Inhabitants Consciousness Concerning Detached Houses in the City and Suburbs of Vientiane, Lao PDR

• Published in: Journal of Asian architecture and building engineering Vol. 8; no. 2; p. 339
• Main Authors: Phongsavanh, Saysavanh, Abe, Hirokazu, Yoshida, Katsuyuki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tokyo Japan Science and Technology Agency 01-07-2009
• ISSN: 1346-7581; 1347-2852

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between detached houses and the consciousness of the inhabitants1 concerning their house in the city and suburbs of Vientiane in the Lao PDR. The relationship between hardware aspects such as the physical dimensions of the house, and its floor plan are compared to the software aspects, such as the character of family homes and household size, and the usage of the area in each room. The opinions of respondents regarding their own house are also examined. These points can be summarized by the following issues: 1) the character of the type of houses was examined by using the statistic method of Hayashi's quantification theory III; 2) the character of families residing in detached homes and household size; 3) the house size or floor area in each house type; and 4) the level of satisfaction of inhabitants with their houses, which relates to current changes in culture and social concerns. Field surveys were performed to obtain information from students of the Faculty of Architecture at the National University of Laos using questionnaires. The main findings were: 1) single families are living in more modern houses (one-story brick houses) whereas multi-household families are living in more traditional houses (wooden stilt houses); 2) inhabitants of one-story brick houses were more satisfied with the bedroom and other rooms than inhabitants of houses in other types; and 3) inhabitants of traditional houses (wooden stilt houses) complained about the rooms.