The Spatial Arrangements of Ordinary English Houses

Abstract

The 45 apartments of the PSSHAK housing estate in London are analyzed using Hillier and Hanson's syntactic method to discover the range of spatial arrangements arising from a participatory design process stimulated by ideas proposed in John Habraken's Supports. There is a compelling family likeness to all the tenant-planned units; this far outweighs any expression of personal individuality through plan organization. The regularities discovered are described as the morphology of ordinary English domestic space. It is suggested that this particular morphological type could form part of a brief for mass housing in the UK. A conclusion is made that `planning your own accommodation" within housing projects that call for tenant participation in the design process (such as those labeled community architecture) is of relatively minor importance and far less significant than had been supposed. The results of this brand of community architecture may be satisfaction through a Hawthorne effect rather than through personalization of living space. The research also suggests that the purported virtues of user participation in design may, paradoxically, be predicated on an agenda that is determined by the profession's need to maintain its control of design.