Dwelling Space Research Articles

Considering the camp: ambivalent geographies of mobile dwelling

As code for spaces of mobile dwelling, the camp and its verb “camping” occupy ambivalent territory. For the well-housed, camping out can be a space and time of recreational discretion, while for those living precariously, the camp can offer temporary respite from forced and continual mobility. We argue that notions of camping are defined in part by their opposite: regular, permanent, secure and formal housing. However, not all campers have housing to “return” to. We examine these nuances and tensions with reference to campgrounds in Auckland, New Zealand, which function as sites of tourist accommodation and informal housing. Our survey of eight urban campgrounds reveals that many have become disciplined sites, recalling Agamben’s conceptualization of the camp. Drawing on the accounts of managers and campers, we examine the ambivalent geographies of campgrounds through three key narratives: residing, moving and mooring. We focus in particular on the experiences of long-term resident campers, for whom campgrounds offer a sense of home and community, while subjecting them to control and inherent insecurity. In addition, campgrounds themselves have an uncertain foothold in urban space, as they are sought-after for redevelopment. Hence, it is useful to conceptualize campground occupation in terms of mooring – a static site that may be occupied for an indeterminate length of time as part of a longer housing “voyage”. At the same time, the fact of long-term residence suggests the emergence of a form of camp space that is not counterpoised with a permanent home elsewhere.

Chikan’s Arcade Buildings: The Hybrid and Civil Architecture of Lingnan

The trade town of Chikan, in the southern part of the Chinese region of Lingnan, is characterized by its arcaded streets built during the 1920s and 1930s – streets lined with buildings whose ground-floor shops open out onto a covered pavement, with dwelling spaces and stores above. Similar buildings exist throughout Lingnan and other parts of Southeast Asia, but they particularly flourished in Guangdong province, and are well preserved in Chikan, where redevelopment has not yet led to large-scale demolition. This article seeks to study Chikan’s arcade buildings as elements of an “architectural sociology” in which they are considered functionally, socially, aesthetically and culturally. It is an investigation of vernacular architecture that aims to reveal the significance of Chikan’s arcade buildings for the locals’ aspirations, identities and lives. It argues that the buildings have a civility or decorum that potentially reveals much about what a town could or should be.

Determining the mechanisms and priorities to achieve regularity in the shape of spaces of traditional housing in the city of Mosul

Regularity in the shape of spaces in traditional house in the city of Mosul formed an important challenge for the designer, especially with the negative impact of the irregular shape of the dwelling and its limited area. This reinforces the assumption that there is a set of procedures adopted by the designer as mechanisms to achieve this characteristic in the dwelling spaces or to distribute the effect of irregularity between different spaces with priorities correspond to their functions performance efficiency.
 The research aims to identify the mechanisms adopted by the designer to achieve regularity and priorities for achieving between dwelling spaces (as an indicator of its relative importance and the efficiency of its containment of the living activities), and this gives us a clearer understanding of the spaces basic design and the way of living.
 To achieve this, a set of hypotheses were tested by measuring spaces regularity of a sample of traditional houses in Mosul , to design the mechanisms used to achieve regularity and its priorities between different house spaces , and the relevance of these mechanisms and priorities with the affect of the shape characteristics of house plot or the spaces characteristics , activities and its spatial organization in the dwelling.

Feasibility study of seasonal solar thermal energy storage in domestic dwellings in the UK

Seasonal solar thermal energy storage (SSTES) has been investigated widely to solve the mismatch between majority solar thermal energy in summer and majority heating demand in winter. To study the feasibility of SSTES in domestic dwellings in the UK, eight representative cities including Edinburgh, Newcastle, Belfast, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, London and Plymouth have been selected in the present paper to study and compare the useful solar heat available on dwelling roofs and the heating demand of the dwellings. The heating demands of space and hot water in domestic dwellings with a range of overall heat loss coefficients (50 W/K, 150 W/K and 250 W/K) in different cities were calculated; then the useful heat obtained by the heat transfer fluid (HTF) flowing through tilted flat-plate solar collectors installed on the dwelling roof was calculated with varied HTF inlet temperature (30 °C, 40 °C and 50 °C). By comparing the available useful heat and heating demands, the critical solar collector area and storage capacity to meet 100% solar fraction have been obtained and discussed; the corresponding critical storage volume sizes using different storage technologies, including sensible heat water storage, latent heat storage and various thermochemical sorption cycles using different storage materials were estimated.

Enric Miralles: espaciar el habitar. Multiplicación, fragmentación y diversificación del espacio medido a partir del ámbito

The essay proposed means to me the opportunity to think about the dwelling space understood as the housing design technique through the representation of physical and existential elements. I have done it by connecting my reflections on the site and the results of my professional experience in designing elaborated housings with Enric Miralles (6 housings in Amsterdam 1996/1998), and the results from another experience which took place during my academic experience celebrated both at the ESARQ-UIC, Barcelona, NIROX Foundation of Johannesburg and at ASU Design School, Tempe (desde 2008 hasta la fecha). These reflections make evident the importance in Miralles’ architecture of dialectic in between design and drawing — between internal-external architecture (physical) and the interior and exterior of each of us (existential).

The Nomadic Nenets dwelling “Mya”: the symbolism of a woman’s role and space in a changing tundra

The official policy of the Soviet state toward nomadic populations was to change their way of life by implementation of enforced collective property (on reindeer), boarding school education, and the displacement of nomadic women to settlements. This policy, however, never totally succeeded in all the Nenets areas and among all groups; many Nenets people remain living in a nomadic community. Today, globalization in the form of modern technologies, industrial development, exploration of underground resources and climate changes are affecting the lives of the Nenets. This article draws from several ethnographic fieldwork surveys of nomadic Nenets families conducted between 2015-2017, within the area of the arctic tundra and among the Forest Nenets of Northern Russia. The author’s aim is to address one aspect of Nenets’s life impacted by modern globalization: their dwelling space. Their traditional dwelling, the “Mya” has been only marginally changed and is still in use in almost all the areas in which Nenets families and communities can be found. Can it be that the displacement of women, originally caused by official Soviet state policy, has also affected the sacred symbolism of the traditional Mya?

Aging animal bodies: horse retirement yards as relational spaces of liminality, dwelling and negotiation

This paper investigates how animal aging and ill-health are managed, spaced, interpreted, and experienced within a horse–human relationship. It does so by exploring the active construction of ‘retirement’ as a legitimate category within the life course of an animal. The analysis is concentrated around the emergent spaces of horse retirement yards. Conceptualising retirement yards as liminal spaces of transition and transformation, particular consideration is given to the role of the yard manager in creating a good retirement for the horse. This includes negotiating and narrating figurative and bodily processes of animal aging with the distant owner. The paper reviews the yard manager’s careful enactment of re-wilding in the shaping of aged and unsound equine bodies, but also their authentic inter-weaving of practices of domestication. Balancing re-wilding and domestication, in both figurative and bodily form, appears central to securing dwelling-in-retirement on a retirement yard and therefore, successful animal aging. In accordance with the non-uniformity of liminality, however, the relational care practices which permit dwelling-in-retirement require daily attention. They remain subject to multiple potential sources of disruption, including those which extend well beyond the aged or unsound state of the individual animal.

Convergence of Home-based Enterprises with Domestic Spaces: Evidence from Dhaka Neighborhoods

This research inspects the utilization of domestic space management in marginalized slums of Bangladesh towards comprehending the contribution of urban poor women’s informal employment as a private initiative. The components that influence the physical association of “home-based enterprises” (HBEs) spaces and its quality are assessed concerning the survival pattern of the low-income occupants. Further, the neighborhood and housing attributes, cultural and social, and the financial status of individuals living in slums are analyzed by in-depth interviews with questionnaires. A stratified random sampling method was used to choose 44 households in two notable neighborhoods in Dhaka City. Data was elicited through focus groups of inhabitants using qualitative research method. Thus, structured and open-ended interviews were conducted with household female members who are 18 years and above while participant observation at moderate level ensured the trustworthiness of the data. The differences observed quality and features of spaces in those settlements inhabited by the slum dwellers gave insight on the factors. The study discovered the prospect of women’s domestic spaces of home-based work in their dwelling spaces. Thereafter, the research recommends that future interferences should counter critically to the event of participation and strife contributing towards uplifting women’s situation inside a specific dwelling.

Prostitution, variegated homes, and the practice of unhomely life in China

This paper studies a group of female sex workers and their ambivalent experiences of home in Dongguan, China’s so-called sin city, before the local government technically cracked down on the city’s sex industry in 2014. It has two objectives. First, we explore these workers’ life journey: spatially from their rural hometown to Dongguan, socially from domestic migrants to sex workers, and subjectively from poor persons to extravagant spenders. Through this journey-based perspective, we show that the departure from one home opens a door to another home, but the door to the sex industry engulfs our respondents into a perpetual condition of unhomely life. Second, we analyze sex workers’ practices of (un)homely life in various spaces of working (sauna), dwelling (rented apartment), and consumption (shopping center) in Dongguan and their imagination of a new home. We argue that home is a liminal space of ambivalent experiences that revolve around dichotomous distinctions between privacy and publicity, friendship and segregation, marginalization and belonging. This paper contributes to the critical geographies of home by incorporating these ambivalent experiences of home into sex workers’ life journey of leaving and making home in the context of China.

中国・日本住空間の比較研究No.1 : 和風住宅の空間について

中国・日本住空間の比較研究No.1 : 和風住宅の空間について

The Complexities of Dwelling in Ali Smith’s There but for the

ABSTRACTThis article offers a sustained exploration of dwelling in Ali Smith’s There but for the. Focusing on the way the character Miles locks himself into a family’s bedroom, I argue that this move transforms a “spare” room into a significant gathering place. As part of his disruptive move, Miles also removes himself from dominant forms of activity and productivity, thereby offering an image of dwelling that is not motivated by capitalist routines of labor and profit. More abstractly, Miles’s form of dwelling opens up a space for thought; both characters and readers are invited to “take the measure” of Miles’s dwelling, as well as their own. Correlatively, the text is an intricate dwelling space, offering an important and challenging phenomenological invitation to the reader to dwell within and upon the relationship between language, space, time, and thought; the text invites the reader to think about dwelling and being in contemporary society.

Flat Layouts and Children Outdoor Activities

In Malaysia's urban peripheries, where residential development still has room to expand, walk-up flats have become a popular form of low-cost housing because of their relatively low construction and maintenance costs to match the required demand of the increasing urban poor. In this housing type, standardization and spatial efficiency result in minimum dwelling space, causing life to spill to the outdoors which then becomes a vital social space for children. Appropriations of the space are an integral part of children's growing up and social experiences. The paper explores the differences in children's outdoor activities near the homes in relation to the different low-cost flat layouts through a comparative observational study. Different flat configurations were found to offer different spatial affordances for children's social experiences which could inform design decisions.

Enhancing sediment flux control and natural hazard risk mitigation through a structured conceptual planning approach

Sediment fluxes from mountain rivers contribute to shape the geomorphologic features of lowland rivers and to establish the physical basis for an optimal set of ecosystem functions and related services to people. Through significant public funding, the hydro-morphological regimes of mountain rivers in the European Alps have been progressively altered over the last century, with the aim to provide a safe dwelling space, to boost transport, mobility and to support economic growth. We claim that the underlying planning weaknesses contribute to determine these inefficient resource allocations, since flood risk is still high and the ecosystem services are far from being optimal. Hence, with the overall aim to enhance sediment flux control and hazard risk mitigation in such heavily modified alpine streams, we propose a structured design workflow which guides the planner through system analysis and synthesis. As a first step the proposed workflow sets the relevant planning goals and assesses the protection structure functionality. Then a methodology is proposed to achieve the goals. This methodology consists in characterising the hydrologic basin of interest and the sediment availability and determining the sediment connectivity to channels. The focus is set on the detailed analysis of existing river cross sections where the sediment continuity is interrupted (e.g. slit and check dams). By retaining relevant sediment volumes these structures prevent the reactivation of hydro-morphological and associated ecological functionalities. Since their actual performance can be unsatisfying with respect to flood risk mitigation (e.g. mainly old structures), we introduce specific efficiency indicators as a support for the conceptual design stage to quantify effects related to sediment flux control and risk management. The proposed planning approach is then applied to the Gadria system (stream, slit dam, retention basin and culvert), located in South Tyrol, Italy. This case study shows that design excellence is needed to re-establish the sediment continuity, while keeping flood risk below acceptable levels. Moreover, the detailed hydraulic analyses highlight that the slit dam is oversized and it could be redesigned to improve sediment continuity and to reduce maintenance costs.

In Service to a Danish King: Comparing the Material Culture of Royal Enslaved Afro-Caribbeans and Danish Soldiers at the Christiansted National Historic Site

ABSTRACTNew archaeological research inside the Christiansted National Historic Site in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands, has uncovered a wealth of cultural resources around the Danish West India and Guinea Company Warehouse that have lasting implications for the largely Afro-Caribbean descendent Crucian community living in St. Croix today. Following a stump removal, exposing the remains of a Danish military stock warehouse containing 3,152 artifacts, two excavations targeting the dwelling spaces of royal enslaved Afro-Caribbeans recovered over 4,000 artifacts within the same warehouse structure. This new research brings into focus the daily lives of the enslaved Afro-Caribbean peoples residing within the walls of the Danish West India and Guinea Company Warehouse in service to the King of Denmark. The project also brings attention to the lives of the Danish officers who carried out their operations in the same space. This article explores the relationship between these two groups.

Reconstructing Inca Socioeconomic Organization through Biography Analyses of Residential Houses and Workshops of Pucara De Tilcara (Quebrada De Humahuaca, Argentine)

Reconstructing Inca Socioeconomic Organization through Biography Analyses of Residential Houses and Workshops of Pucara De Tilcara (Quebrada De Humahuaca, Argentine) Clarisa Otero1 Ph.D; Myriam Noemí Tarragó Ph.D. Abstract This paper presents a micro-structural analysis from a house of the Pucara de Tilcara, one of the most important archaeological sites of the Argentina northwestern region. These results reconstruct the biography of a dwelling space during the last pre-Hispanic period. Beyond its constitution like a preinca dwell space we identify its reconfiguration to become a house-workshop for the production of luxury goods after Inca domination, and its posterior abandonment and reoccupation as a burial place. We compare this residential unit with another structures excavated in early 20th century, that also had been occupied as house-workshops. Available evidences have allowed us to estimate the social-economic organization of the Pucara de Tilcara and to advance in the characterization of the Inca domination in the region. We suggest that the Pucara de Tilcara was a main production center destined to specifically enlarge some local technology and to develop new production within the lapidary industry. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jaa.v5n1a6

협소 거주공간 재실자 특성 및 화재위험성 분석

본 연구에서는 협소거주공간에 대해 이해하고 대표적인 협소 거주공간인 고시원, 노래방 등에 대한 설문 및 실태조사와 과거 관련 사고사례 조사 및 분석을 통해 협소 거주공간의 화재 위험 특성을 분석하였다. 고시원과 노래방은 업종 특성상 구획된 실의 밀폐되고 복잡한 통로 구조를 가지고 있다. 또한 노래방의 경우 지하층에 위치하여 있어 화재 발생 시 환기 및 배연이 잘 이루어지지 않고 피난로가 복잡하여 제한적인 구조를 가지고 있다. 특히 고시원은 독립적이고 폐쇄적인 공간적 특성을 가지고 있어 화재 진압에 큰 어려움을 가지고 있다. 그러므로 협소 거주공간의 구조물 특성에 적합한 소방설비의 설치와 특수한 구조적 형태 및 환경에 적합한 특수 장비(화원 탐지, 요구조자 구조 등) 및 화재 진압 전술에 대한 연구개발이 요구된다. The objectives of this study is analysis of the characteristics of fire risk and survey of narrow dwelling space(the Karaoke, Gosiwon etc). The narrow dwelling space has special structure characteristics; the narrow and the complex escape rote. Gosiwon have very separate and exclusive space room, so have the problem a suppression of fire. Furthermore almost Karaokes located in basement have a complex and limitary escape rote. Therefore we should research and development the exploration equipment that search a source of the fire and a emergency rescuer in the scene of the fire.

협소 거주공간 사고 재현을 위한 시뮬레이션 연구

협소 거주공간 사고 재현을 위한 시뮬레이션 연구

Dwelling and creative imagination in Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology: Returning to the poetic space of education and learning

In response to the so-called crisis in contemporary education in the institutions of higher learning (USA)—the encroachment of corporatism and pervasion of standardization—there is a move to offset this dominance by reconceiving the university in terms of an intimate space of dwelling in learning and education. In light of this moribund condition in education, I address the following concerns: How should educators approach the ‘space’ of learning in the new millennium with respect to the supposed ‘new face’ of education in higher learning? What implication will such changes to curriculum have on the ‘context’ of learning? Will the context of learning now need to be reconceptualized, and if it is, what effects will this have on students and educators? Herein I consider the contributions that the philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenological ontology of space, dwelling, and the creative imagination might make to the formulation of rejoinders to these crucial questions and concerns, which offer the reader a reconceived view of the space of learning that is radically at odds with our contemporary conceptions that might be linked with social efficiency ideology.

Appropriating the socialist way of life: the emergence of mass housing in post-war North Korea

This article examines the mechanisms and principles of North Korea's urban housing designs that appeared following the Korean War (1950–1953). Early in the reconstruction period, the new-born socialist nation imported housing models from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. However, as urbanisation proceeded rapidly, as a result of policies aimed at developing heavy industry, North Korean architects faced two challenges: first, they had to develop their own standard models in the light of their technical limitations regarding prefabricated construction, and second, they had to socialise the country's way of life in its dwelling spaces. Notably, housing types imported from other socialist countries conflicted with the traditional Korean way of life and eventually went through an adaptive process. By the early 1960s, North Korean architects had arrived at new standard models that are still influential in North Korea's large cities. This study attempts to gain insight into the essential components of North Korea's socialist urban housing and domestic culture by focusing on changes and continuity in North Korea's post-war urban housing.

‘Almost like I am in Jail': homelessness and the sense of immobility in Cleveland, Ohio

ABSTRACTDrawing on oral histories conducted with the Cleveland Homeless Oral History project between 1999 and 2005, the article addresses the unhoused interviewees’ overwhelming sense of being immobile. This understanding spoke both to the reality of being restricted to shelters, but it also spoke to the larger feeling of being stuck and unable to escape their predicament. This subjective sense was belied by their everyday reality of constant movement. The article explores the disjuncture between the rhetoric and the embodied practice of movement and stillness. While the rhetoric of immobility spoke to their understanding of oppression, and served as a ‘mobilizing’ language, their resistance frequently involved establishing dwelling spaces in places where they were unwanted. In the context of homelessness in the twenty-first century, the very practice of dwelling can be a radical act through which the unhoused build power by laying claim to home.