Personalization as a sustainable approach to mass housing ( the fundamental theory )

Abstract

Standardised house design is commonly employed in current mass housing in Malaysia. Although all completed houses are assumed to have met the building and planning regulations, the current renovation works indicate the ‘failure’ of the design to meet the expectation of users of different backgrounds. This paper propagates “personalization” as a sustainable means of achieving sustainable living environment. Personalization is an act of marking and changing in order to impose control on one’s territory. The act ranges from furniture rearrangement, putting up displays to structural modification of living units. “Personalization” is essential and a continuous process in housing because people’s physical and psychological needs are ever changing. In mass housing personalization, user participation is central because home environment is an extension of man’s existence and personality, hence man is an agent of environmental change and not merely a recipient of environmental influences. Man should be able to manipulate, shape and alter the environment to meet their needs. Instinctively man is directed by his goals in which to achieve this, he has to interact with his physical and non-physical environments. Cultural influences, particularly the multi-ethnic user values are seen as determinant to selecting and changing housing unit’s attributes. Although renovation works have been in practice in this country for a long time, there is no proper framework established to accommodate the potentially viable approach for a better sustainable and quality home making. This paper suggests a possible framework of personalization that is prerequisite to developing future house design prototypes.