Generality versus Specificity; A Study on the Interior Space of Apartments. Bendik Manum Oslo School of Architecture, Norway bendik.manum@aho.

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1 Generality versus Specificity; A Study on the Interior Space of Apartments Bendik Manum Oslo School of Architecture, Norway bendik.manum@aho.no Abstract The sizes of the rooms and the spatial configuration are characteristics of interior space that strongly affect the degree of generality versus specificity concerning functions or use. In the PhD-study referred to in this paper, these characteristics of space are analysed in a sample of 150 apartments built in Oslo since From this analysis three generations of apartments are identified. Until about 1955 the interior space was general with respect both to the sizes of the rooms and to the spatial configuration. From the 1950s till the 1980s there was a change towards functional specificity; the rooms became more differentiated in size while the spatial layout became deeper and more hierarchic. Since then, the number of rooms has decreased and the spatial layout has become simpler; the apartments have changed towards a type in-between the two described above. However, due to both the sizes of the rooms and to the positioning of the different rooms within the spatial configuration, the interior space is still highly specific regarding function or use. It is hard to see that the apartments now being built are corresponding to the contemporary diversity of preferences about housing and living. 1. Introduction In Oslo, as in other Norwegian cities, industries and institutions have been closed down or relocated during the last 20 years and have thereby made central urban areas available for other purposes. This, as well as rising economic wealth and an increasing interest in urban living, are now causing a great activity in the planning and building of urban housing; architects are at the moment designing the future homes for a huge number of people. As the households and the living preferences are becoming more diverse, a closer look at the capability of domestic space for handling a plurality of needs and preferences is of both architectural and public interest. This paper refers to a PhD-study at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. This study consists of two main parts. The first is a historical analysis focusing on the development of the interior space of apartments since In the second part, apartments found to be typical or otherwise interesting through the initial historical study are chosen for a comparative study of some different apartments as spaces for contemporary living. This paper describes those aspects of the interior space focused on in the PhD-study and summarises the historical study where Space Syntax analysis has been essential for identifying changes in the apartment design. 2 1 Development is here to be understood as changes of new built apartments through time, not as transformation of apartments. 2 The methodological strategy of the PhD-study was presented at the conference Methodologies in Housing Research at KTH, Stockholm in My paper is available at http :

2 4 Bendik Manum 2. Housing Design Corresponding to a Plurality of Preferences Due to the less dominant position of the traditional household consisting of two parents and children and because of the larger variety of social, cultural and national backgrounds of the population, there is now an increasing diversity of housing preferences and needs. When pointing out the need for housing capable of handling both the plurality of contemporary households and the future changes in needs and preferences, the Norwegian scholar Birgit Cold (Cold, 1984, p.10) describes generality as one of the relevant strategies for housing design. Generality is here to be understood as the capacity of a fixed situation to serve a variety of demands or wishes. This is contrary to specificity which describes a situation that is specialised in serving one or a few (out of many possible) demands or wishes. The other strategies described are flexibility and elasticity. 3 The notion of flexibility describes a situation that is easily changeable while elasticity is to be understood as the ability to adapt to changing demands or preferences by changing size. Generality differs from the strategies of elasticity and of flexibility as the capacity for handling various preferences is permanent; it does not (or does to a lesser extent) presuppose the action of making physical changes. An aspect of interior space focused on the on going PhD-study is the dichotomy of generality versus specificity. 3. Aspects of the Interior Space Relevant for Studying Specificity versus Generality When discussing generality versus specificity of apartments, it is possible to distinguish between two relevant aspects of the interior space. One aspect is the characteristics of the individual room, such as size and shape of the room, daylight conditions and technical equipment. A room of 1.2 square metres without a window and containing a WC is highly specific regarding functions, whereas a room of 12 square metres with good daylight has a large variety of potential uses. The other aspect is the characteristics of the context of the individual room; the surrounding spaces strongly affect the potential use of a room. These two aspects of space can be described as characteristics internal versus external to the individual room. 4 Following this distinction, the study concentrates on two characteristics of the interior space; one is the size of rooms, the other is the spatial configuration. The size of a room is an internal characteristic of this room while the spatial configuration of the apartment is a characteristic external to the individual room. The size of a room is a feature that strongly influences the potential for use. As shown later, simple statistical analyses on easily available numerical data are here bringing about findings relevant for discussing the development of generality versus specificity of the interior space. (See Figure 1.) Through the theory of Space Syntax, methods are developed for studying spatial configurations. As pointed out by Hillier (1996), the usability of a space is strongly affected by the positioning within the spatial configuration. In the PhD-study, where an intention has been to look for patterns in the historical development of apartments, a relevant approach // workshop 4, Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Methods: A PhD Study on the Interior Space of Apartments. 3 These are the same categories as described by Klarqvist (1969, p ). 4 This is a parallel to the distinction of global versus local properties of space done by Hillier (1996, p. 317) when discussing movement versus occupation.

3 Generality versus Specificity; A Study on the Interior Space of Apartments 5 Figure 1: LEFT: Floor areas. RIGHT: Legend (Used when naming the rooms in tables and figures.) is Space Syntax analysis using connectivity graphs. As shown by Hanson in Decoding Homes and Houses (Hanson, 1998), this higher level of abstraction from the architectural object than the floor plan drawing makes it possible to discover similarities and differences between spatial layouts that are difficult to find by comparing the floor plan drawings only. 4. The Case and the Sample When intending to study the development of interior space of Norwegian apartments, the initial question was what sample of apartments might be appropriate as data. In the PhD-study the OBOS has been chosen as the case for a closer analysis. The OBOS (Oslo Bolig Og Sparelag) is the main co-operative housing company in Oslo. It was established in 1929 and has been a major developer of housing in Oslo ever since. 5 The principal strategy for the sampling has been to select three OBOS-projects from every year of the period. This selection is done according to two parameters, size (looking for the projects containing the highest number of apartments) and location (trying to achieve a distribution between the east/north, the west and the city centre). Within each of these projects the most frequent apartment has been selected. 6 The total number of 5 Even if a large variety of architects have been engaged in the projects of the OBOS, co-operation with leading and awarded architects has by the OBOS always been seen as an important strategy for developing quality housing within a reasonable cost. When intending to shed some light on the development of urban housing in Norway in general by doing a case study of one single actor, it is hard to find better candidates than the OBOS. A closer description of the OBOS is published in the Norwegian architectural magazine Byggekunst (Sjolie, 2004).

4 6 Bendik Manum apartments in the sample is 150. The first number in the code used when naming the apartments in figures and tables refers to the year of construction. For both the space syntax analysis and the analysis of the sizes of rooms, floor plan drawings have been the main source of information. A floor plan drawing is an abstraction of architecture that captures essential characteristics of the interior space. 7 Even if drawings are secondary sources, as the built apartments would be the primary, drawings are a reliable source. As long as there have not been any illegal building constructions, which are rare when Norwegian apartment housing is concerned, the drawings in the municipal archives illustrate the apartments as they were built. With few exceptions the archive contains floor plan drawings of all buildings in Oslo. By this, the floor plan drawings are a relevant, reliable and easily accessible source for the study. 5. The Room Classification Both the room size analysis and the Space Syntax analysis do require some definition of the rooms which are to be analysed. In most cases from the sample this is simple as the apartments consist of clearly defined rooms separated by doors or door-like openings. 8 The exceptions are mostly living room areas which include dining area or kitchen. In such cases there have been two criteria for modelling the kitchen or the dining area as individual rooms. Firstly they must have the character of being a separate space (i.e. a space being partly enclosed from the rest of the living room). Secondly they must have sufficient daylight otherwise than through the living room (i.e. having their own window). An alternative modelling could be to apply the concept of convex space 9. However, even if being theoretically consistent, modelling by such subdivision would not correspond to how the spaces are used and experienced The Room Size Analysis Figure 1 left illustrates the floor areas of some main rooms in the sample of apartments. It is possible to distinguish between two categories of rooms when the development of the 6 Most frequent apartment means the most frequent type of apartment in the project. Type of apartment is here to be understood as identical or mirrored apartments when floor plan is concerned. 7 On the potential of the floor plan drawing in representing architecture, Bruno Taut has made the following statement: Wer Sinn dafür hat, kann die Architektur am Grundriss ablesen, ohne den Bau zu sehen, so wie ein Musiker die Noten liest. (Taut, 1927, p. 68) 8 If using the concept of Raumplan versus Plan Libre (Risselada, 1988), distinguishing between Loos-space and Corbusier-space, the large majority of rooms are of the Loos-kind. 9 A convex space is a space where no straight line between two points in the space crosses the boundary of the space; or more literally: a space where all the space is visible from any point in the space. (Hillier and Hanson, 1984, p.98.) 10 How the interior space is labelled by name indicates how it is both conceptualised and used. In interviews done in the on going PhD-study, the inhabitants are asked to label all parts of their apartment by name. This rarely correspond to a subdivision according to convex space; the naming of space strongly correspond to the division of space by doors or door-like openings, regardless the number of convex spaces needed for modelling the space. The only exceptions are some of the living rooms containing kitchen or dining where these areas of the room are named as kitchen and dining room (without thereby having to be convex spaces).

5 Generality versus Specificity; A Study on the Interior Space of Apartments 7 floor area is concerned. The first category, which includes living room and bathroom 11, shows an increasing floor area up to about 1980 followed by a decrease. Subsequent this declining tendency since 1980, the size of the living room has been increasing again during the last five years. This is not due to a change towards a higher standard of more spacious living rooms. The explanation is that most apartments no longer have a kitchen as a separate room; the kitchen is now an area included in the living room. The second category is constituted by the bedrooms and shows a different development from the first category. The average size of the bedrooms has been declining more or less continuously through the whole period. The change towards more differentiated and less general rooms is most significant when comparing the size of the living room with the size of the main bedroom. Until 1940 the average floor size of the main bedroom (or the second largest room of the apartment) was 15 square meters while the largest room usually was between square meters. Judged by the size, the living room and the main bedroom was then of the same category. In recently built apartments this is very different. Since 1990 the average floor area of the main bedroom is 11.3 square metres. This is a fundamentally different kind of space than the living room which now on average is a room of 31 square meters and includes the kitchen; the bedroom is a room for sleeping while the living room is the space for all kind of day-time living. 7. The Space Syntax Analysis The table shown in Figure 3 summarises the Space Syntax analysis by listing some basic data of every third case of the total sample The Justified Graphs The Space Syntax analysis is done by drawing the connectivity graphs and analysing these. Figure 2 shows some typical justified graphs and the corresponding floor plans. The space from which you enter the apartment is the root of the justified graph. This space is usually the staircase, while in some cases it is a corridor or an outdoor walkway. When doing the Space Syntax calculations, the rooms from which you enter the apartments as well as the storage rooms are excluded unless the storage room is a through-passage-room. Until 1955 the typical graph is a bush where all rooms except the balcony (if there is one) are connected to the entrance. From then, until , there was a development towards a higher number of separate rooms organized in a deeper spatial layout. Lately the number of rooms has decreased and the spatial structure is returned to a simpler type, which typically has the figure of a two-level-bush 13 where the entrance and the living room are the central and most integrated rooms. 11 When WCs or washing rooms are separate spaces, the floor areas of these rooms are included in the floor area of the bathroom. 12 As the Space Syntax analysis is done on the total sample of 150 apartments, the results referred in section 7 might slightly differ from what would be found if analysing only the 50 cases listed in figure There are generally two kinds of such two level bushes. One has branches only from the space step number two, which is the living(and kitchen)-room. (The entrance is here counted as the step number one from the outside.) The other kind has branches from both the entrance on step one and from the living room on the step two.

6 8 Bendik Manum Figure 2: Some apartments representative for their time-period, illustrated by floor plan drawings and connectivity graphs. (The first number refers to the year of construction.) 7.2. Some Room Sequences Some changes of the spatial configuration can be pointed out by studying spatial sequences such as the one from entrance to kitchen and the one from the main bedroom to the bathroom. Until 1965 most apartments (95%) had a kitchen with direct access from the entrance. This changed significantly about Since then about 50% of the apartments have a kitchen that can only be accessed through the living room. The spatial sequence from bedroom to bathroom shows a similar development towards more through-passing. Until the late 1950s, when the connectivity graph usually was a simple bush, the entrance was the only room linking bathroom and bedroom in 90% of the apartments. In the period this percentage was reduced to being 65 on average. Since 1995 only 55% of the apartments have a main bedroom that can be accessed without passing through the living room Space Types According to Spatial Topology According to Spatial Topology When describing topological positions within a spatial configuration, Hillier (1996, p ) distinguishes between A, B, C and D types of spaces. In short the A-type is a space connected to one other space only. B is a space which is the connection to a sub-complex of spaces without rings and without itself being part of a ring, while C and D categorise different kinds of positions on rings. Generally, when a space B has to be passed through on the way to a space A, the use of either of these spaces strongly influences the potential for use of the other. For such a space A to be general depends on the space B not to socially restrict the passage to A. On the other hand, the potential use of the space B is strongly dependant on the kind of through-passage generated by the space A. When categorising the positioning of the living rooms according to this typology, some

7 Generality versus Specificity; A Study on the Interior Space of Apartments 9 Figure 3: Table listing some space syntax parameters of every third case of the total sample.

8 10 Bendik Manum changes through time are significant. Until 1955 nearly 55% of the living rooms were of the A-type while 35% were of the C-type.) 14 In the late 1960s the living room changed towards being of the C-type; in the years % of the living rooms were a C-type space. During the 1980s there again was a change; since 1995 the living room has been a B-type space in 65% of the apartments. When the living room is an A-type space entered from a neutral entrance, it is a space with few social limitations on use given by the spatial layout. The C-type is a through-passage-space, but being on a ring all movements do not have to be through the space (there are alternative routes). When the living room lately usually is of the B-type, the living rooms and the connected rooms are strongly dependant on each other when the potential for use is concerned. This indicates a limited potential for use of both the living room and the connected rooms; the contemporary spatial layout is by this less general than the earlier apartments Rings Internal rings are an essential feature of spatial configurations. Until % of the apartments in the sample had an internal ring of rooms. Most of these rings (60%) consisted of three rooms. During the period the frequency of apartments having internal rings was much lower, only 30%. About 1965 there was a change and as many as 70% of the apartments built between 1965 and 1980 had an internal ring. Most of these (70%) had large rings consisting of 4-7 rooms. The next significant change happened in the early 1980s; the frequency of rings decreased rapidly during a few years and among the apartments built since 1990 there is only one that has an internal ring Mean Depth from the Entrance Until 1950, all rooms except the balcony and the bathroom were to be entered directly from the entrance (or from a hall) in 75% of the apartments. (Where the bathrooms did not have such a direct access, this is due to the WC being a through-passage-room between the entrance and the bathroom.) As the number of rooms in the apartments was increasing towards , the spatial configuration became deeper. Whereas the average Mean Depth of the entrance, MD(E), was 1,27 during the period , it was 1,66 in the period Since then, the number of rooms has decreased, giving an average MD(E) of 1,43 since This is significantly higher that the MD(E) from the first period due to the two-level-bush as the typical spatial layout of the last period compared to the one-level-bush of the first period Rank of Integration Integration is here described by Relative Asymmetry (RA), which is a value between 0 and 1 where 0 represents the highest possible integration. As expected from the connectivity graphs, the entrance generally is the most integrated room. Until 1955 there was no exception from this. During all the time until the late 1970s, the dominant rank of the main rooms regarding RA was E < L <= K <= Bd1 ; this was the case in 80% of the apartments. Since then the rank of integration has been more diverse. In the period the main bedroom was more integrated than the kitchen in 50% of the apartments. In 4 out of the 7 most recently built apartments, the living room is the most integrated 14 The balcony is here defined as an extension of the living room, not as a separate connected space.

9 Generality versus Specificity; A Study on the Interior Space of Apartments 11 Figure 4: LEFT: Mean depth from entrance, MD(E). MIDDLE: Relative Asymmetry of entrance, RA(E). RIGHT: Relative Asymmetry of living room, RA(L). space. This is a significant change happening just now; this rank of integration does not occur in any of the apartments built before 1957 and in only 10% of the apartments built between 1957 and Control Value When the Control Value (CV) is concerned, the most significant changes are the ones of the living room versus the entrance. Until 1955 the CV of the entrance was far higher than the CV of any other room. In the whole period of the entrance was the room with the highest CV in 95% of the apartments. Since 1960, due to the more central position of the living rooms, the number of apartments where the entrance has the highest CV is lower (63% of the apartments). The Control Value indicates to what extent a space is controlling the access to its neighbouring spaces. However, what amount of control this represents in real life depends on the use of the controlling room ; a corridor having a high CV does not mean that one or some of the inhabitants have much control of what is going on in the apartment. If a living room or a kitchen has the same high CV, the situation is different. As these spaces are more frequently occupied by the inhabitants one can here expect a high CV to indicate high control of what is happening in the apartment. When the CV has changed from typically being 3.0 for the entrance and 0.75 for the living room to now being in average more than 2.0 for the living room, the social control of the life in the apartment can be assumed to be increased significantly. 8. Three Generations of Apartments From the analysis described above it is possible to distinguish between three main types of apartments regarding the interior space. Even if there are exceptions, these types have a chronological order. Until about 1955 most apartments had a character of generality with respect both to the size of the rooms and to the spatial configuration. Compared to the later apartments, the bedrooms were large while the living rooms were small; they both had the potential for various uses. This generality was enforced by the spatial configuration where the kitchen, the living room and the bedrooms were similarly situated within a simple spatial configuration; a configuration where all the rooms were accessible from the central entrance. When the living room by calculation is more integrated than the kitchen and

10 12 Bendik Manum the bedrooms, this is caused by the balcony (which is to be entered from the living room) or a ring made by a door between the living room and a bedroom. From the 1950s till about 1985 there was a change towards thoroughly planned functional specificity; the interior spaces became highly specialised both in terms of the design of the individual rooms and in terms of the spatial configuration. The different rooms were tailored according to specific functions, the number of rooms was increasing, the size of the rooms became more diverse and the total floor area became larger. In the period more than half of the apartments had WC, bathroom and washing room as three separate rooms. In most of the large apartments of this period, the kitchen was a space partly separated from the living room. (Such as apartment number 69-2 in figure 2). The spatial layout of the apartments had a deep and hierarchic configuration where the rooms were situated according to their very specific function. With a few exceptions the entrance was still the most integrated space, but on average the living rooms now have nearly the same RA-value as the entrances. During the last ten years the apartments have changed towards something in-between the two earlier main types. The number of rooms has again become fewer. Neither the individual rooms nor the spatial layout are any longer strictly general or strictly specific. When the characteristics of the living room are concerned, the room is general in the way that it has the size, shape and daylight conditions which make it appropriate for a wide range of activities. In spite of this, the living room is not very general; it is a room specialised for living. Usually being a through-passage-room to bedrooms or to the kitchen, the living room does not have the potential for rest or quiet activities as is the case for the living room of the typical pre-1950 apartment. Compared to the complex spatial layout of the apartment type, the principal spatial configuration has lately become more similar to the early and general ones, but due to the much more central positioning of the living room, the apartments are still highly specific concerning the use of space. Regarding the kitchen, the typical recent apartment does not have a separate kitchen; it is included in the living room. 9. Some Remarks on the Contemporary Apartments The recent tendency in apartment design is worth commenting on. The now typical apartments, which have only one room for general daytime living, are well suited for some categories of households. These households, which are now strongly affecting the market for new apartments, are wealthy young couples or singles (a category which has been increasing due to the later birth age and the corresponding later start of family life) and older couples (whose children no longer live at home) who prefer selling their house and garden. Most such households are uniform in the way that they do not depend on having more than one room for general living. However, for a large number of households the apartments now being built are not appropriate as more than one room for general living is preferred. Such less uniform households are of several kinds. One is all those who by cultural background prefer separate men s and women s spaces, another is the common but not traditional families (such as a pair of years, with small children and where one of the parents has teenager-children still living at home) and a third is the different kinds of non-couple-households (such as students or others sharing one apartment). As long as the apartments are sold anyway, this is not considered to be a problem in the contemporary Norwegian housing market. This has yet scarcely become a housing problem in

11 Generality versus Specificity; A Study on the Interior Space of Apartments 13 any sense due to the fact that these new apartments are still relatively few compared to the total stock of apartments. However, it can be assumed that the contemporary apartment design, if continuing, might cause future problems of high importance due to a mismatch between the preferences and needs of housing and the apartments then available. In the work described in this paper, methods developed through Space Syntax have been essential for studying the development of the interior space of apartments. Awareness of both this historical background and of the spatial characteristics of the contemporary apartments is an important basis for further discussions on contemporary and future housing design. Literature Cold, B., Gunnarshaug, J., Hiortøy, E., Raaen. H., (1984) Nye boligformer, en eksempelsamling, (New kinds of dwellings, a collection of examples), Trondheim, Tapir. Hanson, J., (1998) Decoding Homes and Houses, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Hillier, B., Hanson, J., (1984) The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Hillier, B., (1996) Space is the Machine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Klarqvist, B., (1969) Bostadsplanering, (Housing Design), Göteborg, Läromedelsförlagen Akademiförlaget. Risselada, M., (1988) Raumplan versus Plan Libre, New York, Rizzoli. Sjolie, M., (2004) Hus i Bruk - OBOS 75 år, Byggekunst, 2004(07), p , Oslo. Taut, B., (1927) Bauen der neue Wohnbau, Leipzig/Berlin, Verlag Klinkhardt & Biermann.