. 2011. The Role of Affordable Housing in Creating Jobs and
Stimulating Local Economic Development: A Review of the Literature. pp. 22. Center For Housing
Policy.

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Affordable low rise high density flexible housing

F. J. M. van der Werf
Organic Architecture & Urban design, SOEST, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT: The paper present a low-rise high density housing typology of courtyards, streets
and alleys. It introduces with it Open Building (OB), a strategy based on the clear distinction
of levels of intervention: Urban Tissue, Support and Infill. OB allows the full participation of
users in decisions by its flexible infill. This new high density typology is realized in The
Netherlands in low cost developments. It might be an alternative for high rise buildings, when
cities are dealing with the transformation of dense slum areas. The typology is explained by so
called patterns. Patterns relate form ideas to human issues in a built environment and allow the
open communication with people concerned. On the OB level of Urban Tissue three patterns are
given: 1.Low rise Courtyards, 2.Looping Parking Streets, 3.Connecting Alleys. On the
level of Support ideas: 1. Simple and solid parallel Floors, Roofs and Walls, 2.Long
Galleries, 3.Roofs for Energy, Water and Food and 4. Central shafts for independent
services. Conclusion: The typology allows a gradual transformation of slums into an urban
district.
1 INTRODUCTION
This paper introduces a new housing typology of a low rise high density fabric of streets,
courtyards and alleys, realized by means of a simple mass produced base-building structure,
which is infill-able, continue and extendable: an Open Building (OB) structure. OB is based
on the separation of levels of intervention: urban tissue, support structure and infill (Fig. 5).
This new typology has been first realized in 1978 in Molenvliet, city of Papendrecht, the
Netherlands (Figs. 1-2), as the follow-up of a town-planning competition.
Figure 1. Drawing of Molenvliet, Papendrecht.
Figure 2. Air view of the project (ph. Hofmeister).

642
The density of this realization is high: 93 units per ha of each 90m2 on average, including carparking, storage and staircases. The floor-area ratio (FAR) is about 1.
The typology can be applied to social housing but also with larger budgets.
Figure 3. Base Building Molenvliet.
Figure 4. Slum city.
Because the structure is infill-able, the typology might also be very useful in case cities are
dealing with slums, shanties or favelas. For, within an simple solid building structure, occupants
might build their homes by themselves. And instead of narrow streets, disturbed by cars and
garbage, they will dispose of outdoor spaces for traffic, parking and neighborhood life with
commercial and cultural activities. And they may use self-supporting services for energy,
water, sewage, food and waste.
When low income people are migrating to a city, slums may grow. Now this typology could
offer affordable low rise shelter for them. But when a city government wants to transform a
slum area into a valuable urban district and if eviction is not desirable - they have to deal with
high density. This typology could present an interesting alternative for the usual high rise
buildings, which are alienating and too expensive. It executes high density in a low rise
environment. So families may easily relate to their homes and neighborhood. The concept
allows step by step development, flexible and changeable in the long term. And the total
investment will be limited because of a durable structure and building participation of the users.
2 OPEN BUILDING (OB)
In 1965 and 1973 the Dutch Foundation for Architects Research (SAR), published design
methods as an alternative for uniform mass housing production (Habraken, 1961, 1983). It
resulted in the international movement Open Building (Kendall&Teicher, 2000). Many studies,
experiences and research from all over the world are exchanged during international meetings.
Open Building is not a technology, but a strategy about intervention on the built-environment: a
structuring of decision making by a distinction of levels of intervention (Fig. 5):
Urban Tissue:
Domain: City district
Parts: Street, courtyard, alley, square, zone to built
Decisions: City
Design: Urban designer
Scale: 1 : 1000
Support
Domain: Zone to build
Parts: Foundation, floor, wall, roof, staircase etc.
Decisions: Developer
Design: Architect
Scale: 1 : 100
Infill
Domain: Dwelling, shop, office, atelier, etc.
Parts: Partitioning, door, sanitary, kitchen, piping etc.
Decision: User-occupant
Design: Consultant or user
Scale: 1: 50 and 1 : 20
Figure 5. Levels of Intervention by Open Building (drawing by Kees Gunneweg).

643
Each level is defined by the question: Who decides on what where. It deals with design
elements, domains of intervention, decision makers and designers. Typical outdoor spaces, for
instance, decided by a city authority, will be designed by an urban designer as an urban tissue.
Building parts, decided by a developer will be designed by an architect as a base building: a
support structure. Individual users decide about components on the level of infill. Infill
completes a dwelling, a shop, an office, etc., according to lifestyle, wishes and budget of the
user. On each level freedom of design exists within a given structure of the higher level.
The decisions concern design, financing, execution, regulations, control and user
participation. Each level has somehow its own time span: Infill changes frequently with the
users, a support structure keeps its value over generations, and an urban tissue could outlive
ages. Interiors and architectures appear, change, disappear and reappear over time.
3 APPLICATION OF THE TYPOLOGY FOR SLUM ISSUES
There are many forms in which the typology can be applied. The application depends of course
on a situation as well as the local culture of a city and its inhabitants. It requires an open
exchange of issues and of form ideas and their effects on daily life.
That is why in the following the application of the typology on slum issues will be presented
and motivated through the use of so called patterns (Alexander, 1977). Patterns encourage
open discussion on ideas and their application.
A pattern describes form ideas in relation to human experiences in the built environment. It
is a design tool for communication. Patterns can be used as design directions, but also to
establish agreements with different parties.
We start with 3 patterns on the level of urban tissue, followed by 4 patterns on the level of
support structure. Notice, they are open to discuss!
3.1 About URBAN TISSUE
We name a built environment an urban tissue when and in so far we can formulate
agreements which describe how in that environment space and building are interwoven (SAR,
1973). An urban tissue is the morphological structure of a city district, identified by interwoven
spaces like streets, squares, courtyards, alleys etc. formed by buildings (Fig. 5.).
Space can be identified by dimensions: Linear spaces are identified by the width and are often
used for traffic. Concentric spaces are identified by length en width, invite to stay, meet and
play. We relate also some feelings to spaces: movement, openness, enclosure etc..
The following tissue patterns describe and substantiate in short this typology for our subject.
3.1.1 Pattern 1. Low rise courtyards
Figure 6. Model of low rise courtyards, 200 units.
Figure 7. Idem.
3.1.1.1 Issues
Density. In case eviction is not an answer, the transformation of a slum district should shelter at
least the same people. The density of most slums is high, often 60 80 units per acre (150 - 200
units per ha), an urban density. For instance, in Colombo, the middle sized capital of Sri Lanka,

644
some 66,000 slums are covering 1,000 acres, or 148 units/ha (Dayaratne, 2010). In Maligawatta
Place, Colombo the average floor density is 3,4m2 (36,6sq.ft) per person (Sueyoshi & Ohtsuka,
1999), meaning 30,6m2 (330sq.ft) for an average household of about 9 persons (estimation
2010), that has to increase to < 45m2 (484sq.ft). In that case the floor-land ratio, FAR, has to
increase to 90%.
Neighborhood life. In slums most occupants establish a strong neighborhood life for different
reasons: mutual assistance and cultural initiatives (Nichols, 2012). They need a low rise smallscale environment where children can play and social contacts are easy. Moreover in most
slums the only community spaces are narrow streets, disturbed by traffic and garbage.
High rise buildings are not appropriate: For poor people they are too expensive to buy or rent,
and also alienating. The car parks and greens are too public and unsuitable to neighborhood life.
3.1.1.2 Ideas
Building around courtyards has a strong effect on density.
Entrance courtyard (front sides)

Building zone
Garden courtyard (back sides)
Figure 7. Built/land ratio of 5 : 9.
Figure 8. Entrance and garden courtyards.
The overall number of floors in this typology is 3,5, still a low-rise world. An average unit
size of for instance 410sqft (45m2) in 3 floors around courtyards lead up to a density of 80 units
per acre (200 units/hectare), or a FAR of 9/10. Per ha 3 floors of 3.000m2 offer 9.000m2 units.
So 1/3 of the land will be built. 2/9 is left for courtyards and 4/9 for streets. The Molenvliet
project (Figs. 1-2) resulted in a density of 93 units per ha of each 90m2 on average, a floor-area
ratio (FAR) of about 1, this including car-parking, staircases and storage (Kapteijns & Van
Rooij & Monroy, 1978).
A courtyard is a concentric space. It is collective, ideal for socializing with neighbors, family
and friends, a shared living room, a safe playground for children and a quiet setting. It has a
center, the natural place for a tree, a fountain, a statue or a special little garden. It has corners,
casting shadows at different hours of the day. Each courtyard could get a specific lay-out.
When entrance courtyards and garden courtyards are positioned in a chessboard all buildings
have a front and back side (Fig. 8).
3.1.2 Pattern 2. Looping parking streets
Figure 9. Sketch of courtyards and parking streets, in Wilgendonk, Papendrecht.

645
3.1.2.1 Issues
Well paved streets are expensive in construction and maintenance: thus dimensions have to be
limited.
Fast driving cars on straight streets cause questions of pollution, noise and danger.
Cul-de-sacs lead to feelings of non-safety and trouble.
3.1.2.2 Ideas
The dimensions and thus cost of streets will be limited substantially when transversal parking
and walkways are projected on both sides of the driveway.
Looping streets (Fig. 9) are safe by the limitation of speed and have no dead ends. By linking
them to main streets congestions are prevented.
3.1.3 Pattern 3. Connecting alleys
Figure 10. connecting alleys.
Figure 11. Alley from a courtyard in the Molenvliet project.
3.1.3.1 Issues
All courtyards should be accessible from a street for maintenance and ambulances, but Throughgoing car traffic should be avoided.
Some people want to control their courtyard, living a small gated community. Other like a
larger neighborhood with more openness, while still other cultures prefer total openness.
Through times this openness might shrink or grow.
3.1.3.2 Ideas
All courtyards are linked to a street by an alley for cars.
Courtyards are also connected to each other by alleys for pedestrians (Fig. 10) that might be
open or closed. Alleys offers possibilities in different circumstances.
Alleys might be decorated to mark the border of a subculture (Alexander, 1977), be covered
or over-built (Fig. 11).
3.2 About SUPPORTS
A support is a finished building, ready to be occupied by variable infill (Kendall & Teicher,
2000). It is a permanent base building made up by foundations, floors, walls, roofs and main
piping- and wiring systems. It is the construction and space that different units, dwellings etc.,
have in common. It is the planning level of architectural design (Fig. 5).
Supports allows a flexible allocation of units of different dimensions and it facilitates infill,
the free fit-out of each of the units. The distinction of support and infill is the key idea of Open
Building.
The following support patterns describe and substantiate in short the typology: affordable
low rise high density flexible housing. Again, they are open to discussion.
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3.2.1 Pattern 1. Simple and solid parallel roofs, piers and floors
Figure 12. Model of the support structure.
3.2.1.1 Issues
The support structure has to be inexpensive, solid and almost free of maintenance.
It has a maximum of 3,5 floors and should round the corners of the courtyards.
It should allow the free allocation of dwellings, but also shops, workshops, little restaurants
and small offices. The possibility of free infill of each of the units is essential.
The smallest units could measure about 230sqft (25m2). The average dimension of dwellings
could go to 500sqft (46,5m2) and larger ones will be possible. Some occupants might start small
and enlarge their unit later after reallocation.
3.2.1.2 Ideas
The Open Building principle of free allocation and free infill allows a cheap support structure.
All floors and load bearing piers are identical and parallel. They could be simply mass
produced. They keep direction by going around the corners: longitudinal walls become
transversal piers. Openings between piers (fontanels) can be closed by non-bearing materials,
following the allocation and re-allocation of units (Figs. 12 and 14).
In this example the chosen distance between floors is 8 ft. (2,44m) and the wall system is
based on a grid of 15ft. (4,57m) x 17ft. (5,18m) allowing living rooms or a master- plus a small
bedroom.
The roofs of the support structure are a uniform collective facility. To simplify the
construction all roofs and gutters are parallel to the load bearing piers. While walking through
the courtyards it helps the sense of direction. Roof overhangs cast shadows and protect facades.
The very solid long term construction with thick walls and floors of 1,3ft. (40cm) concrete or
other solid material could considerably increase the return of investment (Bijdendijk, 2011).
3.2.2 Pattern 2. Long galleries
Figure 13. Long galleries in the model.
Figure 14. Galleries along courtyards and streets.
3.2.2.1 Issues
Small as well as large units should be accessible everywhere on each floor, as the consequence
of the free parcellation of units within the support structure.
The number of stairs and elevators should be limited, they are expensive and lower the
density. Everybody also handicapped - should have access to the upper floors.
Social exchanges of neighbors generally happen near the front doors of their homes. It is
therefore desirable that upstairs private front doors are visible from the ground.
In hot climates shadow is welcome in the neighborhood.

647
3.2.2.2 Ideas
Long access galleries have many advantages. Each gallery can give access to a large number of
units (Figs. 13 and 14) of different dimensions. Long galleries need only a small number of
staircases. A elevator here or there makes it possible for handicapped people to live and visit
upstairs.
From the ground front doors of the upper units are visible (Fig. 11). It facilitates the social
conversations.
Galleries cast shadow along the facades.
3.2.3 Pattern 3. Roofs for energy, water and food
Figure15. Integrated PV roof.
Figure 16. Roofs and gardens.
Figure 17. Roof gardening.
3.2.3.1 Issues
When low income people are migrating to a city many of them are used to cultivate their own
crop and fruit. In actual slums areas such land is not available. Why not on the roofs?
Kibera is a shanty town that defines a grotesque poverty. Rusting corrugated roofs sprawl
to the horizon (Greg Nichols, 2012).
Instead of improvised sheets, the roof of a support structure should be solid, keeping out heat,
waterproof and free of maintenance.
Roofs should catch sun energy and rainwater, especially in (sub-)tropical zones (Fig. 18-19).
3.2.3.2 Ideas
Half of the roofs are flat and carry roof gardens with 60cm (2ft.) soil to cultivate crops, herbs,
bushes and little trees (Figs. 12 and 13).
The other half have attics with rain water storage in it. Roofs have overhangs.
The attics are covered by sun panels, most interesting in (sub-)tropic zones.
Figure 18. Five solar performance regions.
Figure 19. Four of the biggest slum areas.
Large slums exist in those zones (Figs. 18 - 19). The norm of a European family
(5500kWh/year would largely be satisfied by 10sqft. (1m2) photovoltaic panel per unit. The
proposed support has PV roofs per unit of about 75sqft. (7m2). The surplus of 6/7 could be
exploited for other purposes like street lighting, water pumps, schools, hospitals, industry and
nearby settlements. Storage is one of the main issues. An electricity company might participate.
The company Steama offers utilities enabling retail electricity in remote areas. The company
enables its clients to collect cash-less mobile payments conveniently, and communicate with
consumers on their terms while internet connection is not required.

648
Sun roofs represent a wonderful expression of abundant sustainable living.

3.2.4 Pattern 4. Central shafts for independed services
Figure 16. Rotterdam: Free shafts in OB project.
Figure 17. Papendrecht: Shaft with basic pipes.
3.2.4.1 Issues
All units should have basic services: water, energy and sewage.
In many slum cities there is a lack of those services. They should be provided locally, selfsupporting, independent from suppliers, so that this housing typology could be realized
anywhere.
The support structure should offer those services through main pipes and wires in a way that
individual households can safely and controlled plug in their private extensions.
3.2.4.2 Ideas
Central shafts for basic pipes and wires are spread all over the support structure (Fig. 16). The
main support pipes are placed in a diagonal to allow infill connections from four directions (Fig.
17).
The basic service systems depend very much on local possibilities. Seven basic service
systems seems interesting: 1. PV roof system and roof ridge heat collectors. 2. Rainwater
storage in attics for gardening and cleaning. 3. Drinking water from a deep water pump. 4. Subsoil fresh-air pipes for cooling. 5. Small compost toilets with a urine outlet plus local compost
centers. 6. The collective Kazuba toilet system. 7. Helophyte filters for purification of grey
water needing 2/3 courtyard land per 200 units.
Those self-supporting systems could provide basic services, independently from providers. It
allows the realization of a pilot project in any neighborhood of a slum area and it will reduce the
total expense per family.
Moreover it will stimulate residents to take care of common facilities in their environment.
3.3 Infill
Figure 18. Rotterdam: Residents wanting the same unit.
Figure 19. Zwolle: Choosing ones parcel.
According to Open Building infill is used for the lay-out and the fitting-out of a dwelling, a
shop, an office or a workshop. Before the infill could start the support structure has to be

649
parceled out in different units (Fig. 18.). By choosing a place one discovers his future
neighbors. The allotment of a support structure has always been a pleasant happening (Fig. 19).
Once parcellation has been finished separation walls between the units can be built.
Within a assigned part of the support structure, occupants realize their private spaces by
partitioning, doors, secondary piping, kitchens, bathrooms, faades etc.. Many slum occupants
are experienced in building their own house or find help. They might experience that executing
ones home within a given structure is satisfying, easier and effective. Infill makes a dwelling, a
shop etc. unique, corresponding to the particular desires and budget of the user.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This typology of affordable low rise high density flexible housing has been developed out of
years of housing practice. The application of this concept could be interesting when cities are
dealing with low income immigrants and especially when is asked for a gradual transformation
of an existing slum area.
The Open Building levels and the Pattern Language are helpful tools in structuring decisions
and user participation. The application of those principles and methods might be of great help in
the tremendous fallow field of illegal un-serviced low-income settlements, which grow in a high
speed around big cities.
The research has resulted in three basic conclusions.
1. Transformation of a slum area into a full urban city district seems interesting and
possible. It creates a high density fabric in low rise buildings that forms human scale
spaces for local traffic and full neighborhood life. It also creates an environment that
locally could be discussed with people involved, and agreed upon, by cities, investors,
landlords and users.
2. The transformation into a simple sustainable support structure seems possible. It
offers the users a fundamental freedom to create their own home, equipments and
finishing.
3. The transformation could very well incorporate sustainable basic services for water,
energy, sewage, purification, gardening and composting, independent from public or
commercial providers.
The transformation towards an urban district could be realized locally, step by step, on a slum
site anywhere. A urban tissue could easily run up to 100 acres (40ha) or more while the support
structure could start in a pilot project of about 1000 units, designed and executed locally with
users, developers, architects and builders. This would be the next step.
The typology is extendable, could be applied on a larger scale. The whole network of streets,
alleys and courtyards will than offer an interesting and divers environment, and strengthen the
engagement of the occupants.
REFERENCES
Alexander, C. A. et al. 1977. A Pattern Language. New York: Oxford University Press, Pattern 52.
Bijdendijk, ir. Frank. 2011. Over Ketensamenwerking en Democratische Projectontwikkeling (About
Chain-cooperation and Democratic Project Development). Amsterdam: 32.
Dayaratne, R. 2010. World Institute for Development Economics Research, United Nations University.
Working Paper No. 2010/64, Moderating Urbanization and Managing Growth. How Can Colombo
Prevent the Emerging Chaos?: 5-6, 12-15.
Habraken, N. J. 1961 1972. Supports an alternative to mass housing. London.
Habraken, N. J. 1983. Signs of structure. Transformations of the site. Awater Press, Cambridge: 185.
Kendall, St. & Teicher, J. 2000. Residential Open Building. E & FN Spon, London: 32.
Nichols, G. 2012. How slums, favelas and shantytowns are solving the worlds most pressing problems.
The optimist, 73, November/December 2012.
SAR73. 1973. Het methodisch formuleren van afspraken bij het ontwerpen van weefsels. (Methodical
formulations of agreements in designing urban tissues). SAR rapport, Eindhoven: 13.
650

Sueyoshi, S. & Ohtsuka, R. 1997. Growth and residential conditions of a slum community in Colombo,
Sri Lanka. Department of Welfare, Kibi International University, Okayama, Japan & Department of
Human Ecology, The University of Tokyo, Japan: 56.
Werf, F. J. M. van der. 1993. Open Ontwerpen (Open Design). 010 Publishers, Rotterdam.
Chapter 10
Safeguarding of cultural aspects of housing typologies and usability

Chapter 10: Safeguarding of cultural aspects of housing typologies and usability
653
On the way to implementing sustainable Open Building in Israel

G. Bar Abadi
Aviel, Israel
E. Hanina
Kefar-Yona, Israel
ABSTRACT: Israeli housing design is constrained by closed and inflexible design and
construction processes. The lack of proper sufficient housing for the changing user's needs,
together with the rising prices of dwellings, lead to the housing crisis, 2011-present This paper
summarizes a search for Open Building solutions, aiming to allow long term adaptability and
reuse of standard Israeli residential buildings. In our research we have studied the limits of
typical planning and construction methods of Israeli housing. We adapted rules and guidelines
learned from Open Building implementation and came up with new ideas of combining two
rigid methods of construction into one that is both adaptable and reusable. Our effort focuses on
the design of reusable steel frame faade panels, designed as an infill to fit the standard concrete
structure. While searching for marketable solutions we are also trying to influence policy
making by taking part in a civil society initiative.
1 INTRODUCTION
Current Israeli housing design is constrained by closed and inflexible design and construction
processes. The rigid residential buildings are incapable of cost-effective upgrading when social
and technical requirements change. Unnecessary entanglement of building elements, with
differing life spans, lead to infrastructure failure causing buildings to deteriorate. The lack of
proper sufficient housing for the changing user's needs, together with the rising prices of
dwellings, resulted in the Israeli housing crisis and a mass social movement, 2011 to present.
The crisis brought many to the streets, protesting against the insufficient govt attempts to
provide for habitable housing (Figs. 1-3).
Many believe the answer to these problems is in the financing, but new financing schemes are
not sufficient. Changes in decision-making priorities are necessary for making an effective
change, integrating the users and their needs into the design process. Smart design is part of this
inevitable shift, as this paper explains.
The question raised in the research is how do we plan standard Israeli housing that will allow
long term adaptability to changing needs? And further, how do we do it in the most effective
affordable way?
The first part of the research looks into the characteristics of the design of common Israeli
residential buildings, searching for possibilities of making these buildings more adaptable.
The second part investigates reusable facade infill, as an affordable adaptable solution for the
standard housing market.
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The methodology used in the first part has been reading documentation of Israeli building
guidelines, conducting interviews with architects and reading articles and books about Open
Building. It involved evaluating plans and schemes of residential buildings and test fitting
alternative schemes. In the second part we studied the Israeli building methods, as well as the
pricing of building materials. We conducted interviews with engineers and construction
companies on alternatives for faade construction. Throughout our work we have been looking
into solutions in Open Building projects and studying their relevance to the local methods of
construction.
Figures 1-2. Inflexible housing. Tel-Aviv 2016.
Figure 3. Housing protest 2011. Photo

credit: Activestills.org.
2 ISRAELI CONSTRUCTION METHODS AND THEIR LIMITS

The Israeli housing process evolved under close government control until the 70s, aiming to
house the many immigrants. The preferred solution was the building of standardized mass row
houses, built to minimum standards and then-current regulations. After the 70s political
changes caused privatization of the housing market, and a shift toward private investors'
management. The main focus of housing production turned to market forces (i.e. short-term
return on investment and investor risk reduction); social and environmental issues were pushed
aside (Bar Abadi, 2011).
Looking into the housing conditions in Israel today, we can observe a rigid housing stock that
is shortsighted and ignores the realities of Israeli social dynamics and evolving living standards.
The incapacity of standard Israeli housing to accommodate changing social and technical
realities is due in part to obsolete attitudes and practices but is also related to over-reliance on
local building methods.
The common construction method is based on concrete structural elements (floors, columns
and beams), faades and interior walls made of concrete or Ytong blocks, connected by cement.
The infrastructure (rainwater pipes, water pipes and electrical wires) set in the blocks and
cemented. The columns and drainage pipes are often placed inside the apartment according to a
specific design. Due to this system, the mechanical infrastructure is complex to repair or replace
and flexibility in design is limited. This creates a shortening of the overall buildings lifespan
leading to much damage when repairs are attempted, and only partial recycled waste (Figs. 5-6).
With the rise in living standards, the new typological characteristics of residential buildings
in Israel shifted from a compact row typology and became a mostly freestanding H-form
building type with many indentations (Fig. 4). This building type is surrounded by garden and
parking and consists of 2-5 apartments per level. Each apartment has in average 3-5 rooms
including a concrete shelter (required since the 90s for security reasons). While offering
ventilation and other advantages, this type of building configuration fixes the floor plan of each
unit, and limits the possibility for spatial change -due to the positioning of structural elements
and specific openings.

Figure 4. Row house

and H form building
typology.
Figures 5-6. Typical

Yokneam 2016.
construction
method
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Figure 7. Specific faade

openings. Tel Aviv 2011.
Researching the limitation of spatial change, we used the method of mapping the supporting
and changeable elements, in different schemes of recently built local residential buildings. The
mapping showed a clear dominance of permanent elements and therefore the un sustainability of
these buildings during times of change in technical and social requirements (Figs. 8-10). Similar
characteristics were found in the different typologies tested: Small indentations (directly
corresponding to floor plans); entangled and buried infrastructure; constraining structural
elements (columns, concrete shelters, and bearing walls) and specific and permanent faade
openings. (Bar Abadi, 2011).
Figure 8. Almogi 421,

Haifa.
Uzi
Gordon
Architects.
Figure 9. Almogi 398,

Haifa.
Uzi
Gordon
Architects.
Figure 10. Lev Atlit. Shwatrs

Besnosov Architects.
During our research for concepts and solutions developed over the world for a more
sustainable and adaptable environment, we found that the Open Building approach provides
answers to how residential buildings can be designed in a more compatible way.
3 THE OPEN BUILDING APPROACH
The Open Building approach, developed by Prof. Habraken at the SAR in the Netherlands in the
early 1960s, and implemented in hundreds of projects in many other countries since then,
recognizes that both individual initiative and community responsibility are needed for a healthy
housing process. In a technical sense, this requires the introduction of changeable INFILL or
FIT-OUT (related to individual aspirations) in more permanent BASE BUILDINGS (what is
shared by all the inhabitants of a building). This separates the common and more permanent
parts of the building (structure, main services, means of egress, etc.) from the parts decided for
each occupant (Infill or Fit-Out). It offers schemes that allow changing the buildings use with
time and replacing the buildings infill and its related infrastructure as necessary. (Habraken,
1999; Kendall, Teicher 2000; Kandall, 2006).
Examples can be seen in two of the leading OB projects, Molenvliet in the Netherlands, and
Next 21 in Japan. In Molenvliet (Architect Frans van der Werf, Netherlands) a government
housing authority project of renting dwellings, the concept of differentiation of Levels of
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intervention is introduced. In this project there is clear separation of the decision making
process between the planner/architect (acting for the investor,) and the users. (van der Werf,
1980) The scheme offers a permanent base building, with capacity to accommodate a range of
unit sizes and for each a different floor plan. This project is very much alive, with replaceable
facades, multiple options for separation walls, and the expression of individuality (Fig. 11).
Figure 11. Molenvliet, Papendrecht, Netherlands 1977. Architect: Frans van der Werf. Images courtesy of
Frans van der Werf.
Next 21 (Osaka Gas Company, Japan) experimental project, introduces the principle of
separating the base building and its more permanent mechanical systems from the infill (fit-out)
and the systems intended per fit-out. The separation is made according to different life cycles of
the building parts allowing both the disassembly and reuse as well as the coordination of
systems for energy conservation. Each apartment can be reconfigured and redesigned without
interference to the base building, and the faade parts can be disassembled and reused to fit the
new apartment layout (Figs. 12-15) (www.osakagas.co.jp).
14.
Open Figure 15. System Diagram
Figures 12-13. Changeable faades and Figure
At At http://Open Building.org.
apartment
schemes.
At structure.
http://www.briqs.org.
http://www.ad.arc.hku.hk.
Figures 12-15. Images of NEXT21. Osaka, Japan 1994. Architects: Mitsuo Takada, Kazuo Tatsumi.
4 DEVELOPING GUIDELINES FOR ISRAELI OPEN BUILDING

By adapting lessons learned from Open Building to fit to the local planning and building
methods, we attempt to influence the adaptability of standard residential buildings in Israel. This
is demonstrated in the redesign of a typical H-type building, from the study shown in Figure 8
(Almogi 421, Haifa. Architect Uzi Gordon). First the existing scheme was studied in order to
find the necessary changes for an adaptable base Building. A few optional design plans were
test- fitted and the overall scheme was changed accordingly (Figs. 16-19). Comparing the
original and revised schemes, three main principles were clearly defined: Spaces between
structural walls with capacity to accommodate variable layouts; variable boundaries between
dwelling units; and the separation between fixed and changeable mechanical elements.
Based on the research the following guidelines were introduced:

1
2
3
4
5
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Evaluate the base building by test-fitting a few options (capacity analysis) for
variable unit sizes and for each unit, variable layouts.
Avoid small indentations (less than 4m).
Place structural elements and concrete shelters according to the variable layouts
tested.
Separate the piping system from the structure.
Replace entirely rigid (structural) faades with changeable elements.
Figure 16. Almogy 421, Haifa.

Architect Uzi Gordon.
Figure 17. Scheme of original

plan.
Figure 18.
scheme.
Redesigned
OB
Figure 19. "Test-fitting" variable layouts for maximum adaptability.
5 ADAPTABLE FAADES
In the second part of the research we chose to focus on adaptable faade design that would
accommodate changeable unit sizes and layouts. This is a key issue because introducing
variability in the faade has a direct relationship with fixed base building elements and variable
fit-out elements.
Faade planning depends very much on budget. Adaptability in faade design in Israel only
appears in high cost buildings where faades are made of aluminum and glass. The user can
choose to close parts of the fenestrations from the inside with gypsum board. This technique is
costly and not relevant for most of the building market (considering Israel is a hot country
fenestration size should be considered carefully). Prices of glass faade infill run around 300400 euro per meter (Fig. 20). Most of the housing market is built in the traditional method of
concrete base and concrete blocks (Fig 21). The cost of concrete block faade infill is around 80
euro per meter for stucco siding and 140 euro per meter for stone siding. These faades are not
adaptable or reusable, as explained above. Searching for advanced building methods we learned
that the light metal structure housing construction, (more common in single family homes), is
reusable and of similar costs to that of the concrete block infill, however it is a bearing wall
construction and therefore not adaptable (Fig. 22).

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Figure 20. Glass faade

adaptable, high cost; Akirov
Hights,Tel-Aviv,
MYS
Architects. Photo: R. Cohen
Image At http://www.nrg.co.il.
Figure 21. Concrete block faade

rigid, low cost; Ness Ziona, Arch:
Faigen Architects. Photo: M. Shalbi.
Image At http://www.ynet.co.il /real
estate.
Figure 22. Metal construction

rigid, low cost; House in
Yesod Hamala; Image At
http://www.mitek.co.il.
Realizing that an important factor for acceptance of new decision-making processes is to

work within the local market and the current building methods, we are currently studying
marketable solutions together with Mitek Israel an advanced building systems company
specializing in steel construction. Together we are aiming to find new cost-effective methods for
connecting permanent concrete base buildings with changeable and adaptable lightweight
faade elements, and making the mechanical infrastructure more accessible to change.
Our collaboration is intended to advance the idea of new faade infill made of steel frame
covered with variable local siding such as stone or stucco, replacing the concrete block.
The faade infill will be designed for change and reusability and will allow adaptable
apartment layouts in standard local housing costs (Figs. 23-24).
Figure 23. Typical local building method.

Concrete structure and concrete block
construction.
Figure 24. Our suggestion for a combined method of

concrete structure with metal frame infill.

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The work we are focusing on involves:

1 The clear delineation of faade elements into base building faade elements and fitout faade elements, and a further separation to more easily changeable fit-out faade
elements that can be replaced over time (Figs. 24-26).
2 Designing the faade panels as frames according to a grid, allowing the choice in the
amount and size of fenestration. Making changes easy and efficient during initial
construction and future renovations. Offering multiple options for panel siding, such
as stone or stucco like the typical local buildings, or any other suitable material (Figs.
24-25).
3 In order to add to the apartment adaptability we suggest constructing beams that will
allow additional balconies according to the permitted volume, thus enabling the
addition of gardens and green areas (Fig. 25).
4 Developing a smart system for mechanical system distribution and routing.This kind
of system will allow the passage of piping in every faade junction, and more
importantly repair and replacement without causing damage to building parts. This
can be done with a vertical grid, connected to the interior horizontal piping, covered
with removable panels (Figs. 27 - 28).
This development will improve sustainability and adaptability of the building stock,
introducing a more effective reuse of building materials, while addressing environmental issues
as well as social issues. Many of these methods can be used in renovations of existing buildings
as well as new. We think that change will be made possible when solutions are made attractive
enough for investors by giving them relevant solutions and more variety of choice.
Figure 25. Metal frame infill with varying panel siding

Placed in-between the concrete structure.
Figure 26. Detail of Mitek metal panel with

75mm Ytung-Tech siding and stucco.
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Figure 27. Option 1: Infrastructure inside the apartment area in every faade junction.
Figure 28. Option 2: Infrastructure as part of the faade in every junction.

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6 CONCLUSIONS AND THE CIVIL SOCIETY INITIATIVE

In conclusion to our research, there appears to be an interest among construction companies to
find adaptable and affordable solutions especially in the faade market. However we are
expecting some difficulties of introducing new ideas into the local building market.
We will need to find a way to work with current building laws that do not yet recognize
making changes in faades as an option. We will attempt to work with building committees to
get points for green building guidelines. The work we expect to follow is the testing of the metal
frame faade infill in a design of an experimental project.
While the housing crisis in Israel continues, in the past year we have been a part of a civil
society initiative to try to bring about change. Together with colleagues, in collaboration with
the Social Congress for Housing Solutions, we are writing a document addressed to the
president. The document focuses on the adaptation and reuse of rundown housing and the
rethinking of Israeli housing design, financing and production.
Part of our initiative is taking action to influence policy making. We believe the right for
housing is a fundamental right and therefore we as architects, have a social role, to make this
fundamental right a reality for every citizen. We believe that new ways of building such as
Open Building are necessary in order to react to the changing demands and needs of the users.
We wish to contact any participators of the conference who will be interested in forming a
network of thinking of advancing these systems of building and making adaptable housing
possible, anywhere in the world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Prof. Kendall from the Open Building organization for providing insight and expertise that
greatly assisted the research.
REFERENCES
Bar Abadi, G. 2011.Open Building Approach in the Design of Residential Buildings in Israel.
[Research Thesis]. The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.
Habraken, N. J. 1999. "Supports-an Alternative to Mass Housing". The Urban International Press. UK.
First edition 1961.
Habraken, N. J. 1998. "The structure of the Ordinary- Form and Control in the Built Envinronment". The
MIT Press.
Kendall, S. 2006. Homeworks, A New American Townhouse. Tradfford publishing. Canada, USA,
Irland, UK.
Kendall, S. & Teicher, J. 2000. "Residential Open Building". CIB, E&FN Spon, London & N.Y.
van der Werf, F. 1980. "Molenvliet - Wilgendonk: Experimental Housing Project, Papendrecht,
Netherlands". The Harvard Architectural Review, Vol.1, Spring 1980.
[website] www.open-building.org.
[website] www.osakagas.co.jp.
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Globalization and
vernacularism
invention
of
identities
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lessons
from
H. Benacer
Politecnico Di Milano University, Milan, Italy
ABSTRACT: We living in a world today where to be modern you need to live in a metropolitan
city with skyscraper districts inhabit a house of glass and in possession of the latest
technology...these behaviors helped to establish a universal order and neglected the regional
differentiation. In the housing context for example; privilege has been given more to the time
and cost instead of taking into account the culture, climate, and inhabitant's needs, new
settlements are lacking a clear definition of enclosure and density, streets have lost their
traditional use and buildings are viewed independent and no longer meaningful, as architects
and designers the identity conservation is one of our duty to defeat the globalization phenomena
and preserve local differentiation. This paper highlights the importance of going back into the
origins in order to extract lessons which can form the basis for a future architecture locally
respective, considering the North African medina as a case study to show how local parameters
shaped its structure and led to attain an acceptable level of socio spatial integration. The
methodology applied range from analyzing to identifying the impact of local parameters and
their roles and benefit for the process of attaining modern and sustainable living environment.
The main finding of this research is setting up guidelines and rules to attain modern housing stat
locally respective to be a reference for decision makers, designers and stakeholders.
1 INTRODUCTION
Today we are living in a global world which has an ideology to create a universal order; the role
of modern architecture is seen to be the tool to express this phenomenon that would account for
all dimensions of architecture: environment, technical structure, scale, context and ornament.
The uniformity of urban landscape is one of its outcomes standing for the same invaluable
experience of places, difficult to be distinguished and the presence of local identity almost
excluded. In the housing context the negative impact of current mass production model has
attained a critical level which emerges the necessity to inspect the possibilities for an alternative
paradigm based on preserving local identity, sense of community and uniqueness of housing in
their structural composition that can enrich the users experience and answers the question of
how we can provide to buildings and places individuality in relation to local conditions. By
going back to history different researchers claim that the Second World War was the turning
point from which we start to experience the loss of place meaning and values by the supremacy
of the physical consideration especially in housing context. Due to the massive destruction on
that time the task was to rebuild and to provide shelters through giving privilege to time, cost
and quantity whereas the quality became trivial and in most cases neglected, resulting a living
environment that is lacking originality and failed to address the local context following a
military philosophy of repetitiveness. As architects our crucial duty is to negotiate amongst
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various realities and perspectives in order to produce an environment meaningful for those who
use and live in it without neglecting the significance of addressing other factors like economical
once. Approaching local context can be made in different ways; while national identity might be
explicitly introduced in new religious, monumental, governmental and civic buildings, it can
also be included through more temporary and ephemeral forms of architecture applied to
celebrate an event, these ways of approaching local identity is mostly temporary and addresses
its superficial texture and not in a deep manner, what we need today is a more deep
investigation on the place conditions. In the case of Maghreb region (North Africa), the adopted
architectural approaches have neglected the existing structure and the lessons that can be
learned from the rich traditional context; instead, it applies norms and characters mostly based
on western conditions which doesnt take into account local climate, socio-cultural conditions
(together with particular importance giving to privacy).
This situation is considered to be inappropriate for local context due to the massive
dissatisfaction among users and their needs that go beyond biological basic ones.
On the other hand, vernacular and traditional architecture is seen to be considered as an
environmental based structure that is built with local conditions and socio-cultural variables
which define the way in which this structure has been built. This paper will highlight and
discuss the impact of the socio-cultural parameters in shaping the traditional architecture in the
Maghreb region and what lessons can be extracted from the past to be revaluated for the new
generation of modern housing projects.
2 PLACE MORE THAN A SPACE
To better understand what the place is, it is useful to start the investigation with what a place is
not or the non place in order that we better recognize just what place is today, according to
Norbergue Schulz Second World War was the turning point from which we begin to experience
a loss of place, new settlements are missing an understandable description of density and
enclosure, buildings are seen to be independent and no longer meaningful in their attention to
human experience or their relationship, streets have lost their traditional use therefore there is a
lack of character and a loss of identity, which led to the appearance of an inauthentic attitude
toward place, this attitude is sustained today with the emergence of other factors that made this
behavior even worst such as mega-structures, suburban sprawl, colonialism, destruction caused
by war..., as a result a place became equivalent to a geographical location; absent of the
intangible features character, sense of enclose, meaning and above all identity, serves to a
better functional experience where people perform their daily activities with no meaning behind
their experience but a pure physical space works as a machine..!.
Oxford Dictionary of Geography defines place as: 'A particular point on the earth's surface;
an identifiable location for a situation imbued with human values.' Place is not just a location,
but a particular one. What gives it particularity is its 'imbued with human values, the dualistic
disposition of a place looking for an equilibrium between nature and human was always a
starting point of considering a place definition. Architectural theory always has given an
attention to develop an understanding to the importance of our existence and inspects how we
can utilize it to produce cities and buildings that improve this aspect of human life, for instance
the early architecture was interested by man connection with the universe and paid importance
to the God and the rulers of that time, the Egyptian pyramid is aligned in relation to the cardinal
indicates of the compass, a connection to the cosmos through the lightening filtration all along
the pyramid tunnels the external shape and its form sits strongly on the ground (earth) and
directs concentration to the sky.
From an architectural perspective place is considered to be the starting point from which all
design for our built environment should begin, an explanation of the quality and uniqueness of
its components can only start with an understanding of the concept of place from different
perspectives, apart from the examination of tangible features like studies focus on the physical
image of the site, connection between the built environment and open natural space, the
organization of public space and geometrical features and the building wealth more attention
should be given to the intangible ones such as the particular place character and the local sociocultural variables, which are similarly essential parameters that comprise the local image and

665
identity to attain a living environment which respects the local paradigms and seeks to attain a
sustainable living environment.
3 THE DETERMINANT FACTORS OF SETTLEMENT PATTERN
Topic was over years under debate, where some consider the dominance of physical factors like
climate conditions, materials availability, land topography and water system in shaping our
places others go to stress on the dominance of cultural variables considering what is physically
determined is culturally selective; for instance Norbergue Schulz claims that an environment
where man has found his meaningful place within the totality which means that make the
general envelope nature visible as a concrete in the scale of local situation or what he called
the cultural landscape in this case nature is seen to be the background that we should refer our
self to if we want to understand our living environment as a source of both physical and non
physical features, however, other goes to consider that the settlement form is an outcome of a
complex set of socio-cultural factors, Rapoport (1969, 1977) through his book 'house, form and
culture', challenge physical determinism studies that emphasized construction materials, climate
and economic conditions as determinants of house form, and confirmed the precedence of
cultural structures in helping to establish the form and design of houses and urban forms. After
Rapoport work many other studies highlight the importance of cultural and social factors in the
design and use of houses like Benham (1973) who illustrated the connection between possible
shapes and forms of shelters and the many other studies that related cultural and social factors to
the design and use of houses. For example, Banham (1973) illustrated the association between
possible forms of human shelters and the existing cultural habits and behavior of local people.
Figure 1. Modifications conducted by the local citizens on buildings to meet their socio-cultural needs.
Source: Google image.
Ignoring the particular local socio-cultural conditions can lead to the situation presented in
Figure 1.
In our case we tried to approach the initial settlement composition through a detached study
that does not pre-assume the dominance of one of the previous factors, however, due to the
papers aim and the size restriction the focus is more on the socio-cultural inputs as a major
generator of the medina structure and its particular DNA in congruency to the existing physical
conditions such as: topography, water system and climatic conditions.
How?
In the medina of Algiers; land topography has a crucial role in defining the generating axes of
the city and the road orientation, whereas the water system has an input in defining the dead
ending road orientation and fountains disposition which were applied as common spaces and
public spheres, for instance the axe that penetrates the city from one edge to another represents
the physical articulation of the city, it contains the main services, institutions and city focal
points like mosque, castle and market, it is considered to be the most public space in the
Medina, in adjacent to these centers urban quarters which are partially autonomous connected
by a chain of roads and narrow winding impasses, that connects the northern to the southern
entrances of the city (Figs. 2, 3).

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Figure 2. The natural input (topography, water system, climate conditions) in determining the Medina
structure. Source: Author.
4 SOCIO-CULTURAL PRINCIPLES IN MAGHREB SOCIETY

The word culture is a determining of a very complicated concept which expresses
all of the intellectual activities of a civilization. The culture is: dynamic, expressed
through the community as well as the individual, interpreted with each member of
the community, shared with groups and transformed to new generation, It involves
a system of rules and also attitudes, values, beliefs and norms. It conveys the
sustainability of vitality of the community, and has the potential to change
(AYALP, 2011).
If we consider the house scale; Rapaport (1969) considers that the cultural features that involve
in the house creation in the Middle East are:
x The family structure and relatives;
x Religion;
x Settlement patterns;
x Heritage peculiarities and Architectural language;
x Land owning systems and division;
x Child raising methods;
x Cognitive maps; territoriality, privacy, intensity;
x Food habits;
x Traditional and Symbolic systems;
x Status defining social identity;
x Behavioral organization in a house;
x Working, business with others and trades;
With all these social, cultural and psychological influences, home is more than drawings,
design, materials and walls, it became a home that gains high emotional and symbolic meaning
(AYALP, 2011).
Informal rules, values and spirituals are fundamental factors in most cultures, particularly the
Pre-industrial ones. In North African region medina represents an integral and alive acts of
history, cultural mirror of the Maghreb city and metaphorical representation of the local ID,
local values have a crucial role in the formation of cities and urban settlements of the region
which gave a unique character distinguished them from European cities. For instance, if we take
the case of the medina in the capital Algiers, the city fabric was strongly conditioned by politics,

667
cultural values, way of life and local traditions through involving directives that have straight
effects in the domestic sphere, like behaviors to social control, privacy, women social statue...
and applying them physically through sexual and functional segregation between male/ women,
services/ residential spheres, introversion housing system, intense informal clusters, filtration
system of circulation through the tri-fold partition of space into private, semi-private, public.
Figure 3. The case study context. Source: Author.
Considering the mentioned impact the resulted structure goes beyond a typical space of living
to a concept of a place that covers the entire dimension including intangible once that can be
perceived visually and emotionally and filled with meanings, motions and stories. Looking
today at the most of new neigheberhood built in many Maghreb cities shows projects without
soul, placelessness in comparison with the traditional old cities.
Going deep in comparing the two sites reveals more differentiation in terms of achieving
peoples needs, environmental and cultural conditions of the place. Some of the cultural
concepts have been highlighted to show their input in shaping the traditional Maghreb medina
and buildings from performative perspective either intentionally or unintentionally.
Figure 4. The old and the new settlements Casbah Algiers and new housing compounds. Source: Google
image.
5 PRIVACY
The privacy in local perspective is more than a concept that gives the ability of an individual or
group to seclude themselves, or their information so express selectively, but is a way, a system
of life and language of communication that allows people to exchange, understand and respect
each other, privacy is an intangible machine that produces the particular DNA and identity of
local citizens and defines the boundaries of their freedom, privacy is a spatial arrangement
reflecting one of the most common principles of the local society is a system that is not
considered only for the house unite but is a whole mechanism that starts from the city itself
passing through the neighborhood to the house, privacy is the core from which most of the
spatial configurations of the built environment start!
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Attaining a certain degree of privacy in the local perspective is fundamental for the
preservation of traditional way of life and cultural believes. To better understand the local
interpretation of the privacy lets start from the general definition of the notion, its meaning and
the way its been interpreted physically. According to dictionary Larousse, the concept of
privacy is the character of what is intimate, deep, interior; it is the quality of a welcoming
environment that favors familiar relations. Rapoport (1977) defines the privacy as the control of
unwanted interaction, Altman (1976) defines it as being, "a selective control of access to self or
one's group, Ittelson et al (1970) privacy means obtaining freedom of choice or options to
achieve goals in order to control what (and to whom) information is communicated about
oneself, however, if we are to structure the concept of privacy we can refer it to an interactional
agreement between two or more sides where all the parties agree that there will be a certain
level or zero interaction and that one of them is to be alone, this segregation is concerning
mainly the gender and function where the sexual segregation can influence the built
environment through distinguishing the spheres sexually affecting directly the shape and the use
of traditional settlements, for instance the introversion system of the house unite allows
receiving and entertaining male guests without intruding the family private sphere, therefore the
arrangement of spaces is based on controlling and filtering system access...
The need for privacy and its values led to the appearance of various interpretation and
meanings across different cultures despite some efforts to generalize its meanings Altman
(1977), we cannot neglect the different ideology behind the significance of adopting privacy.
For example the privacy conservation and the desire of segregation between male and women
is a shared desire between Arabs and Indians however the way of interpreting it differentiate;
for example if we precise more on the sphere of segregation in the Indian community we find
that the husbands relatives are included in the forbidden sphere of the wife which made the
spatial segregation even more severe inside the house itself however in the Arab community is
not the case and the sexual segregation is stressed only with outside the kid group, which made
the mechanisms of achieving the privacy are different from one culture to another, whereas the
aim is based on avoiding the unwanted interaction.
For instance Rapoport (1980) defined and generalize the way of achieving privacy six
mechanisms can be adopted all or part of them depends on the cultural background and the
purpose behind:
x Rules (manners, avoidance, hierarchies ...)
x Psychological means (internal withdrawal)
x Behavioral cues
x Structuring activities in time
x Spatial separation
x Physical devices (halls, courts, doors, curtains).
In our context apart from being an instrument for social control and sexual segregation the
privacy is perceived positively considered indispensable character for psychological, social and
physical well-being of the local inhabitants, privacy is connected directly to the built
environment considering it as a target and the city fabric, neighborhood and house in particular
way is the tool to achieve it. In follow the examination of the traditional city of Medina in the
city of Algiers will show that the desire for privacy is interpreted physically in the city in
several manners and in two different scales:
5.1 Urban scale
Circulation pattern as an instrument for social control: As a whole system the aggregation of
houses is not made spontaneously but is perfectly considering the particular socio-cultural
dimension of the local society and one of them is the privacy. From the house to the
neighborhood arriving to the city the concretization of the privacy values is made in a different
ways depending on the physical scale, the occupancy and the activities, the so-called filtration
system is a very smart way of the concretization of privacy which makes the connection
between the indoor/ outdoor, private/ public spaces soft and gradual, one of the most notable
characteristics associated with transitional edges is that they tend to overcome abrupt divisions
of private and public spaces with more of smooth public-private continuum which flows from
privacy through to the public realm more gradually (Altman, 1975, Alexander 1977..); for

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instance, in the medina scale the hierarchy of roads follow a filtering principle taking you from
the busiest street (public) to the less intimate to the most private; therefore, to have the
possibility to access the interior of the home, one has to go from the street to the alley and after
to the impasse, filters spaces, which are intended to conserve the privacy not only of the single
house but also district and the city itself. This organization is a sequence of limits and
successive screens to cross, cutting the space into sub-spaces separated by borders, which are
represented by a set of setbacks and dissimilation.
How?
Our analysis to the medina pattern is based on the categorization of the roads based on three
scale of assessment:
x Physical: it covers physical road dimension, level and degree of connectivity
x High connected roads
x Medium Connected roads
x Dead ending impasses
x Visual: visual perception, occupation Type of activity, openness, closeness
x Open visual perception public occupation
x Less open visual perception Intimate commercial occupation
x The least visual perception private housing occupation
x Phenomenological: based on the place experience.
The resulted analysis shows three layers of road (Figs. 5, 6):
Firstly, the whole hierarchical spatial organization is articulated on one big road in terms of
the scale and flow density, this road is considered to be the most public and crosses the medina
all along from one access to another through its centre. Along this public road we find the main
infrastructure of the medina and its focal points like public facilities, mosque and market, it is
considered to be largest the longest and the most occupied part of the medina.
Second layer of roads is the connecting once: these roads are in charge of linking the different
parts of the medina with the main road, each residential quarter is connected to the main road by
a street creating an arteries chain. Dwellings are not permitted to be facing the main road which
usually contains shops; this layer of roads is less wide and less occupied then the first one.
Third layer: If we go deeper in the quarters we discover a third layer of streets or paths that
take you to the individual dwelling blind alleys, this layer is the least in terms of scale and
density of occupancy and the most private level of street.
All along the path from the street to the patio of the house, one is confronted with a series of
consecutive sequences. The separation of space along gender lines, with public space regarded
as the land of males and domestic space regarded as the land of women. To attain this objective
the creation of an in-between space to filtrate the flow and makes it gradually conducted which
means not public and not private but can be considered as a semi-private setting a relatively
unusual circulation pattern characterized by a well defined spaces.
Figure 5. Different layers of the medina of Algiers. Source: Author.
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Figure 6. Different layers of the medina of Algiers. Source: Author.
The next step in the analysis was to define the logic behind the flow distribution which allows
the preservation of the inhabitants privacy applying the Hillier and Hanson pattern which
assesses the level of privacy in accordance with the number possible access from location A to
B arriving to location F, the locations has not been taken spontaneously but referring the three
layers defined before, the type of connection between the components of the different layers has
been given a code to distinguish between the different level of connectivity, that is to say the
connection between the components of layer one is named 01 the connection between the
components of layer two is named 3, the connection between the component of layer one and
layer two is named 2 and the connection between the components of layer two and layer three is
named 4.
Figure 7. Medina Urban Pattern the logic behind the flow distribution and privacy conservation.
The level of publicity of the three layers is distinguished through applying the Hillier and
Hanson pattern, which claims that possibility of accessibility defines the level of publicity; the
more one location has the possibility of accessibility the more is public, while, the less
possibility of accessibility refers that the less is public and then more private.
The result shows that the pedestrian has to follow a continuous imposed parcours in respect
to the level of privacy required in each layer, that is to say, from location A the possibility of
accessibility is the highest (Public layer: public facilities), while is decreasing gradually when
arriving to point B (Semi public layer), arriving to the lowest possibility of accessibility in the
layer 3 (private layer) with one possibility of accessibility representing the most private part of
the medina while the three layers are well merged in one structure shaping a well organized

671
system of circulation which preserves the local need for privacy through the possibility of
accessibility of each location.
5.2 Architectural scale, house scale
In the house unite scale; a house is subject to a holy regulation that should be maintained and
not interrupted, it is based on the introduction of a mixed removals system, which redirects
views as much as possible from curious and prying eyes. No one should see or perceive its
inhabitants. Its open to the sky and closed to the public, a typical house in the old medina is
inward-facing, planned around a central court whose accesses were indirect while windows
rarely can be looking into the road, higher level of the houses would open into the court leading
to the roof; which due to the closeness of houses to each other, constituted parallel public space
leveled on top of the street where neighbors mainly women and their kids could socialize
and interact.
The filtration scheme in the spatial hierarchy of the traditional house is promoting privacy
conservation through a set of features.
5.2.1 The entrance hall
A dark space, usually with double doors; the one that overlooks to the patio and the front door.
This path is never straight; it is cut into series, each of them has a different direction which
faces, usually to a wall, thereby avoiding the straight vision to the central courtyard, the filtering
logic in the house is linked with a second scheme of domestic distribution "radio-centric" which
begins from the patio and distributes to the other rooms through crossing a number of
boundaries: the gallery and its threshold, the threshold of the room, and the doors.
Figure 8. The central court position and the role of the entrance hall as a flow filtering space. Source:
author.
5.2.2 The faade

The threshold and openings disposition; materialize the boundary between the outside space
(public or semi-public) and the interior (private).
The windows as well serve to limit the field of view from the road and protect the patio of the
house from direct vision.
Figure 9. Facade consideration for common private connection (openings). Source: Author.
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5.2.3 The door

The door is an intentionally low height smaller than that of a standard man standing. It works to
limit the field of view from the road when the entrance is open and obliges whoever arrives to
subside before passing the threshold of the house, out of respect to its owners, but also for it to
be overview before he could see what was happening inside.
Figure 10. Facade consideration for common private connection (doors). Source: Author.
5.2.4 The terrace

Stah, or the reflection of a particular urban space for women:
The terrace or fifth facade architecture is a big wide open space, or the views of the Bay of
Algiers are impregnable. These terraces are attached to each other, direct communication can be
established from one space to another, by passing the outside (the street).
Moreover, this discreet communication allows direct daily exchange between neighbors, what
makes it as a female space par excellence and it forms a kind of duplication of urban space that
is organized without nuisances, mostly female.
Figure 11. View from the terraces of the Casbah

Source: Ravreau, La Casbah dAlger, ET le site.
Figure 12. Women of Algiers in

apartments. Source: Eugene Delacroix.
their

In the attempt to highlight the importance of addressing local parameters in architecture and
urban studies, this paper tried to demonstrate through the case of Maghreb medina the role of
local values in the process of determining not only the settlement form (both urban and unite
scale), but also the way in which inhabitants are applying it to maintain their values and perform
their daily life and activities. For growing and developing countries like North African once,
rapid urbanization caused an interruption in their local consistency and proved the
incompatibility of the imported solutions with the local conditions and this is due to the
importance of local values for the inhabitants daily life, which makes it crucial to consider the
influent background that is lived and still exists in peoples identity as a desire they want to
attain in their physical places. The old Medina cities in North African region represents the
remaining witness of this rich era, therefore, any attempt to intervene in this context has to be
based on a strong foundation to achieve an appropriate and sustainable design that can satisfy

673
desired people; starting from a deep understanding of the medina structure and the way in
which its been built and set a middle ground layout between the place particularities and our
time realities to be able to develop a contemporary effective concept that can be applied
nowadays by the municipalities and governments.
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Altman, I. 1975. Environment and social behavior: Privacy, personal space, territory, and crowding.
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AYALP, NUR. 2011. Cultural Identity and Place Identity in House Environment: Traditional Turkish
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Banham, R. 1975. The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment. London: Architectural Press.
Benmatti, N. A. 1982. "L'Habita du Tiers-Monde: Cas de l'Algrie". Algiers: SNED.
Duncan, J. S. 1982. Housing and Identity.
Hakim. (n.d.). Arabic-Islamic Cities; and Lesbet, La Casbah d'Alger.
Jencks, C. 1977. The Language of Post- Modern Architecture. London: Academy Editions.
Le Corbusier. 1986. towards a New Architecture. New York: Dover Publications.
Le faivre, L. & Tzonis, A. 2012. Architecture of Regionalism in the Age of Globalization.
Lebbal, N. 1989. "Traditional Berber Architecture in the Aurres, Algeria". Vernacular architecture.
Lesbet, J. 1985. La Casbah d'Alger: Gestion Urbaine et Vide Social". Algiers: OPU.
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Lynch, K. 1981. A theory of good city form. 514 p. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Norberg-Shulz. 1984. Genius loci, Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Riz Zoli
International Publications.
Norberg-Shulz. 1999. The Phenomenon of Place in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. K.
Nesbitt (ed.). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Rapoport, A. 1969. House Form and Culture. London: Prentice Hall.
Rapoport, A. 1980. Cross-cultural aspects of environmental design. In I. Altman, A. Rapoport & J. F.
Wohlwill (eds.), Environment and culture. Human behavior and environment: Advances in theory and
research, Vol. 4, pp. 7-46. New York: Plenum Press.
Rapoport, A. 2006. Vernacular Design as a model system.
Rappaport, J. 1987. Terms of empowerment/exemplars of prevention: Toward a theory for community
psychology. American Journal of Community Psychology, 15, 1-15.
Ravreau, A. 1989, La Casbah dAlger, et le site cra la ville.
Sinan. 2015. Casbah: destruction de la ville dAlger de 1830.
(n.a.). 2014. National Algerian Report on Housing for the Conference on Housing Habitat III.
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675
Sustainability + preservation: the coincidence of the opposites

M. Eufrasia
DARQ-FCTUC, Coimbra, Portugal
ABSTRACT: Todays architectural practice is dominated by two agendas - preservation and

sustainability, which are materialised by their enforcing proxies rehabilitation and green
design, and underpinned by two major supranational institutions UNESCOs World Heritage
and EUs Europe 2020. Both operate by focusing on what happens within the strict boundaries
of what is to be preserved and/or made sustainable, according to prescriptive principles, that in
some cases leads to a single-minded focus on selective rhetorical and physical virtues of
individual buildings, unconsciously disregarding the wider social and cultural ecologies.
Moreover, preservation and sustainability are usually understood as disconnected entities that
point to opposite directions of the history of architecture, but given the sense of prevalent crisis
in contemporary society, building restoration and re-use and energy efficiency would seem to be
logically compatible, especially when considering housing. This paper will claim that housing
provides a very specific backdrop for this debate because, on the one hand, it forces
preservation to reassess its fixation on crystallising landmarks and engage with the current
global forces of urban production, while on the other, it engages sustainability with the
architectural legacy, leading to the realisation that the accomplishment of sustainable goals
depends more on what we do with our existing built heritage than with new structures in nonbuilt areas. We will focus on housing projects that implicate conservation by Alvaro Siza and
Souto de Moura to substantiate that when design is implicated in an expanded time scale, it
engages architecture with a cultural and historical recompositioning, revealing a seemingly
unpremeditated path toward a resourceful exploration of the less developed potentials of
sustainability and preservation.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is widely known that one of todays most challenging issues comprises the earths ecosystem
and its inhabitability. As we continue to gather information and deepen our knowledge about the
mutual implications between the actions of Man and the surrounding environment, it has
become clear that what we understand as the human habitat can no longer be limited to the
realm of humans and their constructions, and is forced to include nature. In the domain of
Architecture, Sustainability is the concept that has indisputably brought the biggest change to
contemporary design. The mantra of sustainability1 has spawned an array of critical think-tanks,
theoretical manifestos, new technological and material tactics, design guidelines and building
assessment techniques that continuously build up the pressure for the greening of architecture.
Furthermore, the proponents of sustainability are usually very passionate in their whole-hearted
support. For example, Norman Foster has unequivocally stated that sustainability is not about
fashion, it is about survival (Foster 2007) and Richard Rogers prophesized that Ecologyconscious buildings will change modern architecture more radically than perhaps any movement
676

we have seen since the beginning of the modern movement (Rogers 2003, p. 172). But, who
could be against sustainability? The question at the end of the day seems to be not if all
architectural designs should go green, but just a matter of when. However, what is not often
remarked is how sustainability continuously pushes architecture toward two opposite and
apparently self-contradictory directions: toward the modernist belief in the utopian purity of its
design principles and toward the ontological primacy of the environment. This embedded
conflict is often neglected because it is the engine of production of sustainability itself. We
might be beginning to realise that sustainable architecture is the product of the simple
juxtaposition of two concepts, without considering their mutual implications, and that by taking
its agenda for granted we are defusing the agency of design. On the other hand, Preservation is
another disputed concept that carries a heavy ideological baggage. It suffices to recall the public
outrage caused by ISILs destruction of the Palmyra cultural heritage site2 to understand how
much preservation is intertwined in the global forces of the contemporary world. Nevertheless,
the escalating tendency to turn architecture in immutable monuments is reaching a peaking
point: For example, OMAs Villa in Bordeaux3 was declared a monument by Linventaire
supplmentaire des monuments historiques in 2001, only three years after its completion,
preventing its present and future owners of carrying any future changes or adaptations, which
causes obvious predicaments. Here, housing and Eco-housing becomes an important lens
through which we can more clearly acknowledge and possibly demystify embedded preconceptions. Even if preservation deals with the past while sustainability looks to the future,
they do not have to be mutually exclusive entities such as the classical archetypal dichotomies
of tradition vs modernity or continuity vs rupture. In fact, the accomplishment of their own
goals may depend on their ability to negotiate with one another, revealing, through that process
the possibility of divergent paths for architecture.
2 THE HOUSE OF ECOLOGY
It is curious to note that Ecology, a science that germinated from the classical studies on natural
history and evolution, domains that are traditionally considered disconnected from politics and
its makings, is etymologically composed by the Greek terms oikos (habitat) and logos (science),
that literally means the study of the house, which, from an architectural point of view, makes the
concept very compelling. Moreover, as Bruno Latour puts it, Ecology designate[s] not the
human dwelling place but the habitation of many beings, human and nonhuman, who had to be
lodged within a single palace, as in a sort of conceptual Noahs ark (Latour 2004, p. 131), and
this simple realisation has multiple implications in our understanding of the framing of
contemporary life and on how we design our habitats. Today, an environmentally aware design
has to acknowledge the Ecological and its relation to politics, and Gregory Bateson (Bateson
2000) and Felix Guattari (Guattari 2000) have provided very early key insights on this matter.
For example, Guattari foresightedly argued that The only true response to the ecological crisis
is on a global scale, provided that it brings about an authentic political, social and cultural
revolution, reshaping the objectives of the production of both material and immaterial assets.
(Guattari 2000, p. 28). Nevertheless, the key concept of our time is sustainability. Sustainability
is what provides agency to the ecological concerns because it intertwines the study of human
and non-human organisms in the ecosystem with the domain of economics, therefore providing
a systemic understanding of the on-going transformations in the territory4. Sustainability has the
merit of initiating an operative architectural commitment with ecology and technology in the
light of a globalized world (Graham 2005) (Kibert 2013) that triggered a fundamental reversal
in the core of design practice: If our traditional understanding of architecture comes from the
protection of humans from the destructive actions of nature, green architecture must protect
nature from the destructive actions of humans. However, in the last years there has been an
increasing choir of critical voices that claim that sustainability in architecture is leading to an
excessive focus on the technical qualities of the building, which has led the practice to retreat
into its own comfortable sphere of self-reproduction, narrowing of the scope of the architectural
project. Sanford Kwinter has argued that many sustainability discourses remain more
oppressive than liberatory, more stifling than inventive (Kwinter 2010, p. 103) and David
Serlin expresses that sustainable design is in danger of becoming the manicured emerald-green

677
Astroturf that covers the nutrient depleted brown soil of problematic business practices (Serlin
2003, p. 145) claiming that the green revolution
has been supplanted by a revolution not in sustainability itself but in the highly
seductive concept of sustainability as a marketing tool (...) a fashionable exercise
by multinational giants to boost their reputations as card-carrying players in the
green marketplace (Serlin 2003, p. 145).
In this polarised context, and given that what is at stake is the future of our common habitat,
can a focus on housing provide a clearer framework for this debate?
It is logical that the socio-economic changes brought by the impact of globalization on urban
living require a continual revision of the architectural concept of the house. Maybe this is why
the house of the future has always fascinated large audiences and succeeded in connecting
technological advancements to human dreams, bridging the often stated distance between the
autonomy of architectural production and the domestic domain of everyday life. The sustainable
designs are consistently described as part of the living habitat, closely connected to their site,
society, climate, region and the planet, in harmony with the nature (Sassi 2006) (Roaf 2001),
however, when this ethical platform is conveyed into design we are diverted into an array of
distinctive and sometimes self-contradictory standards that are committed the performance of
the architectural object. Green home, low-energy house, Net-zero housing, energy-plus house,
passive house, are some of the many terminologies used for types of competing environmental
certifications that demonstrate a heavy dependence on the environmental performance of the
envelope of the building. Their designing often involves reducing the size of windows,
increasing in wall insulation, using triple glazing, inoperable windows, increased airtightness
and the implementation of mechanical means of ventilation; this represents a literal
intensification of the barrier between inside and outside that effectively seems to reduce the
possibilities of interaction between architecture and the environment. The enactment of these
deterministic models is contributing to the furthering of the artificializing of the environment
which seems to be contradictory to the deeply romantic rhetoric that legitimizes it. Moreover, by
carefully selecting or partially adjusting the properties of a given design, these standards make it
possible to prove the sustainability of almost any architectural project (Mehaffy & Salingaros
2013), neutralising design agency. At this point, it is not clear if eco-housing is a remedy or a
symptom of the ecological crisis.
Nevertheless, it is indisputable that that sustainable housing has been one of the most
compelling and popular themes in the last decade. The enthusiasm is of such a magnitude that
there seems to be a hyperbolic media bubble propelling the untiring publication of the latest
advances in Eco-homes. But if we want to be critical in our interpretation, it is necessary to take
a step back and look at the issue from its footings. To be begin with, why is housing such a
fundamental element for architecture? We claim that there are three main drives that reveal why
the house, the object implicated in the terminology of Ecology is such an important link
between technology, nature and humans, and therefore, possesses the agency to become a
critical vehicle to exploit divergent perspectives on sustainability and our common built
environment.
3 THE ECOLOGIES OF THE HOUSE
Firstly, architecture has emerged from mankinds need for shelter. Laugiers description of the
myth of the Vitruvian hut, "the model upon which all the magnificences of architecture have
been imagined" (Laugier 1977, pp. 11-12), is seen as a foundational moment for architecture.
But while it is usually assumed as the moment of separation of architecture from nature, for
Laugier it is a moment of amplification of nature. In the allegorical engraving of the first
house that illustrates the front cover of Laugiers Essai sur larchitecture (Laugier 1977), there
is no opposition between architecture and nature because architecture is itself inscribed in
nature. The eco-home can be seen as a return to this metaphoric concept of nature, anchoring
sustainability to the architectural tradition that understands the house as the origin of
architecture itself.
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Figure 1. Architecture as Natures avatar: Charles Eisens allegorical engraving of the Vitruvian hut that
illustrates Marc-Antoine Laugiers Essai sur larchitecture, 1755.
Secondly, housing has always been a pivotal theme in all the modern avant-gardes, and it
epitomizes the progressive social agency brought by the Modern Movement. From the Maison
Dom-ino to the Units dHabitation, from the Athens Charter the New Towns in post-war
Europe, and throughout the CIAM congresses, housing was the vehicle of progressive views
that implicated new technologies in a process that aimed to redeem and redefine society. The
recent profusion of books on Modern Housing5 and the listing of several modernist housing
estates in the UK are indicative of the renewed interest on the legacy of the modern movement
in its commitment to reform cities through social housing. Eco-housing recoups a time when
architecture had a clairvoyant vision, a global mission and a universal path towards an
optimistic future.
Figure 2. Back to Nature: The Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and his Montana cabin in 1972. Living offgrid may be ecologically sustainable, but it can also convey an unintended detachment from the
unsustainable world.

679
Thirdly, the house is the physical embodiment of everyday family life. It is not only the locus
of the most familiar spatial experiences of the general public, but, more importantly, it is the
crux between architecture and everyday living. And, as it is stated in the UNs Agenda 21
(UNEP 1992), buildings alone are not enough to produce the required ecological revolution: a
change in individual and collective consumption patterns is necessary. If intergovernmental
regulations and policies are the way to bring change to the Industrial sector, the Eco-house is the
architectural way of delivering sustainabilitys pedagogical message directly into the core of the
household, therefore becoming at the same time the (real) object and the (virtual) metaphor of
sustainable lifestyle.
This short exploration is revealing of how housing is in a particularly relevant position to
connect architecture and sustainability, but it seems also to be indicative of the deeply
ideological underpinnings that are still open to debate. In order to broaden our perspective, let
us go back and perform a deeper analysis of these three drives to uncover if some of its
fundamental problems and intrinsic contradictions shed some light on the deadlock in which
sustainable architecture seems to be.
Firstly, historians such as Reyner Banham (Banham 1969, pp. 18-28), Joseph Rykwert
(Rykwert 1972), and, more recently, Luis Fernandez-Galiano (Fernndez-Galiano 2000, pp. 69) have expanded the idea of the house, by challenging preconceptions regarding its
materialization, its metaphysical connotations and its energetic/thermodynamic interpretation,
opening new possibilities of thinking about dwelling and the environment. However, it is rare to
find any reference to the fact that the primordial house, the cabin or the hut is an object situated
at the heart of many polarizing ideologies. It represents the Walden cabin, Thoreaus mythical
romantic embrace of nature, Heidegger hut, where he developed his phenomenological
approach to building and dwelling, Le petit Cabanon, the rustic holiday cabin of Le Corbusier6
in Cap Martin, designed in December 1951 at the same time that his Unit d'Habitation in
Marseille was being built; and the Unabomber Ted Kaczynskis Montana cabin, the place
where, between 1978 and 1995 he built the self-made bombs used to protest the erosion of
human freedoms by modern technologies. From this sample it is possible to understand how the
cabin can personify in a very clear way the problematic relationship between individual
autonomy, collective responsibilities and the environment. Going one step further, it is possible
to envision an updated version of the cabins design according to todays Eco-homes
principles: Waldens bio-mimetic shelter, Heideggers eco-habitat, Le Corbusiers passive solar
atelier, Unabombers self-sufficient retreat On a side note, in the film industry, the cabin in
the woods is the ubiquitous setting for the majority of the slasher horror film genre, the place
where the truly disturbing side of human nature reveals itself, a fact that is telling of our
common mind-set regarding the life in nature. What is surprising here is the ability of the most
primary element of architecture to embody some of the essential bio-political contradictions of
modern society.
Secondly, the example of the role of the cabin in the woods in horror films is in direct
contrast with the contemporary sci-fi genre, where renderings of highly efficient, sanitised and
crystalline towers of the human habitat7 is often linked to the imposition of a technobureaucratic doctrine established by a voluntary surrender of personal liberties. But, as we all
know, the lines between fiction and reality are not clearly cut and the new planned enclave
eco-cities of Masdar8 and Dongtang represent a crystallization point of globalization that
represent a specific spatial and temporal project in which ecology and economy merge around
technoscientific design. (Hodson & Marvin, 2010, p. 210). On this regard, the theatrical failure
of the biosphere experiment9 is a cautionary tale for ecologic visions that emphasise the technobiological functioning of the collective realm. But the eco-house is a much easier way to
implement sustainability because it is dependent on individual will. However, the way the it
operates brings back rather familiar overtones. Eco-housing aims at being autonomous from its
context (attempts to internalize energy, water, and sometimes even food and waste), aspires to
be global and universal (able to be replicated in almost any context), assumes a high grounded
and moralistic mission that expects to revolutionise society (restore ecological balance), favours
a managerial-oriented approach that relies on a scientifically predetermined guidelines that
minimize personal interpretation (environmental impact studies, life-cycle analysis, emissions
calculations), imposes a radical discontinuity from past historical tradition (green standards and
guidelines), focuses on establishing a new order of formal codification that expresses a heavily
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metaphorical content (literal green) which final objective is the total reshaping of our current
urban environment (Eco-polis). If the points of connexion between the principles of sustainable
architecture and the doctrine of the Modern Movement are overwhelming, it is not by
coincidence. This is why broader and more nuanced perspectives on sustainability are
fundamental for the future of architecture.
Finally, as it was pointed out earlier, the legitimacy of sustainable architecture depends on a
self-righteous and whole-hearted affirmation of the urgency of bringing radical change. This
position is underpinned by the assumption that eco-houses will automatically bring us closer to
sustainable living patterns an assumption that can be contested. On the one hand, we cannot
disregard the expansion of greenwashing to the individual domain, in the way ecology itself has
been branded as a new lifestyle, as Zizek suggests: what we are effectively buying when we
are buying organic food, for instance, is already a certain cultural experience, the experience
of a healthy ecological-friendly lifestyle. (Zizek 2006, p. 255). In fact, Eco-homes readiness in
dismissing our existing unsustainable lives is inseparable from its emphasis on newness,
exemplifying the state of our culture, a culture predicated upon the belief that personal and
collective improvement can be achieved via consumption (Reinmuth 2010). Brian Edwards, a
prolific writer on green design, seem to confirm this last statement, when he writes that the main
issue with sustainable housing is the street appeal: Sustainable housing is constrained by
consumer attitudes, not technical uncertainty. () Design has a role to play in presenting green
housing as a must have it commodity. (Edwards 2000, pp. 10-11). The predicament is selfevident. On the other hand, what is not self-evident is that an increase in the energetic efficiency
of a house will automatically imply energy savings. In fact, as Maarten Gielen writes the
phasing out of energy wasting incandescent light bulbs by the European union in favour of
more energy-efficient types of lighting has not realized any significant decrease in electricity
consumption (Gielen 2014, p. 18). Moreover, the cited author refers Stanley Jevans The coal
question to argue that from a historical perspective, the human response to increased energy
efficiency is to build bigger spaces and thus offset any savings that technology might produce
(Gielen 2014, p. 18). We can see how this can be the case in sustainability: For example, the
passive house guidelines set a maximum quota of energy consumption per square meter of
building regardless of its occupants. This means that someone living alone in a big house is
entitled to consume more energy than a family living in a small house, or in other terms, if you
want to consume more energy, build bigger (passive)houses. Guldberg and Sammonds sum up
the argument:
The art of architecture has been subsumed into a convoluted exercise in energy
conservation abstracted from building physics with no clear way of linking any of
this number crunching to the real-world processes of global warming themselves
over-exaggerated or beyond the control of architects (Sammonds & Guldberg
2001, p. 73).
But questioning the real efficiencies of sustainability is not exclusive to critics. In a recent
interview, Richard Rogers made a statement that is reminiscent of the famous Jimmy Carters
1977 cardigan sweater address10:
When we built the Daimler Chrisler headquarters in Berlin, the chairman told
his workers, In the summer, you will take your jackets off when you are hot and in
the winter, you will put on a pullover. That probably does more for energyefficiency than anything else. We dont think twice about [doing] this in our
houses. (Rogers 2003, p. 173).
This account can be seen as a sensible acknowledgment of the shortcomings of sustainability
in the architectural domain, but it is one that undermines the foundations of sustainable design.

681
Figure 3. Biosphere 2: A sealed environment that housed a two-year experiment in self-sufficiency (19911993) that ended being portrayed as new Age drivel masquerading as science while the voluntary ecoprisioners were accused of being part of a cult.
Another example of this problematic can be found in BedZed, a multi-award winning

sustainable housing development built in London between 2000-2002, that intended not to
indulge in cohersive lifestyle changes for residents but to make change to a low-carbon diet
attractive and convenient (Dunster 2010, p. 277). In a recent article, the author of the design,
Bill Dunster, mentioned that Critics are correct to emphasize that the carbon footprint of an airfreighted strawberry is larger than the carbon savings from BedZED superinsulated building
fabric (Dunster 2010, p. 277). This is clear evidence that sustainable architecture has less
influence in the reduction of CO2 than one would think, and therefore, architecture should be
suspicious of projects that self-proclaim to be sustainable. Moreover, to further increase the
levels of disconnection between the architectural rhetoric and its real impact on the future of
society, Bill Dunster is now developing a range of new Zeds: EdZED (schools), MedZED
(hospitals) and a set of zero-carbon floating apartments because, as he puts it East London
suburban street of the future may well need to rise and fall with the tide (Dunster 2010, p. 278).
This type of sustainable approach reduces architecture to a technical legitimation of
conformist solutions that are premised from a particular configuration of the ecological agenda
that obsessively focus on its inputs and outputs as if operating in a world without history or
context. They are resorts of sustainability that neglect existing cities and its infrastructure and
that will have uneven effects of differing populations, segregating communities, deepening the
social unbalance of society. By their unquestioning acceptance of restrictions that narrows the
scope of design, Eco-housing becomes a small-thinking project of beautification presuming to
be looking at the big picture.
It is undeniable that the acknowledgement of the fragility of the planet presents itself as a
challenging opportunity for architecture. Yet, given that eco-houses account for only a fraction
of the total housing stock, and given that sustainabilitys prescriptive doctrine that imposes the
need to produce new urban substance is confining architecture to a very narrow field of
possibilities, would focusing on what is already built be a more logical path toward
sustainability? If so, we must wonder how can the engagement of preservation with
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sustainability spark speculative and open-ended architectural proposals that accept the ironies
and accommodate the inherent paradoxes of the relation between design, globalization and the
existing and evolving environment?
Figure 4. The Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED), UKs first large-scale eco-housing.
Residents are issued with a handbook explaining how to correctly use the building and advocating for a
commitment to a deeply ecological lifestyle.
4 THE ECOLOGIES OF PRESERVATION

If sustainability is one of the top instigators of change in contemporary architecture,
preservation is not becoming less influential. It is irrefutable that parts of our common heritage
need to be protected and that organizations such as DOCOMOMO play a crucial even if
contentious11 role in preserving our common Modernist Heritage. However, the current agenda
of preservation is inextricably attached to UNESCOs World Heritage Centre mission of
crystallising natural landscapes and man-made artifacts that, when applied to architecture, can
potentially and inadvertently contribute to drain real life from the territory, and to undermine
the vitality of communities. In his Cronocaos exhibition in the 2010 Venice Biennale, Rem
Koolhaas explored the consequences of stating that a shocking 12% of the world has been
officially declared immutable12, while in his publication Preservation is overtaking us, he
argued that preservation can become a prospective endeavour that engages with his most
intimate professed utopian dream: to give way to an architecture that does nothing (Koolhaas
2014), or, in other words, preservation as architectures potential formless substitute (OteroPailos 2014). Nevertheless, this position does not represent a surrendering to nostalgia, quite the
opposite: preservation is not understood as the nemesis of progress, but as one of its necessary
pre-requisites, triggered by major processes of transformations13. According to Rem Koolhaas,
surprisingly one of todays most outspoken voices on this topic, the problem is that
contemporary preservation is a completely new global phenomenon for which we have not yet
developed an intellectual apparatus to address it.
If the mainstream sustainable architecture is too committed to a doctrine-based enterprise that
sees context or history as a passive background, preservation can its opposing mirror-image that

683
actively pushes for conservative developments unconcerned by design innovation or the

composition of new form. But sustainability and preservation have more in common than what
one would anticipate. Actually, they are historically implicated in one another. The decisive
moment for contemporary Preservation was the construction of the Aswan high dam in the
1960s, works that required UNESCOs intervention to salvage and relocate a number of
important archaeological sites. Besides producing hydroelectricity, the dam allowed flood
control and provided water for irrigation, so it is appropriate that it was the venture of managing
nature that prompted the World Heritage Convention in 1972 that triggered the world-wide
preservation spiral. In fact, the operations that deal with large scale infrastructure are the ones
that best capture our current ecological dilemma. For instance, the construction of the three
gorges dam in China triggered the first recorded human-induced earthquakes14, and it is why
scientists have proposed that we are living in the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch defined
by the ability of human activity to cause long-lasting effects on Earths geology and ecosystem.
But there is a difference between remaining vigilant of the consequences of human actions on
the ecosystem and the single-mindedness of considering the existing landscapes to be
unalterable. There was a recent controversy regarding a Souto de Mouras project for the
installation of technical and social spaces in the Tua Dam, in Portugal. Located in the World
Heritage site of the Douro valley, the design proposal conceals the building underground, and
only the indispensable infrastructure is left visible, in order to reduce the impact on the
topography. The crusaders against the development15 do not realise the degree of irony of their
campaign: the Douro valley is characterised by an extensive manipulation of the steep slopes
into carved-in shale wall terraces, and it is the artificialization of the landscape that grants its
natural distinctiveness. Thus preservation, whether referring to natural or human
constructions, needs to be aware of its entrenched historical and political content, in order to
inform architectural design processes.
5 THE PRESERVATION OF ECOLOGIES
Figure 5. Authentic: Faade of the Pombaline tabula rasa plan. Eugenio dos Santos, 1756.
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Figure 6. Restored: Sizas Chiado, 1989-1999: The decision of preserving the original layout implicates
design not only in an extended time frame, but also in a political urban vision.
Curiously, it was another earthquake, that also had a wide range impact not only on the city, but
also on humans progressive understanding of the world. Lisbons 1755 earthquake destroyed
85% of Lisbons buildings, causing devastating consequences for its inhabitants which set
writers such as Voltaire and Adorno confronting the rationale of the assumed benevolence of
nature. However, the earthquake triggered a wave of progress: it marked the beginning of
seismology, the development of earthquake resistant construction - the Pombalina cage, and the
unprecedented construction of a completely new city characterised by a pioneering high-density
grid pattern: The Baixa Pombalina. The influence of this response extended beyond the city of
Lisbon and inspired other progressive urban renewals. However, in 1988, another disastrous
incident destroyed a section of the Baixa Pombalina: the Chiado fire. Alvaro Siza, the architect
in charge of the reconstruction efforts, instead of of demolishing the remaining ruins and
introducing new contemporary urban substance, decided to set out an endeavour of meticulously
selective demolition and painstaking conservation that, nevertheless, introduced new public
spaces, brought back housing in the city centre, implemented new infrastructures in the empty
building shells while upholding and even replicating the existing traditional material
compositions (Vieira 2013). Siza took full advantage of repetitive (but flexible) regularity of the
18th-century faade and plan layout to accommodate emerging necessities, leaving room for
future changes and adaptations. For Siza, Lisbons Pombalina downtown is a large pre-

685
fabricated building16, the result of a major urban operation built en masse with a distinctive
regularity, coherence and unity and the destruction of a fragment of it was an opportunity to
correct urban unbalances: The demolition of dissonant accretions, the re-establishing of
pedestrian links, and the implementation of a housing program brought new life to an
increasingly abandoned section of the city. We can contrast this operation with a more recent
one in Lisbons rival city, Porto: the award winning17 refurbishment of the Cardosas city block,
situated within the UNESCOs protected historic center. This is a controversial self-intituled
luxury housing development that hollowed the blocks nucleous and discarded the built heritage
and disenfranchised local communities, introducing a pastiche scenographic composition that
disrupts the monotonous 19th-century faades with the intention of making the design more
attractive to investors. This urban vision is described by some critics as a disneyfication of the
city center, a surrender of the public and political realm to gentrification and private marketing
interests (Grande 2013), producing an architecture emptied of its socio-cultural ecology. The
Chiado project illustrates how architecture can be projected in an extended time frame,
reinforcing the flow of temporal and material continuity, revealing the potential of covertly
ecological design processes18.
Figure 7. Ruined: The Bernardas Convent in 1992.

An abandoned Palimpsest incarnated.
Figure 8. Reclaimed: The Bernardas Convent,

2012. Architecture as a synthesizer of clashing
materiality.
These examples offer opposing paths to the revitalisation our cities, but there is a leeway for
crossbreeding resolute restauration with the inception completely new forms of urbanity. Souto
de Mouras Bernardas Convent is a 2012 housing project located in a historical setting with a
view over the Ria Formosa marsh and the centuries-old Tavira saltworks. The project has the
distinctive concept of transforming a 500 years old abandoned monastery that had previously
been converted into a factory, into a dwelling. Since it was subject to multiple modifications and
accretions, the project involved several demolitions and the addition of a new L shaped
building, but it preserved the reliance on the courtyard as a spatial organiser (Souto de Moura
2013). But what is surprising is the way the existing ruined buildings was preserved by a
thorough but unreserved transmutation of its materiality. There is no contradiction between the
Manueline-Gothic portal and the new faade openings or between the rehashing of historic
materiality and the contemporary expression of its domestic interior. The result is a completely
new hybrid building that understands preservation as the act of updating a construction to its
most contemporary expression19 a step further. We have to acknowledge that the project was
only possible because the building was not listed, but the main argument is that the
preservationist message here is not didactical or museological. Instead, it demonstrates that
our common built history can have a new life by replicating its own historical processes of
adaptation through contemporary construction technologies. Despite the expression of solidity
of the building, its architecture is not understood as a finished project. By accepting the inherent
contingency of the design, we are uncovering a layer of temporal awareness in which
architecture is realised as an always contaminated version of itself and open to future subjective
interpretation and future transformation. At this point we may consider if the architectural
undertaking of preserving our common built history should be restricted to the reclamation of
686

derelict buildings, or if it can be upgraded to become a prospective activity, generator of new

urban form in its own right.
6 COLLAPSING THE CONCEPTS
In an affordable social low rise housing development in Vila das Sete cidades, Aores, Souto de
Moura and Adriano Pimenta have built a low density public housing development that
reverberates the ecologies of the place20. The project consists of 27 two-storey bare concrete
houses placed on a communal plot that replicate the shape and scale of the local housing
typology, emphasising two main traditional elements: the pitched roof and its loft rooms, and
the hearth and its chimney. The Aores islands, and particularly the Vila das Sete Cidades, are
known for their stunning landscapes, and in this large scale project in a small town, could
potentially unsettle its environment. However, we find that the patterned distribution of low
density single family houses overlooking the lagoon introduces a missing component that
intermingles the natural and the artificial and provides structure to the territory. This idea of
mutual dependence between the outside (nature) and inside (building) is further reinforced in
the design of the house unit, by the cutting-out of two opposing corners at the ground floor
level, that, as a consequence, generates its uses: the entrance and the living room. This project is
heavily responsive and seems to connect design with a multitude of issues, evoking the three
drives Going of our earlier proposition:
First, the project recoups two essential components of the primordial house: the roof (shelter)
and the fire (cooking and heating), employing them as spatial organisers and domestic function
providers, and external shape generators.
Secondly, its social-driven purpose and budget restrictions were used as a way to implement
a high degree of rationalization in the spatial and material organization of the design proposal
coupled with its raw material presence on the green landscape and the expressiveness of the
naked and grooved concrete outer shell evokes the motivations and realisations of our Modern
heritage.
Thirdly, the project has no moralistic drive and in no way attempts to convey a literally
pedagogical message or interfere with private lifestyles, however, it intentionally diverts from
the traditional local urban logic - the establishment of boundaried private plots that restrict the
public space to the street, and makes a clear attempt to democratise the distribution and use of
space: all outdoor space is public (there are no private gardens) and the housing unit is
standardised and uniformly replicated on the territory according to a regular and balanced
pattern.
This is why this project provides a paradoxical contribution for the discussion regarding
preservationist and ecological approaches to architecture. It reminds us that design can enhance
natural resources and that new forms do not necessarily address or embody the contemporary
needs and desires more clearly than the ones that already exist.
Figure 9. Repossessed: Dwellings in Sete Cidades,

2016. Preserving the native housing model by producing
new urban substance.
Figure 10. Panoramic view of the dwellings in

Sete Cidades. Despite being strongly opposed
to sus-tainable architecture, Souto de Mouras
design process seems tacitly ecological.

687
In the present scenario, it seems that the vision of preservation as a compulsive immobiliser
of the past and of Sustainability as a generator of the new new will lead to a self-cancelling and
self-defeating effort. Zealously preserving existing architecture from future transformations will
not make our civilization more aware of our legacy and Eco-homes will not save the world. A
possible lesson to be taken from case studies is that there is no pure architecture: the autonomy
of a work of architecture resides in responding to a broad collection of material and disciplinary
concerns driven by the intensification of local ecologies in articulation with contemporary
global forces. However, we are still in the outset of exploring and establishing connections
between sustainability and architecture, and we have not yet begun to explore the potential of
preservation in this equation. It seems to be clear that if architecture intends to extrapolate
material expressions of ecological authenticity and negotiate with different natures, cultures,
climates, politics and economies, it should exploit lines of continuity with our shared common
past. Considering the resources invested by preservation on accessing the rules to impose on
built heritage and by sustainability in the form-making design processes, we could also ponder
devoting some time to reflect on the possibility of collapsing the concepts on each other: to
preserve by generating new form and to make sustainable by transforming the territory without
the generation of new form. By speculating and exploiting preservation and sustainability we
can reinterpret ecological justice, individual freedom and social equality, bringing politics and
globalization into architecture and finally focus on how to forge paths toward broader and more
democratic design processes. Counter-intuitively, preservation may become sustainabilitys
salvation.
ENDNOTES
1
Sustainable, Ecological or Green are disparate concepts, despite being routinely used as synonyms of
each other. This paper maintains their conceptual ambiguity.
2
See Kareem, S 2015, 'Why it's all right to be more horrified by the razing of Palmyra than mass murder',
the guardian, viewed 24 August 2015.
3
See http://oma.eu/projects/maison-a-bordeaux viewed 13 July 2016.
4
The sustainability agenda is propelled by deep economic concerns. The 2005 the UN World Summit
Outcome (Resolution A/60/1) underlined the economic implications of climate change, and earlier,
UKs the Stern Review used formal economic models to conclude that the benefits of strong and early
action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.
5
We are referring to Stefi Orazis Modernist Estates, Elain Harwoods Englands Post-War listed
buildings and Space, Hope, and Brutalism: English Architecture, 1945-1975, Barnabas Calders Raw
Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism, Jonathan Bells The Modern House, Alan Powers Modern: The
modern movement in Britain, John Grindrods Concretopia, Nicolas Grospierres Modern Forms: A
subjective atlas of 20th century architecture, Christopher Beanlands Concrete Concept: Brutalist
buildings around the world, Peter Chadwicks This Brutal World among others.
6
On a side note, Corbusier, often unfairly vilified for his view of housing as machines habiter,
developed the concepts of mur neutralisant and respiration exacte and wrote extensively on the
relation between humans and nature, revealing an embryonic approach to ecology.
7
We are referring to Oblivion, I Robot, Divergent and Minority Report, among others.
8
For a recent report regarding Masdar, see Goldberg, S 2016, Masdar's zero-carbon dream could become
worlds
first
green
ghost
town
in
The
Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/16/masdars-zero-carbon-dream-could-becomeworlds-first-green-ghost-town, viewed 2016-02-20.
9
see Sherrif L, 2016, Its Been 25 Years Since 8 Scientists Sealed Themselves Inside Biosphere 2 For
Two Whole Years in The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/biosphere-2-25years-scientists-lived-inside_uk_573ff024e4b0ffced8623913 accessed 2016-08-28.
10
see President Jimmy Carters Report to the Nation on Energy, in which he argued that modest
individual sacrifices can have a big contribution for the conservation of energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmlcLNA8Zhc viewed 8 august 2016.
11
for a critique of DOCOMOMOs view of preservation of Modernist Architecture, see Martin P 1998,
Terminal Architecture, Reaktion, p98.
12
See http://oma.eu/projects/venice-biennale-2010-cronocaos viewed 2 february 2016.
13
Preservation is intertwined with revolution: Historically, the preservation campaign began shortly after
the French Revolution, with the constitution of the Commission for Art and Monuments in 1790 and
had an exponential growth in England after the Industrial Revolution.
688

14
See Three Gorges Dam triggers frequent seismic activities in Probe International
https://journal.probeinternational.org/2014/04/07/three-gorges-dam-triggers-frequent-seismicactivities/ viewed 19 September 2016.
15
see Giant dam being built on port wine-land in Portugal http://www.salvarotua.org/pt/giant-dambeing-built-on-port-wine-land-in-portugal-helsingin-sanomat-12112014/ viewed 28 september 2016
16
see O intrprete ideal in publico https://www.publico.pt/local/jornal//o-interprete-ideal-26981924
viewed 12 july 2016.
17
the project was awarded the 2012 national prize for urban regeneration (residential use).
18
we can observe this same ecological approach in other European housing projects that are deeply
commited to local architecture and sense of temporal and material continuity such as the Bonjour
Tristesse in Berlin, the Shilderswijk in Den Haag or the Giudecca project in Venice.
19
we are referring to Viollet-le Ducs conception of restoration: To restore a building is not to repair it,
nor to do maintenance or to rebuild, it is to reestablish it to a finished state, which may in fact never
have actually existed at any given time. Viollet-le-Duc E, ([1854] 1990). The foundations of
architecture. New York: George Braziller. p195.
20
see
http://www.archilovers.com/projects/152477/casas-sete-cidades.html
and
http://www.archdaily.com.br/br/765406/loteamento-e-casas-das-sete-cidades-eduardo-souto-de-mouraplus-adriano-pimenta.
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691
The vacuum-space between tradition and innovation. Flexibility

and use
S. Solinas
Department of Civil Engineering, Environment and Architecture, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
ABSTRACT: The quality of vacuum-space is a parameter of sustainability understood as

potential adaptability of a project to its interpretations and modifications implemented over time
by users. The vacuum-space is a space component that associated to the full-space defines its
formal configuration. The appropriation of vacuum is an architectural design strategy which aim
is to enclose a formless void portion. That void finds its most immediate representation in
nature. Related to full, it finds a balance in the built system. Weaving the full-space with the
empty one, suggesting a close relationship between interior-exterior, it is possible to get a
flexible spatial mesh susceptible to modification, according to the needs that arise in time by
users. The degree of adaptability of these spaces is object of analysis in a phase defined as postbuilt, in which we investigate on the actual use by the inhabitants of these places.
1 INTRODUCTION
The wealth of a house lives in its empty space.
There are many subjects that could be developed from these few opening lines. When you are
discussing about quality, the quantity is not a relevant, or at least a limiting question in the
achievement of the objectives that architecture aims to reach, nor in the case of social housing.
The architect designs thinking as if he were to live those spaces -away from preconceived
notions of " Social Housing " that could not achieve excellent results- providing them with
potentiality that are activated in response to users' diversity. As well as talk of sustainability
cannot refer only to the use of environmentally friendly or energy-saving materials, but must be
part of a wider concept. A project cannot be considered architecture because it is sustainable,
but we will be in front of architecture if it is also sustainable, but not only.
The concept of vacuum-space should be developed in a speech that cannot be treated within
this short essay. However, it is sufficient to note that vacuum-space and full-space should not
necessarily be read in an apparent contrast between spatial void and geometric mass. The
opposition of the two terms should be seen, rather than a annulment of the two parts, as a
dialectical relationship between these extremes. Their relationship is essential and necessary in
the construction of space, constituting the two fundamental elements that enhance the meaning.
692

2 THE PROJECT
The 26 social houses built in Umbrete near Seville develop sustainability research through the
vacuum-space reinterpreting the local typology consisting of deep courts that penetrate in the
block, modulated by patios sequences that alternate solids and voids, lights and shadows.
The project originated through a competition for architects under 35 years of age held by
Spanish Empresa Pblica de Suelo de Andaluca (EPSA) in 2002, and built in 2007.
Figure 1. View of the intervention.
The project strategy chosen is the internal porosity which is opposed to the apparent compact
exterior of the block, model that interprets the local ways of life that "occupy" the spaces of the
road as much as those of the house. The project therefore aims to define at the same time some
key issues: on one side the house type, and on the other the global image of the intervention, as
well as the relationship of both with the urban context.
The first strategic and conceptual act resolves the project by occupying the entire surface
available of the block, without leaving to chance any residual space, with an alternation of
volumes, solids and voids, which establish a close relationship between them, thus drawing the
entire project.
A first reading of the principal elevation provides a compact image, almost two-dimensional,
with the presence of measured windows on the first floor and large openings on the ground
floor, veiled with a wire mesh that protects from the gaze of passers.
The overall image gives form to a project where the outside just shows slightly the different
cells of which it consists, and proposes a vision of unity and global image, establishing a
dialogue with the urban fabric, and coexisting harmoniously with the examples of traditional
domestic architecture.
Inside the house a succession of full and empty volumes occurs. Spaces that are at the same
time internal and external, that are surrounded and in turn surrounded, allowing to play with the
lights and shadows that glide on the walls.
The access to each house, from the street, is produced under a covered space which can be
used as a car park, open to the street on one side, and on a first patio on the other. This first
sequence between "full and empty" generates the threshold between public and private which
continues, within the home, with the living room. The sequence is completed by a second patio,
intimate and hidden -the lemon patio, which overlooks the kitchen. In the interior, the stair
climbs up in a double-height volume joining the two floors vertically, bringing on a catwalk that
connects horizontally the bedrooms and a terrace-solarium, located above the living room. The
"voids" of the house, internal or external, are essential in the overall reading of the project,
along with the "full" generate the living spaces of the house itself.
The intervention proposed is therefore a route between full and empty spaces that alternate
constantly at various levels, both in a longitudinal as well as in the transversal reading, , creating
a sequence of rooms and environments some of which open to the sky. This is a reinterpretation
of the succession of spaces typical of the Andalusian Baroque patio house, hybridization itself
from the Arabic and Roman typology.

693
Figure 2. Plan and section of two residential unities.
3 CONTINUITY OF TRADITION
El mundo de la arquitectura est constantemente atravesado por este doble
movimiento: por un lado, el que parte de piezas elementales para llegar a
estructuras complejas por medio de operaciones de composicin; y, por otro lado,
el que nos retrotrae desde las obras en su complejidad a sus elementos constitutivos
a travs de un procedimiento analtico que nos conduce de nuevo a lo esencial. El
primer movimiento permite la hibridacin, el mestizaje. El segundo, en cambio,
apunta a la pureza de las races, a la destilacin de los elementos bsicos. Aunque
eso no es ms que un nuevo punto de partida para otros mestizajes (Mart Ars,
2008)
There are many elements of traditional local Andalusian culture that are relayed in a
contemporary way in the proposed public housing of Umbrete. The idea of the patio is definitely
the first of these.
The use of the archetype of the patio in the project assumes special significance and
coherence if we consider its proximity to the city of Seville taken as an emblem for this way of
building. The structure of the town and the individual buildings, in particular in its compact
urban core, but not only there, it can be revealed and recounted, as claimed by Aldo Rossi ,
through the use of this idea that builds its image around a void. The patio, as common element,
becomes structuring component of the city. It is the connecting thread of a speech that makes it
understandable in a contemporary reading as well as historical, starting from the (Roman)
Domus of Italica to the (Arab) patios of the Alcazar or the (baroque) Archivo de Indias up to the
(contemporary) rion by architects Cruz y Ortiz.
The mass of the city is dotted with these voids. Together they form a texture that includes
either the humblest home as the stately one, in the private sphere, and even religious or power
structures, arriving to include some squares and urban spaces that can only be interpreted as the
patios of the city itself. The central figure of the patio can be made evident in the words of
Professor Gonzalo Daz Recasenes: El patio como forma labrada por el tiempo, cumulo de
buenas soluciones y valores espaciales, capaz de soportar muchas situaciones e intenciones
arquitectnicas. (Daz Recasens, 1992).
A parallel reading of the aerial image of the historic centre of Seville and the volumetric plan
of the project of Umbrete highlights how in both cases you could imagine a process of
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construction of the space that cuts and digs voids destined to live, into a continuous mass,
placing the patio as a basic element in the construction of the city.
Figure 3. a) Seville. Historic Centre. B) Umbrete Housing Project. 2004.
But to the image of the historic city (compact, massive, slowly and continually rebuilds on
itself, which is always the same, but never the same with the passing of time) it is opposed
another, city within a city, diametrically opposite.
El Real, the fence of the Feria de Abril, precise, orderly, serial, is constructed almost as if it
were a Roman castrum. Lightweight and temporary dies and is reborn every year. The Real is
repeating endlessly in his strategic scheme the basic cell that is tracing back clearly to the
archetype of the tent or pavilion, in opposition to the eternal city defined by the patio. Thus we
are comparing the ancestral figures of the wandering and sedentary.
Even in this case the general plant of Umbrete can be brought back to the image of one of the
blocks that construct the Feria. Every single house is matched and juxtaposed to another in a
seriation reminiscent of the organization of the "casetas of Seville but also like any other
feria of the region.
Figure 4. a) View of the intervention. b) Umbrete Housing Project. 2004.
These comparisons show that there is a subtle interplay between solid and void, between
patio and pavilion, and the respective positions that are within the definition of stereortomic or
tectonic spaces.
These cultural and formal aspects can be placed inside of a long route, taken from the
architecture of the Modern Movement and the contemporary one, demonstrating how these
archetypes, especially the patio and the pavilion are "versatile, able to collect under them a large
amount of uses, shapes, sizes, different styles and characteristics." (Capitel, 2005).
It is possible to see through some images as seemingly opposing figures (for example patio
and pavilion) can find a sync or merger in the same project. Limiting ourselves to bring back
Richard Padovan sentence: El pabelln alemn de Barcelona es un pabelln dentro de un patio;
la villa Saboya en Poissy es un patio dentro de un pabelln. (Padovan, 1995).
The journeys of Le Corbusier and his sketches convey a passion for the patio and the
succession of spaces cadenced from light, as well as an interest in the pavilion or nomad tent
and its rules. In the project for the Petite Maison it seems that the patio/fence and the pavilion
seek a dialogue with each other in order to appropriating the void.

695
Figure 5. a) Nozze dargento house. Pompei. 1911 b) temple primitif. Vers une architecture 1924
c)Une petite meison Corseaux. 1923. Le Corbusier.
The same principle holds true for British architects Smithson which, in two exhibitions
celebrated a few months away from each other, treat about the patio and pavilion. These
concepts are blended into their home in Wiltshire.
Figure 6. a) patio & pavillon.. London. 1955 b) The house of future. London 1956 c) upper lown
pavilion Wiltshire. 1963. Alison & Peter Smithson.
The idea of resuming principles related to the tradition means giving importance to the
experience gathered by others before us. This must be done through a vision of continuity and
innovation, in which the tradition does not assume a fixed and unchanging role, but it allows
inhabiting and using forms and ideas that have been handed down over time. We work in a
present that researches into the past some bases as references, points that can be joined by a long
groove, connecting them and puts them on the network that never stands still, but it always turns
towards the future.
4 FLEXIBLE CHANGES
Starting from the data of the project program and a careful analysis of the context, introducing
sustainability data as necessary elements but in itself not sufficient (materials, longevity, energy
balance, passive environmental use of energy, natural lighting, natural ventilation, orientation,
volume, etc), you will get the best possible welfare housing conditions, reducing consumption
and waste. Architecture is a great amalgam of elements that must work together (space,
structure, systems, economy, active systems, passive, etc.) in a global constructive act, not to
mention an aesthetic and formal richness, which is critical in our work.
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Figure 7. Plan and section of two residential unities with possible modifications.
The main effort in Umbrete design was directed to a passive energy operation of buildings,
whereas the cost of the construction of only 526.22EU/m2 and a selling price of EUR 68,355 for
each house (year 2007), has made impossible to install systems with active technologies. The
simple construction and the use of readily available materials and known by local workers have
been the dominant choices: large thermal mass in the thick audience of foundations, walls and
vaulted roofs, allow us to isolate ourselves from the heat in summer and cold in winter.
The proposal distribution in the block was a result of the conditioning initially perceived as
negative, such as solar orientation, which had the longest prospects on the northern and southern
facade. This imposition has led to the search of the proposed solution, which is considered
climatically optimal. The living rooms and master bedrooms, assigned on either side of the lot,
but symmetrically distributed, have been designed to always have views simultaneously on both
exposures.
The sustainable housing quality is also guaranteed by cross ventilation and intensity lighting
controlled by the openings membranes, covering elements, vegetation, leaving the possibility to
the sun to penetrate when appropriate, taking advantage of the seasonal variation of its angle of
incidence on the ground. These are key issues in the climate of southern Spain, that contribute to
energy efficiency and a good degrees of privacy between the different constituent parts of the
house, and also between these and the relationship with the public space of the street.
Each interior space is linked to its own external reference space that is studied as the unit's
expansion program.
The minimum surface of 70m2 useful provided by the Andalusian legislation, distributed in
three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, bathroom and circulation have been designed as
"hopefully modifiable or extensible by some suggestions/consideration proposed in the design
phase, to improve the user adaptability to the project. The house would not change its essence
and nor its relationship and its overall look with the outdoor spaces of the road, if you extend
the kitchen to the garden at the end of the lot. This would result in more room to eat and keeping
the close relationship with the open space of the lemon patio (Fig. 7. Option 1).
Upstairs, the room in the kitchen correspondence has been studied for a possible extension.
Also on the first floor, you could build an additional room in the solarium, with the simple
addition of a roof between the existing walls, thus creating a new bedroom. This would be
useful in the case of the arrival of a new family member, giving also the possibility of an extra
space for a study area, maintaining, without substantial changes the sequence of the patios
existing in the original project (Fig. 7. Option 2). The room on the ground floor, which is the

697
only enclosed space in direct contact with the outside, can be made independent from the rest of
the house, to respond to the changes required by the job, and open directly onto the adjacent
access space. The latter could also be close and attached to the "inner" part of the house (Fig. 7.
Option 3). Possibilities that may be needed to accommodate a ever-changing society.
5 THE VERIFICATION IN THE POST-BUILT
Surely the architect possesses thoughts and interests, passions on the patio and the
void. These ideas have certainly engraved in the design and implementation of its
houses next to the River. Perhaps he thought, while building them, that he would
like to live there. As he could not occupy all, or at least not all together, it was
clear that other people would lived in those houses. Someone now is living there
and perhaps also the architect. We do not know whether they live in his own way,
or in their own way. Curiously we can ask us. (Unknown, 0000)
Figure 8. View from a inner patio with some inhabitants in the interior of the house.
The use of the contrast between full and empty, and the use of patio and pavilion as archetypes
that persist over time, resides much of a design strategy that has as its objective the
appropriation of the void. A written report, the relevant drawings and a photographic survey
express adequately what may be the intention that a designer pours in a project. However, it is
almost absent a reflection on the appropriations by the users, during a period of time, of the
spaces that we design ourselves.
It is therefore proposed to operate in a direction that provides a necessary reflection on a
possible verification of how the theoretical and practices intentions, poured in a given project
are transposed/shared, or not, by users. Verification is developed in a context that wants to
understand how the methods used in the field of practice of architectural design affect on the
"reality, understood as constructed building.
It hypothesizes that during the life of a project, the architect's goals can last and be
assimilated or shared by people who look and live in this work. Or it is possible that the
698

theoretical and practical intentions leaked into the concrete work can be changed, modified,
rejected or even distorted. The verifiability of the post-built project and its use takes place in a
time segment that begins after the construction of the work and extends throughout the use by
residents.
We hypothesize that the architect's work does not end with the construction of an
architectural object. His interest and responsibilities must go beyond this stage; it cannot simply
end with the delivery of the artefact to whom it may concern.
It seems therefore necessary to propose a verification of what happens during the use of a
project, in a period of time which we call as post-built.
The knowledge of what happens and what kind of phenomena take place during the post-built
seems necessary to see whether the ideas that we pour in a project are then found as valid (or
not) respect to the real actual use in a particular context .The considerations and the results that
emerge from this analysis will be relevant to the research that we are about to start again every
time that we place ourselves in front of a new project process.
It is a test that can give a deeper meaning to our work of designers. We fill our projects of
illusions, ideas and hopes. We envision and propose ways of living spaces, ways to stand in
front of the nature, possible ways to exist and live. Understanding what happens during a certain
period of time in the use of architectural production, which amended a previous state of our
environment, it seems dutiful. The proposal to go and see what happens once given the keys of
the works to their rightful owners is a thorny issue. Many times the action of the architects
seems to be concentrated in finishing a work, taking the photographs, if possible without people,
and from that moment on to live with the memory of that moment. Many architects do not want
to know anything about "their own children" once left to their fate.
Figure 9. Photography taken from the book Aircrafts 1929-35 of Le Corbusier.
Yet the charm of a work should also contain that moment of a "new birth" (after the mental
idea, the project, the gestation and the building), that begins his personal path.
In this sense we could speak that we are attempting to make a leap into the void. We do not
know exactly what we will find, and we suspect that any eventual meeting would not give us all
thankful surprises. Yet this launch is to be done.
We must go back to the projects constructed as if it were a journey, reflecting on what was
done and how these works are lived and experienced over time. A position seen for example, in

699
recent visits of architect Alvaro Siza to his works, recounted in the current Venice Biennale, or
in the work of Philippe Boudon who investigates with his book on changes in the project of Le
Corbusier in Pessac (Boudon, 1983).
Figure 10. View of indoor and outdoor spaces of the house.
10 years after the construction of the 26 social houses in Umbrete is carried out an analysis
that "detect" and reveal the changes introduced by the use of housing units to find the
matching of the adaptability assumed in the project, as if it were an experiment in test tubes, in
order to detect whether exist or not the adaptability and flexibility think time ago. It is necessary
to consider about the past/present through the views of users involved building a new
sustainable quality. The observations that arise from the process of post-built verification, lead
to further reflections on how collocate ourselves in front of next projects, giving a deeper
meaning to this profession.
Reflecting on the past, to dream another future.
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6 CONCLUSIONS
The text proposes rules and possible ways to design and rereading a built intervention. Through
a specific study case it highlights how the concept of sustainability and that of tradition can have
a wide range of meanings, showing combinations and facets. It 'also made clear that these
concepts have greater design significance if used in a context where the whole is more than the
sum of its parts.
The appropriation of vacuum-space as a formal configuration strategy is brought to
completion through a balanced use of full and empty and a special attention to the fundamental
relationship between inside and outside, which modulate light and space. This configuration
comes to finalization if we analyze and put at the base of the project the users relationships with
the space itself.
The completeness of an architecture project goes through a process composed of idea /
documents / building / use. The idea comes from the theoretical thinking; project documents
from the hand that designs; the work is seen / read with sight and the use contains the analysis
of the post-built. The fourth point is the verification of the void appropriation by users and its
congruity with as hypothesized by the designer in the previous phases. An action that in
practice, however, is rarely conducted, although it should be considered as a logical conclusion
of a long process of making architecture and a starting point to begin a "new" project.
Appling an integration of these aspects in the process of a project would introduce a change
that could improve the current standard of architecture that generates our cities, where quality is
an exception, making it more responsive to the needs of users.
REFERENCES
Boudon, P. 1983. Pessac di Le Corbusier. Milano: Franco Angeli Editore.
Capitel, A. 2005. La arquitectura del patio. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
Daz Recasens, G. 1992 Recurrencia y herencia del patio en el movimiento moderno. Sevilla: Universidad
de Sevilla.
Mart Ars, C. 2008. Pabelln y patio, elementos de la arquitectura moderna. De Arquitectura, 02: 27.
Padovan, R. 1995. El pabelln y el patio. Problemas culturales y espaciales de la arquitectura de Stijl. In
R. Guasch (ed.), Espacio Fluido Versus espacio sistemtico. Barcelona: Ediciones UPC.
(Unknown). 2000.
Chapter 11
Prefabricated houses and transportable homes

Chapter 11: Prefabricated houses and transportable homes
703
Prefabricated, expandable and portable houses in the Italian

magazine Domus from the thirties
M. T. Feraboli
School of Design, Design Department, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
ABSTRACT: This research results from the analysis of the 88 years of the Italian magazine
"Domus", founded by Gio Ponti in 1928 and directed by Gianni Mazzocchi, now come to the
number 1000/2016. The purpose of the essay is to demonstrate how the magazine, which was
founded favoring bourgeois interiors and home living, will also soon demonstrate a careful
observation of the new standardized construction techniques and their impact on interiors,
circulating in Italy and documenting their evolution to the current solutions. Thus it is witnessed
the development of the concept of sustainability first in the economic, social and, finally,
energetic and environmental sector. First important articles of homes with standardized
components date back to 1932 and offer German and Austrian prototypes of inexpensive and
expandable housing: they are designed for young families expected to increase. Ponti hopes that
Italian architects will follow this example and address similar issues. Changed the director in the
1940, the magazine continues publishing prefabricated and expandable house: offering
examples of Gropius, Scharoun, Hilberseimer and Poelzig, adding the issue of portability with
prototypes of American Buckminster Fuller and French Prouv. This last typology seems
unachievable in Italy for technical and economic reasons but will be subject to various projects
and practical experiments in the 1950. Thus Gio Ponti, back to the guide of Domus, will
publish Eliot Noyes and Ionel Schein concrete and plastic houses, then a model of Cesare Pea,
other portable houses of Prouv and also of Giulio Minoletti. The sequence will continue with
the Wrights inflatable houses and, from the Sixties onwards, with pneumatic structures and
capsule houses issuing Jean Maneval and Roberto Menghi, Matti Suuronen and Marco Zanuso,
Kisho Kurokawa and Alberto Rosselli. In the Seventies Ponti, now in his eighties, will publish
again prefabricated houses bound to the ground as the houses in Corciano (Perugia) by Renzo
Piano that open the way for participatory planning, as well as prototypes in prefabricated
cardboard panels of Planungsgruppe me di um Architekten that allow a total self-construction.
All these are project lines still practiced today: vacation and emergency homes, mobile homes,
kit houses destined to take root in the place of realization and today signed by architects such as
Renzo Piano, Alejandro Aravena, Matteo Thun, Wes Jones, Shigeru Ban, just to name a few.
Each project line develops different typology of spaces and interiors.
1 INTRODUCTION
Domus is one of the most celebrated Italian architecture magazine, founded in 1928 by Gio
Ponti in Milan and published by Gianni Mazzocchi, then publisher also of the coeval and rival
Casabella. This year Domus celebrated the publication of number 1000 edited by Fulvio Irace
and this study descends from the careful analysis of its 88 years of life (Irace, 2016). The
magazine is born favoring bourgeois interiors and art for the house, but soon also proves
attentive to the new standardized building techniques, suggesting the importance of improving
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the production of small prefabricated homes in Italy on the example of what happens abroad and
stressing the importance of the concepts of modularity and standards even in everyday usage
objects for home interiors. The reason for this interest is initially motivated by some sort of
broad spectrum economic sustainability that embraces both the minimum house and the holiday
house, both made with prefabrication systems, commonly called "light. With the new
management that succeeded Ponti from 1941, that is with the rationalist architect Giuseppe
Pagano then director also of Casabella, with the collaboration of the architect Melchiorre Bega
and the writer Bontempelli, economic sustainability turns into social sustainability and ethical
necessity which persists in the immediate post-war with the direction of Ernesto Nathan Rogers
(1946-47), theorist of the well know group BBPR. Ponti comes back as director until 1979, the
year of his death, accompanying the theme of prefabricated house from the emergency to the
economic miracle up to the threshold of contemporaneity, anticipating some current issues
applied to the kit-house: energy saving criteria, recycling of materials, environmental
compliance and direct involvement of the future users.
2 METHODOLOGY
Given that all the numbers of the magazine Domus have been fully digitized by the publisher
and are available online, the research carried out from October 2015 to June 2016 examined the
digital files number by number and year by year. The aims were: 1) find content and images for
the 1000 issue of Domus; 2) examine in depth the development and evolution of light
prefabrication in Italy up to the present time. This research was born curating the "Rapid
Houses" section of the exhibition "Home for All" at the Triennale of Milano in 2008 and flown
into the essay "Kit-houses Italian style" (Feraboli).
The latter compares the origins of the Italian catalog house with the best known US, German,
French and Finnish productions (Graf, 2007; Schnapp, 2008; Stiller, 2007; Standerskjold, 1999)
and identifies their all Italian peculiarities further confirmed by the specific study conducted on
Domus: prefabricated houses with lightweight systems are intended for crisis situations or,
conversely, vacation, but not for the common housing. The online search also allows to create
"keywords" enabling the verification of the outcomes of the traditional consultation.
The" keywords" indicate the conceptual boundaries of the research focused on home and
"light industrial prefabrication" and "catalog prefabrication " as discussed by Carbonara and
Mandolesi, appreciated Italian scholars (Carbonara, 1994, Mandolesi, 1995). The main Italian
and foreign experimentations and creations emerging from this research were compared to the
evolution of technology, construction industry and of Italian society. Their presentation, finally,
was structured with regard to the specific events of the magazine founded by Gio Ponti, mirror
of the architects thought until 1979, according Fulvio Irace, the scholar that assert the
importance of Ponti in the history of architecture (Irace, 1988).
3 1928 - 1940 / FROM THE HOUSE TO THE KIT-HOUSE ITALIAN STYLE
Gio Ponti founds Domus with the intent to educate the taste of the entrepreneurial middle class
to modernity, addressing both the architectural design and the domestic interiors in a perspective
that promotes modernity without abandoning its roots. Thus is born the goal configured with
The house Italian style, the editorial of the first issue of the magazine, a sort of cultural program
of living where art, decorative arts, design and architecture converge in the composition of the
house, refuge of the family as the foundation of society (Irace, 1988; Irace, 2009; Irace, 2011). It
is an idea of living in line with the research of the rationalist Europe, reformulated in
Mediterranean version and targeted largely at middle classes: this is why the first proposals of
houses made of standardized elements at low cost are presented as solutions for resort areas,
suitable for a short stay, and often dismantled and transported. Ponti, in fact, addresses himself
to a wealthy audience and promotes the activity, little known but very lively especially from the
Twenties of the Italian 900, represented by small building companies of prefabricated houses
with wood or metal structure. The latter arose from preexisting structural work whose owners,
as early as the beginning of the last century, sensed the potentialities of the rapid assembly of

705
standardized components during emergency situations, for example following the earthquakes
that shook the province of Messina. Soon connected with this intuition the prospective
suggested by the development of tourism and short breaks, even in just one weekend, at pleasant
locations, far from urbanization (Feraboli, 2008). It is then that Ponti entrusts to Milanese
architect Frederick C. Schmidt, owner of a company that trades "bungalows" and "weekendhouses", a few pages to illustrate some economic houses projects in resort areas, between 1930
and 1935 (I gusti semplificati, 1931; Piccole costruzioni, 1931). They are small houses with
wood or steel framework, with one or two floors, covered with fireproof panels and external
panels in Celotex, with the coverage composed of elements industrially produced and easily
assembled, so containing costs. They are "also demountable, with the only cost of the new
foundation, transportation and manpower" to reassemble elsewhere, concludes Schmidt in his
presentation (Schmidt, 1931). The volumes and interior spaces are essential, characterized by a
large living room and a pergola in tune with the thought of Ponti. The latter, in fact, will
complain the lack of style and character of most of the "small and demountable homes" that
crowded the Milan Trade Fair in 1932, only positively reviewing the work of Bonfiglio
carpentry which entrusted to the architects Enrico A. Griffini and Eugenio Faludi the
development of four types of demountable economic houses with wood timber frame, walls in
Celotex and interiors covered in colored linoleum. It comes to "machines to laze" that do not
exceed the minimum sizing and develop a pleasant ambience, proportionate anyway on a human
scale. Ponti, therefore, ends by inviting the manufacturers of these micro-architectures to follow
the example of Bonfiglio company and entrust the project to architects; he also suggests them
to visit the future exhibit of the Milan Triennale that he is organizing and where, in 1933, there
will be an exhibition of residential prototypes, large and small, made with a variety of
construction techniques (Una villetta per vacanze mobile, 1932). Not only that, the architect
offers space to the news on the subject from Germany and Austria, proposing a number of
projects submitted in the competition at the Building Exhibit of Berlin, followed by prototypes
of expandable houses made at the Vienna Exhibition Hall, always in 1932. The first is the
project of expandable house of Hugo Virchow, described by Werner Daniel and based on the
construction system Bhler, with steel structure and external panels made of pumice concrete,
while the second is the prototype of Erich Boltenstern, with wooden structure and wainscoting,
described by Ponti (Daniel, 1932, Arch., 1932). Both, based on a modular plan, can expand
horizontally for subsequent annexation and represent an intelligent response to the lack of
housing that is low cost but of great social value. This is, in fact, "a minimum house for todays
needs "but conceived in order to grow gradually and organically to meet "the developments of
tomorrow", such as the increase of the family members or the improvement of the owners
economic conditions. Ponti will then propose its Italian interpretation by Enrico Peressutti and
Gian Luigi Banfi studied "for an average professional class" (Per poterla ingrandire , 1932),
and hopes that the Italian builders and architects will be inspired by these ideas, particularly in
the light of the upcoming exhibition at the Triennale. However his hope remains unheeded: the
exhibition will indeed have a great success but not the same effectiveness of the inspiring
model, the Weissenhofsiedlung and only the group of vacation homes by Enrico Agostino
Griffini, Piero Bottoni and Eugenio Faludi will use lightweight prefabricated systems. After this
experience Ponti publishes few other standardized housing and intended only for the resort area:
the wooden hut of the Wiener Niedermoser in 1934, three new homes of Frederick Schmidt in
1935 and, in 1939, the demountable Villa of Guido Frette in Credaro, built by the carpentry
Bonfiglio, the same company positively reviewed in 1932 (Capanna in legno, 1934; Piccole
abitazioni per vacanze, 1935; Una casetta smontabile, 1939). In 1940, due to contrasts with the
publisher Mazzocchi, the architect will leave the direction of Domus and give birth to a new
magazine, entitled Stile, where he will publish his own version of minimal houses Italian style,
with masonry and prefabricated roof trusses made by the company SAFFA (Irace, 1988;
Feraboli, 2008).
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4 1941 - 1947 / THE HOUSE "IN THE FOREGROUND AMONG THE MOST PRESSING
AND HUMAN PROBLEMS"
The course of the magazine mutates following the change of direction, from 1941 made by
rationalists Giuseppe Pagano and Massimo Bontempelli with Melchiorre Bega, in an
atmosphere of great political difficulty that causes defections and replacements: Pagano takes
over architect Guglielmo Ulrich and in 1944 Domus is directed by Bega alone. The new
managers retain the structure of the magazine substantially unaltered, but the first editorial
announced that to the treatise of the house they will add "other topics - social, moral and
philosophical - that, with the house, are intimately linked" and, therefore, the opening up to
cinema, theater and literature as well (Bontempelli, Pagano & Bega, 1941). Thus emerges the
social value of the home, dear to the rationalist ethics, which will find place in the pages of
Domus, and, with the worsening of the conflict, will push the treatise of the kit-house from
holiday housing to emergency housing. It is, however, interesting to note that this evolution
occurs gradually: initially published examples are in tune with the habit of Domus readers as the
curious reconstruction of an American kit-house on the flat roof of a new villa in Posillipo or on
a villa in Forte dei Marmi made by the company Pasotti of Brescia, one of the first Italian
carpentry dedicated to building prefabricated houses (S.M., 1943; Una villetta a Forte dei
Marmi, 1943; Un albergo, 1943; Il legno, 1941; Feraboli, 2008). The article of Pagano on
the villa in Forte dei Marmi praises the wooden structure, the modular plant and the coating in
wood and chipboard, and introduces a bitter criticism of the remaining Italian production which
is inadequate for "normal civil construction" especially for climate comfort reasons. A
peculiarity of the Italian kit-house therefore comes to light: although designed to be mobile and
demountable, it becomes in preference permanent, as in Italy the house is designed to be stable
and handed down from father to son.
In 1944 the collapse of the war events induces the direction of Domus to devote an entire
issue to the home as a refuge, from the primitive to the contemporary home, multiplying the
articles on prefabricated and mobile housing in anticipation of the housing shortage resulting
from the bombings. The lead editorial of the magazine issue No. 195, in fact, recalls that there is
a will to "bring the house back to its right value, placing it in the foreground among the most
pressing and human problems" (Editoriale, 1944), and presents the expandable prototypes of
Hans Scharoun, Ludwig Hilberseimer, etc. made at the exhibition in Berlin in 1932, Sonne,
Luft und Haus fr Alle (Sun, Air and House for all). In a Europe plagued by bombings, these
units provide a reassuring, economical, reproducible in series goal, equipped with all modern
facilities, and whose potential for expansion communicates the idea of a better future. So the
magazine also adds the Hirsch-Kupfer houses of Gropius, Poelzigs hut-house, the Dymaxion
Development Unit of Richard Buckminster Fuller and the project of an entire residential
neighborhood for the homeless by the young Luciano Canella and Renato Radici. Thought for
the post-war period, the neighborhood is composed of housing units consisting of a threedimensional modular lattice made up of Innocenti type steel pipes inside which are fitted roomscells, which are foreseen as molded plastic or, more realistically, in prefabricated wood panels
(Canella & Radici, 1944).

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Figure 1. Domus, No. 195/1944; cover and pages from the issue No. 195: residential neighborhood for the
homeless and Hirsch-Kupfer prefab houses of Gropius.
As well as supporting the need to industrialize the construction industry production, the
project implies the potentiality of polymers applied to it, that, for economic, political and
technical reasons, will be experimented only in the post-war. But the main objective of the
planning establishment is above all the mechanization of the construction industry that emerges
also from the known series of articles devoted to The ideal house: the individual projects for
their families of two of BBPR, Lodovico Belgiojoso and Gian Luigi Banfi, contain an explicit
invitation to adopt industrialized production systems of building components. And, after the
suspension of the magazine in 1945, their colleague and new editorial director of Domus,
Ernesto N. Rogers, will explore this theme throughout the year 1946, within his publishing
program aimed at re-establishing a moral culture, technique and aesthetics of the house for a
renewed society (Rogers, 1946). Since its first issue, then, Rogers entrusted to Marco Zanuso
with Paolo Chessa the series of four articles entitled The prefabricated house that from the
concept of module and standardization, to the building site and the materials, illustrates the
need for evolution of the building industry and conclude with the presentation of a bathroomkitchen-laundry block produced in Canada and adaptable to any type of dwelling (Chessa &
Zanuso, 1946a1-il modulo ; Chessa & Zanuso, 1946b2-il cantiere; Chessa & Zanuso,
1946c...3-i materiali; Chessa & Zanuso, 1946d4-cucina).
Not only, the "mold-house" in concrete made in Texas in only 24 hours is presented (Una
casa in 24 ore, 1946): the magazine, in fact, begins to look for references on prefabrication even
beyond the area of German and Austrian influence, addressing itself especially to the United
States, England and France. The English reconstruction is recalled by Eugenio Gentili who
mentions "the houses made by the building industry worker for other workers, for miners, for
everyone: the Churchill houses, Uniseco, the Arkon Mark, the Tarran" and he analyzes in detail
the bathroom-kitchen block, defining it as the "mechanical heart" of the house (Gentili 1946a.
La casa; Gentili 1946b. Ricostruzione; Gentili 1946c. Cucina). Approximately in the
same years it will be tested and produced in Italy only the bathroom block: in 1946 the Togni
block and in 1949-50 the Better Living of Giulio Minoletti, then author of several prefab
houses.
Moreover the first article dedicated to Jean Prouv, the master of European prefabrication,
makes its appearance and documents the easy assembly of a maison portique, yet presenting it
in a permanent solution, that is to say fixed to the ground on concrete pillars (Nuove forme
strutturali, 1946). In 1947, finally, before Rogers returns to directing Casabella, the interest in
prefabrication is focused on building the QT8 experimental district, promoted by the VIII
Triennale of Milan: a whole issue of Domus recalls some prefabricated building systems applied
to condos and the model 1:1 scale of prefabricated housing, one with the PM system set up by
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Gabriele Mucchi and one Belgian, fully furnished (QT8, 1947; Tonon, 2005). Immediately after
the war, in fact, the attempt of designers to industrialize the building site and encourage
prefabrication continues, but the Italian government chooses to support traditional construction
procedures as a driving force of the economy: in fact, in 1949, for two septennia, the INAHouse Plan is promulgated, allowing the employment also of unqualified manpower for the
construction of houses for the workers (Poretti, 1997; Trivellin, 1998; Poretti, 2002).
5 1948 - 1979 / EXPERIMENTATIONS
Ponti is back at the helm of Domus in 1948 and, a year later, proposes the adaptation to
permanent residence of a demountable Quonset hut by architects John Campbell and Worley
Wong, in California (I secondi pionieri, 1949; Decker & Chiei, 2005). The well-known
prefabricated building with semicircular section of corrugated galvanized sheet, born to military
needs in the Forties on the model of the English precedent example Nissen, becomes the symbol
of regained peace: the light prefabrication can be directed back to the vacation and, above all,
aim to everyday life. Precisely the application of the kit-house to everyday life is a goal that the
same Ponti began to pursue personally and of which he gives demonstration with the prototype
of "Pilot House" built on his project by the company Leone Togni at the Milan Triennale in
1954, dedicated to prefabrication. The "Pilot House" is formed by three prefabricated modular
units (day, night and services), of different height and connected by a hallway of variable size
that allows a certain freedom of the plan and the facades (X Triennale, 1954). Next to it, the
Triennale park is home to more examples of "industrialized houses" designed for the
countryside, the mountains, the town, with metal or wood framework and designed by Luciano
Baldessari with Marcello Grisotti, Giovanni Varlonga, etc. The prototypes, shown on the pages
of Domus, represent one of the many proposals for prefabricated accommodation that the
magazine has published since the Fifties, all subject to utilization in the civil building and a
number made of metal as the maison Prouv, that is to say the type Metropole complete with
furniture, the aluminum house of Romolo Donatelli for the Institute of Light Metals and the
Montecatini group, the house FEAL of engineer Giovanni Varlonga made by Fonderie
Elettroniche Alluminio e Leghe for the 1957 Triennale. It is the economic well-being been
reborn that combined to the technological evolution promotes the production of building
components made of aluminum, steel or alloys: in Italy arise new companies that commit to the
production of houses for the weekend and mitigate the impact of technology retrieving the
archetype of the hut, reduced to the only roof, as in Capanna Minolina of Carlo De Carli for
Holiday or Aluwood of Romolo Donatelli for S.p.A. Aluminum (Casa prefabbricata, 1960;
Per la serie, 1962). Abroad looms the need for temporary residences for offsite workers in
addition to the request for weekend homes while the first polymer applications to housing
prefabrication are born: in 1956 Domus presents the prototype of the maison en plastique of
Ionel Schein, cited as "the first house in the world made entirely of plastic," and the project
Bubble-house by Eliot Noyes, expanded version in reinforced plastic panels of the bubblehouses in cement already made in Florida (Le case a cupola, 1956; Una casa costruita,
1956). One year later, in 1957, it is also published the prototype of Italian Cesare Pea, also based
on the molding of components (Casette prestampate, 1957). Examples of a technological
progress that will become limitless, the Schein and Pea prototypes have a futuristic structure
that tends to move away from the traditional time of the house with a pitched roof, as well as
from the volumetric linearity of the Modern. In these years, even Frank L. Wright experiments a
system of pneumatic domes for residential purposes produced by Rubber Company and
displayed in 1959 at the International Home Exposition in New York: the magazine wonders
about the contrast between the casing - a house that "tends to disappear" - and the content, that
is, the furniture, the fabrics, the curtains and the flower vases of the time (Airhouse, 1960).

709
Figure 2. Domus, No. 195/1973; cover and pages from the issue: Nakagin capsule tower of Kisho
Kurokawa.
Starting from the Sixties the futuristic capsule homes increase in number and Domus
accounts for it publishing, among others, the maison bulle of Jean Maneval and Future of Matti
Suuronen, the geodesic domes of Richard Buckminster Fuller and their derivatives, to include
the summation of individual residential capsules in the famous mega-structure of the Nakagin
Tower of Kisho Kurokawa (Pre-negozio, 1957; Guscio chiuso, 1969; Le capsule, 1973).
The container houses are also already foreshadowed, but the magazine does not overlook the
less showy Kubiflex of Arne Jacobsen and Modules of Kristian Gullichsen and Juhani
Pallasmaa which are based on the rigor of elementary geometry and the use of the wooden
frame (Prefab Finlandia, 1972; Composizioni, 1972). Among its pages you can also find
other types of buildings made with precast reinforced concrete systems, commonly referred to
as "heavy" (Carbonara, 1994; Mandolesi, 1995): plants, factories and warehouses, offices,
schools and even condos; in Italy emerges the personality of Angelo Mangiarotti. Proportionally
there are few published projects related to the emergency, including the Fiat-Anic units of
Marco Zanuso within the context of the exhibition "Italy: the New Domestic Landscape" at the
MoMA, but after the tragic earthquake that in 1976 devastates the region of Friuli Venezia
Giulia, the magazine devotes a careful analysis of the reconstruction and heavy prefabrication in
Italy bemoaning the limited success of the light one for regulatory and planning deficiencies
(Bonomo & Rognoni, 1978; Carbonara, 1994; Mandolesi, 1995).
Furthermore, until 1980, it also publishes annually four special attachments titled "Prefab"
which relate also about foreign developments (Prefab, 1977; Prefab, 1978; Prefab, 1979; Prefab,
1980). If the Italian prefabricated house is once again brought back to an idea of stability that
coincides with being secured to the ground, the end of the Seventies sees the raise of instances
that are a sign of the present: the prefabrication opens to participatory planning, a sustainable
approach still used in disadvantaged areas, while abroad they experience natural materials,
recycling and energy saving. Examples are in the evolutionary type houses in reinforced
concrete by Renzo Piano in Corciano (Perugia) and the temporary kit-house in cardboard of the
German study me di um Architekten that seem to anticipate the design principles of the
housing modules of Elemental with Alejandro Aravena or those of Shigeru Ban. The homes of
Corciano, as well as the Elemental, are formed by a shell result of careful building
industrialization, while the finishing and the final shaping may be assigned to the manual skills
and the needs of the future inhabitant. The houses of Corciano, in fact, consist of a limited
number of three-dimensional elements which, assembled, form a parallelepiped casing of
double height, complete of the nucleus of the services, closed on the short sides by two glass
walls that can slide making the expandable housing (Tipologie evolutive, 1978; Gallanti, 2005).
The temporary accommodation in carton me di um Architekten, however, anticipates the
material chosen by Ban and brings forward its construction simplicity although it is not intended
for emergency situations: it can be installed by two people in just eight hours and is composed
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of corrugated board modules, produced in series and connected by plastic material profiles
(Edilizia temporanea, 1976; Progettare lemergenza, 2015). Other designers, finally, adventure
further to realize housing with standard recycled products (tin cans, glass bottles filled with
inert) (A Londra con rifiuti, 1975; Sul riuso, 1976). With such projects precursors of modernity,
we arrive at the end of the direction and life of Ponti, but the magazine retains the curiosity and
open-mindedness of its founder.
6 1980 - 2016 / OBLIVION AND REBIRTH
After the decade of technology exaltation, Domus records a drop of interest in the prefabricated
house which lasts until 1997, when the director Francois Burkhardt identifies its renewed
importance in the editorial of the same name The prefabricated house (Burkhardt, 1997). Not
only, by referring particularly to the light systems, the historian grasps several similarities
between the design of small prefabricated housing units and the product design, concept that
emerges also from other articles of the review, especially from the post-war to present: the
house is defined " object "and it is the" final product" of the assembly of predefined industrial
components. According to the director of the Architekturzentrum Wien Dietmar Steiner,
moreover, in the Nineties there is a renewed interest in the testing of materials and construction
techniques combined with the awareness that architecture is now subject to marketing strategies
(Steiner, 1997). It is then that some planning lines of the past century flourish again and suggest
another time, duly updated, the principles of economy, social sustainability, energy saving and
environmental protection. A new season is, in fact, inaugurated for the European wood kithouse through factive partnerships between companies and designers that continue into the
present: from Matteo Thun with the Austrian GriffnerHaus (1990) or the South Tyrolean
Rubner (1999) to Philip Stark with the Slovenian Riko (2014), through the prototypes marketed
by the Swedish company IKEA (1996) (Matteo Thun, 1997; McGuirk, 2012; P.A.T.H.,
2014). Also the minimum capsule is proposed again, portable, fully furnished and
technologically updated, that finds in Diogenes of Renzo Piano one of the best examples (Renzo
Piano, 2013; Felbaum, 2014). Since the late Nineties, then, slowly, the standardized house
becomes again the center of attention prompted by different factors ranging from the social
transformations to natural disasters, from the new poverty to the more recent conflicts. And one
of the most recent and significant evidence of this process was in 2008 when the MoMA of New
York and the Triennale of Milan dedicated to this topic the two exhibitions Home Delivery
curated by Berry Bergdoll and Casa per tutti curated by Fulvio Irace, then punctually reviewed
by Domus (Home delivery, 2008; Irace, 2008). Unfortunately, the recent dramatic earthquake
that hit central Italy back to emphasize the importance of prefabricated house and its design.
7 CONCLUSIONS
The historical analysis of the evolution of prefabricated house with light systems in the pages of
Domus magazine demonstrates how this is appreciated in Italy for construction speed and
inexpensiveness but, to date, is mainly used in holiday situations or, conversely, emergency and
how, especially within this ambit, the magazine states its social and economic sustainability. It
is precisely the periods of greatest crisis that show that the kit-house can be considered a
socially acceptable solution because it provides a quick response to the problem of housing,
with low costs, a good degree of technical efficiency and is often also removable: it is the
solution of the present but does not affect future developments.
It is emblematic that Ponti, back in the thirties, senses and publishes Austrian and German
expandable prefabricated houses reminding that in the field of economic building they are the
solution of the present but contain, in their being expandable, the hope of improving the life of
the person. The importance of the pre-fabricated house is an intuition that becomes an
imperative when the magazine is directed by Pagano, Bega and Bontempelli during the Second
World War and gains strength after the war under the direction of Rogers: the light
prefabrication and standardization of building components can become a solution to the

711
problems of the whole of Italy through the renewal of the building site that would be assimilated
to industrial production.
In this intention, remained so, you can grasp the principle of effective economic sustainability
as well as social: the advantages of prefabrication are not addressed only to the individual and to
the moment, but to the whole country as the transformation of the building sector should
regenerate the labor market and the production of the country by creating new and profitable
financial linked by-side activities. This hope emerges again and unfortunately also fades away
in the Fifties, when Ponti is back as director and the economic recovery is nevertheless
occurred: despite several manufacturers of prefabricated houses such as Holiday or ICS are born
and several experimentations are carried out, the construction industry continues to prefer the
traditional building site.
These are the years in which the highly technological character of the prefabricated house
emerges and affects its image, just think of the Future by Matti Suuronen, even though the
context in which it is available is mostly that of the holiday resort. Although the magazine does
not state this, the disassembly and removability that characterizes most of the submitted
prototypes can be considered an anticipation of the sustainability principle applied to the
environment, the safeguarding of which is being dealt with by the first UN (1972).
After a period of oblivion, from the Nineties, the production of prefabricated kit-houses
seems to have taken force thanks to the interest of well-known designers such as Matteo Thun
and Philip Stark. However in Italy the generated economic by-side activities are still limited to
certain regional production areas, such as Trentino Alto Adige, confirming the building history
of the country. The recent earthquake that hit central Italy, finally, reiterates the importance of
the prefabricated house and its sustainability in emergency situations, leaving aside when
bureaucracy intervenes: the tents prepared by the Civil Protection in the territories of Amatrice
will be replaced by kit-house in wood by Sae - emergency housing solutions, authorized by the
State, and will only be ready in March 2017.
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Bontempelli, M., Pagano, G. & Bega, M. 1941. Ti sei accorto o lettore. Domus, 157 (1): 1.
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A.l.p.s. - Antiseismic lightweight prefabricated system

A. Gaiani & G. Cattoli
School of Architecture, Ferrara University, Ferrara, Italy
ABSTRACT: Contemporary social issues and the evolving living and housing needs of people
and families offer the starting point for developing a new holistic approach to the design and
construction process for the production of original, low-cost, high-quality, sustainable, and
customized housing, based on the innovative and performance features of prefab building
approaches and techniques using dry construction technologies.
1 BACKGROUND
1.1 Social context: family units and fragility
The global recession, which began with the financial crisis of 2008, has had a great impact on
families, increasing the situations of financial hardship and often worsening the social decay and
neighbourhood relations problems in family contexts that are already in difficulty.
The number of families in difficulty is on the increase with the constant increase in the
migration trend, which involves entire populations fleeing from hunger, poverty, and wars.
Such complex transformations make necessary a critical rethinking of the categories used to
recognize and interpret the various configurations of todays families and, as a result, of the
buildings where they will go to live.
Social housing must increasingly become a temporary place of passage, and be a place of
exchange; of life experiences, culture, and contamination between the experiences that each
resident carries within himself and the external part with which he interacts and reacts.
The idea underlying this study is that of redesigning a place, a building, and thus a social
form which, identifying itself by and within the space, determines and re-establishes new
contaminations among those who will be temporarily living there.
There are several design rules we must follow in order to meet the needs of the community,
which traditional building systems, based on a closed system, can no longer meet:
- Buildings must no longer be single-function.
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- Buildings must be generic in order to permit temporary forms of change in relation to

the social needs: open spaces, not closed ones.
- The construction cost must decrease.
- The management cost must be considerably lower.
- The construction time must be shortened.
We must go from a structure of linear thought (economic, social, architectural), i.e. toward a
continuous consumption of resources, to a circular one, in which there is a recycling of the
resources, innovating and investing in more efficient buildings, less energy-consuming houses,
all built quickly and by set deadlines. The circular system will allow us to create sustainable
buildings.
2 AIMS & OBJECTIVES
The aim is to identify a new common tool between architectural and social projects, combined
within a hybrid model.
Today architecture is, more than ever, a system of relationships rather than of objects, of
spaces of dynamic relationship rather than of static scenes. What is becoming increasingly
frequent is a hybrid design, an open design, which communicates directly with the physical and
social characteristics of the place. More and more common is an interstitial design, one of
mediation and connection between the physical and social contexts, which must operate within a
territory that is already heavily anthropized, and seek the relationships of proximity within new
spatial and social configurations.
Thus contemporary architecture abandons the dimension of the unchangeable to evolve into a
dynamic substance. Expressions such as temporariness, transitoriness, flexibility, variability in
time, and interchangeability of the parts have by now become quality features requested in
numerous residential buildings those which, more than others, are called upon to incorporate
the rapid social and work-related changes.
We aim for this objective through this proposal of creating a lightweight dry-construction
prefabricated structure which may offer a technologically innovative solution/product capable
of meeting the changing needs of society, investors, sustainability and, above all, the evergrowing seismic risk.
The system pursues the following specific objectives:
- Using materials according to their specific physical, static, and performance
characteristics;
- Designing a hybrid layered concrete/wood frame that permits the utmost design
freedom, free from structural constraints, and which resists earthquake tremors;
- Defining a series of new prefabricated elements of concrete and layered wood and new
connections between them joined dry, in a single system that combines the loadbearing structure, vertical external and internal closures, and roof, and avoiding thermal
bridges and heat loss in order to guarantee simultaneous temperature and humidity
comfort, durability, and the quality of the production and assembly of these elements;
- Organizing in detail both the part connected with the production of the prefabricated
elements and the construction site part;
- Designing the construction system proposed with the use of a dedicated and customized
Building Information Modeling (BIM) program, in order to avoid conflicts;
- Proposing solutions for all those marginal links between the exterior and interior
which give the architecture quality.
3 METHODS: THE HYBRID, TEMPORARY DESIGN
The design process proposed in 2003 by Stephan H. Haeckel, Adaptability Loop (Haeckel,
2003), based on the multidisciplinary nature of knowledge and contents and on the synergetic
interaction among all elements, theorizes a design as an open system rather than as a closed and
definitive unit, which appears to us to be the most significant direction to take.

715
While traditional logic was based on the logic of the static nature and permanence of things,
of architecture as a static element in space, contemporary design implements a dynamic logic in
the system of interactions and relationships: it promotes the concept of the open and complex,
defining a dynamic, temporary, and flexible space as the strategy of the hybrid design,
together with the pursuit of environmental sustainability.
Therefore, over the creation of single-function spaces, preference is given to a nature of
mutual integration (a characteristic necessary especially in social housing neighbourhoods
where the living area available for each inhabitant is necessarily very limited).
Today thinking hybrid is a possible resource because the availability of global digital
operating tools enables us, through their operating potentials, to activate a holistic strategy that
makes it possible to integrate any creative and decision-making process, condensing the
problems.
It permits us to pre-visualize the elements of the home, both spatial and construction, and preconstruct them, simulating their static and energy performance.
In fact, the combination of digital pre-visualization and prefabrication enables the
architectural design and construction to converge toward a common objective: producing
quality architecture at accessible costs.
The Italia Governments housing plan, with an initial tranche consisting of the construction of
10,000 dwellings, thus creates the opportunity for developing a design capable of meeting social
housing living demands and creating a new social condenser.
3.1 Mixed uses /social condenser
The building becomes a social condenser that meets and feeds the still-existing needs of
community living. It concentrates indifferently, in an extreme and rigorous economy of
expressive means, its nature as a signal, in the urban panorama, of an accumulator of meaning.
The sustainability of the construction design is thus associated with the pursuit of social
sustainability through the availability and support of numerous and flexible type configurations
that meet the demand for spatial multi-ability (Figs. 12).
Figure 1. Different night & day spaces to be combined for dwelling configuration.
Figure 2. Different typological combination are possibible starting from a fixed grid base design.

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3.2 Design and construction hybridization

The contemporary world puts great economic and cultural pressure on the
architect to offer abstract solutions, and a building project is always necessarily
guided by an ideological agenda, but the building cannot simply be the mere
expression of an idea; it must undergo a process of materialization. (Moneo, 1988)
Theory and practice have become separate and distinct elements in the realization of an
architectural object when, on the other hand, the art of building and architecture have always
intersected, relating to one another in various forms and according to different weights,
sometimes separated, sometimes perfectly joined together, often disconnected. It can be seen
how the rationalization of the building process has become an irreversible process, and that it
will tend more and more to favour construction methods based on lightweight dry-assembled
structures.
The evolution of this thought led us to design a hybrid system which considers both design
and construction problems, to best meet social housing demands: buildings that are low-cost, of
high construction quality, sustainable, energy-efficient, equipped with services, and which can
meet the needs of different categories of users.
We have developed a construction system called A.L.P.S. which combines a prefabricated
framed hybrid system, reinforced concrete pillars connected to layered wood beams with dry
joints, a layered wood floor slab, and an external wall consisting of a frame of layered wood and
environmentally friendly finishes, lightweight prefab bathroom fixtures, and a design flexibility
capable of adapting to the different conditions of the physical, social, and economic context
(Fig. 3).
Figure 3. A.L.P.S. prefab components system.
3.3 Sustainability of the building design process

The circular system theory is based on the circularity of resources, i.e. on sustainability, which
thus becomes a necessary condition of the architecture, and which may basically be summed up
in the broadened Triple zeroes concept (W. Sobek): zero CO2, zero kilometres, zero waste,
thus of a circular design process.
In our design-construction system, sustainability translates into the systemization of the
traditional parameters such as the building orientation, wind study, shading, window sizes
based on the orientation, the buildings mass, and a natural ventilation strategy, with an
industrial construction system that provides for a proper integration, that is, for a hybridization
of the best characteristics.
This result is obtained through the use in the design of renewable materials such as, for
example, wood and natural materials, rock wool, and wood fibre.
This approach may be summed up by the low tech concept expressed by Matteo Thun,
which means the use of the physical natural resources present locally and high technology only
where absolutely necessary. At the same time, the use of pre-assembly methods permits the use
of materials from any place, installable within the construction process, permitting a

717
considerable cost savings, recycling scrap through separated waste disposal, and creating a
virtuous circle of total use of the resource, following a total sustainability approach.
The system is based on five parameters that are fundamental for guaranteeing sustainability:
Raw Material, Production, Transport, Assembly, and Energy Efficiency.
Raw Material: The design envisages the combined use of concrete and layered wood (Fig. 4).
The concept of sustainability is based on the idea of use of the appropriate material for the
functioning conditions: reinforced concrete is used for resisting earthquakes, through the
vertical elements, pillars or partition walls; layered wood is used to meet comfort needs, and
thus to make the floor slabs and external frame walls.
Figure 4. A.L.P.S. hybrid wood-concrete structural frame.
Compared to alternative structure types consisting entirely of reinforced concrete or steel,

A.L.P.S. boasts a lighter structural weight than concrete, with a positive impact on the floor
seismic weights and a considerably lower horizontal seismic force, geometry being equal.
Compared to steel, when used in wall structures (Xlam), there are no obstacles created by cross
braces which reduce the freedom of internal distribution (Fig. 5).
Figure 5. A.L.P.S. structural strenghts.
Wood, a reforestation material and therefore renewable, is multisensorial and flexible, and
has the advantage of preventing thermal bridges and being recyclable at the end of the
buildings life; at the same time, it has excellent thermal characteristics. Combined with natural
materials such as rock wool or wood fiber, it is possible to construct layered wood frame walls
with low thermal transmittance and high thermal lag coefficients, for cooling in the
summertime.
Production: Factory production of the designed pieces, totally customized on the basis of the
specific project, using a known performance system, makes possible a virtuous process of
production of the pieces, which come out complete with an assembly method certification. The
factory pre-assembly also makes it possible to work in a safer environment than a construction
site (Fig. 6).
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Figure 6. A.L.P.S. process: from components factory fabrication to on site installation.
Transport: One of the elements affording the greatest energy savings has to do with mobility.
The design for pre-assembled elements permits an optimization of the transport system, no
longer random on the basis of daily construction site needs, but meticulously scheduled,
permitting an optimization of the loads and overall decrease in incoming and outgoing traffic.
Assembly: The dry assembly of the elements permits a simultaneous reduction in the time
and resources necessary for construction. It also makes it possible to reduce the work carried out
on-site, thus improving safety, as well as drastically reducing fine dusts. The assembly of
preassembled wood elements (layered wood floor slabs, beams, and frame walls, and
lightweight frame bathrooms) affords great assembly precision, resulting in a building with less
heat loss than a traditional building. The dry assembly also considerably reduces dependency on
the weather conditions, drastically reduces scrap and waste, and cuts construction site times in
half (Fig. 7).
Figure 7. Advantage of A.L.P.S. on site mounting process compared to traditional construction approach.

719
Buildings are designed in compliance with the strictest energy and acoustic efficiency
standards:
1) Heating criterion: the building has an energy requirement for environmental heating
no higher than 29.5kWh/m2 per year (Legislative Decrees 192-05, 311/06,
Presidential Decree 59/09, and Ministerial Decree 26/06/09 and subsequent
amendments thereto (approximate mean value).
2) Cooling criterion: the demand for sensitive energy useful for environmental cooling
(where envisaged) is no higher than 30 kWh/m2 per year (zone E) in compliance with
Presidential Decree 59/09 and subsequent amendments thereto.
3) Winter comfort criterion: the operating temperature in the rooms may be kept above
20C, within the energy limits mentioned above.
4) Air seal criterion: The building envelope must have a Blower Door Test result of
pressurization (at 50 pa) n50 no higher than 2.00 h-1 in accordance with standard EN
13829.
5) Summer comfort criterion: the operating temperature must fall within the comfort
range indicated in standard EN 15251. Temperature below 26C with active cooling
system.
6) Thermal performance criterion of the building envelope in the summertime, with
compliance with the average periodic transmittance of the opaque vertical structures <
0.12W/m2K.
7) Acoustic insulation criterion: The characteristics of the component materials and
systems (prefab floor slabs and external vertical walls) make it possible to achieve
Class II performance, which is higher than the minimum performance standards
stated in the Prime Ministers Decree of 05/12/97 and subsequent UNI1136 standard.
3.4 Flexibility
The changed, and continuously evolving, social scenarios strongly suggest a pressing need for a
new, more flexible organization of the living space, which aims decisively for an abandonment
of the room as such, with its predefined functions, in favour of distribution and functional
choices that permit the possibility of customization.
The figurative image of the residential building thus becomes a hybrid, eliminating
repetitiveness, drawing on a language that makes the vertical surface porous and capable of
giving weight to each apartment in the overall design of the faades, which are open to removal
of volumes or, vice versa, to the addition of projecting elements such as terraces and balconies,
or to the painting of the surfaces based on the modular differences of the openings (Fig. 8).
At the same time, the design by system and not by standardized components enables us to
have endless planimetric/volumetric configurations that meet all design needs (Figs. 9-10).
Figure 8. A.L.P.S. hybrid approach allows variety and flexibility in architectural projects.
720

Figure 9. A.L.P.S. hybrid approach allows different urban design configurations.
Figure 10. A.L.P.S. hybrid approach allows differentiated facades design.
3.5 Spaces of scalar sequence relationship

The relationship among private, public, and semi-public spaces becomes a resource of design as
well as bioclimatic mediation systems.
The preference in the in-depth attention to threshold spaces, borders, and margins in
architectural configurations becomes an invariant of designs for triggering favourable visual
and emotional relationships between interior and exterior areas, seeking the often-overlooked
relationship with the urban and natural landscapes.
Social efficiency parameters of the design are introduced to evaluate its level of social
sustainability, which promotes and envisages the introduction and strengthening of the
following benchmarks: Social Contributions, Empathetic Transmission, and Social Life Cycle.
Social Contributions: this parameter evaluates the exchanges that may take place from the
public/semi-public space to within the residential units. It is necessary, in this sense, envisage
the providing of spatial/operating areas that foster/trigger processes of spatial sharing among the
residents, through the introduction of semiprivate spaces that can be shared for activities to be
decided. In this sense, the designs will identify spatial opportunities that may foster actions of
external > internal appropriation.
Empathetic Transmission: this parameter comprises the idea of fostering communication and
the appropriation of the semi-public spaces of buildings: in particular, transforming the transit
and vertical and horizontal communication areas into spaces suitable for group activities. By
way of example, these could include shared floor vegetable gardens, shared equipped play
spaces for children with self-management by the residents, and conversation and reading spaces
in direct contact with the single residential units.
Social Life Cycle: this parameter evaluates the providing of spaces usable for activities of a
typically urban and neighbourhood type (activities conducted under agreements with the local
government offices, such as time banks, co-working spaces, etc.), with the aim of promoting an
integration of the social fabric at the urban level.

721
4 BIM APPROACH
The growing complexity deriving from the hybridization of processes, roles, spheres of
responsibility and action, the evolution of the regulatory framework, and the need to integrate
the management of the entire life cycle of the building with its construction (life cycle
management) are the inescapable starting points for identifying work procedures based on a 6dimensional operating concept (6D BIM): tools which make it possible to manage, in addition
to the 3 Cartesian dimensions, the time, cost, and management throughout the entire life cycle of
the building.
The nature of the BIM is mainly this: the building of a hybrid model (digital and threedimensional) that comprises a vast store of knowledge and data that can be extracted and
represented according to the different options of similarity to reality: sometimes isomorphic,
sometimes analogue, sometimes homologous.
The development of the ALPS designs has adopted this changed approach to the design
process: all those involved in the design share organization, work, and sharing procedures, with
the possibility to constantly access, use, and modify the digital mock-up in progress, so that
each and every choice or change can be shared and updated.
Based on the organizational framework described above, the BIM procedure applied to the
A.L.P.S. design envisages the implementation of the following phases:
- definition of the concept and the in-depth design studies through the implementation
of cooperative processes among all the designers involved and the stakeholders, by
means of optimized checking and approval procedures;
- generation of coordinated 3D models among the various professionals for monitoring
all the executional problems, comprising all the final measurement, type, quantitative,
and qualitative information on the building, from which to extract significant
information on demand;
- specific performance checks of the design elements (illuminance, energy class,
acoustic and structural simulations, visualization);
- deriving from the 3D models of all the executional indications for the production
phase (working drawings, measurement calculations, material lists);
- accurate planning of all the work phases, management, and scheduling of the orders
in order to minimize the risk of errors and resulting re-orders, coordination and
management of suppliers, reduction of processing scraps, and progressive budget
control;
- monitoring and planning of the management and scheduled maintenance costs based
on a 3D digital database.
- The BIM approach envisages the creation of a model for each construction type
(architectural, structural, plant engineering), which may be visualized and used either
singly (for the generation of measurement calculations and other specific processing
needs) or in an integrated manner, in order to check, for example, for possible
interferences among elements or construction problems which might not be
immediately evident (Fig. 11).
The integrated model also makes it possible to use the GREEN BUILDING (gbXML)
procedures by monitoring, during the design and operating phases, the performance
characteristics of the building by means of energy simulation and LCA (Life Cycle Analysis and
Assessment).
The digital model may be considered, on the one hand, the designs operational centre, as a
3D hybrid archive of data and, on the other, the tool necessary for guaranteeing true quality and
the sustainability of the building.
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Figure 11. A.L.P.S. BIM workflow.
Figure 12. A.L.P.S. hybrid social building realization example.
5 CONCLUSIONS
A.l.p.s is a hybrid wood-concrete dry construction system, conceived as a structural frame with
prefabricated elements (pillars, beams) and dry metal joints, LL or precast concrete slabs, prefab

723
multi-layered walls with LL frame structure, and prefab systems: at last, a complete integrated
building system.
This lightweight system, without structural bindings, gives the designer maximum freedom,
from the structural grid to flats layout definition, having the capability to conceive endless type
mix options. Lightweight walls allow facade flexibility (single or continuous balconies of
different shapes, greenhouses, winter gardens, loggias).
The dry system affords better on-site safety, faster construction time, low predetermined
construction costs, and cheaper management costs.
REFERENCES
Haeckel, S. H. 2003. Adaptabily Loop. In H. Dubberly (ed.), How do you design?, 131. San Francisco:
Dubberly Design Office.
Moneo, R. 1988. La solitudine degli edifici ed altri scritti. Turin: Alemandi Editore.
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725
A collaborative practices typology for Australian prefabricated

housing networks: convergence, alignment and coordination
Z. Pablo & K. London
University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
ABSTRACT: Prefabrication in housing construction has had limited uptake in Australia, and
preliminary studies have identified a number of possible barriers. However, many of these
barriers are underpinned by uninterrogated assumptions, among them limited understandings of
the outcomes linked to prefabrication and the type of firm that can lead prefabrication
initiatives. Studies also overlook that many of these barriers are rooted in the fundamental
challenge of achieving large-scale collaboration. We use actor-network theory and comparative
qualitative case study techniques to examine successful cases of large-scale collaboration in
housing prefabrication supply chains. We identify eight collaborative practices that drive
successful prefabrication, thus contributing theoretically to an enriched multi-dimensional
definition of collaboration. We contribute methodologically by using the practices to develop a
rubric that guides empirical research in analyzing collaborative arrangements across supply
chains. Finally, we contribute to practice by demonstrating that prefabrication driven by
different types of firms to achieve diverse outcomes.
1 PREFABRICATION IN AUSTRALIA
Researchers and practitioners have linked prefabricated housing solutions to a number of
benefits: economic advantages, improved environmental outcomes, and increased worker safety
(Pan & Goodier, 2012). However, housing prefabrication uptake in Australia has been limited,
and much of the industry continues to operate largely as a cottage-based and fragmented sector
(Loosemore et al., 2003). The reasons for this failure to achieve a large-scale shift to
prefabrication are unclear, mainly due to a lack of systematic case studies about the Australian
context. Still, a number of explanations for this have been offered, primarily through the
identification of a wide range of barriers to prefabrication. Examples of barriers identified are
significant startup costs, a market that perceives prefabricated houses as low-cost products,
resistance from unionized labour and the overall conservative stance of the construction industry
in response to radical change (Blismas et al., 2005; Blismas &Wakefield, 2009).
While the initial identification of possible barriers has been insightful, we make two
observations. First, a number of them appear to be based on widely-held but possibly
unexamined perceptions across key sectors. For example, the seemingly unproblematic
association of prefabrication with high startup costs and low-cost prefabricated houses appears
to be linked to uninterrogated sets of interlocking assumptions: that prefabrications main
benefits are related to the efficient mass production of houses driven by extensive use of capital;
and that this implies standardized houses, large investments in equipment, and the extensive
resource base of large, established firms. While these assumptions may have a historical basis, it
726

has in recent times become less justified and more constraining, in no small part due to
technology developments. This has led us to frame our first research question as follows: (1)
What are the different firm typologies and outcomes that are linked to successful
prefabrication? In this paper, we present four case studies that, taken collectively, demonstrate
empirically that successful prefabrication can be driven by firms that represent different
typologies. Housing prefabrication supply chains can, for example, be led by large and small
firms. Prefabrication can be supported by large-scale as well as limited investments in capital.
Importantly, prefabrication can support not just outcomes such as standardization, but also
outcomes such as design complexity, customization, and exceptional environmental
performance.
A second observation is that the manner by which these barriers have been identified (for
example in Blismas et al., 2005) leads to framing and subsequently addressing these barriers
atomistically as separate issues. We argue for a different approach. We take the view that
underpinning many of these seemingly disparate barriers is a more fundamental challenge of
achieving large-scale collaboration. We base this on the argument that a number of countries
such as Japan, Western Europe, Scandinavia, China and the USA have overcome challenges to
prefabrication through a complex process requiring extraordinary collaborative efforts (Miles
and Whitehouse, 2013). In the field of construction management, however, there is very limited
work (Xue et al., 2010; Walker & Walker, 2015) that seeks to systematically unpack what
collaboration is, in ways that are robust enough to guide empirical research and practice. To
ground our discussion on collaboration, we weave together research in construction
(Simatupang & Sridharan, 2002; Harty, 2008; Xue et al., 2010), mainstream management (Gray,
1985; Wood & Gray, 1991), and actor-network theory (Latour, 1987; Callon, 1991; Law, 1992),
and propose a multi-dimensional definition of collaboration. This definition was presented
earlier (see London et al., 2016) as a conceptual framework that suggests that collaboration is
best understood as a multi-dimensional phenomenon with individual, systems, work, and
market-related elements. Drawing from this conceptual framework, we define collaboration here
as a pattern of interaction that emerges when a champion driven by a compelling vision and
organizational citizenship behaviors (individual dimension) draws together human and nonhuman actants into sets of complex, heterogeneous networks of relationships (systems
dimension) that cohere in ways that make the network stable, enduring, and convergent (work
dimension). This collaborative network can also be expanded by aligning with other networks
(market dimension).
We believe that this approach, of using a multi-dimensional definition instead of a precise
and narrow definition of collaboration, has a distinct advantage: the main dimensions of the
definition are flexible enough to sensitize users to a wide range of possible collaborative
dynamics that are often overlooked by narrow definitions. However, in this study we seek to
develop the definition further, specifically by identifying the key collaborative practices that
comprise collaboration in housing prefabrication supply chains. We argue here that firms that
have successfully implemented prefabrication have been supported by concrete sets of
collaborative practices directed at creating and sustaining networks of organizations, people,
objects, and texts linked together in complex and varied ecologies, to achieve different
performance outcomes. Our second research question is therefore framed as follows: (2) What
are the collaborative practices that support successful prefabrication in housing construction
supply chains? In addressing this research question, we propose eight key collaborative
practices that underpin successful prefabrication. We will show that the identification of these
eight key practices contributes to theories on collaboration by enriching our multi-dimensional
definition of the term. We will also show that the key collaborative practices are also a valuable
contribution in that they form the basis of a rubric that aids empirical research and practice. We
also argue that as part of future work, this rubric can be applied to our four case studies to show
that different configurations of collaboration that can support housing prefabrication networks.

727
2 METHODOLOGY
2.1 Qualitative case study techniques
To address the research questions, we use qualitative case study techniques. We believe that
they are well-suited to exploring phenomena in prefabrication supply chains, given that these
are complex and, in Australian settings, little-explored. Qualitative case study methods are
known to be appropriate in such contexts, as the finely-grained data that emerges from
qualitative examinations has been known to contribute to theoretical development in areas that
are relatively unexplored (Eisenhardt, 1989). The approach is also well-suited to examine
collaborative practice in particular, given that much of the research on collaboration has focused
primarily on quantitative approaches that can be quite limited in attending to nuances and
complexities in collaborative practice (Hardy et al., 2003). We also note our selection of four
cases was driven by the goal of achieving maximum variation, which increases generalizability
of findings. This is because, taken collectively, the diverse cases provide insights on how
different circumstances shape and are shaped by specific processes and outcomes (Flyvbjerg,
2006).
2.2 Actor-network theory (ANT)
In examining four case studies qualitatively, we used the toolkit of actor-network theory
(Callon, 1999; Latour, 1987; Law, 1992), an approach founded on the premise that much of
reality is the outcome of human and non-human actants interacting. Actor-network theorists
argue that much of what we see in our everyday worlds computer systems, entire countries,
organizations, supply chains are all network effects that emerge as objects, people, texts,
and social systems interact with one another (Law, 1992). We believe that ANT is a robust
methodological approach to employ in construction settings. First, construction projects involve
not just one autonomous firm, but complex supply chains. As a network approach, ANT is
useful in that it not bounded by the limitations of other approaches that depict the business
organizations as autonomous units of production (Pryke, 2012). Second, construction settings
almost always involve both human non-human entities (we use the term actants). Non-human
actants include equipment, buildings and housing products. This is consistent with the ANT
assumptions of heterogeneous networks and general symmetry (Law, 1992). Third, much of
ANT research is grounded on the idea that networks develop in stages. A network emerges
when a prime mover problematizes a situation, then seeks to enrol human and non-human
actants into a network with the goal of solving this problem. Actants enrolled are envisioned to
fulfill interlocking roles that support network goals. As these actants accept increasingly
simplified roles defined relative to other actants functions, the network becomes increasingly
converged, and may stabilize to the point that its programs of action become difficult to reverse.
Prime movers can also seek to expand network programs to include more actants, across time
and across locations (Callon, 1999). The idea of network development through creation,
convergence, stabilization, and expansion is useful in exploring dynamics in prefabrication
supply chains. In particular, understanding these stages provides a processual perspective on
how collaboration emerges. Such a perspective sheds nuanced understandings on collaborative
phenomena in ways that static approaches cannot (Gray, 1985).
2.3 Data gathering, analysis, and case descriptions
ANT also provides methodological guidelines in terms of defining case contexts. For example,
in discerning the boundaries of each of our four case studies, we were guided by ANT theorist
Bruno Latour (2005), who argues that the boundaries of a network being researched can only be
traced by following the actors. In our case, following the actors led us to identify people,
groups, equipment, objects, regulations, and texts as actants in each of the four prefabrication
networks that we examined. Each case study, then, was not defined as a single organization, but
as a network of people, organizations, objects and texts that were convened to carry out
prefabrication efforts in housing. These networks we examined are at different stages: one at
creation, two at the growth stage where entrepreneurial activity is emphasized over formalized
728

processes, and one at the maturity stage where formalized processes are foregrounded. Our
primary data-gathering method was 24 semi-structured interviews with high-level managers
from the focal organization of the supply chains under consideration, as well as their external
partners such as architects and structural engineers. Interviews were fully transcribed and
analysed thematically with the aid of NVivo. We also conducted observations, which allowed us
to explore, among the other things, the roles of nonhuman actants like computer-numeric
control machines, yards, and physical office spaces.
Brief descriptions of our four cases are summarized in Table 1. Drawing from actor-network
theory, we note that each network is driven by a key actant, referred to by ANT researchers as
the prime mover (Callon, 1999). In each of our cases, the prime mover is the focal organization
that initiates prefabrication, convenes a network, and seeks to sustain it in order to achieve
specific prefabrication outcomes. Because of its primacy in network creation, much of our case
narratives and findings are framed around the work of this focal organization. That said, it is
also important to acknowledge that these firms, while influential, are not autonomous. They are
enmeshed in collaborative relationships in complex supply chains. We thus foreground these
collaborative relationships in Part 2 of the analysis.
Table 1. Case descriptions.
Case 1
Focal organization is a diversified property group that was recently acquired by an
international real estate company. It operates in New Zealand and in five Australian states,
with staff numbering over 600. Focus is on initial use of prefabricated cassette flooring
systems in 2012, triggered by concerns about worker safety and fall from heights.
Case 2
Focal organization is a regional builder of prefabricated transportable houses in two locations.
Began as a family-owned business and while it has grown, it still remains very much
relationship- and community-oriented. One location manufactures houses on an automated
rail system, another builds these in a yard. Houses are then trucked to various locations.
Employs than 100 employees. New general manager feels the company is flying under the
radar.
Case 3
Focal organization is a regional builder that has strong designer-builder relationships.
Prioritizes customized housing projects using prefabricated components. Known for complex
designs and exceptionally high energy ratings. Current employee base is less than 50.
Recently restructured from a single company into three companies focused on specialized
functions: design, project management, and prefabrication operations.
Case 4
Focal organization is a start-up in Victoria, Australia, with a mission of manufacturing
precision-engineered wall and roof elements for timber frame construction, in a fullyautomated factory using German technology. Awaiting more funding for equipment. Once set
up, it expects that it a bespoke two-storey house can be assembled in two days with a team of
five, a crane, and a single truck taking materials on a real-time basis to the building site.
3 ANALYSIS PART 1: FIRM TYPOLOGY, OUTCOMES AND PREFABRICATION

Table 1 highlights the characteristics of four different firms leading Australian supply chains in
housing prefabrication. It is interesting to examine their characteristics relative to widely held
beliefs about the ideal type organizations driving prefabrication. Earlier we noted current
perceptions in prefabrication appear to be shaped by interlocking sets of assumptions: that
prefabrication is all about achieving particular outcomes (low cost, high volumes) and pursuing
specific strategies (mass production, standardization), and by extension this is taken to mean
that prefabrication should be led by firms of a certain typology (large, capital-intensive). The
uncritical acceptance of these assumptions could very well be a deterrent, potentially
unfounded, for certain types of firms (small, labor-intensive, customization-oriented)
considering a shift to prefabrication. Our empirical analysis of four prefabrication collaborative
networks does in fact interrogate these limiting assumptions. In addressing the question (1)
What are the different firm typologies and outcomes that are linked to successful
prefabrication? our findings indicate that there are diverse typologies of firms that can drive
prefabrication (Section 3.1), and that prefabrication is linked to a surprisingly diverse set of
outcomes (3.2). We explore each of these points in the succeeding sections.

729
3.1 Finding 1: there are multiple firm typologies that support prefabrication
Our findings clearly suggest that is not just the capital-intensive, mass production-driven firm
that is capable of convening and sustaining a collaborative prefabrication network. For example,
Table 2 shows prefabrication networks can be successfully driven not only by large, established
national developers, but also by small-and-medium enterprises with employee bases that do not
go beyond 100, as well as new and emerging firms. Output-wise, prefabrication can be carried
out successfully for detached as well as multi-storey, low- to medium-rise residential structures.
Manufacturing operations can be designed around components, wall or flooring systems, or
even entire houses. Such operations can be supported by full-scale industrialized processes
(latter stages of Case Study 1, possibly Case Study 4), by parallel manual and factory operations
across two locations (Case Study 2), or by basic equipment in a single factory (Case Study 3). In
two cases, interviewees described how their offsite assembly of houses was literally being
carried out by people working manually in a yard. Collectively these indicate there is no one
ideal type of firm that can successfully lead a housing prefabrication supply chain.
Table 2. Typologies of firms that have driven successful OSM.
CASE 1
CASE 2
National
Focal organization
Regional builder
developer
Firm life stage
Maturity
Growth
Market type
Housing
Housing
Housing type
Single-to-five
storeys
Single storey,
detached
CASE 3
Regional
designer-builder
Growth
Housing and
commercial
Low rise to three
storeys, detached
OSM product
Floor system
House
Components
Capital intensiveness
Low then high
Medium
Size
MNC
SME
(*) Successful in key areas of setup, but note it is still in startup stage
Low
SME
CASE 4*
Startup
manufacturer
Startup
Housing
Low-rise,
detached
Wall and floor
systems
High
Micro
3.2 Finding 2: there are diverse outcomes linked to prefabrication

Our findings also call into question prevailing beliefs that the target outcomes of prefabrication
are low-cost, mass-produced, standardized units. Qualitative data from our interviews show that
prefabrication in each network was driven by complex sets of outcomes, and cross-case
comparisons reveal interesting contrasts that suggest that prefabrication can be mobilized to
pursue a surprisingly broad swathe of targets. Among all of the supply chains, Case Study 1
appears to be closest to traditional views of prefabrication; we describe it briefly and
subsequently use it for comparative analysis. Case Study 1 interviewees who spoke about their
pilot prefabrication project highlighted efficiency gains from their shift to the use of timber
cassette floors. Specifically, efficiency gains included increased speed (four levels of the
structure were built in six weeks; the building was completed one month early), manpower
savings (from more than 20 to six), and cost savings (25% reduction in built costs per
apartment). Prefabrication of timber flooring systems supported subsequent large-scale housing
projects, including the construction of 48 two-storey homes completed swiftly over a six-and-ahalf month period, instead of over the projected 12-month period. In light of these efficiency
gains, expansion to Western Australia through projects using the cassette floor was pending.
The role of capital equipment was significant. To support high volume house production, the
cassette floor is now being produced in large quantities by a dedicated supplier that had invested
heavily in equipment.
Case Study 1s priority outcomes, then, appear to be gaining new broad markets across the
country through large-scale housing projects. This was made possible through reduced costs,
and notably involved mass customization, not standardization. Interestingly, interviews also
showed the main driver of the shift to prefabrication was not efficiency gains, as important as
they turned out to be. Plans for prefabricated floor systems were launched mainly due to
concerns about worker safety, as traditional flooring systems previously used posed health risks

730
and the risk of fall from heights. Exploring Case Study 1 provides an interesting benchmark that
highlights some contrasts, as well as subtle differences, in outcomes pursued other case studies
(see Table 3). For example, market expansion was prioritized in all cases, but in two cases
expansion meant seeking broad markets, and in other cases it meant seeking niches. The
emphasis on cost reduction also varied. Finally, specific supply chains were unique in the way
that they championed specific outcomes. In Case Study 3, energy efficiency was very important;
in Case Study 1, worker safety was a key driver.
Table 3. Outcomes pursued through prefabrication.
CASE 1
CASE 2
National
Focal organization
Regional builder
developer
Emphasis on new
High/ Broad
High/ Niche
market
Emphasis on low costs
High
Medium
Make cost +
delivery of
Targets for cost
15-25% built
transportable =
reduction
cost
to cost of sitebuilt house
Emphasis on
complexity/
Medium
Low
customization
Mass
Mass
Strategy
customization
customization
High
Medium
Worker safety/ comfort
Environmental
Low
Medium
sustainability
Control over process
Low
Medium
High
Low
Speed and efficiency
*Potential, not actual.
CASE 3
Regional
designer-builder
CASE 4*
Startup
manufacturer
High/ Niche
High/ Broad
Low
High
Prioritize quality,
complexity,
energy efficiency
over cost
25%
High
High
High
customization
Medium
High
customization
Low
High
Medium
High
High
High
High
4 ANALYSIS PART 2: COLLABORATION IN NETWORKS

Outcomes in construction projects are not dependent on strategies executed by autonomous
actants, but on networks of actants bound together by collaboration. The link between
collaboration and overall project performance has thus been the subject of a number of studies
over the last two decades. Larson (1997), for example, used multiple regression analysis to
explore the effects of independent variables of partnering (team building sessions, conflict
identification, use of consultants to facilitate interactions, etc.) on dependent variables linked to
project
success (technical performance, control of costs). Baiden et al. (2006) identified
dimensions of team integration and used this list to analyse teams of successful project
managers who had won significant awards, assessing if such characteristics were fully, partially,
or not achieved within such teams. Keung & Shen (2013) examined a list of collaborationrelated factors that lead to what they refer to as network performance, using factor analysis to
identify five critical dimensions: information exchange, communication, knowledge-sharing, a
supportive culture and learning capabilities.
Despite attempts to link collaboration and performance, there are still significant gaps in
more fundamental aspects of collaboration research. Specifically, there is very little work that
has been done to define collaboration in ways that are robust enough to guide empirical research
and professional practice. This has led Holti & Standing (1996, p. 5) to describe collaboration as
not being definable in its own right. The lack of a clear definition in turn could arguably be
linked to Sabath & Fontanellas (2002, p. 24) comment that collaboration has the most
disappointing track record of various supply chain management practices introduced to date.
Therefore our goal in this study is to contribute to this growing body of work specifically by
analyzing collaboration in prefabrication supply chains through the identification of eight key

731
collaborative practices. Beginning with the premise that collaboration is a strategy for supply
chain integration, we draw from actor-network theory to propose that an integrated supply chain
is best understood as a converged network. Convergence has two elements: alignment and
coordination (Callon 1991). To define alignment more concretely, we drew from ANT research
that defines it as two elements: shared space and shared history (Callon, 1991). To define
coordination more concretely, we found it helpful to draw from outside the discipline, from
organizational theory. In his work in the area, Henry Mintzberg (1989) argues that coordination
in and between organization takes place via six major mechanisms, depending on firm
configuration. These six mechanisms, combined with Callons (1999) two components of
alignment, provide a tentative list of eight elements comprising convergence (Table 4, Column
1). We used these eight elements as preliminary themes for analyzing our interview data,
specifically in categorizing participant responses to questions on what helped and hindered
collaboration in prefabrication initiatives. As we moved between the initial eight elements and
the data, we found that the 11 most frequently mentioned collaboration drivers mentioned by
our interviewees were significantly aligned with the eight initial themes (see how Column 2
maps to Column 1).
Despite this alignment, we also found that our data could be used to further enrich the eight
initial themes. In the initial set of themes, for example, no mention was made about the
importance of a shared vision as foundational for successful convergence. However, both ANT
and our empirical data clearly suggest it is important. ANT, for example, highlights this through
its emphasis on a prime mover problematizing an issue in a compelling way (Callon, 1999).
Our empirical data also suggests that a key driver for successful collaboration is the vision of a
champion. These findings have led us to re-evaluate one initial theme, direct supervision; to
reframe it was a broader concept, champion; and to include the element of vision as part of
our definition of this modified theme. Another example is Mintzbergs (1989) reference to
standardized processes as a mechanism for coordination. As an initial theme, it was helpful in
that it sensitized us to the importance of explicated processes, but it was still potentially
limiting. Standardization implies that all actants adhere to a common and fixed set of rules
and specifications. Callon (1991, p. 148), however, suggests a totally convergent network
would thus be a kind of Tower of Babel. Everyone would speak their own language, but
everyone else would understand them. Each one would have specific skills, but everyone would
know how to use them.
In our case studies, for example, different actants in the supply chains achieved coordination
not only through the imposition of a common set of narrowly-defined processes, although
shared processes were certainly present at times. Coordination was on many occasions also
achieved despite actants having to maintain certain domains of specialized processes. What was
important was that other actants came to understand and uphold the different specialized
processes that had to be carried out. As one interviewee pointed out,
that's why we have people around the table, because I know I don't know
engineering to the nth degree but I've got a fairly good understanding of it from a
frame and truss point of view. But to draw on knowledge from these guys has
given me a bit more confidence in making decisions in big meetingsIt just
builds momentum and people catch on.
As we moved between the initial themes and the data, we thus sought to capture nuances and
enrich these preliminary categories. The enriched themes are now the collaborative practices
found in Table 4, Column 3. Following the identification of these collaborative practices, we
then defined each one (Column 4) and explained how each one links to the different dimensions
(individual, systems, work, and markets, see Column 5) of our definition of collaboration.

732
Table 4. Collaborative practices.

Concept based on
Theme based
literature
on interviews
(1 = most
frequent)
COORDINATION Willingness to
1:
mutually assist
Mutual adjustment
in problem
(Mintzberg, 1993)
solving (7)
Collaborative
Practice
Definition
Link to definition
(individual, systems,
work, market)
Mutual
adjustment
and problem
solving
Parties interact
directly to solve
problems in ways
that generate
mutually acceptable
solutions
Convenor
provides vision,
drives chain
through key
organizational
citizenship
behaviors, and
ensures roles and
tasks of actants fit
together
Procedures related
to project tasks are
documented and
parties commit to
adhering to these
procedures
Systems: emphasis on
how specific types of
direct collaborative
interactions can
emerge in mutuallyacceptable ways
Individual: emphasis
on how the
characteristics and
vision of a prime
mover can set stage
for collaboration
COORDINATION
2:
Direct supervision
(Mintzberg, 1989)
Champion (23-4-5)
Champion
COORDINATION
3:
Standardization of
processes
(Mintzberg, 11989)
Clear
contracts,
programs,
(plans,
drawings,
specification)
(6)
Explicit,
coherent
process
standards
COORDINATION
4:
Standardization of
output (Mintzberg,
1989)
Clear
(contracts,
programs),
plans,
drawings,
specifications
(6)
Explicit,
coherent
output
standards
COORDINATION
3:
Standardization of
skills/ qualifications
(Mintzberg, 1989)
Right people
in terms of
qualification
(2-3-4-5)
Right people
in terms of
attitude
Optimal input
from multiple
disciplines (23-4-5)
Collective
mindset (11)
Optimal mix
of qualified
people (skills
as well as
attitudes)
COORDINATION
6:
Standardization of
norms (Mintzberg,
1989)
Collectively
upheld norms
Specifications of
manufactured
products are
captured in
technical drawings
then shared with
partners, who
uphold these
Expectations on the
level of knowledge
and specific
attitudes of partners
are explicated and
upheld, and the
right combination is
achieved
Cultural values like

commitment to
quality or
commitment to a
prefabrication
mindset are
embodied and
widely accepted
Work: emphasis on
how procedures can
be render
collaboration durable
through explication/
formalization, thus
supporting
collaboration
Work dimension:
emphasis on how
output specifications
can render
collaboration durable
through explication/,
thus supporting
collaboration
Individual and
systems: emphasis on
how the
characteristics of
each actant as well as
the mix of
qualifications are
foundational to
collaboration
Systems, work,
markets: emphasis on
how norms and
values become the
basis for initial
interactions, which
can then become
reified as a
collaborative culture
which can then be
expanded to other
domains

Table 4. Collaborative practices (continued).

ALIGNMENT 1:
Shared history
Long-term
(2-3-4-5)
Shared history
relationship
Relationship
(Callon, 1999)
building
orientation (8-910)
ALIGNMENT 2:
Shared space
(Callon, 1999)
Co-location (1)
Communication
mechanisms
(use of IT) (8-910)
Shared
physical/
virtual space
733
Relationships are
prioritized,
relationships with
partners are
maintained over the
long term
Co-location and
frequent face-to-face
meetings are
prioritized, and at
times supported by IT
Systems, work:
emphasis is on how
collaborative
interactions can be
prioritized, then
rendered durable over
the long term
Work: emphasis is on
creating a structure
that patterns
interactions through
material devices
Apart from defining the collaborative practices in Column 3, we also developed guidelines as
to how each of the practices would look like if it were present in a specific context in a strong or
weak way (see Table 5, Columns 2 and 3, for examples). This rubric, shown in part here,
addresses our objective of developing a guide for empirical research and practice.
Table 5. Partial rubric for high and low level examples of collaborative practices.
Mutual adjustment one of the things which we said to (Some parties are) are like, Well, you
and
problem him was, We're going to work a fix it. You designed it, its your
solving
program that's reasonable around your responsibility. I said, Well, thats
factory that it can produce. So let's not going to work because you need
work out what is reasonable that your that entire collaboration and that entire
factory can produce. So it's cycle to occur.
working with them to understand what
they can and can't do.
Explicit, coherent So once you systematise every aspect And again when I started, theres no
process standards
of the construction, you need less - it's agreements in place, theres no pricing
more of a repetitive task, which is easy grid theres no SLRs (service level
to achieve quality and you can also agreements), theres no any of those
have apprentices doing it.
things. So Im trying to bring to that,
like get some agreements in place.
5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

In this study, we have made three contributions. First, we contributed to theories of
collaboration. Specifically, the collaborative practices we identified (Table 4, Column 3) enrich
the multi-dimensional definition of collaboration we presented earlier, not by adding new
dimensions but by surfacing nuances within the different dimensions. Through literature and
previous work we had previously defined the systems dimension as interactions and
relationships between human and nonhuman actants. This study goes further by bringing to the
fore specific characteristics that make such system interactions collaboratively viable: the
importance of shared virtual and physical spaces, the power of mutual problem-solving, the
importance of the mix of actant qualifications, not just individual qualifications, and the potency
of a long-term orientation towards relationships. The work dimension is similarly enriched
through the identification of important elements. An interesting finding, for example, is that
standardization as traditionally defined by Mintzberg (1983) may be limiting as a mechanism
for coordination. In this study, we have highlighted that it is not necessary for actants to share
the same narrow set of standards to coordinate. What is needed is different actants being willing
to explicate, understand and uphold diverse sets of processes in ways that allow the network to
cohere.
As we draw these findings together, we can begin to propose a richer definition of
collaboration. Space does not allow us to discuss this fully here, but collaboration can now be
more fully understood as follows: a pattern of interaction that emerges when a champion driven
734

by a compelling vision and organizational citizenship behaviors (individual dimension) draws

together human and non-human actants with specific sets of qualifications into shared physical
and virtual spaces, creating opportunities for interactions based on mutual problem-solving,
which then coalesce into complex, heterogeneous networks of relationships (systems
dimension). These relationships cohere in ways that make the network stable, enduring, and
convergent (work dimension), primarily through explicated, coherent process and output
standards as well as shared norms. This collaborative network can also be expanded by
aligning with other networks (market dimension).
A second contribution is methodological: we provide guidance on how collaboration in
supply chains can be explored empirically, through the formulation of a rubric for the eight key
collaborative practices. Future work can focus on applying this this rubric to our case studies.
Third, our empirical case studies have interrogated common assumptions that prefabrication
supply chains can be driven only by one type of firm (large, capital-intensive firms doing high
volume standardized production). Instead we have empirically demonstrated that it can be led
by diverse types of firms. We have also shown that prefabrication as a strategy can be linked to
a surprisingly broad set of outcomes. Particularly interesting is the finding that prefabrication
can actually support, not hinder, customization.
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736

Index of Authors

Index of Authors
Abanda, F. H.
Agudelo Rodrguez, C. F.
739
545
3
Earl, G.
173
Edith Yajnes, M.
303
Ahmad, R.
631
Ekinci, S.
45
Alijla, M.
565
Emekci, .
555
Amoda, R.
275
Eriksson, A. B.
361
Andersson, B.
47
Eufrasia, M.
675
Andrieu, H.
87
Falasca, C. C.
189
Arts, J.
285
Fallahi, A.
227
Asah, J. F.
545
Feio, A.
425
Bai, Y.
227
Flix, D.
425
Bar Abadi, G.
653
Feraboli, M. T.
703
Baratta, A. F. L.
Basile, M. C.
Bech-Danielsen, C.
Bedoya Ruiz, A.
13
493
95
3
Finucci, F.
Flindall, O. K.
Froese, T. M.
13
199
227, 565
Gaiani, A.
713
577
Behar, D. L.
565
Geraedts, R. P.
Belen Putruele, M.
303
Germon, A.
55
Benacer, H.
663
Gigante, A.
189
Bernardo, C. di
109
Giofr, F.
369
Goi, P.
303
493
Groba, U.
211
Buccolini, F.
493
Gromark, S.
345
Carla Berardino, M.
303
Grover, R.
227
Caruso, S.
303
Grum, B.
379
Carvalho, J. P.
435
Grum, D. K.
379
Cattoli, G.
713
Guzeloglu, T.
293
Chamnarn, T.
27
Hammer, A.
445
Chutskoff, A.
565
Hanina, E.
653
37
Hayati, A.
325
Bertram, N.
Bruni, V.
Ciulla, V.
75
D.Vitulano,
493
Heywood, P.
589
DAmbrosio, V.
109
Ike, N.
519
Dantas, A.
401
Ilustrumm, K.
537
De Canditiis, D.
493
Isworo, B. W.
325
Ivask, M.
537
De Capua, A.
37
De Decker, P.
503
Jayawardena, N.
173
Din, I.
631
Jia, B.
237

740
Jin, Y.
237
Oostra, M. A. R.
315
Karakul, .
67
Otkunc, A.
45
Kasbar, M.
227
Owusu, G.
153
Kat, N. de
577
Pablo, Z.
725
Khor, L.-A.
75
Pettang, C.
545
Kim, S.
227
Porro, L.
369
Kraatz, J.
173
Raamets, J.
537
Kutti, S.
537
Ramos Calonge, H. G.
Lee, S.
411, 601
Remy, H. T.
577
Leone, L.
303
Rist, T.
537
Li, P.
565
Roca, E.
173
Liu, B.
173
Sailer, M.
315
Santosa, H. R.
325
London, G.
75
London, K.
725
Schillebeeckx, E.
503
Macieira, M.
455
Sha, K.
119
Shukor, A. S. A.
631
Mahaut, V.
55, 87
Manjia, M. B.
545
Silva, S. M.
435
Mart, N.
285
Solinas, S.
691
Mateus, R.
435
Staub-French, S.
227
Mazzola, E. M.
611
Stender, M.
129
263
Melgaard, B.
95
Surez, M. C.
Mendona, P.
455
Tagliaferri, S.
493
Mercader Moyano, M. P.
303
Tanyer, A.M.
555
Mesquita, M. R.
387
Thontepu, S. K.
227
Minami, K.
467
Toh, S. X.
335
Mohamed, S.
173
Tornuxi, J. A.
153
Mohammad, M. F.
631
Vandenhende, K.
263
Monteiro, D. V.
425
Vettik, A.
537
Visscher, H.
485
529
Volpi, L.
285
Multari, G.
109
Wadel, G.
285
Musa, M. F.
631
Wang, Q.
237
Nieboer, N.
477
Werf, F. J. M. van der
641
Nygaard, M.
199
Wijk, H.
529
Wilkin, P.
139
Wrigley-Asante, C.
153
Montuori, L.
Morichetto, H.
13
Nylander, L. O.
249, 529
Oosterlynck, S.
503

Index of Authors
741
Yu, M.
161
Zadeh, P.
227
Zaveri, A.
161

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