Referring to the previous Post, I mentioned about Sustainable housing takes in Cultural sensitivity matters. We talked about mass housing design that simply ignored how the traditional communities have been, to make it simple, the grouping system which existed since a long time ago in the villages. These group of houses can be identified by a common factor such as the economy or perhaps blood ties. But the conventional way has prevented the social culture to be practiced.
I find it much more interesting to have a town houses planning where houses are not common to each other. Every house has their special lot, you can have the same module or prototype to cut down the cost, but having the same type of building on the different orientation of the land certainly means different too. Besides giving itself a plot of the land gives benefit to future expansion or renovation, considering the allowed buffer zone. This is basically what Malaysia traditional houses have been practicing last time. But we have to talk about economic factors too, which a studies were done by the National Housing Ministry, in 1992 proved that although the grouping pattern of detached building is based on housing codes and regulations, it can provide more units per hectare at lower construction costs than a linear design when each detached house accommodates four separate units in grouping patterns.
If we observe from the table above, certainly the different concept has shown different demographic of land usage as well. But what really concerned me is that it is a matter of fact that the conventional terrace house has diminished our way of social interaction. By grouping these houses we can see a better social interaction, it offers less privacy but also good that you have your own unique space of land and orientation in comparison to the standard view of terrace house to the main road,