GROWTH AND MULTIPLE SPACE USE AS PARAMETERS OF

CUSTOMIZATION: A STUDY OF MULTISTORY HOUSING IN AHMEDABAD,

INDIA
OSB_09016

Abstract
The potential of open building systems in providing user control over the built environment
and achieving a sustainable building stock is well established. Despite its advantages, open
building is not practiced extensively in India in the field of housing. It is proposed that user
initiated transformations be viewed as a contextual form of open building. This paper
describes the contextual differences in housing in India through a study of demand-supply
conditions, relative construction costs and cultural preferences. In the second section, based
on a study of user initiated transformations in housing in Ahmedabad, design parameters that
encourage or discourage user transformations are mapped. This mapping establishes the role
of the location of rooms with respect to the external facade, and the size of rooms and
resultant room patterns as design parameters that give users a greater control over modifying
and inhabiting their houses.
On the basis of this study, it is proposed that the system of open building itself should be
looked at as a set of core principles that are universal, and design methods that are specific
to the context.

Keywords
User transformation, housing, developing countries, open building, interpretation, design
parameters

INTRODUCTION

Many decades have passed since the formulation of the ‘supports’ theory by Habraken
(Habraken et al. 1999). This theory has been further elaborated into the system of open
building that is gaining increasing currency across many countries. The key concept of this
theory- that of giving users control over the built environment they inhabit, holds true in
contemporary society. The assumption is that a greater sense of belonging can be fostered
through giving users a greater degree of control in shaping or at the least having a stake in the
shaping of their residential spaces. However, in cities across the world, we see an increasing
alienation of people from their environments (Graham & Marvin 2001). On the other hand,
especially in the last decade, there has been a growing awareness of sustainability. In the
realm of buildings, this translates into a need for creating building stock that can last longer.
In the current consumerist society, however, the life cycle of objects has reduced
considerably. The buildings that we build today will have to be robust in order to be
sustainable, and yet agile enough to cater to the changing demands of society. The concept of
open building becomes even more appropriate in this context.

India is a developing country and is witness to a boom in the construction industry. There is
an acute shortage of affordable housing in cities due to ever increasing demand. It is therefore
important to analyse the relevance of open building system in India. A cursory glance at the
Indian construction market shows the absence of open building systems. The concept of core
and infill is only seen partially in commercial architecture and even here it does not take
advantage of the extensive research done in this field. This paper begins with an analysis of
the Indian construction market and posits factors responsible for the non prevalence of open
building systems.

Inhabitants of housing in developing countries exercise control over their built environment
through the process of user initiated transformations (Tipple 2000). This phenomenon has
been studied extensively from the viewpoint of housing processes, empowerment of people,
inadequacy of design methods, and the resulting urban character. In this paper such
transformations are studied from the open building perspective. Previous studies in the field
of open building have attempted to incorporate growth by suggesting over provision of
support structures for future additions (Oxman 1984). This paper suggests that the original
houses be looked at as supports and the user initiated transformation as infill. The logical next
step is to analyse the original housing designs and propose guidelines for its design as a
support mechanism. This is similar to the method adopted by the SAR (Habraken et al. 1976).

CONTEXTUAL DIFFERENCES

Many differences- although not unique to India- 3 differences highlighted- demand supply
gap, relative construction costs, cultural connotations.

Demand Supply condition

The challenge faced by developing countries is different from the developed countries. The
state of the economy also plays a great role in defining contextual issues related to housing.
India is a steadily growing market with high rates of growth in urbanisation. This, coupled
with the high population numbers, has resulted in chronic shortage of affordable urban
housing.

Citation for housing supply gap in India- population growth and high rate of urbanisation
primary reasons for housing shortage- rapidly increasing land values in cities- high cost of
housing- shortage in affordable and low income housing

Effects of housing shortage- low incentive to experiment- anything sells- coupled with high
land value therefore high cost consciousness especially in affordable housing-

Construction costs
Table showing comparative break-up of construction costs across developed and developing
countries- materials requiring industrialised manufacturing processes relatively more
expensive as compared to materials requiring less manufacturing- also because of artificially
low costs of extracting mud and stone from soil- comparatively low labour costs- wet, in-situ,
labour intensive construction cheaper than dry, pre-cast, mechanised construction

In context of open buildings, partitioning systems need to be questioned.

Cultural connotations of housing
Indian census department definition of ‘kuchha’ and ‘pucca’ house- notion of permanence-
augmented by commercial interiors seen as temporary- augmented by the need to be different
from slums which use sheets/boards and dry construction methods

GROWTH AND TRANSFORMATION

Very common practice in developing countries- various studies elaborating on the reasons for
the same- Graham Tipple, John Turner- various examples of user initiated transformation in
housing across the developing world

Probable reasons for transformation as opposed to moving/migration to new house-

associations- rental vs. ownership- home ownership still a desirable thing in India- cultural
connotations- family lifecycle- growth in family size- prosperity- growth in economic
condition- check with graduate thesis!

THE THESIS

Assuming that growth is an important parameter of flexibility and that the initial house is
akin to supports- what are the parameters of support design

The background documentation for this paper was carried out for my graduate research thesis
(Kashikar 2006). The specific houses discussed in this paper were revisited for the purpose of
this study. Only urban middle class houses in multi-storey apartment buildings were
considered for this study. This is due to the potential for growth and transformation in this
section of society. Changes in the form of renovations (new flooring, furniture, kitchen
layouts etc.) and in the form of additions (additional rooms, terraces, extension of rooms etc.)
were noticed in most of these houses. The documentation included measured drawings of the
houses (including furniture) and recording of activity patterns through observations and
informal unstructured interviews.

Accessibility pattern of rooms

Space syntax has been extensively used to research on room organisation and its impact on
activity. Past research tends to focus on activity patterns in themselves (Monteiro 1997). Only
recently, research on relations between room organisation and activity patterns are gaining
currency (Asquith & Vellinga 2006). Thorough fare rooms, which were common in both
vernacular and colonial houses of this region, have disappeared in the modern era.

The bedroom in house X (ill.X) has two ways of entering- one from the entrance hallway and
one from the corridor. This bedroom is converted into a home-office in some of these houses
and in most cases it is used as children’s bedroom with the other bedroom being used as the
master bedroom. This happens despite the two rooms being of the same size. This is
primarily due to the fact that during the day time, privacy levels in the room with two
entrances are much lower than that of the other bedroom. In one of the houses, this room was
also used as a living room for a short duration. A similar situation was observed in house X
(ill.X) where the bedroom and living room were interchanged. This was possible due to two
entrances to this house.
Evans (Evans 1997) traces the history of the interconnected rooms and the reasons for its
demise in the post industrial city. In the Indian context, however, colonial houses in the early
nineteenth century continued to employ interconnected rooms as an integral feature of the
houses. The standardized modern multi-storey apartment, which is largely an import in India,
did not take into cognisance this multiplicity of accessibility. A study of space use patterns of
houses that have multiple accessibility patterns clearly demonstrate the flexibility that can be
achieved by providing additional movement routes within the house. Whereas these houses
were not designed keeping flexibility in mind; they provide valuable insight into people’s
response to such layouts.

Size of rooms
The relative size of rooms in conjunction with its accessibility patterns affects the flexibility
of the space in terms of potentials for multiple uses. The size and shape of the room directly
determines the various possible furniture arrangements. Most bedrooms in middle income
housing in Ahmedabad are around 3 meters X 3 meters whereas sizes of living room range
from 3X3.5 to 4X5. In house X (ill.X) the living room and the bedroom are almost of the
same dimension. This, coupled with the multiple accessibility of these rooms, allow for user
choice in swapping the functions of these two rooms. This is indeed the case in the
aforementioned house where the living room has been transformed into a bedroom and vice
versa. Multiple accessibility is also seen in house X (ill.X). However none of the documented
houses show interchanging of functions in these two rooms. This is primarily due to the
difference in sizes of the two rooms.

The other aspect of size is in relation to furniture arrangements. The arrangement of furniture
in the living room is governed by cultural norms of entertainment as well as that of display.
Most urban middle class residents do not perceive the living room as a formal space reserved
for entertaining guests. The living room is also the family room and the television room. The
furniture of the living room, thus, doubles up as a formal sitting space as well as an informal
gathering space for the family members. The furniture of the living room thus comprises
mainly of two single-seater and one three-seater couch, a television/music console, and a
show-case/book case consisting mainly of souvenirs. Each of these furniture elements ideally
requires a wall at the back. The relationship and its dimensional constraints (ill.X) imply that
most living room furniture occupies a space of roughly 3.5 meters X 4.5 meters. In houses
with rooms of other proportions (ill.X) the skewed dimensional relationship between the
walls creates problems in furniture arrangements.

Location of rooms
The location of the rooms with respect to the facade plays a pivotal role in the possibility of
extensions. Extensions in the form of additional rooms, balcony/terrace spaces, and toilets
were observed in more than half the case studies. Covering of balconies to create a store
room was the most common form of additions observed in the late 20th century. This has
changed in the 21st century where addition of entire rooms and in some cases additions larger
than the original house is prevalent.

Additional room extensions are usually in the form of an extra bedroom for an extended
family. In a few cases, the one of the bedrooms is subsumed into the living room to make a
larger space and the bedroom is replaced in the extension. The layout of house X (ill. X)
prevents any possibility of adding additional rooms due to its closed nature. On the other
hand, many different kinds of additions were observed in house X (ill. X). This clearly shows
that the design of the original house plays a great role in determining the possibility of
extensions.

Orientation
The effect of orientation on indoor thermal performance in very well documented in the field
of building physics and climatology. Studies (Raychaudhari et al. 1965) have shown the
changing performance of differently oriented rooms in a house across the seasons (ill. X). A
similar analysis was carried out for Ahmedabad and this data was then correlated with season
and time of the day specific changes in activity patterns. There is a tradition of shifting
seasonal use of space in the vernacular houses of this region. Summer nights and winter days
are pleasant, summer days are extremely hot and winter nights are cold in this region. Due to
this there is a tradition of sleeping on the terraces during summer, festivals on terraces during
winter days, and a tradition of staying indoors with all windows shut during summer
afternoons.

Houses in point block multi-storey buildings have varying orientations due to the limitations
of the point block design. This creates a situation where houses having similar layouts have
different orientations and therefore different indoor conditions. It was noticed in this study
that to some extent, the use of rooms was governed by its orientation. Bedrooms rather than
the living room were used for daytime activities like reading and family get-togethers in
houses where the bedrooms had favourable orientations. The same phenomena reversed with
the change in season, where the living room was used for the same activity instead of the
bedroom. A greater degree of flexibility of room usage was seen in houses where indoor
climatic performance of rooms varied substantially from each other and to a lesser extent
when there was no perceivable difference in thermal performance of rooms.

CONCLUSIONS

Each of the parameters

Developing countries face a different challenge- contextual differences demand a different
way of looking at open building systems in order to cater to the Indian condition- in a
demand driven market there is very little incentive to experiment with unknown systems- the
labour conditions make wet construction systems a cheaper alternative in the initial stage-
there is a strong cultural bias towards brick and mortar as permanent and partitioning systems
as temporary- this is heightened by census as well as slums which use such materials

User control over housing is seen extensively in the form of user initiated transformation in
housing- if this is considered as a open building model then the initial plan is a support
whereas the additions are infill- which means that the design of the supports need to be
studied in greater detail to understand its potential for allowing various types of additions- in
this paper, a few such parameters of the support design have been identified- this is just a
preliminary study- an extensive study like that of SAR will be required to refine the design of
supports to make it robust enough to cater to user driven infill.

The larger picture

Achieving user control over housing is the core tenet of Habraken’s support theory. Open
building as a system, with the help of researchers and practitioners, has developed into a
robust design method that caters to this theory. The capacity to react to varying contexts is
built into the system because it separates the supports from the infill. I would like to see it as
a system that recognises the need for the essential as well as the circumstantial. I propose that
a set of core concepts be identified that are universal in its application and a context specific
‘infill’ be allowed in order to adapt open building systems to varying contexts. This will
allow for a greater degree of interpretation as well as application of the theories of open
building in widely varying contexts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asquith, L. & Vellinga, M., 2006. Vernacular architecture in the twenty-first century: theory,
education and practice, Taylor & Francis.

Evans, R., 1997. Translations from drawing to building and other essays, Architectural
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Graham, S. & Marvin, S., 2001. Splintering urbanism: networked infrastructures,

technological mobilities ..., Routledge.

Habraken, N.J. et al., 1976. Variations: The Systematic Design of Supports, The MIT Press.

Habraken, N.J., Teicher, J. & Valkenburg, B., 1999. Supports: an alternative to mass
housing, Urban International Press.

Kashikar, V., 2006. Temporal Dimension of Flexibility in Space Use: The case of multistory
housing in India. National University of Singapore.

Monteiro, C., 1997. Activity Analysis in houses of Recife, Brazil. In 1st International Space
Syntax SymposiumSymposium. London: University College of London, pp. 20.1-20.13.

Oxman, R., 1984. to grow a house. open house international, 9(1), pp.24-36.

Raychaudhari, B., Ali, S. & Garg, D., 1965. Indoor Climate of Residential Buildings in Hot
Arid Regions. Building Science, 1, pp.79-88.

Tipple, A.G., 2000. Extending themselves: user-initiated transformations of government-built

housing in developing countries, Liverpool University Press.