Last year (1992) marked the 50th anniversary of wartime housing in Montreal. Built as temporary shelter for workers engaged in the war industry, these homes were to be demounted after the war. Public demand for inexpensive housing however, forced authorities to allow workers and veterans to purchase a unit. No bigger than a 1000 ft$ sp2$ (100 m$ sp2$), the wartime home can be investigated as a prototype for today's small affordable housing. Downsized homes, tailored to suit modern lifestyles and provide opportunity for ownership, have been criticized by theorists like Ruth Madigan, Moira Munro and Constance Perin for their inflexible designs in fulfilling people's social and spatial demands. This thesis explores how people manage to meet these needs by employing wartime housing as a research model. Interviews were conducted with owners of 22 wartime homes that were not enlarged, drawn from the Ville St-Laurent, Montreal-East, and Snowdon districts. The case studies revealed that spaces like the kitchen, the bedrooms, and storage areas play a major role in accommodating users' changing needs. Moreover, solutions rendered in space management by residents can serve as guidelines for architects in designing small living spaces. Relative to small-lot housing, adaptability in the wartime house was facilitated by its sizable lot and coal shed in the rear.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.69779 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Pantelopoulos, Maria D. (Maria Dimitra) |
| Contributors | Friedman, Avi (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Architecture (School of Architecture.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001397909, proquestno: AAIMM94252, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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