Bendik Manum Apartment Layouts and Domestic Life; The Interior Space and its Usability A Study of Norwegian Apartments Built in the Period 1930 - 2005 © Bendik Manum, 2006 ISBN: 82-547-0205-5 ISSN: 1502-217X CON-TEXT Dissertation #26 A Doctoral dissertation submitted to: The Oslo School of Architecture and Design PUBLISHER: The Oslo School of Architecture and Design COVER: PRINTED BY: Unipub AS / AiT E-dit 2006 Abstract The background for this study is Norwegian housing where floor plans of new apartments seem to differ significantly from what previously has been built as well as from what architects have considered good quality. The study consists of two empirical surveys. The first is a diachronic analysis examining the development of apartment layouts since the 1930s, while the second is a synchronic interview-based survey where different apartments identified through the diachronic study are examined as dwellings for contemporary living. The features of apartments particularly examined in the diachronic analysis are the sizes of rooms and the spatial configurations of the apartments, two features that are decisive for the degree of generality concerning functions or use. These features of space have been analysed in a sample of 150 apartments built in Oslo since 1930. The conclusion of this analysis is the identification of three generations of apartments. Apartments of the first generation, which was common until about 1955, were general with respect to sizes of the rooms as well as to the spatial configuration. Around 1960, there was a change towards larger apartments and functional specificity. In the second generation of apartments, those that were typical in the period from the 1960s until the early 1980s, the individual rooms were highly differentiated in size and positioned in accordance with their very specific function. Since then, the number of rooms has decreased and the spatial layout has become simpler, the kitchens are now usually in the living room and the bedrooms have become smaller. These apartments, which are the third generation, are specific with respect to use in that the bedrooms are rooms for sleeping while the “living and kitchen room” is the place for all daytime living. 1 The three generations of apartments defined by the diachronic analysis are not just a theoretical classification of floor plan layouts but also a typology that captures features relevant for real domestic lives. Sizes of rooms and configurational aspects of the interior spaces are decisive for what kind of households that lives in a particular apartment as well as for how they use their rooms. A conclusion from the interview-based survey is that generality works; the first generation of apartment, the apartment characterised as general due to large “second largest rooms” and a spatial layout where all rooms have access directly from the entrance, is the kind that houses the largest range of households. This is very different from the apartments being built now, which are appropriate only for a limited range of households. Since they rarely have more than one place for daytime living, they are unsuitable for the many households where daily lives consist in simultaneous and not easily co-existing activities. Where theory and methodology are concerned, the field of architectural research named “space syntax” has been a basis for figuring out the subject to examine as well as for carrying out the analyses. This study not only illustrates how space syntax can be useful for identifying patterns across a sample of dwellings, but also how the configurational features of space captured by the space syntax methodology are relevant for households preferences of dwellings and for their daily living. 2 Preface This thesis comes out of an interest in apartment layouts born while studying architecture in the late 1980s. When observing the Norwegian dwellings built at that time, they seemed to differ from what previously had been considered good architectural quality. This was particularly the case when comparing them to the tradition of Scandinavian modernism as represented by Bengt Espen Knutsen, who in his esteemed architectural practice as well as in his teaching has emphasised to create spaces for living rather than buildings as esthetical objects. An aim of this thesis has been to develop a knowledge- based contribution to a discussion about layouts and qualities of dwellings. Two theoretical and methodological references have been essential in order to develop a subject of interest into a research question and in order to figure out relevant empirical inquiries; one is the Scandinavian tradition of survey- based housing research, the other is the methods for analysing architectural space developed within the field of architectural research named space syntax. This positioning of the work does not imply that other aspects of housing or alternative theoretical and methodological approaches would not be interesting, only that it would have led to different studies than the one carried out. I am grateful to The Oslo School of Architecture and Design for my education here, for inspiring periods with part-time teaching in the years thereafter and most of all for giving me the opportunity to carry out the study that is summarised through this thesis. I will thank Halina Dunin- Woyseth for important support at crucial stages of the work and for guiding me to Björn Klarqvist and his PhD-symposiums at Chalmers Institute of Technology. Klarqvist’s teaching of space syntax provided a basis for this study. I am also very grateful to Julienne Hanson at the Bartlett, University Collage London, for her highly skilled guidance in space syntax analyses of dwellings. Where more local condition are concerned, I must thank Jon Guttu for his advices about housing research in theory and in practice and supervisor Bjørn Sandaker for his support and for his reading of drafts that were rarely on schedule. I must also thank Espen Rusten and Paul Benze for 3 managing to transform my description of a space syntax tool into the very easily applicable software AGRAPH. This thesis has an empirical basis that I alone would never have managed to establish. I am therefore very grateful to Husbanken and to OBOS for their financial supports that have made it possible to get highly skilled students’ assistance. I would first like to thank Erlend Torkildsen and Cleas Cho Heske Ekornås for all their hours spent in the archives of the local authorities as well as for their computer skills applied in digitising and organising the hundreds of drawings. I must then thank Ida Lenander, Line J. Musæus, Maja Fjøsne and Håvard Brevik for their excellent work in carrying out the interviews. I am also very grateful for the hospitality of all those letting us into their private home and participating in the interviews. When it comes to the finishing stages of the work, I am grateful to Ann Giæver for her patient attempts to improve my English and to Jonas Adolfsen for handling the numerous illustrations that were originally in all kinds and qualities of digital as well as analogue formats. Finally, I am thankful for the love and patience of AnneLise, Birk and Jarand; a support that this study could never have been done without. Oslo, September 2006 4 CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................1 PREFACE......................................................................................................3 CONTENTS...................................................................................................5 1 INTRODUCTION......................................................................................8 1.1 PROBLEM ................................................................................................8 1.2 BACKGROUND.........................................................................................9 1.2.1 The Layout of Apartments...............................................................9 1.2.2 The Standard of Living and Housing............................................14 1.3 CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ............................................19 2 FOCUS AND LIMITATIONS ................................................................20 2.1 A REVIEW OF HOUSING RESEARCH........................................................21 2.2 VOID AND SOLID ...................................................................................38 2.3 SPATIAL CONFIGURATIONS ...................................................................40 2.4 GENERALITY VERSUS SPECIFICITY ........................................................45 2.5 DWELLINGS AND TIME PERIOD ..............................................................54 2.6 THE STANDARD OF HOUSING.................................................................55 3 METHODOLOGY...................................................................................57 3.1 THE QUANTITATIVE AND THE QUALITATIVE; COMMENTS ON DISCIPLINES AND THEORIES............................................................................................58 3.2 THE RESEARCH STRATEGY ....................................................................61 3.3 THE CHOICE OF CASE ............................................................................63 3.4 BASIC SPACE SYNTAX METHODOLOGY..................................................66 3.5 THE SPACE SYNTAX ANALYSIS OF THIS STUDY ......................................82 3.5.1 The Kind of Space Syntax Modelling............................................82