Daily life support : building a collective neighborhood

Do the house forms and residential neighborhoods commonly found in the U.S. accommodate the present needs and lifestyles of the people who live in them? The single-family detached house and multi-family units like the triple-decker originated in an era quite unlike the one in which we now find ourselves. I intend to explore the possibility that we may not have to adapt to a dwelling sensibility that is restrictive and inappropriate for the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Perhaps the result will not look radically different than the models we already know but will only function in a subtly different manner, for very specific reasons of use and daily life. I will design a piece of a residential neighborhood in Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts based on the premise that the physical, organizational, and functional aspects of housing design do affect and can contribute to the quality of people's lives. Some questions that I find valid for exploration in the context of housing are: 1) can a mix of uses animate a neighborhood by providing commonly needed services and by reducing the isolation of the home from everything else in life: work, shopping, child care, entertainment?; 2) have we been perpetuating outdated Victorian ideals about the separation of work and home based on roles related to gender? If so, couldn't housing design be more progressive in supporting the way women and men actually live today rather than the way one's great-grandparents lived?;

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1990

Author dc:creator

• Hamanaka, Leslie K. (Leslie Kinu)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Renee Y. Chow.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/66723

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/66723