RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FLOOR PLAN OF DWELLING UNIT AND HABITANT'S LIFE AND EVALUATION IN APARTMENT HOUSE

Although many people are interested in the relationships of room layout and happiness and there are many books of room layout or design published including the books of house physiognomy, there are few researches examining the relationship of physical characteristics of dwelling including room layout of dwellings to the evaluation by habitating people in appartment house. This study aims to clarify the relationships of physical characteristics of room layout to the habitant activities, interpersonal relationship of family, evaluation of layout, evaluation of indoor, indoor environment and evaluation of life. The author conducted a large scale online questionnaire survey via the internet to the habitant living in apartment house in Tokyo metropolitan area. More than 1000 respondents answered the questionnaire and 851 valid samples were obtained. The questionnaire inquired about the physical characteristics of dwellings including room layout, fitting and windows and characteristics of apartment building, indoor activities and outdoor activities in the apartment premises and evaluation of room layout, environment, daily life, indoor community and outdoor community, personal attiributes such as income, and so on. This article copes with the physical condition of exlusively owned part of apartment building, habitants' activities and evaluation. In order to reveal the relationships, the samples were cross tabulated by the combination of the answer of spatial characteritics, frequency of activities and evaluations. Physical characteristics were categorized into two to four groups by the character of living room such as size, orientation, connevtivity, visibility, proximity, fittings and windows. Also, number of bedrooms, corner unit or not, number of bedrooms facing to south, floor area, number of windows and floor level of the unit were categorized according to the number of respondents. Furthermore, fifteen items of frequency of activities of husband, wife, children and family were categorized. Ten items of interpersonal relationship of family, six items of evaluation of layout, eight items of evaluation of daily life and ten items of evaluation of overall quality of life-style and life were also categorized according to the distribution of respondents' answers. Independence of categorized anwers were test by χ2 values, and adjusted standardized residual values were analyzed. As a result, many relationships among physical condition of dwelling and respondents' subjective evaluation were found and statistically confirmed. Overall relationship is as bellows. Physical condition of dwellings has particular relationships with frequency of activities and interpersonal relationships. For example, as living room is closer to entrance they have more guests, have breakfast more often in family, children tends to be more independent. As it has more sliding door, children study more in living room and they feel stronger family ties. As for the evaluations of satisfaction and quality of life, they are strongly related with the size of living room, floor area and number of windows. In terms of the azimuth orientation of living room, activities has various relationship such that husband help with housework and children proactively study at home in north living room, family enjoy spending time more often in east living room, while evaluations of many items are simply higher in south living room.