Design Process 4. Lifestyle

So far, my Design process research has covered 3 main aspects, Overpopulation, Land Shortage and Money, now its the last research aspect that our group had done, Lifestyle. So what is lifestyle?? Its the things that we do and go through on a daily routine such as education for the younger ones and working or business for the adults. It can also be tourism or matters that involves a family. 
First , education , more students are going out of their native country to pursue further education. With that , a country needs to build more student hostels. For a country like Singapore where we are facing land constraints , the government may be building more hostels in a small land, thus , more students have to share a hostel when compared to the past. This results in a shrink in living spaces even more international students studying abroad. 
Secondly , the family factor , obviously having a big family of more than 4-5 people will definitely reduce one's personal space. For example, a married couple with 4 children (that is also my stakeholder) living in a standard 1000 square foot home when compared to a married couple with just 2 children living in a house with the same size will undeniably experience more cramped up living. 
Lastly we have Tourism. This factor is more indirect than others but our group felt that it is necessary to include some research about it too. Who doesn't like travelling overseas with your loved ones and enjoy life right?? The tourism industry is booming right now across the world and Singapore in particular , generate income and keeps our economy growing by relying heavily on tourism. With more tourism , more hotels have to be built, this may limit the spaces for residential buildings like HDBs or private condominiums. With that plus Singapore's small land , living spaces will be reduced as more land is being used for the construction of new hotels and commercial infrastructure  such as shopping malls.   

How are Living Spaces getting smaller?

If you compare the government flats (or HDBs) built in the past and the new ones , you will find a significant decrease in size. I had previously visited some of the new government flats and new condominiums in Singapore and they were all much smaller than my current old government flat which is built in the late 1980s located in Pasir Ris. From the kitchen to the living room and to the bedroom, all of which are smaller than mine. My old flat is able to fit a 5-seater dinning table in the dinning room, whereas some new condominiums that i visited could hardly even fit a dinning table. All these were the result of land shortage and population growth, more people, lesser land, results in a shrink in size of the flat as governments and developers needs to fill in more people in a lesser area of land. With that, prices of land and apartments have also gone up significantly over the decades making it more difficult for young couples who wants to settle down and they are also on a really tight budget.  

Places where living spaces are getting smaller.

Map of Hong Kong.

Mumbai's overpopulation problem.

For most of us , the first place that pops up in our minds will be the cramped up city of Hong Kong. Hong Kong sits on a relatively small area and with natural factors such as mountains and rivers, that small space is reduced further. With a population of 7.15 million living in a small area, it is one of the most dense cities in the world. I just read an article about how families can live in a 40 square-foot space, which is not much bigger than your typical king sized bed. Another place with serious problems is Mumbai, it has a small land area and a poor transport system., thus many people who are working in the city lives near the city, the result? Living spaces of 4.5 square meters per person and property prices sky-rocketed , mid-town flats can costs up to $1m-$3m.  

Who are affected by Small Living spaces??

Generally, I think bigger families will be directly affected by the shrink in area of living spaces as we all need personal space to move about and carry out our personal and daily routines, thus by having a big family, like 5-6 people, living in a small area will turn out to be really cramp. For me, i am stepping into the shoe of a stakeholder who is a 45 year old man with middle-income and 4 kids , living with his parents. That makes up a total of 7 people living in a relatively average sized flat. The experience is tough as the kids needed money for school., i also imagined that my kids were NAFA students and that they all had to buy the expensive sets of Rotring technical pens. Thus, with such high expenses and an even higher property price in the current market, it is difficult for me to buy a bigger apartment to fit my entire family comfortably. Going deeper into brainstorming, I think Musicians and Artists may be affected as well due to their huge amount of equipment. Musicians may have multiple guitars or drumsets, or a huge grand piano, all these takes up considerable amount of space. Artists may have huge canvas paintings to store and tons of paint, brushes as well as other mediums of art that they use.

Extreme transformer home in Hong Kong: Gary Chang's 24 rooms in 1

Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world and its severe shortage of land made living there relatively difficult. Most of the apartments there are really small and cramped up , families usually live in houses that are around 600 square foot. The YouTube video above which was shared by my group's leader , Krishna , showed an Architect named Gary Chang , turning his small little apartment ,which is just over 340 square foot in area , into a home full of hidden rooms. His method of movable walls using tracks installed on the ceilings is simple ,low-tech but yet very effective and the design is also very contemporary. This can be the future of maximizing space in micro-apartments and will be especially useful in other places such as Tokyo , London.

Design Process 3 ,Money.

In many big metropolitan cities around the globe , economy and lifestyle are very fast paced. Cities such as Paris , New York City , London , Tokyo and Singapore experiences an ever growing economy and time , is money.Standards of living in those cities are rather high because of their strong economies , and this will definitely affect the people living there in terms of purchasing what they want. Of course , by now most people would have already found out that Singapore was named the world's most expensive city to live in 2014 , a study result which includes 131 cites done by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Singapore topped the list because of its strong economy and currency , also the cost to run a car and soaring utility bills and not to forget , buy a house. It is also the most expensive place to buy clothes. With all these factors combined , a full-time working class adult needs to spend quite a lot of money in month.With money invested in everyday necessities like clothes , it is very difficult for a middle-income adult to actually own a big house in Singapore. This is made worse by the fact that Singapore faces land constraints and an increase in population. Nowadays , a brand new 3 bedroom condominium can set you back at around $900,000 - $1M+ . A condominium with the same size , or perhaps even slightly bigger in other countries such as United States of America (USA) , is probably going for half of that price.Given the same amount of income per year , I am sure that one could probably invest in a much larger home in places like Malaysia , Indonesia.  Therefore , a working class adult living in cities which has a very high standard of living , is going to face financial constraints when going for a home with a considerably large area.  

Bibliography!

All of us will not like the feeling of people using our works and not crediting them to us. Thus , it is very important that we make a note and credit the actual owner or creator of a particular information or work piece by doing a bibliography. Studying in a tertiary level , learning to write a bibliography is an important step towards working in the society when things can get very tense. It is necessary to include our references in our research and  so as to avoid plagiarism. In NAFA , we have the access to the NAFA Style Guide which guides us on how to write proper bibliographies depending on the resources that we have taken from , be it an online Encyclopedia , books , videos or podcast and many more different sources. These are the bibliographies that my group did for our Report , it is all based on the NAFA Style Guide.

Bibliography:

1 'Joint statement by fifty-eight of the world's scientific academies'. InterAcademies , Created 199. Accessed January 25th 2014.
<http://web.achive.org/web/20100210203604/http://www.interacademies.net/?id=2547>

2. Lim,W.S.W. , Cities for People: Reflections of a Southeast Asian Achitect. 1990 , Singapore: Select Books Pte Ltd.

3. Wassener , Bettina. 'Inside Hong Kong's incredibly cramped cubicle apartments'. The Sydney Morning Herald. Vol. 42 , Issue no. 2 , October 15th 2013 , Accessed Day January 26th , 2014.

4. Jacobson , Mark ,'Mumbai's Shadow City'. The National Geographic Magazine. Vol. 22 , May 2007 , Accessed day January 25th ,2014.

5. Conran , Terence. How to Live in Small Space. London : Conran ,2013.

6. Parikh , Anoop. Making the Most of Small Spaces. New York :Rizolli ,1994