Poor Relations

Flexibility in planning is an architectural method of conserving the resources, both physical and cultural, of this place. Flexible residential planning could add another dimension to sustain us.

As I see it, a building which has a number of ways of using it safely, gives that building a longer life cycle before it requires replacement or alteration. This conserves physical resources by limiting the amount of building materials to one round of construction, and postponing the resulting garbage from replacement. The cultural fabric is conserved through the longevity of the building, which adapts and contributes to the changes in the society without having to be suffered with as obsolete, be radically altered or replaced.

The third dimension that flexible residential planning could offer is a healthier more durable relationship to each other through an alteration of the way we define dwelling.

My work in flexible planning has been to break down the traditional house or apartment into its individual sleeping spaces which are able to connect to a set of common spaces. The idea has been to be able to subdivide a large dwelling into smaller components which serve needs at different times in life. Two examples of this would be a four bedroom house which can divide through its stair to two separate apartments, each with two bedrooms; or an apartment which can be rented with two, one or no bedrooms, the untaken bedrooms able to operate as single room occupancy units (hotel or rooming units).

Looking at typical zoning regulations, the standard of governing occupancy in a dwelling is the family unit, a group of related people. The number of family members is not governed as a use limitation. The number of people unrelated to the family is generally limited in the allowable uses. Use limitations govern the use of a property within a given district, independent of the size or accommodations of buildings in the district. A simple, small building would be governed the same as a large building with abundant accommodations within that same district. It is what is possible to do on a given parcel of land.

The qualities of families changed a lot during the twentieth century. Children were less connected with their parents in many families because they were not supervised primarily by their parents. The ability to reside in shared accommodations became less comfortable and less peaceful during that time. In some places parents and even their grown children remained in the same dwelling because housing costs were so high that the children could not justify an independent start. Alterations to dwellings of this sort occured to achieve needed privacy. Partitioning the floor plan, and locking doors were some of the alterations.

The cost of housing pushes some people to share living accommodations in order to have a life which independent from their family. In an ordinary house, where all features except for the bedrooms are shared, the same privacy conditions develop.

If the concept of dwellings were to change in nature to address those issues of privacy, perhaps it would not be important to establish the family relationship of people to be able to house people in a healthy way. The configuration of the dwelling would determine the constellation of people who could inhabit it. In this case, as in the zoning ordinance and the housing standards limit the occupancy of a given building through area regulations, further definining plumbing and privacy regulations could allow a rational discussion of the health safety issues of a given building accommodation.

Once habitation density were discussed and finally regulated with regard the health and safety of particular living accommodations, then flexible planning could create buildings which could contain ever changing dwelling sizes and arrangements to suit all economic situations and life/age conditions. Such buildings would have to be constructed in a more substantial and fire-safe way, since the boundaries of dwellings would be mutable.

By supporting habitation of all social arrangements, such planning would sustain us in that our built enviroment would safely support our style of living in any particular period no matter what period that building was built in, leading to continuity of social fabric and enduring use of resources.