Influence of domestic spatial organisation on family interaction: a study of contemporary apartments in Dhaka

Abstract

With the rising population and increasing housing demand, the urban house form has gone through a transformation which shaped the apartments in Dhaka during the last two decades. The change of house style influences the arrangement of space and consequently affects social and cultural content. Recently it is observed that the parent-child relationship is declining rapidly in the families in Dhaka. Lack of family interaction is affecting the socialization process which generates several recent social problems. To examine the relationship between the visibility of domestic space and family bondage of the family members this study presents the results of the spatial analysis conducted on a sample of 30 contemporary apartment plans in Dhaka using space syntax methodology. ‘Space Syntax’ is a set of techniques which creates important data about how social meanings and lifestyles are expressed in spatial models. This research undertakes both quantitative and qualitative observations. Most of the information about the spatial organization and the use of activity space is obtained from the field research. Socio-demographic data is acquired from the interviews with family members, while observations during the house visit have provided information on the use of domestic space and daily activities. To understand the visual characteristics of activity spaces visibility analysis is conducted on the collected plans using Visibility Graph Analysis (with Depth-map Software). Through syntactic analysis, this study is set out to explore whether the visual characteristic of spaces in the domestic sphere is creating segregation or integration among the family members and the role of visibility of spaces within the household in creating strong cohesion among the different members of the family. The examination of syntactic properties of a spatial organization reveals the relation between family interaction pattern and spatial configurations. A direct relationship between visual integration and family interaction is established by syntactic analysis in shared activity spaces. From the study, it is found that more visual integration in shared spaces creates more family interactions. On the other hand, spaces with less visual integration are responsible for reducing family interaction in contemporary domestic spatial organization. From the methodological perspective, all information collected from this study can further be transformed into a relationship diagram of space and activity that has the opportunity to help to adapt useful guidelines for practising designers.