The Research On The Super-small Apartments

The logic chain of this thesis is as follows: facts→theories→values.The booming of super-small apartments in the real estate market of recent years should catch architects' attention. Based on a research into those super-small apartments in Changsha's real estate market, this thesis summarizes the basic characteristics of this kind of apartments, including their regional distribution, exterior design, plane layout and room arrangement, etc. These basic characteristics, analyzed from social and economic perspectives, can fully and reasonalbly explain why super-small apartments are more adaptable and vibrant in the market.If treated on a theoretical level of housing and dwelling style, super-small apartments essentially serve the purpose of reducing living space through simplifying and reconfiguring those traditional interior features of an apartment. This kind of simplification must be supported and supplemented by peripheral facilities, which are usually more effective, to a certain degree, in achieving a better quality of life than those independent dwelling style, and at the same time can save more energy and money. The dwelling fashion proposed by super-small aparments developers is actually a simplified life style, which is to satisfy basic needs in life through resource sharing by the whole society. This answers the aspirations of many emerging communities.Instances of similar dwelling style can be found in history: The Earthen Houses (Tulou) in Fujian, which have a history of more than 1,000 years, reduce the living cost of individual household through resource sharing and compromising the need of individual household for the benefit of the whole clan. The Unite d'Habitation in Marseilles, designed by Le Corbusier in 1945, tried to provide the tenants with more public sharing facilities, which not only made life easier for them but also could offer services unavailable to individual household. The apartments for old people in Japan give prominence to the special association between public services and the clan communities. Because they live together, the clan communities can satisfy their own needs easily. These three instances more or less retain some traces of Primitive Communism or Utopian Socialism, and Le Corbusier was even accused of being a communist by western journalists.We can gain some inspirations for new dewlling and housing styles from the practices of super-small housing: to satisfy various needs of housing through publicservice channels and clan community living style. Globalization and diversification are two sides of same coin. Diversified values lead to community identification, common needs of life result in specialization of public services, and the clan community living style will make life easier and better for us.The most important discovery of the author is the developing trend of housing style diversification: from super-small housing to clan community housing.