Housing Layout Reconsidered In Societal Context: A Case Study In Switzerland

摘要

Housing units are material products of society that define and delimit domesticspace for households. They provide shelter and protection for daily activities.The fact that housing units in the same society have quite different shapes andsizes, and that they are built with a range of construction materials suggests that,beyond pragmatic factors, others are of at least equal importance in determiningtheir layout, construction, and meaning. Therefore, it is necessary to develop anunderstanding of those contextually defined factors implicated in the layout,construction, and use of housing units. For example, one purpose of the spatialordering of residential environments is to distinguish between public and privatedomains. Nonetheless, this distinction can be interpreted from several perspectives.Some of these interpretations will be briefly reviewed in this paper. Thena case study of the layout, construction, and use of urban housing in Switzerlandwill be presented