Rethinking Home Adaptability: How Everyday Life Inspires Design for a Resilient Housing Stock

By Dr Heba Sarhan

I had the pleasure of sharing findings from my PhD project at the HAS Conference in April 2025, a presentation that was generously funded by HSA. This distinguished platform offered me both an opportunity and a challenge to share a design-focused argument on adaptable housing with expert audiences from diverse housing-related disciplines.

In an era where adaptability has become a buzzword in housing design, I aimed, through presenting my paper “Family Homemaking Tactics in Tyneside Flats,” to share my critical perspective on the mainstream approaches followed in adaptable design. The paper challenges conventional theories of flexible design, those that focus almost exclusively on structural systems and architectural form,  and shifts the conversation toward the lived experiences and creative agency of residents. By doing so, it opens up new ways to think about how people, not just architects or decision-makers, can shape the adaptability of the existing housing stock.

Traditional models of adaptable or “flexible” housing have long been grounded in the capacity of a building’s physical structure to change—relying on movable walls, modular layouts, and adjustable systems. While such strategies support the resilience of buildings amid changing paradigms of home living, they often overlook a crucial reality: not all residents have the power or resources to modify the built form. Renters, low-income families, and those living in heritage or shared housing are often excluded from actions taken by developers or local authorities to respond to changing domestic needs, even though their daily lives constantly demand adaptation of their homes. The paper argues that this oversight has resulted in a limited understanding of what adaptability really means in the context of residential architecture.

Through an in-depth study of Tyneside flats in Newcastle upon Tyne, Victorian homes now accommodating contemporary families, the research reveals an inclusive and nuanced view of adaptable design. Rather than focusing on architectural interventions, it explores how residents employ homemaking tactics to negotiate their living conditions. These tactics, drawn from residents lived narratives and facilitated by design features, represent adaptive practices that respond to evolving social, emotional, and spatial needs without altering the dwelling’s structure itself.

As multi-use of space being often flagged as a central feature of adaptability in today’s ever-shrinking dwellings, the question here is: does space inherently offer this possibility? Indeed, participants described how time scheduling transformed their use of space. A single living room could function as a dining area, study zone, or playroom at different times of the day. However, what is remarkable here is how they altered sensory elements, such as lighting, warmth, and sound, to create distinct atmospheres suited to each activity. These temporal and spatial negotiations reflect an experiential form of design adjustment that is physically subtle, yet deeply transformative on sensory and emotional levels.

Alongside experiential adjustments, adaptable design features also emerged in the findings as physical elements influencing the lived experience of the home. The findings identifies two key adaptable design concepts: slack space and interconnectedness. “Slack space” refers to indeterminate zones, corners, attics, or sheds, that residents use flexibly for work, play, or retreat, without prior associations with a particular function. These are spaces of possibility, shaped more by imagination than by design intent. Interconnected spaces, such as kitchens linked to living rooms, were also perceived as opportunities to enable social flexibility—allowing parents to supervise children while cooking or to shift smoothly between solitude and being socially connected.

Ultimately, the paper proposes that adaptability should be understood as an experiential process alongside the structural flexibility of buildings. Through homemaking, families express agency facilitated by design features that enable a dialogue between their spatial environment and their lived realities. This relational adaptability allows homes to evolve alongside their occupants’ lives, supporting diverse lifestyles even without architectural intervention at the structural level.

By foregrounding the voices of residents, “Family Homemaking Tactics in Tyneside Flats” redefines design adaptability as an inclusive and ethical design quality. It shows that the power to adapt a home doesn’t solely rely on movable walls or modular systems, which may be restricted in many housing scenarios. In fact, design features that respond to everyday practices, sensory experiences, and spatial negotiations are central to allowing life to unfold within domestic space, empowering residents to adapt their homes independently of external forces influencing change in residential environments