Introduction to Housing and Human Settlements

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the introductory concepts, theoretical frameworks, housing typologies, and key scholars from Module 1 of Architecture 135: Introduction to Housing and Human Settlements.

Shelter

A place or structure providing basic protection from environmental conditions, physical danger, or other external threats, primarily focused on survival.

Dwelling

A physical environment that is inhabited or occupied as a place of living, which becomes meaningful through human occupation.

Inhabitation

The act and condition of living within a place.

House

A physical building used primarily for residential purposes that can be drawn, measured, constructed, bought, sold, rented, demolished, or renovated.

Home

The lived, personal, social, emotional, and symbolic dimension of dwelling; a lived relationship with place containing memories, identity, routines, and attachments.

Household

A person or group sharing a living arrangement and organizing aspects of everyday life together around a dwelling, distinguished from kinship-based family.

Housing

The multi-dimensional physical, social, economic, cultural, environmental, and institutional conditions through which people obtain, occupy, use, and experience places for living.

The Continuum of Human Habitation

The conceptual progression of human living spaces from basic individual protection to collective community creation: Shelter, Dwelling, House, Home, Household, Housing, Community, and Human Settlement.

Amos Rapoport

Architect and environmental-behavior scholar who wrote 'House Form and Culture' (1969), arguing that house form is primarily shaped by culture and social organization rather than physical climate alone.

Paul Oliver

British architectural historian and author of 'Dwellings: The House Across the World' who documented vernacular architecture as a repository of accumulated environmental and cultural knowledge.

Vernacular Housing

Traditional dwellings built using local materials and technologies that serve as a record of how a community has learned to adapt to its climate, culture, and way of life.

John F. C. Turner

Architect and theorist who challenged the idea of housing as a standardized commodity supplied by institutions, conceptualizing housing as a process and a verb.

Housing as a Verb

The conceptual proposition by John F. C. Turner stating that housing is not merely a static product people receive, but an active, user-controlled process of building, modifying, managing, and adapting.

Incremental Housing

An approach to housing where dwellings are constructed and upgraded gradually over time by residents according to their evolving needs, priorities, and financial resources.

ELEMENTAL

A Chilean architecture firm led by Alejandro Aravena that popularized the 'half of a good house' approach to incremental social housing.

Quinta Monroy

A pioneer incremental housing project in Iquique, Chile (2003) designed by ELEMENTAL, which supplied the initial core structure and basic services while allowing residents to self-build expansions over time.

Adequate Housing

A recognized standard under the international human-rights framework stating that housing must satisfy seven criteria: legal security of tenure, availability of services/infrastructure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, location, and cultural adequacy.

UN-Habitat

The United Nations agency focused on sustainable urbanization and human settlements, which establishes that adequate housing is a fundamental human right rather than a privilege.

Human Settlement

A spatial organization of people, dwellings, infrastructure, activities, institutions, and natural systems across scales ranging from isolated rural dwellings to metropolitan areas.

Jane Jacobs

Urbanist and author of 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' (1961) who emphasized the community dimension of housing, active sidewalks, mixed uses, and 'eyes on the street'.

Housing Unit

A distinct residential living space intended for occupancy by a household or individual, serving as a primary physical and statistical measurement unit.

Housing Type

The physical or organizational category of a dwelling or group of dwellings based on structural layout and arrangement.

Detached Housing

A dwelling structure that is physically separated from other residential buildings on its own plot of land.

Semi-Detached Housing

Two dwelling units that share a common partition wall with a firewall while remaining independently occupied.

Row Housing

A series of attached dwelling units arranged continuously along a street or shared boundary.

Townhouse

A residential dwelling unit attached to neighboring units that typically extends vertically across two or more stories.

Apartment

A self-contained residential unit located within a larger multi-unit building, commonly offered for rent.

Condominium

An individually owned residential unit within a multi-unit complex that includes joint ownership of and financial responsibility for common areas and amenities.

Informal Housing

Housing developed partly or wholly outside formal institutional systems of urban planning, land tenure, construction permitting, or regulatory frameworks.

Housing Density

The concentration of residential units or population within a defined land area, typically quantified in units per hectare or persons per hectare.

Housing Tenure

The legal, contractual, or customary arrangement under which a household occupies a dwelling, encompassing ownership, rental, lease, cooperative, and informal occupancy.

Affordable Housing

Housing whose total costs can be sustained by a household without creating an excessive financial burden that undermines the ability to satisfy other essential living needs.

Social Housing

Housing designed to support households underserved by the commercial housing market, often delivered through government programs, nonprofits, or public-private partnerships.

Public Housing

Housing developed, owned, funded, or administered directly by public authorities or government agencies for designated beneficiary groups.

Residential Environment

The physical, social, and environmental setting encompassing a dwelling unit, its immediate surroundings, and the facilities that support daily life.

Neighborhood

A spatially identifiable residential environment containing households, streets, shared spaces, community facilities, and social networks.

Spatial Cost of Living

The economic concept that housing affordability depends not only on the construction or purchase price of a building, but also on location-dependent costs such as transit, commute time, and access to employment.