Week 1

Smaller Living - An Introduction

Settlement Patterns Affect:

• Urban sprawl

• Urban decay

• Increasing social segregation

• Political and economical displacement of the disadvantaged

Changing Demographics

• Blended families

• Single parent

• Single dweller

• Same sex couples

These demographics highlights the opportunity to downsize to multiple unit housing are low maintenance solutions

Climate Change

• Challenges infrastructure and livelihoods

• Housing and infrastructure should be climate defensive where appropriate responses include attention to preventative, adaptive, social and economic solutions

High Density Cities

• Increase human interaction

• Reduced energy consumption

Understanding the effects of larger living on our environmental and social climates contextualises the current housing crisis. As someone who lives in student accommodation, I didn’t fully grasp how detrimental our national housing crisis was to health and climate. With this context, understanding why we are redesigning a 2 bedroom apartment into 2, 2-bedroom apartments makes sense. With the climate issues in mind, biophilic design might be an interesting avenue to research and include in the redesign.

Site Measure

Determining where to take the site measure was an ordeal, however, after finding a home that was too large for our purpose, we decided to cut off 2 bedrooms, leaving us with an 89m2 space.