Designing for Unpredictable Households: Furniture Design Requests for a Flexible Use of Dwellings

Abstract

New ways of living and a bigger variation on household’s geometry leads to an unpredictability on households’ functional needs throughout time, causing sometimes an inadequacy of dwellings’ space towards their users’ needs. Furniture solutions may enable a more flexible use of dwellings. What are the main requests to design furniture that will increase a flexible use of space? The answer for this question was found with the crossover of primary research, via direct observation/interviews on overcrowded dwellings, and literature review, leading to conclude that for furniture to provide a flexible use of the dwelling along the time, the designer must adopt user centered methodologies that focus on sustainability principles: i) a long usage period, supported by ii) durable materials, iii) services of maintenance and upgrade, iv) formal and/or functional adaptability and v) user inclusion on the design process to better understand the complexity on their present and future needs.