SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
In the previous section I looked at what made a home and discussed the idea of how emotional and spiritual sustainability was implicit in the idea of home. Now we need to develop these ideas a little more and see how they inform the selection of the houses presented in this book.
Social sustainability is an issue both within the family and within the wider community. How, for example, does the home sustain the needs of families? How, also, does the home sustain healthy relationships between members of a family? And how does a house interact with its social context to sustain healthy social relationships?
In any society there is a constant negotiation between community and privacy. In Asian societies, in particular, it is probably true to say that, traditionally, community has taken precedence over privacy. The common good has always been promoted over individual needs or desires.
But all this is changing. Rapid urbanization, especially of the main cities, surging economic development, the emergence of an It culture, global financial management, and globalization in general have instigated significant social change throughout Asia. New economic sectors have had an enormous impact on rising levels of education which, as a result, have spawned new professions. These factors have created new demographics, with priorities potentially at odds with traditional society.
the traditional extended family has been complemented by the emergence of the nuclear family: people who remain single by choice or otherwise, couples who have delayed having children, or couples with only one or two children. At the same time, a changing cultural landscape has seen a growing interest in urban engagement, although this is offset to some extent by growing anxiety about real or perceived threats to domestic security, leading to gated and guarded communities or other defensive strategies to protect the home.
‘The extended family continues to sustain itself, but within an ongoing negotiation of greater privacy and independence for individuals within the family.’
These changes in the dynamics of traditional Asian families do not mean that newly urbanized Asia wants to throw out traditional values. What is happening in reality is another version of the conversation-cum-negotiation I have already referred to—and further confirmation that architectural moves do not happen in isolation but as part of a wider context of social and political debate as well as economic diversification.
The extended family thus continues to sustain itself, but within an ongoing negotiation of greater privacy and independence for individuals within the family. There are a number of architectural models for this. On the one hand, there is the single dwelling planned to provide privacy for individuals but pivoting around communal spaces. Then there is a model which breaks this down to a greater or lesser extent by ‘pavilionizing’ the house. This may involve a series of linked pavilions or a family compound with independent pavilions, or even houses clustered around a central, shared court. Another variation is simply to purchase multiple adjacent lots or subdivide one large lot to enable adult children to live next door to their parents and/or siblings.
Within the nuclear family there is, as I noted earlier, a growing respect for the autonomy of children and their particular needs. As long ago as 1938, in The Culture of Cities, Lewis mumford wrote that ‘the child is no less entitled to space than the adult: he must have shelves and cupboards for his toys, room for play and movement, a place for quiet retreat and study, other than his bed. No housing standard is adequate that provides only cubicles or dressing rooms for the child, or forces him into the constant company of adults.’ For the family to be truly sustainable, it is crucial to acknowledge that the world of the child is, despite its dependence on adults, a self-contained world with its own priorities and values. Equally, of course, parents are entitled to their own privacy and autonomy. These issues are addressed in house plans which clearly separate parent and children domains, again with linking communal areas where the family can come together.
The Ekamai house in Bangkok (page 28) illustrates a number of these issues in the one house. The free-flowing L-shaped plan of the ground floor offers direct connection to the garden court and a separate retreat for the couple’s child, while upstairs adult and child domains are at either end connected by a perimeter corridor. At the same time, operable timber shutters connect the garden court with the life of the street outside. In this way, the house contributes to sustaining the character of the precinct without compromising its own privacy and security.
GATED AND GUARDED COMMUNITIES
As a number of the houses in this book are located in gated or guarded communities, we need to look briefly at how this increasingly prevalent phenomenon impacts on social sustainability. The separation of the guarded community from the wider community is delineated but does not involve a physical barrier, merely a security presence. Hence, it remains to some degree a part of the public domain. The gated community, however, is walled off and only authorized entry is permitted, making it private and exclusive.
It is often argued that the phenomenon is inimical to social sustainability. Given that the term includes the word ‘community’, we need to ask whether such developments really create a community or whether they are simply aggregations of dwellings whose long-term consequence is, in fact, alienation—alienation from the wider community, but also alienation for the people living in the gated/guarded communities because of the isolation which results from living in what is basically a suburb without any of the ebb and flow of human activity that typifies an organic community.
Whether gated or guarded, there is inevitably a loss of connection to the broader social world. The standard explanation for gated/guarded communities is fear. The inhabitants are seeking security from a perceived threat of assault and robbery. In some places this may be a very real threat. However, in a place like Singapore the threat is surely minimal. This suggests another motivation for building in a gated/guarded community—status. Research supports this contention, suggesting that ‘exclusivity’ has the double meaning of keeping people out but also signalling social superiority. The reality is, however, that in many places in Asia security is a real concern. In Jakarta, for example, memories of the 1998 riots remain fresh. Moreover, there, as in Kuala Lumpur and Manila, the threat of crime is quite palpable.
This house by Aamer Taher in Sentosa, Singapore (page 114), is angled to maximize natural light.
Every gated community is different from every other one. In many there really is a community, one not just defined by a perimeter wall but by shared values. This might be because the community represents a concentration of people from the same religious community or, as in the case of the R House in Tana Peru at depok outside Jakarta (page 148), there is a concentration of people with university ties. Often it will be the planning of the gated community which helps generate a sense of community where no natural affinities exist, as at the Kubik House in Ipoh, Malaysia (page 50), or at Tanah Teduh in Jakarta (page 160).
A final caveat is the fact that many gated communities are actually quite porous, as are guarded communities, with a constant flow of people and transactions during the day and with full security applied only at night. Space does not allow a fuller discussion of the issue. Suffice it to say that guarded and gated communities come in many different forms and respond to many different imperatives. Depending on how we look at them, and on how they are planned, they can be either sustainable or unsustainable.
CULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY
Without identity, life is simply not sustainable at either the individual or the community level. But identity is a social construct which can only be sustained by continuing connection with a cultural tradition and by constant interrogation in response to external change. The family home is an expression of the identity of those who live in it. It does not exist in isolation, any more than architecture operates in a social vacuum. Notwithstanding globalization, the traditional societies of Southeast Asia are not about to abandon their cultural heritage.