NEED-BASED HOUSES: A STUDY ON SPACE ISSUES AND INTERVENTIONS IN SHILLONG CITY

Abstract

The need to be housed is a basic requirement and based on various factors that affect the way how houses can manifest and evolve, we can observe a multitude of forms which it may adopt based on one or several combinations of factors. In the context of these factors and the people to whom they apply, there is no particular ‘type’ of person who lives in any particular type of house so much as a combination of circumstances that determine their occupancy. It becomes a question, then, of whether these houses meet the requirements of their inhabitants. The study aims to understand the housing typologies that define the local context and document the nature of their transformation – their elements, spaces, structure, and form. As a person’s history and experiences can shape their housing expectations, social, cultural, economic, material, and spatial, among other inter- and intra-relationships, can impact how people view the houses that they live in. While the scope of the study is to look at how residents’ needs affect space, it may also look at interventions to the housing typology usage in general to determine the applicability and relevance of small space design solutions. To facilitate this, we limit ourselves to houses of Shillong city in the state of Meghalaya, particularly to Khasi Christian households to attempt to understand what factors define living in them and the issues that may come from the same. This may provide a baseline of core issues faced by their inhabitants, which can serve toward developing a need-based framework of interventions that can address space issues across various local and neighbourhood contexts.