ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 493

ción, southern Chile. These complexes were selected aiming for variety in dwelling types and
materials but also in terms of the strategies and orientation of their developers, covering both
mid-rise apartments and semi-terraced units developed by a non-profit NGO that uses participatory design and incremental housing and a for-profit real estate company that provides close to
finished units. Only recently occupied complexes (1 to 4 years) were included in the study aiming
to gather information on early stages of the personalisation process (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Case study housing complexes developed by a non-profit NGO (left) and a for-profit company (right), both located in Concepción, southern Chile
The survey covered three main topics: general demographic characteristics, satisfaction levels,
and modifications to the dwellings. The demographics characteristics module gathered information on the number of users of each dwelling, number of family nuclei, age segments (0 to 5
as child, 6 to 17 as young, 18 to 35 as young adult, 36 to 59 as adult, and 60+ as elder), gender,
relationship to the head of household, former residential situation (non-renter, informal dweller, renter, or other), educational level (no formal education, basic, secondary, or tertiary education), mean household autonomous income (national decile), and occupation (housekeeping,
employee, self-employed, informal worker, unemployed, unoccupied, pensioner, or student). The
overcrowding index of each dwelling was calculated dividing the number of bedrooms per the
number of dwellers, where households with indexes between 2.5 to 3.4 were considered as overcrowded, 3.5 to 4.9 as highly overcrowded, and 5.0+ as critically overcrowded. Further architectural variables such as orientation, materials, number of floors, types, and surface areas were also
coded and included in the analyses.
The residential satisfaction module ranked current levels of fulfilment of the interviewees with general characteristics of their dwellings, were 1 was considered as very low, 2 as low, 3 as neutral, 4 as
good, and 5 as very good. This scale was used to assess number of bedrooms, extension possibilities, internal modification capabilities, lot size, kitchen size, finishing works, bathroom location,
and dwelling size (i.e. architectural variables); and also moisture levels, natural light, ventilation,
safety, acoustic and visual privacy, and winter and summer temperatures (i.e. environmental variables). In parallel, the interviewees were asked to rank their former expectations regarding both
general architectural and environmental variables (i.e. before occupancy).

Personalisation strategies and residential satisfaction in chilean social housing

491