MODULE 3: HOUSING TYPOLOGIES

Duration: March 2022

Session: Week 4
Number of Hours: 2.4 hours
Objective: To learn the different typologies of housing around the globe.

Houses can be built in a large variety of systems and configurations. A basic division is
of spaces are considered in different housing types. Both may vary greatly in scale and
amount of spaces provided.

a) Detached single-unit housing - contains only one dwelling unit and is

completely separated by open space on all sides from any other structure

b) Semi-detached dwellings - is a single family duplex dwelling house that shares

one common wall with the next house.

c) Attached single-unit housing - one side of your house is attached or built

directly at the side (boundary) of your lot.

d) Attached multi-unit housing - Multi-family residential is a classification

of housing where multiple separate housing units for residential inhabitants
are contained within one building.

e) Movable Dwelling - is any tent, caravan, van or other portable structure used for
human habitation.

3.1 Detached single-unit housing

Single-family detached home

a. Bungalow: any simple, single-storey house without any basement.

b. Castle: primarily a defensive structure/dwelling built during the Dark Ages and
the Middle Ages, and also during the 18th century and the 19th century.
c. Cave dwelling, Chinese: called a Yaodong and of two types, 1) built into rock on
the side of a hill or 2) earth sheltered with a courtyard.
d. Cottage: usually a small country dwelling, although weavers' cottages are three-
storied townhouses with the top floor reserved for the working quarters.
e. Earth sheltered: houses using dirt ("earth") piled against it exterior walls for
thermal mass, which reduces heat flow into or out of the house, maintaining a
more steady indoor temperature.
 f. Farmhouse: the main residence house on a farm, or a house built with the same
type of styling and located anywhere.
g. Log home, Log cabin: a house built by American, Canadian, and
Russian frontiersmen and their families which was built of solid,
unsquared wooden logs and later as a well crafted style of dwelling.
h. Mansion: a quite large and usually luxurious detached house , may be two
storey or more.
i. Manufactured house: a prefabricated house that is assembled on the
permanent site on which it will sit.
j. Prefabricated house: a house whose main structural sections were
manufactured in a factory, and then transported to their final building site to be
assembled upon a concrete foundation, which had to be poured locally.
k. Ranch: a rambling single-storey house, often containing a garage and
sometimes constructed over a basement.
l. Split-level house: a design of house that was commonly built during the 1950s
and 1960s. It has two nearly equal sections that are located on two different
levels, with a short stairway in the corridor connecting them. This kind of house is
quite suitable for building on slanted or hilly land.
m. Shack: a small, usually rundown, wooden building.
n. Single-family detached home: any free-standing house that is structurally
separated from its neighboring houses, usually separated by open land, making it
distinctive from such dwellings as duplexes, townhouses, and condominiums.
o. Stilt houses or Pile dwellings: houses raised on stilts over the surface of the
soil or a body of water.
p. Tree house: a house built among the branches or around the trunk of one or
more mature trees and does not rest on the ground.
q. Underground home: a dwelling dug and constructed underground.
r. Vernacular house: house constructed in the manner of
the aboriginal population, designed close to nature, using locally available
materials.
s. Villa: originally an upper-class country house, though since its origins
in Roman times the idea and function of a villa has evolved considerably.

3.2 Semi-detached dwellings

 a) Duplex house: commonly refers to two separate residences, attached side-by-
side, but the term is sometimes used to mean stacked apartments on two
different floors (particularly in urban areas. The duplex house often looks like
either two houses put together, or as a large single home, and both legally and
structurally, literally shares a wall between halves. Two-family home or two-
family house: the generic American real estate business jargon for a small
apartment house or a duplex house that contain two dwelling units.
b) Two decker (A Double decker building plan): since real-estate advertising
generally specifies correctly whether the two-family home is a duplex-house
type these are usually more desirable for both rentals or purchases.
c) Semi-detached: two houses joined together;

3.3 Attached single-unit housing

a) Byre-dwelling: A farmhouse with people and livestock under one roof.

b) Connected farm: A type of farmhouse complex in New England.

c) Housebarn: A combined house and barn, see article for many types.

d) Longhouse: A historical house type typically for family groups or as a

housebarn.

3.4 Attached multi-unit housing

Multi-family residential

Specific terms under various American federal, state, or local laws dealing with fair
housing, truth in advertising, and so forth, have been prescribed and engender specific
legal meanings.

a) Apartment: a relatively self-contained housing unit in a building which is often

rented out to one person or a family, or two or more people sharing a lease in a
partnership, for their exclusive use. Sometimes called a flat or digs (slang). Some
locales have legal definitions of what constitutes an apartment.
b) Apartment building, Block of flats: a multi-unit dwelling made up of several
(generally four or more) apartments.
c) Barracks: a type of military housing, which used to connoting a large "open
bay" with rows of bunk beds and attached bathroom facilities, but during the most
recent several decades for the American Armed Forces most of the new housing
 units for unmarried servicemen have been constructed with a dormitory-style
layout housing two to four service members.
d) Basement apartment
e) Condominium: a form of ownership with individual apartments for everyone, and
co-ownership (by percentages) of all of the common areas, such as corridors,
hallways, stairways, lobbies, recreation rooms, porches, rooftops, and any
outdoor areas of the grounds of the buildings.
f) Flat: In Great Britain and Ireland, this means exactly the same as an
"apartment".
g) Garage-apartment: an apartment over a garage; if the garage is attached, the
apartment will have a separate entrance from the main house.
h) Loft or warehouse conversion can be an apartment building wherein part of the
unit, usually consisting of the bedroom(s) and/or a second bedroom level bath is
sub-divided vertically within the structurally tall bay between the structural floors
of a former factory or warehouse building.
i) Mess: a building or flat with single bedroom per tenant and shared facilities like
toilets and kitchens. These are popular with students, bachelors or low wage
earners in the Indian subcontinent.
j) Officetel: small apartment providing a combined work and living area in one
place, especially in South Korea.
k) Penthouse: the top floor of multi-story building
l) Railroad apartment (or railroad flat): a type of apartment that is in a building
built on a very narrow
m) Rowhouse (USA); also called "Terraced home" (USA); also called
"Townhouse": 3 or more houses in a row sharing a "party" wall with its adjacent
neighbour. In New York City, "Brownstones" are rowhouses. Rowhouses are
typically multiple stories.
n) Shophouse: the name given in Southeast Asia to a terraced two to five story
urban building featuring a shop or other public activity on the street level, with
residential accommodation on upper floors.
o) Single Room Occupancy or SRO: a studio apartment, usually occurring with a
block of many similar apartments, intended for use as public housing. They may
or may not have their own washing, laundry, and kitchen facilities.
 p) Studio apartment or Studio flat (UK), or Bachelor apartment or Efficiency
apartment: a suite with a single room that doubles as living/sitting room and
bedroom, with a kitchenette and bath squeezed in off to one side. The unit is
designed for a single occupant or possibly a couple.
q) Tenement: a multi-unit dwelling usually of frame construction, quite often brick
veneered, made up of several (generally many more than four to six) apartments
(i.e. a large apartment building) that can be up to five stories. Tenements do not
generally have elevators.

Example of late Victorian terrace in Moss Side, Manchester, UK.

r) Terraced house: Since the late 18th century is a style of housing where
(generally) identical individual houses are conjoined into rows - a line of houses
which abut directly on to each other built with shared party walls between
dwellings whose uniform fronts and uniform height created an ensemble that was
more stylish than a "rowhouse".
s) Tower block or Apartment tower: a high-rise apartment building.
t) Townhouse: also called Rowhouse (US). In the UK, a townhouse is a traditional
term for an upper class house in London (in contrast with country house), and is
now coming into use as a term for new terraced houses, which are often three or
more stories tall and may include a garage on the ground floor.

Multifamily home features

• Tenants usually have some portion of the basement and/or common attic.
• Fire regulations strictly require a separate emergency egress for all
apartments under U.S. laws and national fire codes.
• Utilities are either paid as part of the rent, or (now predominant) the units
have separately provided heat, air conditioning, electrical distribution
 panels and meters, and sometimes (uncommonly) water metering, separating
all secondary housing costs by rental unit. Common lighting may or may not
be off a separate meter and circuitry in subdivided former single-family
dwellings.
• Leasehold documents will specify other common factors such as specific
parking rights, rights to common spaces such as lawn and gardens on the
premises, storage or garage (usually a detached unit, that cannot
economically be converted into an additional housing unit) facilities and
details such as who has responsibility for upkeep, snow removal, lawn care,
and so forth.

3.5 Movable dwellings

• Park home, also called Mobile home: a prefabricated house that is

manufactured off-site.
• Tent: usually a lightweight, moveable structure.
• Travel trailer or Caravan
• Yurt or Ger: used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia.
• Houseboat: includes float houses