Chung Yan Chan

Architecture MArch (Hons)

Women Collective Housing: Enhancing Sheltered Housing to Tackle Social Isolation in Elderly Women Through a Deep Retrofit

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Chung Yan Chan

Women Collective Housing explores the gender and social class segregation of spaces within a household and how this has evolved throughout the centuries. The inequality of living allows the exploration of how feminists, architects and social reformers tackled this issue through design. This guided the thought of whether the integration of leisure and labour activities have provided more work for women. 

The thesis attempts to resolve this by challenging the removal of domestic labour from the home through testings where leisure and labour are separated in the collective housing. By removing labour from the house, it maximises private areas for independent use.

The flexibility of spaces in the thesis provides a model for the future of social housing. By designing living and communal areas to suit the living needs of all women can reduce homelessness in many, effectively reducing social isolation felt through a disconnection with its community. The living spaces is to be designed to house elderly women as well as women with children, with sensitivity to privacy and its surroundings.

By creating communal spaces, it gives women the opportunity to engage at a community level through the growing, harvesting and sharing of freshly grown flowers and produce. It allows the community to grow and form closer relationships, reducing isolation and loneliness in not only women but the dispersed neighbourhoods of Dundee.

Detailed Section with Part Elevation: Living Space with Thermal and Lighting Comfort
Women Collective Housing - Landscaping for Communal Living
Logie Housing Estate, Dundee: Sketches

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