Introduction

The development of housing typologies is an emergent and testimony of the cultural, political, economical and technological context. New social behaviours, family structures, working routines and equipment needs are some of the factors that produce a continuous transformation in the collective and individual dwellings design during the 20th century.Mapping the housing development requires a format with a systematic and methodological study –periods collecting equal housing developments, functional areas within the housing structure, growing population, mobility, etc. – to define the criteria for selection of the case studies. Building’s documentation essential research instruments are: plans, pictures, investments, regulations, owner types, quality and number of residents, among others. We have chosen to present the results using internet. This webformat we started in Rotterdam, the second biggest city in the Netherlands. In 2007 a team of architects and historicans made a selection of 150 typical housing projects over 1,5 century and classify the selection in 5 periods in witch projects share the same developments. By the end of 2011 more than 200 housing projects and 30 short neighbourhood descriptions will be published on the website

Up to some Rotterdam conclusions

The first results of the Rotterdam research show some interesting conclusions. The surface a social house during the 20th century increased 4 times, while in 1900 aprox. 7,2 persons lived in the house and in 2010 approx 2,3. In the Rotterdam-case we can conclude that average person now uses 7 times more housing space than one century before. The opposite is shown in the average area in wealthy housing where the surface per person decreased with factor 2,2. Housing for the common wealth didn’t grow or shrink at all. Actual government statistics shows that housing nowadays became smaller than 5 years ago. In the far future we maybe can conclude that in Rotterdam 2005 was the year people used the most housing space per person.For the editors this hypothesis is the main drive in the research. In the 20th century the time between changes of governmental regulations, communication between owner/ architects/constructor, transportation and technical possibilities of new construction systems, changes the real estate of urban live. Experienced architect can tell about the changes in the building business about the time they were practicing and till now the changes followed more and more up in rapid tempo. With this research results we find the useful tools to predict the limit of the changes for the future.The future: It looks like that by the end of this year the editors of the Rotterdam research will conclude that we are at the beginning of a new housing period where dwellers don’t care about the quality of a physical house anymore, but choose for a neighbourhood and a place to practice their own lifestyle. With the recent possibilities of internet and free social media for everyone, developers can easily react on the consumers wishes. The Rotterdam team hopes that these consumers will take a look at the free website with all round information they produced. and now: comparing metropoles_The Rotterdam research team choose the city Rotterdam because of its interesting historical and recent architecture. After taking the first conclusions the team and different stakeholders like to know some conclusions about other metropoles around the world. Considering to extend the 4 dimensions of the Rotterdam research (3D-space and time) with a 5th dimensions, namely the location on Earth, made by its cultural and economical environment. A young team of architects and historicans from different countries started to work out this ideas, and choose for two American cities; Buenos Aires in Argentina and New York (Manhattan) in the USA.