Housing, place and design

The words ‘housing’ and ‘design’ are both nouns and verbs, representing products on the one hand, and processes on the other. Housing design, therefore, is a process for producing ‘places’ for human habitation in the broadest sense—physical, psychological and social. It is a complex, dynamic and temporal process involving many human and non-human actants, including residents themselves throughout their occupancy via personalization, modification and relocation. Over the life course, residents can develop deep psychological and social ‘place attachment’ to the home and wider residential environment and experience ‘displacement’ if forced to relocate. Ideally, the objective of housing design is to optimize ‘environment-behaviour fit’ or ‘congruence’ for residents within the resources and options available. This chapter examines social-spatial concepts of housing design as both process and product and how these have been operationalized through participatory and inclusive design practice and evaluation, including for marginalized and vulnerable groups in society.