Housing Pathology: Towards a Holistic Pathological Approach of Residential Buildings

Housing pathology is the holistic approach to identify, investigate and diagnose housing deficiencies, specify preventive measures and remedial interventions and evaluate their effects. In analogy with health as the core condition for the quality of human life, the health of housing accommodations stands for housing quality, being the ability of...

Digging deeper: Public housing in Ghana managed by local authorities

In the 1980s, the government of Ghana decided to withdraw from direct housing provision. In lieu of this, the two main institutions through which government provided and managed public housing – the TDC and SHC sold off most of their dwellings. The few remaining dwellings were transferred to local authorities to own and manage. There have been...

Housing obsolescence in practice: Towards a management tool

Obsolescence, broadly defined as a process of declining performance resulting in the end of the service life, is a serious threat for built property. This is even more the case in present times of reduced investment budgets and relatively small numbers of new-built homes, which increase the relative importance of the existing housing stock....

Housing pathology: A new domain or a new name?

The term pathology has its origin in the medical science and is generally defined as the systematic study of diseases with the aim of understanding their causes, symptoms and treatment. The term has been applied since in many different disciplines; in the context of the built environment being in particular building pathology, social and urban...

Housing obsolescene in practice: A pilot study

Obsolescence is a serious threat for built property. As an often used demolition motive, obsolescence can be regarded as the last phase of the life span of buildings. From a sustainable viewpoint, life cycle extension is necessary to minimize waste. But there are more considerations to carefully maintain the existing stock. Knowledge about the...

Demolition in Europe: Volume, motives and research approach

What determines the life span of dwellings? Much is known about the initial phase of buildings. The vast majority of scientific knowledge is concentrated on the building initiative, the programming, design and in particular the construction. Knowledge about the utilization phase, including management, transformation and redesign is growing. But...