Informations- og kommunikationsteknologi i boligen: evaluering af et forsøgsbyggeri

By og Bygs Results 016: Implementation of ICT technology in housing: Evaluation of an experimental housing project.

With the purpose of testing how information technology can be implemented in housing occupied by families with disabled members, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs initiated an experimental housing project in collaboration with the City of Næstved and the Housing Association for Disabled persons in Næstved. Apart from testing the actual implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in the buildings, the project intended to provide a well functioning environment for homeworking.

When the tenants had lived in the housing project for approximately eight months Danish Building and Urban Research evaluated the building programme, the tenants' satisfaction with their new living conditions and the architectural quality of the buildings. The evaluation proved that the finest aspect of the building project was the intentions that were originally behind the scheme. However, it had been difficult to carry out the intentions in the actual buildings.

One of the major problems was to achieve the initial intention to create a flexible, socially integrated housing project with a high level of accessibility and with excellent possibilities of homeworking with the use of ICT technology. The actual buildings have a whole range of half-way solutions and it is quite remarkable that most of the intended ICT technology was never implemented as a result of budgetary cuts made during the building process.

It is strongly recommended that financial support of future experimental housing projects is earmarked in the building budget for the intended experiment to ensure its implementation. Another result of the evaluation shows that the tenants were affected by poor coordination of the existing tax, social and housing legislation. The tenants who were actively employed and who worked professionally at home, could have achieved tax reductions of expenses related to the working space, if it was situated in a separate room used for no other purpose. However, the apartment plans do not allow this and this circumstance further aggravated by the fact that the apartments are too small. It was felt that a certain level of working ability was a precondition required at the formal selection of tenants, nevertheless they were little motivated to work for fear of having their social benefits reduced. The disabled tenants usually had a physical constitution that would worsen with time. Better coordination of these problems should be considered in similar future projects.

The evaluation of the architectural quality points to the fact that the

project suffers from incoherence resulting from too many intentions. The

buildings lack architectural character as well as a consistent attitude to

problems of design and function seems to be lacking. In future experimental

housing projects, special attention should be paid to the architectural

qualities of the project.

In conclusion the tenants were only partly satisfied with the buildings.

Apart from the problems mentioned above, lack of satisfaction was caused

by the fact that housing for disabled persons usually has to be designed

54

especially for the individual needs of the families. The buildings incorporate

a great deal of flexibility in the apartment plans, but it was difficult for the

various families to see the actual possibilities of how to use the rooms and

arrange the furnitures. The tenants also criticized that it was an obstacle to

make the necessary physical changes and adaptations themselves and to

afford it.

Many of the problems pointed to in the evaluation could have been

avoided if the tenants had been involved in the actual programming of the

building project and if the individual family had been professionally guided

with the physical adaptation of the apartment at the time when they moved

in.