A Humanistic Approach to Housing

This paper is an effort to rethink approaches to housing design and assess potentials and limitations of each approach to propose a dynamic process, which could respond to diverse human needs and living styles. This is based on a qualitative research method. Human needs are considered in interrelated conceptual layers such as socio-cultural, linguistic, historic, phenomenological, and psychological. The comprehensive model thus developed will enable the designer to recognize processes, which affect the self-place relations as defined by past, present, and future states of the house to be designed. Such a house will respond to the needs of its inhabitants in different periods of their life.