Architects and user requirements in public-sector housing: 1. Architects' assumptions about the users

This series of three papers reports on interviews with the architects of a sample of six public-sector housing schemes in London. In this paper are described their images of the council tenants for whom they design. These images are generalised, imprecise, and stereotyped. Occupiers are seen as young nuclear families, or as elderly people, with positive relationships both within and between households. The most strongly articulated objective was to allow or encourage social contact. Objectives on providing for individual identity and privacy were less clearly stated. Aesthetic preferences imputed to the occupiers were not distinguished from those of the architects. The architects did not appear to attempt to evaluate the accuracy of their images of the users.