Transition from house to home - Catering for ownership

Catering for ownership Transition from house to home

Reto Egli 4419553

Yıldız Haseki 4414888

Liza de Jong 4091434

AR1Ad040 Architectonische Reflecties (2014­2015 Q2) Tutor: Nelson Mota

26 January 2015

Abstract

This thesis states that anonymity can cater the feeling of ownership while flexibility is not an indispensable factor to achieve the sense of ownership. A particular housing complex, the Hoefkadeblock in The Hague is examined in order to understand the adaptation process and its reasons.

The architect’s intention was to create an adaptable environment through standard housing units, which appears as an unidentified living­space that can be occupied in different forms, due to the expected, necessary, multicultural atmosphere of the neighborhood. In the Hoefkadeblock ‘anonymous space’ itself, is the approach that allows adaptation. Its repetitive order of the same dwelling unit could have led to anonymity and standardization; labeled by Jaap Bakema1 as a negative aspect for ownership.

However, this was not the outcome of Alvaro Siza’s design.

Once Siza’s area of responsibility ends through the constraints and capabilities of technology, what finally decides the form of a dwelling, and moulds the spaces and their relationships, is the vision that people have of the ideal life. The Hoefkadeblock suggests an ideal environment that forces the inhabitants to attribute socio­cultural ownership as a physical expression that reflect their symbolic nature.

The case study in this subject is examined in terms of analytical drawings based on the buildings timeline of growth and change. A visit to the building site was essential to understand the relationship between the dwellings and inhabitants. Following the visual analysis of the block, several interviews have been made with the residents. The survey is outlined through a new interpretation of the building with its coherent catalogue of socio­spatial patterns of use.

The essay states that anonymity can be seen as a way to create the sense of ownership, while the flexibility is not an essential feature for the same objective. In the case of Hoefkadeblock the anonymous units are necessary to allow each person from any culture to adapt their living­space in regard to their needs and preferences.

Thesis: flexibility or polyvalence is not an indispensable factor to generate the sense of ownership, but the ability to adapt through sociocultural expression is. In the case of the Hoefkadeblock the standardisation of the ‘frame' is the gesture by Alvaro Siza that allows for adaptation.

1

Jaap Bakema, "Bouwen voor de Anonieme Opdrachtgever,” Forum 16, no. 2 (1962): 41­44.

Introduction What is the task of an architect? Is it just designing a building, organizing an apartment layout and than assuming that people find a way to live in them? Or could we expect architects to fulfil a much bigger task; creating spaces that people can call their homes?

Moreover, what if all these people that will live there have different cultural backgrounds? Then the task we demand for the architect gets even bigger.

To house all different types of cultures in one building block can be a struggle. Bakema mentions in his article ‘Bouwen voor de anonieme opdrachtgever’ that it is inhuman to force the views on life found in a particular group of the society on others outside this group2. We could see all the different cultures as different groups of society that can not be forced to live in the typical narrow Dutch brick house with the wide windows, tilted roofs and ridged space organization as they all demand different aspects from their home due to socio­cultural factors.

Rapoport describes the relations between socio cultural factors a house forms, through which we could understand the difficulties if designing for a wide target group; how it could be achieved to make all these people feel at home.

Rapoport3 determines five social­cultural aspects that occur to be of influence for the way of life of people and in that way what they expect from a house: 1. some basic needs, 2. family, 3. position of women. 4. privacy. 5. social intercourse.

In case of the first one, you expect people all around the world to have some sort of the same basic needs: breathing, eating, sleeping and so on. But Rapoport illustrates that the way how you link these needs is what makes such a big difference. Eating, and then specifically cooking area might be a good example for this: in the Netherlands it is very common to have the kitchen, dining area and living close to each other, sometimes even with an open connection. However, people are not used to this everywhere; a lot of cultures prefer a separately closed kitchen.

Only by illustrating these first aspects with all his different, sometimes conflicting elements it is imaginable how hard it is to design houses where all these different needs could be facilitated.

Siza’s task was to design houses for people with different cultural backgrounds. Hoefkadeblock is a perimeter block in the ’’Schilderswijk’’ in The Hague, an area with a big ethnic variety, a low average income and many social difficulties. The building houses mainly Dutch, Moroccan and Turkish clients.

A socio­cultural mix that questions a common understanding of inhabiting a home; a sense of ownership.

What we address with this essay is how the Hoefkadeblock caters for the sense of ownership, analyzing a process that was meant to happen and was yet unpredictable to a certain extent by Alvaro Siza. Along with several inspirations of sociologists and architecture theoreticians our own personal observation will question the performance of the building towards the sense of ownership of its clients. First it will 2 3

Bakema, Bouwen voor de Anonieme Opdrachtgever, 41­44 Amos Rapoport,House Form and Culture (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice­Hall, inc., 1969),60

be defined what is meant by the term ownership. After that the patterns of inhabitation, observed during site visits will be addressed to illustrate how people did create a sense of ownership in the Hoefkadeblock. To get a clear view on what aspect caters for the sense of ownership in the Hoefkadeblock we will then address the theories of Bakema about flexibility, Leupen about frame work and certain theories on anonymity by various authors.

1. Ownership In this essay the term ownership isn't referred to as the tenure status of housing. It has more to do with the place that you call home, the place where you feel at home; the place that you feel is yours. To illustrate the differences we make a distinction between house and home. Houses are being built. They define and delimit space to provide for shelter and protection. But it is the people that are going to live there that create the homes4. Or as Saegert5 says in ’’The Role of Housing in the Experience of Dwelling’’: ’’Home is not only a place, but it has psychological resonance and social meaning. it is part of the experience of dwelling ­ something we do, a way of weaving up a life in particular geographical spaces’’. To even more demonstrate the difference between house and home she connects the home to the verb dwelling; the continuing active making of space, space that has a symbolic connection between the self and the physical world.

Therefore we could say you can either own a house; the actual possession of a property or you could have the feeling of ownership about your home. The feeling of ownership of a home, or as Saegert suggests the actively creating of the home, which creates a sense of ownership for the dwellers, is the ownership that we will further discuss in this essay.

1.1 House Alvaro Siza knew that he was designing a building that is going to be inhabited by Dutch people, Moroccan people or people with any other cultural background ­ All types of different people from different cultures were going to live together. He had his own vision of how he wanted to accommodate all these people; he intentionally chose to use one type of window, framed through one type of brick, framed to one type of dwelling, framed around the type of Haagsportiek, repeating itself to one block.

He succeeded in creating a block that forms a community holding its inner variety of inhabitants together. The outer appearance of the building within the neighborhood stays monotonous. A well­integrated facade that is to be read as a monotonous repetition creating an anonymous impression.

It is not possible to say whether an apartment is inhabited by Dutch people, Moroccan people or people with any other cultural background.

Furthermore, the house form is an indentation of a simple, repetitive structure of elements standing for the local building culture. The element that links the outside neighborhood from the street to the 4 5

Roderick J. Lawrence, "What Makes a House a Home?". Environment and Behavior 19, no. 2 (1987): 154­68.

Susan Saegert, "The Role of Housing in the Experience of Dwelling,” Human behavior and environment 8 (1985): 187­309.

apartments is formed by the ’’ Haagsportiek’’, a typical Dutch circulation system (fig1, haagsportiek).

The block is a repetition of this core­element, linking its staircases to one type of apartment each floor, aligned in a symmetric order.

This monotonous appearance that is wrapped around this building is peeled off towards the inside of the block. Accessible through a corridor that shapes a volumetric cut out at the southern middle of the block, one is led into the courtyard. A semi­public space for the inhabitants that functions as an outdoor space for communication and display. The inner facade embracing the courtyard works as a connection to the inner variety of the building through balconies and their connecting doors.

Siza’s influence as an architect ends at the point where the physical house is built. An architect designs a house and not a home. That ’does not mean that an architect is not trying to design houses with an attempt to cater for the creation of the home and in that way caters for the sense of ownership. We claim that Alvaro Siza provided a framework of the above described architecture that is meant to be part of an ongoing process, continued by its inhabitants. This catering for the sense of ownership is what Siza has attended on the project of the Hoefkadeblock. However, to bridge that gap of an unforeseen process he introduced one flexible element; a sliding door between the living and the dining room. A possibility of using the given dimensions of the dwelling in different ways. Alvaro Siza introduced that door, driven by the thought how many individual interpretations will lead out of the diversity of inhabitants.

2. Creating a home; patterns of inhabitation From the outside, the building appears as this monotonous housing block. But as soon as we go past this outer facade; either to the courtyard or into one of the apartments, there are many patterns of inhabitation visible. The transition of an atmosphere between the exterior and the interior of the building is apparent. While one gets the impression of standing in front of a typical Dutch housing block, which was Sizas intention, this impression vanishes as soon as you get into one of the apartments or by entering the courtyard. The cultural variety of the inhabitants gets visible and one feels like standing in a different building or country. Inside the apartments several personal objects such as shoes on the floor, symbolic evil­eye ceramic beads hanging on the wall and similar items that fortify the sense of ownership give the idea that even though the inhabitants were given the same framework, they have ‘owned’ their living environments different from each other. A process that could not have been foreseen by Siza. When analyzing these patterns of inhabitation we tried to discover what aspect it was, that catered for the sense of ownership in the Hoefkadeblock.

2.1 Growth and change in a monotonous building The courtyard in the center of the block contains common elements of ownership. These ‘patterns of use’ are clearly identifiable and repetitive. For instance, the allotment place in the middle of the courtyard shows that everyone has his individual spot to grow plants. Still they are located in the shared space. Single areas mesh with each other, creating a mixture corresponding to the divergent cultures of the inhabitants ­ Sizas intention. Moreover, the inner facade allows us to explore the process from anonymity and monotony to identity. A quick look over to the apartments from the courtyard indicates

how they diverge from each other. The separation between the housing units is obvious through objects such as garden cabins for extra storage, satellite dishes set all over the area or hanging clothes from some of the balconies. By looking more into detail at the apartments reveals some important features of individuality. It seems that some of the residents used balcony closures in order to have more privacy.

The cable wires hanging between apartments show that some of the residents share technical equipments, which suggests that they probably know each other. Another recognizable element is the curtain, which we spotted in numerous different forms and colors. This is a clear example of distinction within generic space. Every apartment is well­defined through its curtains that align for three windows in a row, which consist the length of a typical apartment. A distinction that Siza intended to hide on his monotonous facade.

2.2 Different use of the apartment layout The observation made during the site visit confirms Siza’s intention of an unforeseen process is to be partially achieved. The floorplan is standardized without any specific relation to the future occupant.

However, it appears to be anonymous, although it suggests new forms of habitation within certain constraints. This comes forward if we compare the two apartments that have been visited; both inhabited by Turkish families. The first apartment (fig. 2 furniture in apartment1) consists of a family with six people. We could say that this is overcrowded, since there is only three bedrooms with 10m² each. This apartment has the atmosphere as if you are in a typical Turkish apartment ­ a lot of carpets and decorated furniture. They also adapted the shape of the dooropenings from rectangular to rounded, oriental ones. This changes the socio­cultural feeling of the apartment (fig 3. shaped door). The second apartment (fig. 4 furniture in apartment 2)is inhabited by only three people who express themselves with a much more modern and luxurious lifestyle according to their furniture . (fig. 5 Jacuzzi in the bathroom) Even though the houses are the same and the inhabitants share the same culture of origins, there is a clear distinction between the two homes.

2.3 Culture and use of space Siza’s other housing block with typical Dutch ‘boven beneden woning’ has been visited as well. In this housingblock the difference in ‘ basic needs’ that Rapoport6 mentions as one of the five things that influence preferences of housing in different cultures can be clearly illustrated.

The ‘ boven beneden woning’ is formed by two houses on top of each other, where the top one can be entered through a door to the street that has a small hallway behind it, immediately followed by a staircase. Shoes had to be taken off in this really small hallway downstairs. The space was not sufficiently planned big enough to do this with a few people at the same time; this space clearly was not designed with the intention to accommodate for this basic need. But still the dwellers adapted to it.

3. Elements that cater for the sense of ownership Hereby we can conclude that Siza achieved to make a building where people feel at home. The inhabitants have adapted themselves and became dwellers. But what is it, that made it possible for them to adapt themselves and create that sense of ownership?

6

Rapoport, House Form and Culture, 60

3.1 Flexibility As mentioned before, Siza used a sliding door to provide a possible variation in the spacial organization of the apartment. This element could be seen as an intention of Siza to make the apartment more flexible. As Bakema7 argues in his essay “ bouwen voor de anonieme opdrachtgever”; flexibility is the solution to let people take part in their living environment and create a sense of ownership. In this line of reasoning we could wonder if the sliding doors of Siza contribute to the catering of adaptation for the inhabitants and in that way create the sense of ownership.

It has to be mentioned that Bakema suggests a much more radical form of flexibility than sliding doors; a building method where only the core of a house is built by the way of joint building initiatives and can then be expanded ­to set limits­ through personal building initiatives. In this way the house could be extended at different stages of the life. For example if the dweller gets married or/and gets children, additional area could be added to the home.

Coming back to the case of Hoefkadeblock, can such a relatively small flexible element like the sliding door cater for the purpose that Bakema gives to flexibility: to form your own living environment?

The observation made during the visit reveals that the sliding doors are hardly used in the apartments; most of them are closed the entire time. According to the this fact, we could conclude that the intention of Siza to make the apartment layout more flexible did not achieve its goal. This intended flexibility is not the reason why people are able to adapt and it is not the reason why people have this sense of ownership.

3.2 Anonymity The standard unit which provides the basic needs and preferences without any specifications may be a satisfying generic space but it also leads to anonymity.

“individual interests are shuffled and moulded in committee studies for such a long time that they degenerate into greatest common divisors.’’ Bakema8 sees this as a negative approach.

But what if we see this in such a way that Siza achieved to mould and shuffle all the needs of all these different people from different cultures into the greatest common divisor which creates a type of apartment that caters for the possibility to adapt for all of them?

We could say that Siza compensated the diversity in culture by designing a monotonus building. This is a result of designing a less identified, anonymous type of house that can cater the sense of ownership for a broader target group. Rapoport also plies for this sort of non specific house layout in his book: “the more forceful the physical constraints, the less are non material aspects able to act’’.

7 8

Bakema, Bouwen voor de Anonieme Opdrachtgever, 41­44 ibid.

According to Marcus9 the key to personalize space seems to be done through moveable objects ordained by fate. Since we collected them based on our personal taste and needs throughout life, a clearly patterned framework sets stages that symbolise our selfhood. In that Sense the courtyard of the building block, a semi­public space visible to each inhabitant forms a space for communication and display. That constant notion of change through individual expressions makes people feel at home.

That feeling to be visible despite that big amount of neighbours makes the place specific.

Ridderhof10 describes the situation in the Hoefkadeblock as a ‘non violent experience’ and verifies the adaptation process to be logical. The interior adapts itself to the residents’ way of life without being an obstacle to their provisional development. The dwellers are independent on how they want to identify their living­spaces as long as the interior is responsive.

3.3 The ‘Frame’ As mentioned before, Siza introduced a repetitive housing type for the anonymous future occupant.

This configuration might be defined as ‘the frame’ like Leupen11 describes. Similar to Siza’s approach, the ‘frame’ is the place where change occurs. Changeability has its different kinds but in the Hoefkade case it appears as ‘adaptation through use’. Leupen quotes Priemus who distinguished the latter in three categories which are: flexibility of components, multifunctionality and polyvalence.

For him “these terms all relate to the possibility of using the dwelling in different ways”. If we question ‘the frame’ of Siza, we understand that he succeeds in giving possibility to the dwellers to internalize their space. The two apartments that were visited has the same spatial configuration while their way of occupation have their differences between one another.

This situation is labeled as ‘polyvalence’ by Leupen in which he defines it as ‘the space which invites different kinds of use without changing its form and dimension’. Following this affirmation, we can say that the frame in Hoefkade allows polyvalence. But how does such an unidentified space turn out to be well­identified by a great number of people who do not have the same way of inhabiting?

The ‘frame’ is anonymous, yet capable to provide all the necessary elements to live inside. It does not offer non­standard solutions, which makes the building monotonous. However, it is still well­adapted by the residents without any necessity of predefined identities.

Clare C. Marcus, House as Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home (Berkley,CA: Conari Press, 1995), 57 Ridderhof, Ruud, ed., Detachement and Involvement. Work of Alvaro Siza for the Schilderswijk Area (The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1994), 34­36 11 Bernard Leupen. Frame and Generic Space (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2006), 24­26

9

10

Conclusion Going through the reasons behind how adaptation took place in the Hoefkadeblock, it could be concluded that anonymity itself achieved to cater the sense of ownership. The framework presented by Siza is ready to be identified by its future occupant. This is both the reason and the result of having a multicultural dweller profile, as it was already percieved and predicted by Siza in the design process.

Regarding the elements of ownership, the case of Hoefkadeblock reveals that flexibility is not an indispensable factor to personalize a living environment, in contradiction to what Bakema stated.

Likewise, the relationship between designer and resident occurred in the opposite way to Bakema’s approach. As it has been seen in the case study, the architect may not necessarily know the exact future client and his own specific desire. This doesn’t mean that he is not able to comprehend dweller’s expectations and necessities. Still, he could foresee the suitable dwelling unit that satisfies the common requirements and leave the resident to identify his own space.

For Siza, the notion of flexibility is reduced into a single element, sliding door in this case, which offered a limited possibility to change the spatial configuration. In fact, Siza generated almost a ‘fixed’ spatial form rather than a flexible one. It did not end up like a housing block filled with ‘anonymous’ units where there is no relation between the house and its occupant as Bakema criticizes, but instead, the defined but unidentified space became the default to give the possibility of ‘owning’ the place that we call home. The patterns of inhabitation spread all over the building, show clearly that adaptation proceeded when people started to transform the ‘frame’ into their home.

As we label the latter for the place where change occurs, like Leupen, we affirm that Siza achieved his objective of using the generic space, so­called frame, to offer variable living atmospheres without knowing who would be the owner. This reason became the main circumstance for catering the sense of ownership. The diversity in culture is compensated by a monotonous building.

Bibliography Bakema, Jaap. "De Anonieme Opdrachtgever.” Forum 16, no. 2 (1962): 41­44.

Lawrence, Roderick J. "What Makes a House a Home?" Environment and Behavior 19, no. 2 (1987): 154­68.

Leupen, Bernard. Frame and Generic Space. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2006.

Marcus, Clare C. House as Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home. Berkley,CA: Conari Press, 1995.

Rapoport, Amos. House Form and Culture. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice­Hall, inc., 1969.

Ridderhof, Ruud, ed. Detachement and Involvement. Work of Alvaro Siza for the Schilderswijk Area.

The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1994.

Saegert, Susan. "The Role of Housing in the Experience of Dwelling.” Human behavior and environment 8 (1985): 187­309.

Illustrations:

figure 1: Haagsportiek, own illustration

figure 2: furniture in apartment 1, own drawing and pictures

figure 3: shaped door, own Illustration and picture

figure 4: furniture in apartment 2, own drawing and pictures

figure 5: jacuzzi in bathroom, own Illustration and picture