The Role of Circulation Spaces in Creating Flexible Housing Units

Professor, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shahid Beheshti University
Flexible housing is among many topics of interest for contemporary architects. Production of housing that would be responsive to the many and varying needs of occupants throughout a life cycle can solve a great part of current housing issues both socially and economically. There are many factors affecting flexible housing design, one of them being access and circulation which is of inevitable importance in the architectural plan design. The focus of this paper is on circulation spaces aiming at enhancing the flexibility of design.
A library research was conducted in the first step, exploring the views of pioneers of flexible housing design regarding the role of circulation spaces. Several examples of housing plans were then reviewed in the next step. Since the complexity of different projects is variable from the flexibility perspective, hierarchical levels of complexity were introduced in this paper (from simple to complex) to help analyze the cases presented with regard to the role of access and circulation spaces. In the final step, a group of access and circulation design solutions is presented at each level of complexity. It is also revealed that the organization into levels of complexity result in better understanding of flexibility so that learning about simpler levels facilitates design in more complex levels.