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...

Are building regulatory systems in European countries climate proof?

Demands on the energy performance of new and existing buildings hold a prominent place in the regulations of all European countries. The influence of EU policy goals and contents of EU Directives reverberate strongly in the energy regulations. Goals set by the European Union are that all newly built constructions must have a zero energy level by...

Dutch municipalities and the quality of the owner-occupied housing stock

Owners are responsible to maintain their own dwellings in an adequate manner. In practice however all kinds of constraints occur. Lack of financial means and insufficient (technical or practical) knowledge are the most important barriers. Because the quality of owner-occupied housing exceeds the individual interest; there are also general...

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, symp-toms 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 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...

Owner-occupiers and the quality of their dwellings

Home-owners are in principal responsible for maintaining the physical quality of their dwellings. It is in their own interest to do this in an adequate manner, but all kinds of constraints can and do occur in practice. Lack of financial means and insufficient (technical or practical) knowledge are only two of the possible barriers. The quality...

Housing Pathology

Housing pathology can be defined as a holistic approach to understand the nature and life cycle of residential buildings and their environment, in order to identify, investigate, and diagnose deficiencies, specify preventive measures and remedial interventions, and evaluate their effects. Though buildings can physically exist long after being...

Measuring housing system performance: Is a composite indicator a useful instrument?

Housing outcomes are predominantly compared in terms of individual indicators, in-cluding such items as quality or affordability measures, where the outcomes of the individual measures are often not linked in a preceding research step. However, the creation of a composite indicator of housing outcomes, in which these individual measures are...

Life cycle of dwellings: A conceptual model based on Dutch practice

Dutch ideas for stressing the responsibility of homeowners for housing quality