The sectors´paradigm: Understanding modern functionalism and its effects in configuring domestic space (original) (raw)

Order and structure, design and use in housing estates

Urban Design International, 2000

The main goal of this paper is to investigate a quite common concern regarding the process of urban changes individually introduced by dwellers of public housing estates in Brazil. A significant number of housing estates, particularly those designed according to rationalist concepts, are widely transformed when compared to the original layouts. Beyond the quantitative features, the morphological changes mean a fundamental new approach to understand how completely new urban structures can arise from the space produced by a comprehensive urban design, took as a starting point for the transformations made by the dwellers of those settlements. As a case study, two different housing estates built in Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil, in the same neighbourhood almost at the same time in the late 1970's are analysed. The physical rules individually introduced by the dwellers change the features of the entire settlements at two different levels: (a) locally, through the transformations introduced in order to solve individual needs; (b) globally, the local rules of physical transformations produce a new overall structure for the whole urban complex. The knowledge of this process makes it possible to bring to the surface of architectural theory some generic configurational codes that can be used as a tool for designing public housing estates in Brazil.

Rubem Berta Housing Estate: Order and Structure, Design and Use 1

1997

The main goal of this paper is to investigate, through some space configurational based tools, a quite common phenomenon found in many different locations in Brazil, concerning the process of urban changes individually introduced by dwellers of public housing estates. A significant number of housing estates, particularly those designed according to rationalist concepts, seem to be unable to support space related social requirements and are then widely transformed when compared to the original layouts. Beyond the quantitative features, the morphological changes that take place in those housing estates mean a fundamental new approach to understand how completely new urban structures can arise from the space produced by a comprehensive urban design, took as a starting point for the transformations made by the dwellers of those settlements. As a case study is analysed the Rubem Berta Housing Estate which was built in Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil, for 20,000 people in the late 70’s. Since the...

Conception of Space for an Architectural Prototype. Form, Construction and Figuration in the Northeast Brazilian Context

IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2019

This paper tries to demonstrate the transmissibility of a prototype for primary care in several marginal areas through the historical awareness of the reference context. The role and the concept of the prototype in architecture has been investigated for its critical function and its potential assignment in defining a conceptual and experimental structure of space. Firstly, the article defines the prototype as a synthesis operation addressed to a

An analysis of the spatial organisation of people and activities in the household

2019

HOW CULTURAL PATTERNS ARE REFLECTED ON DOMESTIC SPACE HAS BEEN VASTLY DISCUSSED IN SPACE SYNTAX LITERATURE. THE GENOTYPE ANALOGY WAS DEVELOPED WITH THE UNDERLYING NOTION THAT THE CONFIGURATIONAL PROPERTIES OF ARCHITECTURAL FUNCTION REFLECT PATTERNS OF USE AND ACTIVITY THAT ARE CULTURALLY STRUCTURED. THE PAPER WILL FURTHER INVESTIGATE THIS QUESTION BY LOOKING AT HOW THE DOMESTIC SPACE IS ABLE TO ORGANISE ACTIVITIES, AND THEREFORE INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS, THROUGH THE SPATIAL DIVISION AND DETERMINATION OF ARCHITECTURAL FUNCTION. IT WILL EXAMINE A SERIES OF INTERPRETATIVE INQUIRIES ON THE WAY FAMILIESPERCEIVED AND USED THE DOMESTIC SPACE, WHICH WERE DEVELOPED IN THE 1970S IN PORTUGAL WITH THE EXPLICIT AIM OF RELATING SPATIAL ATTRIBUTES WITH THE WAY SPACE WAS USED. THIS WAS NOT ACHIEVED AT THE TIME, AND THE RESULTS PRESENTED IN THE PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS WERE NOT ABLE TO TAKE SPACE INTO CONSIDERATION. THE PAPER FOCUSES ON TWO QUESTIONS WHICH WERE PROPOSED AT THE TIME AS BEING MAJOR IN HOW RE...

Architecture as system: Study of housing systems evolution

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research, 2016

Understanding architecture via the concept of system came after numerous, rapid and different developments upon all aspects of architecture, especially since the last third of past century till the present day.Some theories characterized architecture as the complex whole that based on the different relationships and interrelationships with different sciences, besides of the multiplicity and independency of internal components, it should be assigned into the world of integrated system.This study attempts to explain the phenomenon of architecture through the concept of (system), in order to include both its cognitive (the subject) - which is potential, and realistic presence (the object) -which is explicit. This study tries to explore both sides of the concept, in order to understand the architectural system -in one hand and determining its components -in the other hand.To find out how these systems which have been developed via some housing projects, as an integrated system; comprise...

Converted flats? Converted houses? A study on the transformation of Brazilian housing estates

Third International Space Syntax Symposium, 2001

\This paper presents the preliminary results of an investigation conducted on public housing complexes on the outskirts of Recifes Metropolitan Region. The investigation draws attention to the nature of inhabitants interventions in buildings and public spaces, beyond governmental control or professional assistance. These interventions have been dramatically changing these housing complexes, transforming classic architectural types (the house and the apartment) into unpredictable and indescribable objects and challenging the current professional taxonomy. This paper addresses these changes by describing, from a typological point of view, the housing units and the urban setting. 1 Explicit design norms and rules; implicit users code and convention There are two different processes governing the genesis of form in built environment. First, a set of normative rules, acting as design tools, expresses ideas of how form, space organisation and space use should be. Second, implicit users codes and convention represent knowledge of how form, space organisation and space use has been constructed. Congruence and confluence are to be found between these two poles. Congruence reveals the traditional view of harmony of one thing to its ends, expressing timeless qualities, which form the ways of doing, being and becoming. As stated by Johnson (1994: 25), it has to do with agreement, accord, conformity. Confluence, on the other hand, translates the experimental view-unplanned qualities informing the moment. Domestic space organisation seems to be part of this bi-faceted form generation process, established between very precise and harmonic taxonomies, part of the professional knowledge, and inhabitants needs and expectations, constantly reified by day-today life. Houses and flats are expressions of this professional taxonomy. As buildings for domestic use, they are differentiated for few, but fundamental properties. Houses, being detached , semi-detached or terraced, with one or many storeys, being large or small, present a unique property that unifies all houses phenotypes: a direct access to the street. This property defines a clear boundary between public and private domains. A flat, or apartment house, however, is characterised by the aggregation of individual units forming a communal structure , which shares spaces for access and common facilities. Access to flats is mediated by a sequence of semi-public spaces that generates a subtle isolation between public and private domains.

Indiscipline Which Transforms Architecture Appropriations of Domestic Space in the Federal District

This paper is a result of the field research for the doctoral thesis and it is an attempt to contribute to a broad spectrum of studies related to domestic space analyzing the morphology of apartments (geometric and configurational features) and their appropriation (occupation and use) by the inhabitants. The main goal is to understand the people’s ways of living in apartments of Brasilia and of the Federal District, Brazil, analyzing spaces as originally built and after being modified by their occupants, studying domestic spaces’ uses and their adaptations in the last five decades. Thus, the analytical model considered the space appropriation by residents and their morphological (geometric and topological) limitations, where the Space Syntax and other theories and methods were used looking for a logic – or even a system – in this historical process of appropriation. The sample consists of apartments of buildings for strictly residential use, including the original (140 plans) and restructured projects (60 plans). This sample is representative of the socioeconomic diversity and of the territorial occupation development of the Federal District (Brasilia and some satellite cities). Having the Pilot Plan’s creation as the landmark for a modern concept of inhabiting, the study considered apartments built in different decades, starting with those built in the 1960s until those recently built (after 2000), allowing to draw a map of the domestic space’s main changes in the period. The residents’ appropriation is done by what is defined in the study as “heavy indiscipline”, understood as deep changes in the interior space of the apartments by the residents. These indisciplines are ways to question the physical structures of the apartments, and the residents’ interventions suggest discrepancies between views of the real estate market and of users. The data involve lessons on how to design minimizing future costs on the residents’ part, forced to adapt the apartments to meet their wishes and ways of living. The analysis of the modified plants showed that preferences and needs of the population are in some respects, similar in different localities and social classes. The residents’ interventions show a cultural resistance to certain modern spaces, confirming their preferences for some characteristics of pre-modernist houses. The analysis of morphological characteristics, comparing modified and original plants, showed significant changes in the domestic spatial structure, which undermines the tripartite structure (private, social, and service’s sectors) of the Brazilian domestic space, a legacy of the Nineteenth Century bourgeois home. This shows a strong trend for narrowing the domestic space being even more privative for the family, which is clearly seen in the configuration and the appropriations.

Spatial types in Ankara apartments

Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium …, 2005

Apartment living was first introduced in Ankara when the city became the capital of the newly established Turkish Republic in 1923. Ankara, a small Anatolian town, was to become the epitome of the new government's ideals of cutting all ties with the Ottoman Empire and creating a modern secular Turkish nation. Design of the residential buildings in Ankara was left for Turkish architects unlike the administrative buildings that were mostly commissioned to foreign architects. This presented an opportunity as well as a challenge for the Turkish architects who did not have a lot of experience in apartment design. They were trying to create domestic environments to support/encourage a modern way of life for a society with established traditions-a society of which they were also a part. Since then, apartment living became the most common way of life not only in Ankara but also in other big cities in Turkey.

The qualitative structure of built environments

Fundamenta Informaticae, 2001

This paper provides an ontological analysis of built environments. It shows that boundaries are ontologically salient features of built environments and that there are different kinds of boundaries that that need to be considered. It discusses in particular the important role of fiat boundaries. At the level of objects built environments are formed by partition forming objects and populated by non-partition forming objects. The underlying partition structure is the main organizational structure of a built environment. Non-partition forming objects are potentially movable and their movement is constrained by the barrier properties of the boundaries of other objects forming or populating the environment. This paper argues that the qualitative formalization of built environments needs to take into account: (1) the fundamental role of boundaries, (2) the distinction between bona-fide and fiat boundaries and objects, (3) the different character of constraints on relations between these different kinds of boundaries and objects, (4) the distinction between partition forming and non-partition forming objects, and (5) the fundamental organizational structure of regional partitions. It discusses the notion of object-boundary sensitive rough location and shows that a formalization based on this notion takes these points into account. 1 This is consistent with the observation that bona-fide objects as wholes overlap themselves and all of their parts. 2 See the right part of Figure 3.3.1 for a geometric example.