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Determinants of Activity Patterns in Egyptian Homes: A space syntax analysis

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 Determinants of Activity Patterns in Egyptian
Homes: A space syntax analysis of use

Yaldiz Y. Eid
Architecture Dept., Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, Egypt

Dina K. Shehayeb
Housing and Building Research Center, Egypt

Paper to be presented at the ENHR Conference

July 2nd-6th 2004, Cambridge, UK

1
Determinants of Activity Patterns in Egyptian Homes:
A space syntax analysis of use

Introduction

A large portion of the urban population in Egypt is housed within three types of
residential environments: (a) physically deteriorating traditional housing, (b) informally
developed housing, (c) and formally-designed mass housing in New Cities. Each one of
these housing types affords a different residential environment and a variety of “home”
designs. Environment-Behavior Studies have always pointed out a reciprocal relationship
between the built environment and behavior. The following study acknowledges the
relationship between the home environment and behavior and suggests that the built
environment is a most powerful manipulator of lifestyle. Socio-cultural characteristics of
the residents do not, by themselves, determine the spatial organization of activities in the
home. The distribution of activities within the home reflects the extent to which the
design of the “home” allows people to fulfill their social and psychological needs in a way
that fits their lifestyle and priorities.

The objective of this research study is therefore to analyze those various “home” designs
through a space syntax analysis of activity patterns in order to explore this relationship.
An empirical study was conducted for a sample of 380 residential units of comparable
sizes and physical conditions to explore the relationship between residents’ lifestyles and
characteristics of the home environment in each of the three housing alternatives. This
study is part of a larger research project on the non-physical dimensions of home design1.
El-Sayyeda Zeinab was chosen to represent a traditional neighborhood. Dar Elsalam was
chosen to represent one type of informal housing sprawl, and the Sixth District in Sixth of
October City was chosen to represent the mass housing constructed in new cities.

The survey included a questionnaire covering social and lifestyle indicators, as well as
activity annotated plans for each dwelling to show the various day-to-day activities in the
home, as represented by wall subdivisions, furniture, traces of use as well as verbal
accounts of use. The verbal and graphic data for the 380 household-sample was then
analyzed qualitatively. This revealed three major patterns in the spatial and temporal
organization of activities that differ mainly in the association of “family living” activities
with other activities such as “sleeping” and “receiving guests.” Also analysis using Space
Syntax (Hillier and Hanson, 1984) was applied focusing on the public/private relationship
in the home by looking at the depth and visibility parameters of the different home
activities/spaces.

One-way analysis-of-variance was performed testing 12 variables (5 socio-cultural

indicators, 2 physical indicators, and 5 syntactic indicators) for their significance in
explaining the three major activity patterns mentioned above. The analysis shows that it
is the spatial configuration that influences the pattern of daily activities within the
public/private domains of the home. The significance of this study is to reveal the
characteristics in home design that play a significant role in people’s utilization of the
spaces we design. By understanding people’s priorities and trade-offs they decide to
accept, architects may have a clearer understanding of the determinants they impose on

PT1 TPThis paper is based on partial results of a research project titled, “The social, health and
psychological dimensions of the design of the dwelling and the residential environment.” funded by the
Academy of Scientific Research and Technology.

2
the inhabitants of the physical environments they design. This in turn would help guide
future development of residential areas to be called “home environments.”

The Relationship between Domestic Space Use and Spatial Dimensions.

Environment-Behavior Studies have always pointed out a reciprocal relationship between

the built environment and behavior. Space is a meaningful and informative formation
expressive of the culture and lifestyle of different societies and of the transformations that
the social structure has experienced (Dursun and Saglamar, 2003). According to Hanson
(1998):

"Houses are sensitive to social relations only insofar as they construct

and constrain interfaces between different kinds of inhabitant and
different categories of visitor."

People's pattern of daily activities may be dependant on individual, social and cultural
values (Rapoport, 1990). These produce spatial patterns and are reflexively produced by
them (Monteiro, 1997). Space syntax compliments behavioral science in research on the
built environment by controlling a key architectural variable: spatial layout.
In order to discuss the relationship between spatial parameters and social patterns of
domestic space it is necessary to describe both the built space and space use, represented
by activity spaces, as phenomenon of spatial arrangement. A number of behavioral studies
focusing on daily domestic activities (Kent, 1984; 1990; Ahrentzen, 1989) and some
which also used syntactic analysis (Eid, 1993; Monteiro, 1997) have suggested that spatial
dimensions of a culture can be fully understood not only in terms of spatial arrangement
but, more significantly in terms of the spatial arrangements of activities, furniture and
people.

The main proposition of space syntax analysis is that social relations and events express
themselves through spatial configuration. Space syntax analysis is used to explore the
cultural patterning found in large samples of plans, where examples often appear to be
unique visually or in terms of shape and form, but it is not obvious whether there are any
configurational consistencies beneath the surface variety which is presented to the eye
(Hanson 1998), how they are connected together and sequenced, which activities go
together and which are separated out. Thus, the configurational analysis of the plan can be
conceived as an archaeology of space. The question is whether configurational
characteristics in the different plans are inherent to different patterns of space use. If the
dwellings display morphological regularities, then the buildings speak directly of
culturally significant household practices which have been crystallized in the form of the
dwelling (Brown and Tahar, 2001).
According to Hillier (1996) related spaces cannot be seen all at once but require
movement from one to another to experience the whole. Hence, it is argued that the
potential socially generative effect of layout is a by-product of movement (Peponis, 2001).
Configuration explains how spatial relations that exist between spaces in a system relate
to form a pattern rather than explain more localized properties of a particular space.
Morphological studies aim to describe spatial models and to present these models in
numerical and graphical form i.e. interpret them on a scientific basis (Dursun and
Saglamer, 2003).

3
Depth is an important configurational property of spatial patterns and indicates how many
steps one must pass through to arrive to a particular space in the spatial configuration
from the entrance or any other space in the system. The idea of describing the sequence of
activities from the house entrance appears interesting since it presents the primary
experience of buildings, the most natural movement from arriving home to getting to any
specific place in the structure. It can be useful to understand the notion of front/back
(Rapoport, 1982) and the relationship between spaces of visitor/inhabitant (Monteiro,
1997).

The visibility field i.e. isovist measures the observer’s visibility limits of the spatial
system that belong to a given path of observation in that system. Isovists are defined as a
polygon shape visible from a certain vantage point in space (Benedikt, 1979). The
visibility field i.e. isovist measures the observer’s visibility limits of the spatial system
that belong to a given path of observation in that system. Isovists seem to offer highly
suggestive ways of interrogating spatial configuration. (Turner and Penn, 1999). Although
relying on a quantitative method, isovist analysis is also a quantifiable syntactic technique.

The Study

An empirical study was conducted for a sample of 380 residential units of comparable
sizes and physical conditions to explore the relationship between residents’ lifestyles and
characteristics of the home environment in three housing alternatives located in three
different neighborhoods.

Al-Sayeda Zeinab one of the traditional neighborhoods located in the heart of the city of
Cairo; is part of the urban growth around the Medieval City (founded in the 10th Century).
It is predominantly 19th Century apartment buildings, two to four storeys high, with some
commercial activities on the ground floor along certain streets. The apartments are
characterized by having many enclosed activity spaces, and transition spaces usually with
a central space connecting them.

New cities in Egypt were developed in the 1970s in the desert to divert the population
growth away from the congested Nile Valley. The 1980s witnessed a boom in mass
housing design so that each neighborhood in a new city was an opportunity to experiment
a different housing prototype. Twelve neighborhoods in the new city of 6th of October
were addressed in this study. Although their corresponding prototypes may look different
but they are similar as far as their influence on the distribution of activities within the
dwelling, as will be seen in the analysis.

The third housing type addressed in the study is one of the informal housing patterns in
Egypt. This type is mainly found on the outskirts of the urban bulk; it denotes the natural,
unplanned, growth of the city. The area of Dar Al-Salam was chosen to represent this type
of informal housing, particularly because it was known to house the spill over population
of the nearby traditional neighborhoods including Al-Sayeda Zeinab area. Housing takes
the form of multistory apartment buildings, from four to twelve storeys high, built using
reinforced concrete skeleton structures. The buildings have a linear shape with a small
frontage. Apartments are therefore also linear in organization, with only one room
overlooking the front façade. The rest of the rooms would be ventilated on narrow light-
wells (2.5m x 5m on average).

4
Apartment area in the 380 units sample ranged between 40m2 to 130m2 with an overall
average of 65m2 in the three areas. The traditional neighborhood (Al-Sayeda Zeinab) was
characterized by the widest range of dwelling size with some apartments reaching 200m2,
while the informal area (Dar Al-Salam) had a rather restricted range of dwelling size with
almost 40% around the 60m2. As for the new city (6th of October), the designed
prototypes came in three categories of size with 62% of the dwellings around 55m2.
Dwelling size variations of 65m2-80m2 were also present in the sample.

Regarding the number of rooms in the dwelling, there was a remarkable similarity
between the traditional neighborhood and the informal area, where the majority of the
apartments had four rooms or more (65% and 74% respectively), whereas, in the new city,
apartments of the same area were subdivided into a fewer number of rooms; 65% of the
dwellings are 3-room apartments. This phenomenon is reflected in the occupancy rates of
the dwellings in each area. The occupancy rate in the traditional neighborhood is the
lowest with 76% of the dwellings at less than the National Average of 1.5 inhabitants per
room, while in the new city; only 58% of the dwellings are at less than the National
Average.

Methodology

The innovation of this research is that instead of analyzing the pattern of space, as is
common in space syntax, what is analyzed is the spatial pattern of activity in the home
(Eid, 1993). In order to understand such interfaces we have dealt with two aspects: a/
relations between inhabitants; b/ relations between inhabitants and visitors2. Analysis was
carried out at two levels: a/ the way families live, concerning who does what, with whom,
how often, and where, as well as the level of satisfaction with the spaces of their houses;
b/ the configuration of the house plans, using techniques of space syntax theory.

The distribution of dwelling activities inside the residential unit was analyzed in the 380
plans representing the three study areas. Two activities, namely, “receiving visitors,” and
“family living” (including family sitting, watching television, studying, and eating) were
chosen as indicators of the household’s priorities i.e. lifestyle.
How residents chose to relate these two activities to the other dwelling activities was
assumed to reflect their perception of the opportunities afforded by the design to fulfill
their social and psychological needs determined by their cultural background. Data on the
first level was obtained by means of a questionnaire and some subsequent selected
interviews in greater depth. It was possible to identify which spaces were more (or less)
used by inhabitants and by visitors, as well as those inaccessible to the latter. On a second
level, data was obtained from as-is annotated plans after alterations revealing the various
day-to-day activities in the home, as represented by wall subdivisions, furniture and by
traces of use as well as verbal accounts of use.

Methodology is based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. First, the

qualitative method is based on 1/ a description of the as-is condition of the plan layouts of
the different house types based on a/ the drawings of home plans, b/ dwellers' statements
of activities as well as, c/observations made by the researchers; 2/ categorization of
patterns of the inhabitant/visitor activities, and inhabitant/inhabitant activities. The

PT2 TPUnlike de Franca and de Holanda (2003), we have not dealt with relations between inhabitants and
servants since most of the sample of study cannot afford having servants help due to economic restraints.

5
qualitative analysis aimed at discerning the salient patterns of distribution of these two
activities.

The quantitative analysis which represents the main focus of this research aimed at
discovering the factors that most influence the users’ decision; user socio-cultural
characteristics, or physical characteristics of the design. Several analytic tools were used.
First, an analysis of the syntactic properties using: a/ measurement of depth from the
apartment entrance (meaning the number of spaces traversed in order to access another
space from the apartment entrance); b/ an isovist analysis from the entrance location.

Second, chi-square analysis was done to test correlation between the three salient activity
patterns and 12 variables. Users’ socio-cultural characteristics as a determinant of
household needs and priorities were described by means of 5 variables: household size,
household structure, children’s gender, mother’s education, and father’s occupation. On
the other hand, 5 syntactic characteristics were chosen as a measure of the dwelling unit
design, and these were: depth of living; depth of receiving visitors; depth of kitchen;
visual exposure of the public activity “receiving visitors;” and visual exposure of the
private dwelling activities (sleeping, cooking, bathing …etc.). Two physical non-syntactic
characteristics were also tested: the neighborhood area and the number of rooms in the
dwelling unit. These correlations were tested for each variable independently, once for
the sample within each study area, and once for the entire sample in the three areas
combined.

As a third analysis, one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) was applied to the
same variables to discover whether there were statistically significant differences between
the three activity patterns in its association with each variable. Furthermore, in order to
pin down the influence of the variables under study on the activity patterns, we also
applied the discriminate function analysis, and stepwise selection, to discover the degree
to which the 12 variables are influential in determining the activity pattern within the
dwelling unit. This analysis would identify the group of variables that, if known, would
help predict the activity pattern chosen by the inhabitants.

Results

Activity Patterns. The analysis sheds light on the differentiation in the activity patterns in
each housing type. Three salient activity patterns were found. In the first pattern, the two
activities, “receiving visitors,” and “family living” were combined in one space (pattern
L+V). In the second pattern, “family living” was combined in one space with “sleeping,”
while “receiving visitors” was in a space of its own (pattern L+S). In the third pattern,
each activity was independently enclosed in a space (pattern L/V/S). Configurational
analysis confirms what patterns of use and lifestyle have indicated: dwellings are divided
into inhabitants and visitors domains in different ways. While the formal mass-housing
type reveals the first pattern L+V more dominant, the third pattern L/V/S almost did not
exist in it, yet it was present in almost one third of the dwellings in the other two housing
types (see figure 1). The second pattern L+S was equally present in the traditional
neighborhood and the new city housing, and was slightly more in the informal housing
type. This reveals important characteristics of the sample, which bear upon the social
relations developed herein.

6
 Dar Al-Salam 6th October Sayeda Zeinab

44%
37% 35%
32% 30% 27% 27% 28%

7%

L+V L+S L/V/S L+V L+S L/V/S L+V L+S L/V/S

Figure 1. The distribution of the three Activity Patterns in the three study areas

Figure (2) shows the spatial organization corresponding to the activity patterns as found in
the formal designs in the new city. From the 15 prototypes studied in this housing type
only one design (figure 1a) allowed the third activity pattern L/V/S. This is because the
shape of the shallow space and its relation to the access point gave the inhabinats the
opportunity to subdivide it into 2 activity spaces, one used for ‘family living’ and the
other used for ‘receiving visitors.’

pattern L/V/S pattern L+S pattern L+V

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 2. The three Activity Patterns in the formal new city housing sample

Syntactic Results. Although justified graphs of the dwelling units are different from each
other, The entire sample of dwellings is classified as having a tree structure, with many
branches in the traditional and informal housing (figures 3c and 3d) and fewer branches in
the new city (figures 2b and 2c). Some of the graphs are based in their formation on
transitional spaces or activity spaces. Space organizations consist of spatial units that have

7
access from these spaces. Access is created through a shallow activity space which is a
private space (figure 3c) or a visitor's space (figure 3b) or a circulation space (figure 2a).
The non-existence of any rings in any of the dwelling systems in the sample suggests a
simpler organization (Dursun and Saglamer, 2003) which may be described as having
more control over accessibility to the different spaces and between them.

When the end points or deepest spaces of the justified graph is examined these are usually
bedrooms, bathrooms and balconies. Across the three study areas, the shallowest
bedroom or, in some cases, also the one most exposed visually (i.e. least private), is the
children’s bedroom, while the parent’s bedroom was usually the deepest and hence the
most private (figure 3a). When the ‘family living’ activities are incorporated into a
bedroom (activity pattern L+S) it is usually in this shallowest bedroom, which renders it
more permeable to both inhabitants and informal visitors such as next of kin relatives.

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 3. Justified Graph Maps for different plans in the sample

Service areas; kitchens and bathrooms, were also deep in the traditional and informal
housing types usually accessed from a transitional space of their own (figure 3c and 3d).
Whereas, in the formal designs of the new city kitchens were often shallow just off the
first point in the dwelling whether it were a transitional space or an activity space (figures
2a and 2c). Also in those modern architect designs, when the kitchen is located near the
entrance of the dwelling the route to and from the kitchen cannot be private because
residents have to traverse the ‘receiving visitors’ activity space. Some residents change
accessibility of the kitchen from the public to the private bedroom zone. Others have
simply put trails of curtains along the wall where the kitchen door is (see figure 4).

8
 Figure 4. Visually securing the route to the kitchen in new city housing plans

The justified graphs in figure 3b, 3c, and 3d, describing the high/low permeability of
activities in the system reveals that quite often the shallowest part of the system (depth 1
from apartment entrance) accommodates the ‘family living’ activities as is the case in the
first pattern L+S and 63% of dwellings adopting the third pattern L/V/S (in all three areas).
This community space which is connected directly or through a circulation space to the
private part, and shallow with respect to the entry sequence, enables informal interaction
of household members. We also notice that, in the informal housing, as in the traditional,
the ‘receiving visitors’ if enclosed in a separate activity space, pattern L/V/S (figure 3c
and 3d) this space is usually the nearest to the entrance point of the dwelling, and in some
cases it would even have a separate entrance from the outside.

Chi-square Results. The results of the chi-square tests show that statistically significant
relations were found between the resident’s choice to distribute activities in the dwelling;
that is the activity patterns, and all of the 7 physical and syntactic variables, while there
was such a relation with just one social variable, namely, household size.

The two physical variables ‘neighborhood’ and ‘number of rooms in the dwelling,’ were
both strongly related to the activity patterns (significance level more than 0.01). The first
pattern L+V was associated more with dwellings that had a few number of rooms (less
than 4) and more significantly so in the new city (6th of October). As mentioned earlier,
dwellings of the same area had more rooms in the traditional and the informal
neighborhoods than it did in the formal modern designs of the new city, and evidently this
characteristic increased the probability of organizing activities into the third activity
pattern L/V/S.

The social variable ‘household size,’ was only moderately related (significance level more
than 0.05) to the activity patterns in two areas, the new city mass housing and the
informal housing type. The increase in household size was associated with the pattern
L+V, whereas it was found to be independent of pattern L+S, implying that household
size did not influence inhabitants’ decision to incorporate ‘family living’ activities, in one
of the bedrooms. The third pattern was associated with small and medium size
households.

9
Chi-square analysis also reveals that the ‘depth of kitchen’ was significantly related to the
activity patterns only in the new city, mass housing type (6th of October). When the
kitchen was deep into the dwelling unit; that is, closer to the bedrooms, the ‘family living’
activities were more often accommodated in the shallowest bedroom, thus creating pattern
L+S, and when the kitchen was at a shallow depth, closer to the dwelling entrance, more
inhabitants decided to merge ‘family living’ and ‘receiving visitors’ in the shallow space
nearby.

The explanation is provided from the case studies where residents express their desire to
secure visual privacy from visitors for the route between the kitchen and all the spaces
used by the family. In other words, residents want to have the freedom to move to and
from the kitchen in privacy from any on-looking visitor. This was the main reason given
for moving the ‘family living’ activity into a bedroom, and not as we designers thought, to
secure the privacy of the ‘‘family living’ activities themselves. This argument is different
from what De Franca and De Hollanda (2003) suggest about the multi-functionality of the
bedroom as a result of its contemporaneousness justifying the superimposition of leisure
and rest in the same place where TV sets, computers, gym equipment, study desks, sofas
and chairs are found. The private living/bedroom reinforces the double character of the
dwelling: where it is informal as far as the permeability of the social parts are concerned,
and formal as far as the relative depth of the private area in the system (although not the
deepest).

This finding is asserted once more by the results concerning the depth of ‘family living’
activities and depth of ‘receiving visitors’, which reveals that ‘family living’ activities are
mostly in a shallow space (depth 1 or 2 in case of small vestibule) not only in the first
activity pattern L+V, but surprisingly, also in the third pattern L/V/S. By comparing the
depth of ‘family living’ to the depth of ‘receiving visitors’ (figures 5 and 6) particularly in
the pattern L/V/S, we find that there are more ‘family living’ activities at depth (1), and
more ‘receiving visitors’ at depth (2) from the dwelling entrance. This means that
inhabitants, when given the choice, would rather put the ‘receiving visitor’ activity space
in a deeper location and do not mind leaving the ‘family living’ activities in the shallower,
more visually exposed, space.

It is important not to misinterpret the choice of putting ‘receiving visitors’ in a deeper

space thinking it is to secure visual privacy of that activity from the dwelling entrance.
The explanation is two-fold: 1/ the inhabitants’ priority to visually shield the visitor from
the activity spaces and circulation routes of the household in order to achieve desired
privacy for household members; 2/ inhabitants prefer, when possible, to keep ‘receiving
visitors’ in a clean space protected from everyday wear and tear since this space expresses
their social identity to the outside world. The two-step tree plan (figure 2b and 2c),
characteristic of the formally designed mass housing in New City perplexes the
inhabitants because it does not allow them to dedicate an enclosed space to the activity of
‘receiving visitors.’

The results shown in figure 7 show that the ‘receiving visitors’ activity space is usually
exposed to the dwelling entrance in patterns L+V and L+S, whereas in pattern L/V/S it is
more often not, reflecting the reasons given above. Figure 8 concerns the visual exposure
of all other inhabitant activities that we considered ‘private’ such as bathing, sleeping
cooking, and the ‘family living’ activities. In the entire sample, we notice there is always
more privacy achieved by pattern L+S since ‘family living’ activities moved deeper (52%
of dwellings in this pattern have ‘no private activity spaces’ exposed).

10
 all the sample Sayeda
140 35

120 0 30 5
8 0
100 39 25 0

no of units
no of units

7
80 9 20
57 13
60 15 23

40 83 66 10 20

20 45 5 11
9 4
0 0
L+V L+S L/V/S L+V L+S L/ V / S

pattern pattern

Dar El Salam
6 October
70 50
45 5 1
60 0
40

no of units
50 22 0 37
no of units

35 25
3 30
40 10 depth 3
25
30 19 20 depth 2
20 38 15 25
10 depth 1
10 19 3 15
6 5 5
0 0 0
L+V L+S L/ V / S
L+V L+S L/ V/ S
pattern Pattern
Figure 5. Relationship between pattern and depth of visitor's area from entrance

all the sample Sayeda

140 35

30 3
120 5
0 8
100 33 25
no of units

38
no of units

7 6
80 7 20
28 15
60
40 79 68 10 20 21
18
53
20 5

0 9 0 0
L+V L+S L/V/S L+V L+S L/V/S
pattern pattern
6 October Dar El Salam
70 50
45
60 13 4
4 40
no of Units

50
no of units

35 1 depth 3
23 7
40 30
14 8 25 depth 2
25
30 20
32 depth 1
20
33
15 26
25 10
10 0
9 5
7
0 2 0 0
L+V L+S L/V/S L+V L+S L/ V / S

pattern pattern

Figure 6. Relationship between pattern and depth of living area from entrance

11
 all the sample Sayeda
140 35
0
120 2 30
5 0
100

no of units
25
no of units
2
1 21
80 20
105 79 38
60 15 26 17
40 10
20 45 11
26 5
15 5
0 0 1
L+V L+S L/V/S L+ V L+S L/ V/ S
pattern
pattern
Dar el salam
6 October
70 50
45
60 3 1
40
37 15

no of units
50
no of units

35 2
40 30
25
26
53
30 25 20
20 15 27 2 spaces
10 10
16 2 1 space
7 7 5 7
0
0
5 no spaces
L+V L+S L/ V / S
L+V L+S L/ V / S
pattern pattern

Figure 7. Relationship between Patterns and Visual Exposure of Visitor's Activity Space
all the sample Sayeda
140 35
1
120 4 30
21 0
8 2
8
100 25 0
no of units

no of units

3 2
80 45 1 20
17
60 66 12 14
15

40 51 22
10
57
20 31 5 10 9
15
0 0 0
L+S L+B L/S/B L+S L+B L/ S/ B
pattern pattern

6 October Dar El Salam

70 50

60
45 02 03
1
40
11 17
50
no of units

35 1 34
no of units

40 04 30 7
29 25 3 spaces
30 16 20 15
2 spaces
20 15
26 1 space
10
10 19 21 12 no spaces
06 5 6
0 30 0
L+S L+B L/ S/ B L+S L+B L/ S/ B
pattern Pattern

Figure 8. Relationship between Patterns and Visual Exposure of Private Activity Spaces

12
The exposed private activity space in pattern L/V/S is usually the ‘family living,’ and
when pattern L+V achieves full privacy of private activity spaces it means that the
dwelling access point is on a circulation space and that the space where ‘receiving
visitors’ and ‘family living’ activities are combined is visually obscured from the entrance.

Analysis of Variance Results: The analysis tested the significance of variance between the
three activity patterns for the entire sample in each of the 12 variables as a form of
verification upon the findings of the chi-square analysis. None of the social variables
displayed significant variance between the patterns. The physical variable, number of
rooms in dwelling, displayed significant variance (above 0.01); the variance was between
the third pattern L/V/S and the other two. From the five syntactic variables, four
displayed significant variance (above 0.01). Only ‘depth of kitchen’ did not reveal
significant variance among the three patterns. This comes as no surprise since chi-square
analysis found significant associations with this variable only in one of the three areas.
Concerning depth of ‘family living’ activities, the variance was significant between
pattern L+S and the other two, as for depth of ‘receiving visitors,’ there was significant
variance between each pair of the three patterns. In terms of visual exposure of either, the
private activities, or the public activity of ‘receiving visitors,’ the significant variance was
between pattern L/V/S and the other two patterns.

The last verification was by means of stepwise discriminate statistics, using Wilks’
Lambda (λ), which tested the predictability of each activity pattern by the significant
group of variables. The results identified 6 out of the 12 variables to be significant
predictors of dwelling use and these were: 1/ number of rooms in the dwelling; 2/ depth of
‘family living;’ 3/ depth of ‘receiving visitors;’ 4/ visual exposure of public activity
spaces; 5/ visual exposure of private activity spaces; 6/ neighborhood. The variables
were able to correctly predict 69% of the dwelling units with activity pattern L+V, and
equally those with activity pattern L+S. For pattern L/V/S, knowing those 6 variables
could correctly predict 81% of the dwelling units adopting it. These variables are
therefore considered strong predictors of the activity pattern that would be adopted by the
inhabitants of the dwelling unit.

Conclusion

The cumulative results of the study are of great value to designers since they clarify to
them the behavioral implications of their designs. The triangulation of qualitative analyses
(plans, activity patterns and interviews) and quantitative analyses (association, variance,
and space syntax) have revealed several substantive lessons to Egyptian architects that
could guide them to designing more appropriate home environments. The methodology
applied in this study could be repeated to other forms of housing, or other groups of users
and reveal different phenomena and therefore different design guidelines. Hence, the
conclusion at a broader level emphasizes the responsibility of the designer and the critical
role played by spatial relations in determining how inhabitants could utilize the design.
Another important lesson for designers is to realize the importance of discovering, and
understanding, the latent functions of activity spaces. In other words, they should find out
what inhabitants are trying to achieve through spatial organization of activities; what their
indirect needs are, and what their priorities are. These factors change with culture, and
would therefore lead to different substantive guidelines for the designer in each context.

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