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Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing is a basic human need, and it plays a critical role in shaping the quality of life for individuals, families, and communities. Overview Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether it is a home or some kind of physical structure for dwelling, lodging or shelter and it includes a range of options from apartments and houses to temporary shelters and emergency accommodations. Access to safe, affordable, and stable housing is essential for a person's health, safety, and well-being. Housing can also impact a person's economic, social, and cultural opportunities, as it influences their access to education, employment, healthcare, and social networks. In many countries, housing policies and programs have been developed to address issues related to affordability, quality, and availab

Evaluation of bamboo for building elements satisfying housing criteria

David Javier Guzman Chavez

Bamboo – identified as a Non Timber Forest Product (NTFP) – offering optimal mechanical properties for construction purposes, and at the same time little studied among contemporary building materials, is paradoxically most used in precarious housing. The use of natural resources within the context of sustainable development is nowadays considered a subject of vital importance, especially in the construction industry, considered as being the largest consumer of world energy. This work concerns itself with two fundamental contemporary issues: the use of natural resources as a contribution to sustainable development and precarious housing. The topic of housing among the different problems relating to the construction industry is one of the most critical in developing countries since poverty entails precariousness in various aspects of the habitat and particularly in housing. The aim of this thesis is to validate a construction element designed using bamboo as its main constituent. Therefore in the first part, before presenting the composite bamboo structure, the CBS panel (an element designed within the framework of this thesis), the theme of precarious housing in relation to bamboo is examined. A final part gives insight into the appropriation and application of the proposed CBS panel. The first part, devoted to the link between bamboo and precarious housing, analyses the problems concerning social housing in developing countries. To identify how bamboo's use for construction is related to the social habitat, precarious housing is evaluated on the basis of the world view and aspirations of inhabitants. This will help determine the challenges involved in the construction proposals put forward to reduce the complex problems of social housing in the South. In this search, the reality of intermediate cities is examined to obtain a better understanding of the urbanisation phenomenon of metropolises versus the deterioration of the rural habitat within the context of globalisation (Chapters 1 and 2). The second part is devoted to presenting the composite bamboo structure (CBS panel) carrying out simple four-point load bending tests resulting in values that guarantee the element's load-bearing capacity, establishing the existence of a composite behaviour between bamboo and concrete. An experimental study, allowing the interaction between bamboo and concrete to be identified, was carried out. The use of bamboo in construction is validated via mechanical tests, studying the mechanical properties of bamboo and identifying high tensile strength, and confirming the weakness of bamboo, a longitudinal separation parallel to the grain. The investigation contributes to improvement by means of fibre reinforcement: natural, such as jute, and artificial, such as glass fibre, with compression tests made parallel and perpendicular to the fibre (Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6). The third part concerns the study of appropriation and application criteria, applied to the composite bamboo structure (CBS panel). This part contains theoretical elements and a descriptive study with qualitative methodology that explores appropriation by various populations of Latin America, all involved with a construction project. This revision confirms the hypothesis that social appropriation is a complex issue that includes cultural, social and psychological elements, which are part of the emerging phenomenon of human settlements in precarious areas. The production of social housing is based on the study of the relationship between bamboo, its morphology, its applicability as construction system and the spaces that can be generated. Consequently the different possible forms of housing are presented, developing details of connections between the housing elements, and their chain of production. Quality control is identified as being the most important stage to guarantee the final product. Failure to carry out this control would be to jeopardise the success of not only the CBS panel but also the use of bamboo as resource. We also demonstrate that appropriation of a technology for a target group must be considered not only in relation to this group, but also introduce its use to a superior target group, since the reference factor is important (Chapter 7).

EPFL2008

Towards sufficiency in housing: Agent-based model and transition scenarios

Margarita Agriantoni

Research problem: Housing is responsible for a considerable part of global resource consumption. In Switzerland, it accounts for almost one third of the country's CO2 emissions and half of the total energy demand. Thus, housing plays an important role in the transition to sustainable development. Housing has been thoroughly studied from a disciplinary perspective, e.g., economics, social sciences, psychology, engineering. However, little attention has been paid to housing as a system of interrelated actors, e.g., developers, owners, tenants and state, whose actions might be described by different disciplines. Aim: The aim of this thesis is to investigate how a change in the construction practices of property owners in combination to a more space-efficient allocation of dwellings to households and a behavioural change of tenants can achieve a substantial reduction in the environmental impact of housing. This dissertation focuses on the interrelations of housing actors, concentrating mainly on the property owners and explores which measures and to what extent can lead to a reduction of space consumption of housing.Methods: Housing is characterised by a high level of complexity, therefore a transdisciplinary approach is adopted. Firstly, the Swiss housing market and its unique attributes are studied. However, in this thesis, we study a subset of the Swiss rental housing market; it comprises two housing cooperatives: ABZ in Zurich and SCHL in Lausanne as well as the insurer and asset manager Swiss Mobiliar. Their housing stocks, of approximately 10,000 dwellings, are examined in depth and are used as a case study. Extensive data gathering allowed to create an exhaustive inventory of the building stock of the three property owners. The data on tenants was limited, thus, we conducted a tenant survey. Furthermore, a series of workshops with both tenants and property owners were organised to study their decision-making processes. A bottom-up agent-based model (ABM) is built, which portrays the case study housing system. The main actors of the rental housing market (property owners and households) are represented in the model by agents; the owner agents make decisions about their building stock and tenants, while the household agents choose a dwelling based on their needs and housing preferences. The dynamic evolution of both owners and households and the interaction between them is simulated in the model and allows the study of emergent phenomena. The present thesis attempts the assessment of the environmental impact of housing through the lens of housing sufficiency. Space consumption, in terms of dwelling surface and floor area per capita, is considered as the largest determinant of resource consumption.Results: The simulation results show that measures taken to decrease the environmental impact of housing and space consumption are inadequate if owners do not change their construction practices and households do not actively change their housing behaviour. Most measures explored in this thesis, if implemented individually, succeed in reducing the rate of increase in space consumption but fail to reverse the upward trend. A more space-efficient allocation of dwellings to households proves to have a certain effect. However, only when combined with other measures, such as the densification of the existing building stock and a change in construction practices, a significant decrease of environmental impact is observed.

EPFL2022

New Vernacular Architecture as Appropriate Strategy for Housing the Poor

Sytse de Maat

Improving living conditions of the poor often involves a drastic change in lifestyle, in order to fit daily life into industrially produced dwellings. Slum rehabilitation programs replacing informal settlements with standardized mass housing, have often resulted in a mismatch of inhabitants and their built environment. Participation strategies meant to counter this problem, show little effect unless the user is in charge. What is the problem with development and participation? This chapter will discuss ‘housing the poor’ as a case to illustrate how industrialization and systemization are at odds with participation. We will consider two ways of producing housing: industrial mass housing, and informal settlement. The focus is on the connectedness of the user, the inhabitant, with his dwelling. It will lead to the observation that participation aims at meeting the diversity that is natural to human beings, whereas systemization requires and produces the opposite: uniformity. Moreover, the term user-participation implicitly states the user is an outsider participating in developers' projects, which after all are dominated by the interests of the construction industry. An Appropriate Technology - approach in housing the poor would benefit from a focus on user-building interaction as it taps directly into people’s most powerful resource: creativity. Western systemization is not the only route to improvement. Strategies based on vernacular are at least as effective, appropriate, and humanly sustainable.

Springer Verlag2012