Socio-cultural factors in housing design: reconsidering the utilitarian and social roles of kitchens due to lifestyle changes in metropolitan Shanghai

Abstract

Targeting the family of the young working class in Shanghai, this paper provides a critical review of how designers and building byelaws are ignorant of the need to gauge changes in lifestyle and, as a result, changes in user requirement for buildings. It is observed that very often designers and law-makers assume a status quo scenario by simply following the building regulations and building standards that are often quantitative in nature as the norm for designing buildings. It is argued that user requirement of home evolves drastically in an ultra-economic-based transformation of society. As shown in a survey by the research team, the work-oriented lifestyle of the young working class demonstrated a change in attitude and expectation in the role of home and space usage. Using kitchen space as a control subject of the study, the authors proposed that there are two new trends in young working families: one that favours open-plan kitchen and another that favours separate kitchens. Discussion of the implications on design and space usage due to these opposite preferences argues that there is a need for re-structuring the design paradigm of the kitchen and its role (other than utilitarian) in a home. The analysis pinpoints socio-cultural factor as a significant influence for designing buildings by the example of kitchen, more so than those physical parameters such as daylight provision for the kitchen.