Flexible, Family-friendly: Developing an alternative high-density, vertical housing option

<p>There are many benefits associated with living in low density, detached housing conditions. However, the increase in housing demands have prompted Auckland’s surge of peripheral land to be developed into homes and the amplified cost of housing. Defined as urban sprawl, many of these housing types are standalone and built on private land, as the preferred type of housing. Studies have demonstrated that Auckland families' housing preference is the standalone dwelling. The objective for this thesis is to gain a better understanding of urban sprawl, higher-density and vertical development conditions, and recognise the various family types and their associated living preferences. The collected data influences what is considered family-friendly housing attributes, which are reviewed in three different scales of urban, building and unit. This is with the aim to propose another housing option that considers and addresses a family’s housing requirements, as an alternative to the standalone housing option. The resulting design proposes flexible, expanding and contracting units as a solution to provide families the freedom to adapt their living spaces to suit their requirements. By providing family friendly, higher-density dwellings as a suitable option, this could off set the Auckland families’ preference of the standalone house, which is currently contributing towards Auckland’s sprawl.</p>

Flexible, Family-friendly: Developing an alternative high-density, vertical housing option

<p>There are many benefits associated with living in low density, detached housing conditions. However, the increase in housing demands have prompted Auckland’s surge of peripheral land to be developed into homes and the amplified cost of housing. Defined as urban sprawl, many of these housing types are standalone and built on private land, as the preferred type of housing. Studies have demonstrated that Auckland families' housing preference is the standalone dwelling. The objective for this thesis is to gain a better understanding of urban sprawl, higher-density and vertical development conditions, and recognise the various family types and their associated living preferences. The collected data influences what is considered family-friendly housing attributes, which are reviewed in three different scales of urban, building and unit. This is with the aim to propose another housing option that considers and addresses a family’s housing requirements, as an alternative to the standalone housing option. The resulting design proposes flexible, expanding and contracting units as a solution to provide families the freedom to adapt their living spaces to suit their requirements. By providing family friendly, higher-density dwellings as a suitable option, this could off set the Auckland families’ preference of the standalone house, which is currently contributing towards Auckland’s sprawl.</p>

Housing and Mental Health during Outbreak of COVID-19

Background: Recently, a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused global health concerns. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, house quarantine was considered to prevent the outbreak of the disease and ensure physical health, but it may cause serious mental health problems. The present study aims to assess housing satisfaction, housing preference of residents, and their mental health in house quarantine of COVID-19 considering housing type, spaces, environmental factors, and function and activities. Methods: Quantitative data were gathered through administering online questionnaires. In April 2020, 421 valid responses were gathered from people who were living in Tehran. Then the collected data were analyzed using SPSS. Results: According to the result, environmental factors have a higher mean than spaces and functions and activities throughout housing preference. Satisfaction with all parameters affects improving mental health. The kitchen, view quality, exercise, and cultivation and maintenance of plants have the greatest impact on improving mental health among house spaces, environmental factors, activities, and functions, respectively. The mental health of people living in private houses is better than residents of low-rise and high-rise housing.Conclusions: Residents’ opinions about the houses showed that there are differences between the current situation of the house and the preferences of the people during the house quarantine period, which has been effective in the mental health of the residents in this period. Consideration of parameters in housing design by architects and home planners can improve people's mental health during special and critical situations such as house quarantine due to the spread of epidemics.

“SeoulHouse2Vec”: An Embedding-Based Collaborative Filtering Housing Recommender System for Analyzing Housing Preference

Housing preference is the subjective and relative preference of users toward housing alternatives and studies in the field have been conducted to analyze the housing preferences of groups with sharing the same socio-demographic attributes. However, previous studies may not suggest the preference of individuals. In this regard, this study proposes “SeoulHouse2Vec,” an embedding-based collaborative filtering housing recommendation system for analyzing atypical and nonlinear housing preference of individuals. The model maps users and items in each dense vector space which are called embedding layers. This model may reflect trade-offs between the alternatives and recommend unexpected housing items and thus improve rational housing decision-making. The model expanded the search scope of housing alternatives to the entire city of Seoul utilizing public big data and GIS data. The preferences derived from the results can be used by suppliers, individual investors, and policymakers. Especially for architects, the architectural planning and design process will reflect users’ perspective and preferences, and provide quantitative data in the housing decision-making process for urban planning and administrative units.