Inadequate housing in rural communities: interior design as a tool for social design

Abstract

Abstract:

At present there is a large percentage of inadequate housing located in the rural areas of our province, it is notable to find informal housing, without title deeds, where governance policies are not equitable with respect to the completion of adequate housing. Additionally, it is observed that they are built with unsafe materials.

The proposed research assumed a qualitative perspective with an exploratory and application scope, and sought to solve a problem in the interior space of houses whose owners belong to a vulnerable economic group, in which interior design is used as a discipline that provides solutions with low-cost materials, to improve their quality of life; in this case the community of Llulluchas - Sayausí in Cuenca - Ecuador was considered to be part of the study and to be the main beneficiaries.  

The methodology considers the variables; spatial, thermal, acoustic, lighting, furniture, materiality, quality of life, initial interviews and observation sheets. In this sense, information was collected from six minimum low-income housing units in poor condition, within a specific sector in the community.

With reference to the above, important problems were found which needed to be solved quickly, and solutions began to be developed through interior design proposals, focusing on aspects: formal, functional and constructive. In this virtue, the next step was the socialisation of the prototypes to the users who approved the ideas and contributed their opinions based on their needs and experiences in the space of their homes.

Given the above conditions, the benefited homes improved the comfort of their interior spaces, where the thermal and lighting aspects represented the greatest difficulty in the proposals generated: low-cost interior design solutions can be generated to improve comfort and safety for families.

Keywords: design, interior design, housing, social rurality