Investigation of user participatory process in the production of social housing for low income groups

Urbanization is one of the most important process that makes visible the change of community life. The environmental and physical changes cause human relationships to alter and human behavior to adapt to the new environment. Social housing and mass housing systems are applied as a solution to the problem of housing shortage that ensue from urbanization process. The housing problem that emerged with urbanization has been tried to be solved by different solutions within the scope of the social housing policies that states have produced. While some developed social housing projects for the topic succeeded, wrong policies accelerated the formation of informal settlements Today, approximately one billion people live in informal settlements and are expected to double this number in the next 20 years. Informal settlements such as the 'slum' settlements in Turkey or the 'favela' in Brazil, especially in developing countries, constitute urban areas as dominant sources. There are new methods and studies developed to enable the unplanned construction to be controlled and to facilitate the adaptation to urban life. The underlying cause of the problem is that low-income users do not have enough budget to be a resident, and they try to meet their needs with informal means and their own unique solutions. It is possible to talk about various groups of actors depending on the political and socio-economic situation of different countries in the formation of low cost and affordable housing solutions. Social housing for people with low income contains different actors which have an active role in the design and construction phase. These actors involve; people with low income, the government, investors, non-governmental organizations and rarely designers. These actors, who are prominent within the scope of the thesis, will focus on the contributions and activities of the low income group user, state and designer. The human-centered thought movement that started to be active in the arts and social fields in the 1960s contributed to the idea of user participation in the space design and decision processes by influencing the architecture. In addition, with this period, 'the user' in architecture with criticism of modernism; at CIAM (Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) congress the borders have been transformed from 'the passive user' who has been passivated by the defined spaces defined by the designers to 'the active user' who is considered by the variable and transformable forms by Archigram. In the 1970s, the first examples of user participation have begun to be practiced in residential projects. Walter Segal's 'Borough of Lewisham' social housing project, where the user is involved in the construction process, is one of the first examples in this practice. After the 1970s, changing state policie, changed the understanding of the social state, and people with economic inefficiency began to live in social housing located outside the city. The rapid and mass production of the building blocks started to grow in the same solid forms in different geographies without considering the environmental factors, and the relationship between the living spaces that they formed and the environment created by the users and the environment started to be questioned. One of these mass housing production models is the Pruitt-Igoe mass housing which is designed by Architect Minoru Yamasaki in Saint Louis, United States. The Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, consisting of 11 floors, 33 blocks and 2,740 residential units, was demolished in 1972 from security weakness. In this thesis, the effect of the level of user participation and the process in the social housing for people with low income was investigated through the samples and the positive and negative effects were tried to be visualized. This study, treats the social housing as an architectural system. With this point of view, the aim of thesis is to analyze architectural characteristics of the selected building groups, to investigate interactions and relationships between physical spaces and corresponding social practices in these systems; which physical features of architecture support or non-support community's social life, social interactions and its potentials. The study is proposed to reinvestigate through social housing that the architecture creates life beyond produces a physical entity. In accordance with this purpose, some architectural examples from Turkey and the world were selected and the study being conducted on these examples such as SAAL (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local) Bouça Porto, TOKİ (Turkey), Quinta Monroy (Chile) etc. The examples were selected considering varied roles of actors (people with low income, the government and designers) which are included the process of social housing production. Thus, chosen examples were categorized under 3 sections by the roles of these actors. - Examples which the user (people with low income), designer and government have equal roles in design and construction phase. The examples are SAAL (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local) Bouça Porto, Portugal and Viranşehir Su ve Toprak, Turkey. - Examples which the government has a dominant role in the design and the construction phase. The example is TOKİ Emlak Konut Tuzla 1. Etap, Turkey. - Examples which the user (people with low income) and designer has a dominant role in the design and the construction phase. The examples are Quinta Monroy, Chile and Düzce Umut Evleri, Turkey. For tracing the effects of architecture on the social practices, selected social housing projects will be analysed according to predetermined criteria based on relationships such as; roles of actors, user participation and relation between actorsin process of social housing. In addition,site plan of the settlement and settlement's relation (physically) with environment, public/private space, user/environment relationships in these settlements will be analysed for each project. Different experiments and studies have been carried out in the design and implementation process to ensure user participation. In particular, researches on the inclusion of the user in the computer aided design and even the management of the whole process have been examined within the scope of the thesis. Applications targeting low-income users to be involved in the design and implementation process have been grouped in three groups in the direction of common aspects. John Turner and World Bank collaborated in the first 'sites and services' initiatives in Peru, John Habraken's 'support and infill' applications that transformed from site and service applications, and finally 'incremental housing' applications with incomplete housing model. In conclusion, the aim of incorporating a low-income user into the design and implementation of the housing unit has been reached at the point where the user can be satisfied by embracing the living space and feeling belonging. The user who tends to change or abandon a place that he or she can not identify with is becoming more adept at areas where he / she has a say and can intervene. It has been observed that social housing projects, in which the user is active in the application and design phase, have different participation levels and design approaches in the direction of readings and studies. Examining varying examples and making visible the potentials of social housing architecture will hopefully provide better insights on the architecture of future social housing processes.