The Application of Adaptable Housing Method under the Chinese Context

Adaptable housing has a long history of theoretical research and practice. This article summarizes the most common design approaches and discusses their current and possible application in the Chinese context. With the method of literature review and case study, it explores adaptability in the aspects of community and single suite. In the former, it summarizes the design strategies of ‘shared garden and balcony’, ‘enlarged communal circulation’, ‘combinable unit’, and ‘exchangeable space’, which are proposed as a response to the indifferent neighborhood relationship in contemporary community and the trend of satisfying all demands inside the door. In the later, it concludes the approaches of ‘changeable layout’, ‘multi-use room’ and ‘changeable pipeline and partition’, following a suggestion of confining the spatial adaptability and expanding the scope of adaptable building components. The objective of this article is to sum up the practical approaches of adaptability, and to explore the opportunity of their application in China. This research will also provide a reference to other countries.

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ISBN
978-1-944214-31-9