The Advantage of Generality Dwellings ' Potential for Housing Different Ways of Living

generality; dwellings; housing In a world striving for environmental sustainability, one out of the many possible contributions from the field of architecture is to construct buildings capable of facing changing demands and diversity of use rather than buildings appropriate only for a particular purpose in a period just after being built. The challenge of housing is therefore not only to satisfy the people who first move in. What we as architects must strive for is to design buildings that also have the potential of becoming good homes for numerous more future residents, people that we, at the time of designing the building, know little about. Based on an empirical study, this paper shows that basic space syntax parameters, such as integration and topological position of particular rooms, describe properties of a floor-plan that are highly relevant to dwellings ' potential to cater for a diversity of people. The study presented in this paper has examined "potential usability " of dwellings by combining two research traditions. One is a space syntax analysis that has revealed a chronological typology of dwellings. The other is the Scandinavian tradition of survey-based housing research examining correspondences between the buildings and peoples ' lives inside them. By an interview-base