Abstract
One of the many reasons to build an environment is to satisfy the needs of its user. In the context of housing and its users, in olden times houses were built by people and for people who were supposed to reside in it. The modifications were made by the users based on their culture, religion or vocational requirements. This also has emanated regional vernacular architecture. But in the 19th century the scenario in housing changed excessively. Housing, in present situation, is developed by designers and that too for faceless clients. For design conditions, which involve large group of individuals, it becomes impossible to resolve every single need and design accordingly. “Because we can never learn what each person really wants for himself, no one will ever be capable of inventing for others the perfect dwelling” 1 As an outcome of this, one faces an evolution of housing out of standardization which follows a “top-down” design process according to prevalent factors and similar design is provided to every other client. A “top-down” design process is that where the completed designed house is provided to the users without any opinion of the user in the designing of that house, which is opposed to the traditional way of man building his own house.
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“… we have come to the point where uniform dwellings are assembled in monotonous, uniform building blocks.” 2 For example, mass housing schemes are designed as a production of identical functional units for non-identical users. In current situation, individuals of diverse cultures and different backgrounds reside together in urban settlements, which scantily acknowledges their diversities and varying life styles. Under these circumstances, the mass-housing scheme fail to cater to the particular requirements of each and every client residing in it. To solve these issues, mass housing needs an element of flexibility. An element that can allow one to personalize, that lets one to grow his own built environment, that can give one an opportunity to undergo transformation according to his tradition, culture or financial backgrounds.
