‘Working from Home’ – Recent development trends in terraced housing design in a new suburban township in Malaysia

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a massive increase in the number of Malaysians working from home. This scenario has put the living and working gap at disposal, questioning the relevance of the ‘living lifestyle’, particularly in new housing township projects. This paper investigates the culture of working from home (WFH) and its influence on the spatial design of developer-designed terraced housing scheme for a new Suburban Township in Malaysia. Using qualitative observation and comparative analysis between developer’s home buying guide and the show unit, the findings suggest that ‘flexible open volume’ plan created through nooks and openings are the speculative future in promoting working from home. Hence, it advocates developers towards a double-frontage housing township that allows integration of living-working lifestyle as everyone works where they live and not vice-versa. Keywords: Working from home; Mindfulness; Spatial innovation; Housing development trend eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6i16.2728