Adaptables2006, TU/e, International Conference On Adaptable Building Structures 2-76

Eindhoven [The Netherlands] 03-05 July 2006

The Polyvalent Dwelling

[Link]
Technical University Delft
Faculty of Architecture
Berlageweg 1
2628 CR Delft
[Link]@[Link]

Keywords: Dwelling, Polyvalent, Spatial composition

Introduction
The word ‘polyvalent’ has been known for years in the context of the multi-purpose hall or salle
polyvalente, the kind of building that is to be found in every French village or small town, which can be
used for weddings and parties, for musical and theatrical performances and as a cinema. The word was
introduced into the architectural debate by Hertzberger, some of whose ideas on polyvalence can be seen
in the Diagoon houses he designed for Delft (1967-71). Here too polyvalence means that the building can
be used in different ways without adjustment to the way it is built. There is a difference, however: the
various uses of a salle polyvalente take place consecutively, but a dwelling must be able to provide space
for all the different activities which it is capable of accommodating to take place at the same time.
Polyvalence in the context of housing relates primarily to the interchangeability of activities between
different rooms.

Palladio etc.
Until the 1920s people built homes with a relatively high degree of interchangeability in the use of space.
It could be said that homes always used to be polyvalent to some extent. Rooms derived their meaning
more from their status than from any precise definition of their function. If we look at the ground plan of
the piano nobile of Palladio’s Villa Rotonda we see large and small rooms alternating, rooms that by
virtue of their decoration are all equally prestigious. You cannot tell from the plan what activities are
supposed to take place where. In practice the use was defined by the occupant’s preferences. A room was
furnished as a bedroom or living area based on whatever was convenient, and this could change with the
season or mood. Nor did the presence of a bed necessarily rule out using a room for the receptions that
took place regularly at the villa. The nineteenth-century bourgeois house is also made up of a series of
large and small rooms whose dimensions do not necessarily define their functions. Their siting in relation
to service areas such as the kitchen and bathroom, of course, betrays what they are intended for: the
dining room is adjacent to the kitchen and connected to it by a serving hatch, and the parental bedroom is
next to the bathroom, to which it has direct access by way of a door.

Determinism or changeability?
At the beginning of the twentieth century architects seized upon the problem of providing homes for the
working classes. The urbanization that had taken place in the nineteenth century had produced rapidly
growing world cities with inexpensive housing. The housing developments built there purely for profit
were notorious for their poor hygiene and cramped conditions. This was the first time that progressive
architects took on building homes for the masses as their responsibility. Neither the various types of
nineteenth-century workers’ dwellings nor the houses of the bourgeoisie provided the basis for a good

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solution to this problem. The new homes for the working classes had to be developed from scratch—and
on a scientific basis.
Time and motion study was the right tool for this: in the Netherlands, for example, Willem van Tijen
analysed the activities that take place in the home. He recorded home life in terms of dimensions and
motion diagrams (Tijen, 1966, p. 44). In Germany Grete Schütte-Lihotzky similarly developed the
Frankfurt Kitchen, based on ergonomic studies. After World War II this research led to such things as the
Functional Principles of Dwellings (Bouwcentrum, 1958) and the ‘Regulations and Tips’ (MVRO, 1965)
in the Netherlands. The latter document, with which every subsidized Dutch home had to comply during
that period, provided the general specifications for the homes built as part of the post-war reconstruction
programme.
The ergonomic studies, and above all the way they were translated into building regulations for
subsidized housing, provide a snapshot of the typical post-war family. When building many of the homes
for post-war reconstruction these requirements were for a long time set in reinforced concrete. The
dimensions complied with the minimum sizes laid down in the building regulations. The space is
squashed in between a large pipe duct and a reinforced concrete load-bearing wall, and thus
unchangeable.
As set out in Frame and Generic Space (Leupen, 2006, p. 18), we are faced with the following
contradiction in terms: the more precisely we are able to decide what requirements a dwelling should
meet at the start of its life, the greater the likelihood of a discrepancy arising between the dwelling and its
future use. The more precisely architects were able to define the measurable aspects of living and convert
them into a design, the more the design neglected the uncountable and unmeasurable aspects.
Instead of freedom of design, ergonomic studies brought determinism, leading to a deterministic
functionalism. Hertzberger says of this type of functionalism: “if there was anything to which these
concepts were not resistant, it was time” (Hertzberger, 1991, p. 146). Later on in the same book
Hertzberger proffers a solution.
"Flexibility therefore represents the set of all unsuitable solutions to a problem. On these grounds a
system which is kept flexible for the sake of the changing objects that are to be accommodated within
that system would indeed yield the most neutral solution to specific problems, but never the best, the
most appropriate solution.
The only constructive approach to a situation that is subject to change is a form that starts out from
this changefulness as a permanent - that is, essentially a static - given factor: a form which is
polyvalent. In other words, a form that can be put to different uses without having to undergo changes
itself, so that a minimal flexibility can still produce a optimal solution." (Hertzberger 1991, pp. 146-
7).

Six basic activities

If we are to gain a better understanding of polyvalence, we need to know about the activities that a home
generally needs to accommodate, since it is these activities that need to be able to change places in order
for it to be polyvalent, as I argued in the Introduction. As a general rule, all living, irrespective of culture
or degree of wealth, can be reduced to six basic activities. The differences between cultures, stages of
development or degrees of wealth can be seen in the relationships between these basic activities and how
they are carried out. As regards the latter, the nature of the objects required (furniture, appliances,
crockery etc.) plays an important role: while one person may cook on a wood fire and another on a six-
ring electric cooker, there will be cooking taking place.
In the diagram shown here (Fig. 1) Nishihara compares traditional Japanese domestic culture and
Western domestic culture in terms of six activities (Nishihara, 1968). In present-day domestic culture we
find particular rooms being set aside specifically for particular activities, whereas the traditional
Japanese house has a number of multi-purpose rooms which derive their meaning from the objects used
there. If the box of tea ceremony paraphernalia is brought out, the room is the tea ceremony room; if the
sleeping mats are rolled out and the tea ceremony box put away again the same room becomes a
bedroom.
The case we analyzed aims to provide an understanding of the polyvalence of dwellings, and in addition
to test the hypothesis that the polyvalence of a dwelling depends on its spatial organization. We can
examine the first point by seeing to what extent the six basic activities can be located in different ways.

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Eindhoven The Netherlands 03-05 July 2006

This was done by applying various programmes to the dwelling. These various situations can be
expressed in an activities graph, based on the six basic activities. The analysis identifies the following six
basic activities: Sleeping, Get Together, Eating, Cooking, Bathing and Working.i

1. Comparison between the traditional Japanese house and the Western house (Nishihara, 1968)
For four thousand years now dwellings have provided a place about four by four metres in size where
people can get together. Only single-person flats and temporary accommodation such as hotels do not
have a space of this kind for each unit; this space is often found at a different level, e.g. the foyer of a
hotel, or the communal kitchen-diner in a student hostel. In practice this means that a house must at the
very least have a room where this four-metre space fits, in other words a room at least 4m x 4m.
To test the hypothesis that the polyvalence of a dwelling depends on the pattern of relationships between
the living/sleeping areas we show the spatial organization of the dwellings in a graph to permit
[Link] For the case study below two kinds of graph were drawn, one of the spatial system and one
of the activities and their interrelationsiii. A number of activity graphs can be drawn for one and the same
spatial system, depending on how polyvalent that system is. As a general rule we can identify five basic
models: A Chain, B Star, C Star with central room, D Circle, E Grid (entrance = Square + arrow). These
are shown here in graph form (Fig. 2).

2. Graph of dwellings. A Chain Model, B Star Model, C Star Model with central room, D Circle
Model, E Grid Model (entrance = Square + arrow).
Say there are six basic activities and six rooms where they can be located, and assuming all the rooms are
the same size, then all the models of spatial organization (star, circle or chain) are equivalent as regards
the number of possible arrangements of activities. Theoretically this is 6 factorial = 720. If we lay down
rules on the arrangement of activities, however, (e.g. the activity Get Together must not be accessible
only via the activity Sleeping) or on the location of specific activities (the room for Cooking and the
room for Bathing are fixed), we find differences between the six basic models in the possible
arrangements, or the degree of polyvalence. We find that, when specific conditions are laid down, the
star model has a larger number of possible arrangements (i.e. it scores better on polyvalence) than the
chain model. This number can be calculated arithmetically, but the essential factor is the conditions laid
down, which are culturally determined (we are not used to entering the living room via a bedroom) and
differ from one domestic situation to another.
The projects we analyzed have been selected for their unusual spatial organization. All of them are to
some extent polyvalent, enabling them to be lived in in various ways. In most cases the polyvalence only
applies to some of the rooms, and the place where people get together—the living room—is determined
by its place in the organization and its size. For this study we made analysis of the following five
projects: MVRDV Ypenburg, Diener and Diener IJ-burg Amsterdam, Pantillon Rotterdam (Student

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projectiv), Duinker and Van der Torre Dapperbuurt Amsterdam, Riegler and Riewe Graz. As an example
we show her an abstract of the analysis of de Duinker and Van der Torre project.

Duinker & Van der Torre

The project designed by the firm of Duinker & Van der Torre for the Dapperbuurt district is a classic of
polyvalent housing. Here too doors play an important role in manipulating the spatial system, in this case
two-way doors and sliding doors. Large doors and sliding walls can increase polyvalence. Although the
sliding doors change the spatial system to some extent the dwelling is still polyvalent, as it can be used in
different ways without moving a single nail (Leupen, 2006, p. 191). Duinker & Van der Torre’s
dwellings have a circle structure (model D), which in principle enables a room to be accessed from two
directions. This increases the polyvalence, provided the circle is not too large, as otherwise it turns into a
chain structure (each room is only accessible from the next one). To reduce this effect Duinker & Van
der Torre have provided a shortcut between two of the rooms in the circle: the centrally situated vestibule
that forms the shortcut also provides access to the bathing and toilet facilities. The polyvalence of this
dwelling is restricted to a large extent by the fact that only one room is large enough to accommodate the
activity Get Together. If the three rooms were all large enough for this purpose the dwelling would be far
more polyvalent.

3. Duinker & Van der Torre, Dapperbuurt district, Amsterdam, Grafe of the spatial system and
two grafes of posible activities

Conclusions
In theory every dwelling has the capacity to be used in various ways: a room defined as a bedroom, for
instance, can be used equally well as a study or hobby room. Things get more interesting, however, if a
dwelling can accommodate different living patterns. A home that can be occupied, without modification,
by either a family with two children or three or four singles can be described as highly polyvalent.
Clearly there are degrees of polyvalence, a scale of polyvalence. The extent to which a dwelling is
polyvalent could be said to depend on the number of possible arrangements or combinations of activities
it permits. This number is related to five factors:
1. The size of the rooms
2. The number of large rooms
3. The underlying spatial structure of the dwelling
4. The relationship to rooms with fixed activities such as the bathroom and kitchen
5. The kind of relationships between the rooms

Ad 1. Living/sleeping areas larger than 16m² have the potential to accommodate any basic activity.
Ad 2. The more rooms larger than 16m², the more freedom there is to distribute the basic functions
among them.
Ad 3. The case study shows that e.g. a star or circle structure has more potential than a chain structure.
Rooms that provide access to other rooms with no alternative route are less suitable for basic activities
such as sleeping.

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Polyvalence is restricted by having only one large room. In a domestic situation with two adults and one
small child, for example, Diener & Diener’s design and Duinker & Van der Torre’s are equally
polyvalent. Systematic research into how a large number of dwellings regarded as more or less
polyvalent actually function in practice could increase our understanding of this fascinating phenomenon.
Putting knowledge of polyvalent dwellings into practice could result in a new generation of homes with
interesting spatial organizations and substantial expectations (sustainability) as regards changing and
unpredictable uses.

Bibliography
Bouwcentrum (1958). Functionele grondslagen van de woning, Algemene inleiding [Functional
principles of the dwelling: a general introduction]. Rotterdam, Bouwcentrum.

Hanson, J. (1998). Decoding Homes and Houses. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hertzberger, H. (1991). Lessons for Students in Architecture. Rotterdam, 010 Publishers.

Leupen, B. (2006). Frame and generic space. Rotterdam, 010 Publishers.

MVRO (1965). Voorschriften en Wenken voor het ontwerpen van woningen [Regulations and Tips for
the design of dwellings]. The Hague, Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting en Ruimtelijke Ordening.

Nishihara, K. (1968). Japanese Houses - Patterns for Living. Tokyo, INC.

Tijen, W. v. (1966). De ruimtebehoeften in en om de Nederlandse volkswoning [Spatial needs in and

around the Dutch working-class dwelling]. Draft dissertation, Zandvoort: 83.

i I differ from Nishihara in using Get Together rather than Family Get Together, as living in a home does
not by definition involve a family. Instead of Washing/Evacuation I use Bathing for short.

ii The method of drawing has been developed from that used in Decoding Homes and Houses. (Hanson
1998)
iii Analyses by Esther Stevelink and Sophie Pfeiffer
iv Daniel Pantillon graduated from the New Concepts for the Dwelling studio at the Faculty of
Architecture, Delft University of Technology.

The polyvalent dwelling by B.A.J. Leupen