Apartment layouts and domestic life : the interior space and its usability : a study of Norwegian apartments built in the period 1930-2005
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.
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.