Elements of desirability : exploring meaningful dwelling features from resident's perspective

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=chos20 Housing Studies ISSN: 0267-3037 (Print) 1466-1810 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/chos20 Elements of desirability: exploring meaningful dwelling features from resident’s perspective Jenni Kuoppa, Niina Nieminen, Sampo Ruoppila & Markus Laine To cite this article: Jenni Kuoppa, Niina Nieminen, Sampo Ruoppila & Markus Laine (2019): Elements of desirability: exploring meaningful dwelling features from resident’s perspective, Housing Studies, DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2019.1680812 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2019.1680812 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 06 Nov 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 305 View related articles View Crossmark data Elements of desirability: exploring meaningful dwelling features from resident’s perspective Jenni Kuoppa a , Niina Nieminen b , Sampo Ruoppila b and Markus Laine a a Faculty of Management, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland; b Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Turku, Finland ABSTRACT The need for more dweller-oriented approaches to the development of residential environments is widely agreed upon. In the theoretical discussion, the concept of affordances has been seen as promising in grasping the desirable dwelling features and how they become meaningful in everyday uses. However, the concept has been used surprisingly little in empirical housing studies. This article introduces an inventive method to study affordances and contributes to the understanding of the concept by reflecting its usefulness in the context of housing research. The method consists of focus group interviews guided by participant-produced photographs, which allows the participants more freedom to define what they consider meaningful in their dwellings. The results reveal some desirable dwelling features largely uncovered by the public or scholarly discussions yet. From residents’perspective, developing higher quality housing means paying greater attention to the mundane “secondary spaces”, the sensory experiences and the related atmospheric qualities, as well as the continuums between interior and exterior spaces. The results also emphasize an active role of the resident in discovering and shaping the affordances. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 8 October 2018 Accepted 9 October 2019 KEYWORDS Dwelling features; affordances; participantproduced photography; housing design; focus groups Introduction The need for more dweller-oriented approaches to the development, design and building of residential environments is widely agreed upon (e.g. Coolen, 2015; Hasselaar & Qu, 2011). However, currently residents tend to have little impact on what sort of housing is being developed. Information collected for the needs of housing production tends to incorporate rough categorizations and superficially phrased questions and, consequently, reproduces uninformative ideas of general housing ideals (Lapintie, 2010). Whereas residential location, housing type and tenure, as well as neighborhood qualities, have been quite thoroughly investigated (Pirinen, 2014, p. 28), the understanding of smaller scale features increasing or decreasing housing satisfaction is largely missing. Moreover, while much academic research focuses on the decision-making of CONTACT Niina Nieminen [email protected] Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Turku, Finland. ß2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. HOUSING STUDIES https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2019.1680812 housing choices (e.g. Aerø, 2006; Boumeester, 2011; Hasu, 2018) and its various background factors, these studies too often miss the information on the desirable dwelling features and qualities, and how they become meaningful in everyday uses and interactions with the living environment. Eventually, however, the information of functional, desirable and meaningful qualities of (urban) dwellings is what will make a difference also in the housing market. What makes a dwelling desirable for the residents is of course a combination of many elements. The physical, material, and formal features of dwellings, the social life that inhabits them, their meanings, their felt and ambient aspects, as well as housing policies and practices, are seen in a co-constitutive relationship (Jacobs & Merriman, 2011; Jacobs & Smith, 2008). Along social sciences in general, housing studies have turned the attention towards socio-material practices, action, embodiment, affects, and feelings related to spaces, environments and material settings of our lives. In other words, considerations beyond the symbolic meanings and representations of spaces and environments have become prominent (Clapham, 2011; Gabriel & Jacobs, 2008; Gillon & Gibbs, 2019; Hitchings, 2004; Imrie, 2004; Jacobs & Merriman, 2011; Smith, 2004). In our study, we use the concept of dwelling referring to a heterogeneous physical structures of which meaningfulness is produced in everyday life practices and embodied experiences of their inhabitants. This understanding of dwelling comes close to approaches of cultural geographies of home and home-making that recognize homemaking as a more-than human process, simultaneously imagined, lived and practiced (Gillon & Gibbs, 2019, p. 105). However, the home is a contested and loaded concept in academic literature (Blunt & Dowling 2006,p.2–3) and tied to extensive discussions about e.g. identity, domination, and alienation. Furthermore, as the more traditional approaches in housing studies highlight personal, social, psychological, and emotional meanings of home, while commonly lacking the dimension of physical structures (Easthope, 2004) essential to our research, we have chosen to use the concept of dwelling. King (2009) calls for a theory of dwelling for revealing the personal and lived experience and meaningfulness of often politically addressed and already existing housing units, issues and problems (King 2009,p.49). 1 However, the dwelling is not a passive object or structure onto which residents project meanings and identities, but it is an active and lively part of the everyday interactions between the resident and the environment, equally shaping this reciprocal relationship (see 2011 for his understanding of human-environment relationship; Clapham, 2009,p.9;Ingold,2000). A promising concept to capture this co-productive, practical, embodied, and meaningful relationship between people and their domestic and residential environment is ‘affordance’(Buckenberger, 2012; Clapham, 2011; Coolen, 2006,2015; Coolen & Meesters, 2012a,2012b; Heft & Kytt€ a, 2006), originating in ecological psychology developed by James Gibson (1979). The concept refers to the possibilities or obstacles that a particular individual perceives in her/his current environment in the context of action at hand (Ingold, 2015, p. 38). Thus, from the resident’s viewpoint, an object or a physical attribute of a dwelling is something that affords particular interactions with it (cf. Michael, 2016, p. 652). An affordance is not an equivalent to ‘function’ because it is relational to the specific resident’s intentions, needs and perceptions 2 J. KUOPPA ET AL. (Clapham, 2011, p. 366), stemming from the reciprocal relationship between the resident and the dwelling in everyday activities. The concept steers the analytical focus onto the meanings of a dwelling as intertwined with its materiality, physical structures and the embodied practices (including feelings, senses) of using it (Clapham, 2011; Heft & Kytt€ a, 2006). In this article, we enhance the understanding of the concept in the field of housing research by reflecting on the ideas of the ecological anthropologist Tim Ingold (2000, 2011,2018), the longstanding advocate but also critic of Gibson’s ecological psychology, in light of our empirical research. Ingold’s studies have been influential in many disciplines dealing with relations between people and their environments, but his work on affordance thinking has remained in the margins in anthropology (Ingold, 2018, p. 41) and, even more so, in housing research. Furthermore, despite of the attention in the theoretical discussion, the concept has been used surprisingly little in empirical housing studies. In this article, we discuss the methodological challenges, but also contribute by introducing an inventive method to study affordances and providing research findings shedding light on residents’perspective on meaningful housing features. As the residents’needs, wishes, life stages, and tastes are diversifying and differentiating (Ilmonen, 2016, p. 49; Hasselaar & Qu, 2011, p. 179), we aim to identify types of affordances that are flexible enough to apply to many types of physical settings, housing types and tenures in further studies. The article is based on a research project which examined important housing qualities for urban dwellers in Finland, in order to contribute to the regeneration processes of housing estates and brownfield areas. The research question addressed is: what kinds of affordances are relevant for residents making their dwellings not only functional but also desirable and meaningful. Affordance-based approaches in housing studies The concept of affordance was introduced into housing studies to structure the reciprocal relationship between intentional actors and their residential environment (Clapham, 2009,p.9).Gibson(1979) originally developed the approach of ecological psychology as a reaction against cognitivist approach to perception of the environment and the Cartesian premises of mainstream psychology splitting the world into the thinking mind and the executive body (Ingold, 2011, p. 77). For Gibson, perception is about moving around and actively engaging in our surroundings, discovering what they have to offer, whether for good or ill. These offerings of the environment are affordances (Ingold 2018, p. 39). Affordances are, in our understanding, inherently relational: they emerge in an interface between a perceiver and an environment (Ingold, 2011, p. 77–79; 2018,p.40;Knappett,2004; Lennon et al., 2017, p. 783; Michael, 2016,p. 652)—in continuous processes in which affordances are discovered and shaped by actors pursuing their objectives (Clapham, 2011), and likewise, the uses of the environment lead to new experiences, aspirations and needs. Thus, people continually shape environments and environments shape people (see Ingold, 2018,p.40). 2 Meanings and experiential qualities of the environment are drawn from these active engagements (Ingold, 2011, p. 78). According to Ingold (2011), this offers a HOUSING STUDIES 3 radically alternative way of thinking about the meanings as this means that they are not attached to objects but discovered in uses. Thus, all the meanings and values of a dwelling do not lie in shared systems of symbols, that is, in the ideas, categories and representations simply cast onto the world. Instead, meanings are understood as an inseparable, immediate part of the intertwined processes of perception and action (Ingold, 2011,p.77–78; 2018,p.39–41). In housing studies, the concept of affordances is promising as it enables scrutinizing the living environment, experiences and practices from the resident’s perspective, without the typical fixed attributes or rather general categorizations, such as housing type (e.g. Dekker et al., 2011), tenure (e.g. Andersen, 2011), type of residential area (e.g. Karsten, 2007; van Diepen & Musterd, 2009), or number of rooms, and focusing instead on the experiences and practices of dwelling (Coolen, 2006,2015). It also allows connecting the inherent meaningfulness and experiential qualities of a dwelling with its physical and spatial characteristics. According to Heft & Kytt€ a(2006), meaning has typically been treated in the psychological and social sciences as a subjective and mental quality that separate individuals impose on an otherwise meaningless environment or physical structures. However, Ingold sees an irresolvable problem in Gibson’s original approach to perception and the resulting understanding of affordance: For while, on the one hand, he brings the perceiver back to life, as a being who is continually moving around, actively attending to things, exploring their inexhaustible potentials and becoming more and more skilled in the process, on the other hand the environment is effectively solidified: it is portrayed as an environment of objects, every one of which is fixed in an rigid and invariant form, rendered inert, ready and waiting for the perceiver to come on the scene and to suss out its affordances. (Ingold 2018,p.42). Putting it simply, Ingold argues that even though the potentialities of the environment shape the actions of the perceiver, it is portrayed as an environment where nothing changes, happens, moves, or flows. In this article, we have taken this critique into consideration by extending the understanding of the affordances to include features of residential environment beyond a mere rigid set of objects. Coolen & Meesters (2012a) have presented a conceptual framework for studying the features of a dwelling and dwelling environment through the concept of affordances. Figure 1 (above) represents the framework developed further to fit our study. However, few studies have employed the concept in empirical housing research. Figure 1. A conceptual framework for studying affordances. 4 J. KUOPPA ET AL. Applications have been likewise rare in empirical studies on architecture and urban planning (Kytt€ aet al., 2013, p. 32). Yet, the possible uses of the concept, including how to identify the relevant and meaningful affordances among the numerous possible ones, and how to empirically connect the meanings and physical structures of a dwelling as the concept implies, have evoked some discussion. Coolen (2015) has suggested an affordance-based approach for determining the uses people intend to make of the dwelling and the objectives they try to achieve, i.e. the stated preferences. In his research design, the participants were provided with lists of possible affordances, of which they selected the most important ones. The affordances were identified by applying the idea of Affordance Feature Matrix model by Maier et al. (2007). The chosen affordances, both positive and negative, and their related physical structures (i.e. cooking in kitchen, personal care in bathroom, relaxing in living room, kitchen and balcony …) were investigated in a way that resembles the approach of much of the traditional housing preference studies in which housing attributes are put in mathematically calculated order, lacking context and situation (see Hasu, 2017, p. 33). Such an approach has been criticized for assuming people’s ability to abstractly weigh and measure user-benefits of various attributes and thus arrange a bundle of attributes according to their preferability (Hasu, 2017, p. 139). From this perspective, since affordances are characteristically situational and relational, the research should rather be anchored to a real-life context (Heft & Kytt€ a, 2006, p. 212)—what is actually happening in people’s mundane life. Another perspective for identifying affordances has been provided by Clapham (2011). Discussing housing for people with physical disabilities, he suggests that the concept of affordance should be expanded from basic functions (e.g. preparation of food or bathing) to cover the human needs included in the concept of wellbeing. A starting point could be the literature on the meaning of home that has provided lists of the factors that people think are important, such as security, shelter and warmth, or the general elements of wellbeing like self-actualization, autonomy, personal growth, self-acceptance, life purpose, mastery, and positive relatedness (Clapham, 2011). This approach also holds to rather general, pre-determined values as a basis for identifying affordances. Direct relationships between material attributes, uses and meanings cannot be assumed but need empirical and context-specific examination (Clapham, 2011). A quite routinized method applied for this, at urban level, is Public Participation GIS (PPGIS), used for collecting experiential knowledge on perceived environmental qualities. It allows mapping of environmental experiences and daily behavior practices with respect to specific locations and measurable qualities of the physical environment (Broberg et al.,2013; Kytt€ aet al., 2013,2018; Samuelsson et al.,2018). However, this kind of mapping often produces a rather static picture of the environment. For studying affordances, Heft & Kytt€ a(2006, p. 212) suggest observing the activities of individuals in situ, that is, recording what individuals actually do in particular places or conducting interviews on site asking participants to describe activities they typically undertake there and the features in the setting that support these activities. A rare housing studies example of such an approach is Lewinson’s(2011) study, HOUSING STUDIES 5 using the concept of affordances, on positive experiences of low-income residents living in hotels. Combining individual interviews and a photography method, she managed to compose stories reflecting the practices of home-making in far-fromideal living conditions. Data and methods: focus group discussions guided by photographs In order to anchor the study in the real-life context, avoid the pre-determined selection of affordances, and to gain access to residents’own embodied perceptions, practices and experiences instead, we chose an open, exploratory and participant-centered research strategy. Therefore, we applied a qualitative methodology combining photoelicitation technique with participant-led photography together with focus group interviews. The basic idea of photo elicitation is to add images into a research interview in order to elicit more or different kind of information (Harper, 2002). In our case, the photos were participant-generated, which resembles the idea of a participatory-action research method called a photo-voice (Nykiforuk et al.,2011). It has been used predominantly in studies presuming that the participants form a ‘community’— often one previously ignored in society or research (Warren, 2005)—to promote critical group discussion about community issues and assets (Wang et al.,2004), stimulate empowerment, and advocate community change (Ronzi et al.,2016). In a similar way, we used photographs as devices to gain access to participants’ perceptions on their actual dwelling environments (Rose, 2016). However, the study participants were not presumed to belong to marginalized groups or form a ‘community’, but rather share an interest in developing a particular (kind of) residential area. The use of participant-generated photography methods has also emerged in housing studies, including studies on home and homelessness (McCarthy, 2018), home creation of refugees (Fozdar & Hartley, 2014), experiences of comfortable home and homeliness (Madsen, 2018), place and identity in suburbs (Oldrup, 2010), and immigrant housing (Levin, 2014). All these studies agree upon participant-generated photographs as a method unmasking experiences that otherwise would have remained hidden. The article is based on a research project which examined relevant and important housing qualities for urban dwellers in Finland in order to contribute to the regeneration processes of housing estates and brownfield areas. The empirical study focused on two city districts in two Finnish midsize cities, Tampere and Turku. The Tampere case Tesoma is a socio-economically relatively disadvantaged housing estate, constructed in the 1960s and the 1970s, and now a target of redevelopment and densification plans. The district was chosen as an example of a relatively sparsely built large housing estate surrounded by a green environment, a ‘forest suburb’(mets€ al€ ahi€ o) in Finnish terminology. The Turku case Linnanf€ altti is a fairly central and attractively located brownfield area under conversion into a quite dense urban neighborhood. The district was chosen as an example of city center expansion area in a formerly non-residential setting. Particularity in the Linnanf€ altti neighborhood is that the new units developed consist of wooden-cladded housing as an extension of the city’s wooden inner suburbs. In both cases, the focus group formation was based on four different life stages. The focus groups represented students, households with children, households without 6 J. KUOPPA ET AL. children, and the elderly (over 65 years old)—i.e. groups which are likely to possess characteristically somewhat different housing needs. In Linnanf€ altti, the total number of participants in four focus groups was 23. In Tesoma, also a fifth, additional group was formed on a basis of residents living in a specific housing block undergoing a large-scale reconstruction process. In Tesoma, a total of five focus group discussions were performed with 28 participants. In Tesoma, the study participants’recruitment process focused on those currently living in the district. As the Turku study area did not have residents yet (by the time the study), the participants’recruitment focused on people interested in this new district or developing new wooden housing in the inner city in general. The majority of the participants lived in the central areas of the city, many in the old wooden housing districts, but some also in the neighboring (suburban) towns. We did not enquire the socioeconomic status of the participants, except of the characteristics of their current residence (Table 1). All except one participant represented native Finns. All in all, the two cases offer variety in terms of the material and social contexts of the participants’dwelling environments, including many house types, block typologies, tenures, and neighborhood contexts. This also provides groundings for generalizing the results even beyond the two district types studied. Essential to our method, the participants were given pre-assignments to take photographs (e.g. with their mobile phones) and send them to the research contact person in advance of the group discussions. They were asked to take four photos: first, of what they considered the most pleasing or functional place or thing both in their dwelling and their living environment; and second, of what they found poor, dysfunctional or otherwise unpleasant both in their dwelling and their living environment. The assignments were loosely defined in order to encourage the participantsown perspective. The focus group discussions were thematically divided into sections, which concerned directly the participant-generated images. The photos were used as a communicative tool, to guide and stimulate stories and comments from the research participants to explore the housing qualities (see e.g. Guillemin & Drew, 2010; Harper, 2002; Warren, 2005). Every participant presented her/his image and was asked to tell about its meanings. All participants were encouraged to take part in Table 1. Focus group participants and their current dwelling types. Tesoma Dwelling type Group Block of flats Terraced house Detached house Other (semi-detached/multidwelling) Students (7) 7 Families with children (5) 1 2 1 1 Household, no children (6) 1 4 1 Elderly (7) 5 1 1 Additional group (5) 5 Linnanf€ altti Dwelling type Group Block of flats Terraced house Detached house Other (semi-detached/multidwelling) Students (4) 3 1 Families with children (6) 2 1 1 1 Household, no children (7) 3 2 1 1 Elderly (6) 3 3 HOUSING STUDIES 7 commenting and discussing the photographs with others. At times, the researchers guided the flow of the discussion with focused questions. The benefits of focus group method were evident as participants’photographs triggered multiple responses from other participants and led to rich and animated conversations. In groups based on different life stages, participants could share and discuss their experiences of housing with their peers, keeping the conversation going easily. On the other hand, group conversations may be biased due to uneven interaction between dominant and more hesitant participants. Additionally, at times spontaneous comments and open-ended nature of responses can complicate the interpretation of results (see Stewart & Shamdasani 2015, p. 47). The photographs were an integral part of the data production and, finally, of the analysis. Our data consists of nine group discussions of about 2 hours each that were recorded and transcribed, and about 150 photographs in total. The analysis was theoretically informed by the conceptual framework, but at the same time grounded in the data to preserve the participant-centerd character of the research (see Shortt, 2015). Using interpretative content analysis of the group interviews, we identified the relevant affordances, i.e. the meaningful practices and experiences that participants talked about. While participants assigned certain meanings and activities to photographs, the photographs were also about objects, spaces or tangible features of dwelling spaces. Therefore, we also conducted a simple content analysis of the participants’photographs, arranging the data based on the kinds of spaces and physical structures they depicted. This dual strategy of analysis, inspired by Shortt and Warren (2017), allowed examining how affordances are connected with the tangible, material and physical characteristics of a dwelling. Desirable and undesirable dwelling spaces This section examines the affordances that people talked about when having the freedom to define what they consider relevant and meaningful features in their dwelling. These included the daily practices in ‘secondary spaces’, a multiplicity of affordances between the indoor and outdoor spaces of a dwelling, the sensory experiences and related atmospheric qualities of a dwelling, and the modifiable and flexible spaces. In the following, we elaborate these findings answering our research question on the relevant affordances for residents as well as briefly reflect on the existing—often rather limited—scholarly literature on each theme. Affordances of ‘secondary spaces’for daily routines The functionalities supporting everyday life activities may easily become unnoticed as routines flow uninterrupted. However, the material things affording the basic functions at home become visible and meaningful when they do not work as expected. In our view, this partly explains why many participants of our study described spatial arrangements and functions related to mundane daily practices as ‘negative affordances’that cause difficulties in the flow of daily routines such as housework, laundry, storing, or moving between different spaces at home. The problems reported were mainly related to poorly functioning or too small hallways and vestibules, stairways, 8 J. KUOPPA ET AL. uncontrollable quality makes the experiences even more annoying. The material conditions producing these negative affordances are often beyond residents’control and difficult to adapt to. Participant: The voices and sounds emanate from the kitchen very strangely, so if you turn any machine on there, it is very loud in the living room. So, if I watch TV, I always have to tell the others to close the door, if they are talking in the kitchen, using microwave or anything ( …) It is an incredibly annoying, terrible noise. Interviewer: Do you get used to it? Participant: No, I never get used to the noise. (Household with children, Turku) The findings add weight to the previous criticism on the visio-centric perspective of modernist architecture and design practice for underexploring nonvisual sensations and tactile qualities (Pallasmaa, 2012; Paterson, 2017). Ingold (2016, p. 163) has provocatively asked whether there can be ‘architecture without atmosphere’or whether we can imagine a building without the air circulating, the changing light, the sounds of inhabitants, or scent, evoking no moods (Ingold 2016, p. 163). There are a lot of geographical, architectural and anthropological writings about the atmospheres, for instance lightness and darkness (e.g. Edensor, 2015; Pallasmaa, 2012), and an ongoing discussion on the conceptual resources to investigate the affective and multisensory experiences of the built environment (Paterson, 2017). Those studies have, however, largely focused on public spaces (Shaw, 2015, p. 586). The multisensory, embodied aspect of affordances in dwellings has not yet been widely discussed in Figure 6. A positive feature of a dwelling presented by a participant. HOUSING STUDIES 15 housing research, even though it can play a significant role in creating desirable dwelling spaces. Affordances of flexible spaces for diverse and changing needs The needs and wishes for housing evolve and are revealed for residents as they inhabit their dwellings and time passes by. The majority of the participants wished for flexible housing solutions or possibilities to modify and influence their dwelling and its affordances to better suit their needs and ambitions. Many of them had also made at least small-scale repair works or otherwise altered the physical settings of their dwelling. The caption below reveals how alterations have helped a blended family’s members to appropriate space, instead of adapting to existing circumstances. Discovering and shaping affordances is a learning process. Well, the thing is that its me who is new in the house. On a psychological level its about how I am taken into the family as a stepmother. When can I speak out, where is my own territory, and where is our common territory? And then again, some kind of status quo has already formed [laughs]. The house can be modified according to our needs, and as my man is handy we can really do it. If the plot and building permit allowed, we could even build a bit more. So, the situation is ideal, after all its our motivation and desire driving how much we want—or not—to increase comfort or functionality ( …) and compromise …Its still a learning process. (Household with children, Turku) A space can also afford multiple uses without physical changes, as residents adapt their needs to the available opportunities. For instance, in our data, quite a few households were using their private saunas for drying laundry or for storage. However, some spaces truly serve for varied affordances, such as the exterior spaces already discussed, or kitchens integrated with living room or dining room spaces, which are experienced as places for several activities and therefore extending the affordances at home, e.g. by allowing socializing while cooking. Spacious apartments and large bedrooms were also valued because they were considered suitable for multiple functions and furnishings along changing life situations. I spend most of my time in this small room, which was left empty when the children moved away. I named it “the engine room”. There is a freezer, a computer and an armchair. Everything I need, and then, of course, the office of the Tesoma neighborhood association is there too. I think its wonderful that for the first time in my life, I have my own room. (The elderly, Tampere) There can be flexibility not only within the dwelling, but also in relation to its environment. One participating family in Turku told how they had rented another flat in the same building as their family size grew and they did not want to move. However, even after their children had moved away, the parents continued to make use of the second flat, which now serves as their home library and is their favorite place at home. Our findings highlight the significance of a diverse group of spaces that could be called ‘intermediate spaces’(Mugerauer, 2012, p. 266), ‘building peripheries’or ‘interstitial spaces’(Steele & Keys, 2015, p. 113), or even ‘loose spaces’(Stevens & Franck, 2007), which not only allow for one fixed use but also a freedom of different 16 J. KUOPPA ET AL. appropriations of space. That remains a rather neglected idea in contemporary housing research (Steele & Keys, 2015, p. 120, 123). These findings also support the viewpoint that a home continues to evolve as people live in it, and that the on-going process of transforming and maintaining a dwelling is central to making and keeping it a home (Fyhn & Baron, 2017). Conclusions Although dwelling is one of the most important dimensions of human life, residentoriented approaches to the development, design and building of housing and residential environments are few. Therefore, this article has explored what kinds of dwelling features are relevant for residents making their dwellings not only functional but also desirable and meaningful. The article’s theoretical contribution is integrating Tim Ingold’s(2011,2018) understanding of affordances to the discussion of ‘affordance’in housing studies (Clapham, 2011; Coolen, 2006,2015; Heft & Kytt€ a, 2006). The concept, referring to opportunities for action and experiences, connects the inherent meaningfulness of a dwelling with its physical and spatial characteristics. We also paid attention to Ingold’s arguments about the limitations of the concept. From Ingold’s perspective, affordances are not a set of objective conditions that exist independently and in advance of inhabitants’actions and lives, but they are inherently relational, discovered and shaped in uses of the environment as a result of reciprocal mental and bodily interactions with it (Ingold, 2011,p.78–79). From this position, affordances of a dwelling are sometimes a more complicated matter than e.g. Coolen’s(2015) preselected functions and values of spaces, suggesting that living room affords relaxation or kitchen affords cooking. We will reflect on this more after summarizing the empirical contributions. The second contribution of our study is methodological. We introduce a method, which enables letting people define what features they find meaningful and important in their dwelling, without categories predetermined by researchers. The method is based on focus group interviews in which photo-elicitation, in the form of photographs taken by participants, have a great role to play. The photographs help participants to reflect on their everyday activities and on the material, tangible elements of a dwelling, giving them some distance to what they are usually immersed in (see Rose, 2016, p. 316). As the results have shown, this offered novel, specific, detailed information on housing features and provided new perspectives on what relevant dwelling spaces are. Our study also points out how photos can help evoking more sensory and embodied reflections (Bramming et al 2012; Rose 2016, p. 308). On the other hand, we must critically reflect what is missing in the photographs. Participants did not produce, for instance, any photos of family members or other people and the layouts of dwellings were relatively seldom discussed. The reasons can be practical or more complex relating to social acceptability and conventions—what participants wanted to show to the researchers (Loopmans et al.,2012; Rose, 2016, p. 324) or in the group. However, this did not seem very relevant in our study. Risk of bias towards aspects of easy visual representation has also been identified in previous HOUSING STUDIES 17 research (da Silva Vieira & Antunes, 2014), but in our material photographs served also as pointers to discuss multisensory matters. All in all, the article has highlighted the relevance of developing exploratory and participant-oriented methodologies in housing studies. The third contribution of the article is empirical. We set the aim of organizing the findings to affordance categories that are flexible enough to apply to different physical settings, housing types and tenures. These were, first, the significance of affordances for routine activities at home, such as storing, housework and moving between spaces. Very mundane ‘secondary spaces’of a dwelling afford these activities. Second, multiple and diverse affordances were identified in spaces and continuums between the indoors and outdoors of dwellings such as window views, balconies, gardens and courtyards, which were greatly valued. Third, the importance of affordances for corporeal and multisensory engagements with dwelling spaces was raised. The potential of natural light as well as rich sensory experiences of exterior spaces in creating enjoyable atmospheres in a dwelling was emphasized. On the other hand, the often unpleasant haptic, acoustic and thermal experiences related to (negative) affordances created by technical flaws were also pointed out. Finally, the fourth important dwelling feature was flexible and modifiable spaces, which afford many possible uses for diverse or changing needs. Importantly, all these categories highlight dwelling features that have been rarely discussed in the context of housing (preference) studies. Figure 7 below summarizes the most important findings including the affordances for activities, atmospheres and experiences that residents either already find good and desirable in their dwelling (environment) or think would need improvement. As to the generalizability of our empirical results, the cultural boundaries of the generalizations in all distinguished affordance categories are a topic of further research. The empirical study through which the understanding emerged focused on two quite different kinds of urban residential areas in two Finnish midsize cities. Figure 7. The categories of affordances for activities and atmospheres connected with the dwelling features in residents’current dwelling. 18 J. KUOPPA ET AL. Furthermore, the ages, life-stages and the material and social contexts of the study participants’dwelling environments were diverse, which supports generalizing the results beyond the case studies. However, geography-wise the results will undoubtedly resonate more regarding the sparsely built housing estates, as well as inner city districts of Northern European cities, as they share many planning and cultural traditions and fairly similar climatic conditions. The results strengthen the notion of affordances towards more experimental and multisensory dimensions. Moreover, instead of concentrating on separate attributes or objects, our approach has allowed us to investigate how the various features of a dwelling entwine together in affordances. These features are also created by non-human things, materials and events. Changing light and temperatures, emanating sounds, mud and dirt, circulating air, weather, seasons and growing vegetation, weathering and decaying of buildings all shape the dwelling spaces, their sensory and tactile qualities and affordances for activities and experiences. Thus, as Ingold (2011,2018) has argued, the weakness of Gibsons original theory of affordances is leaving the understanding of the environment inanimate. The use of the concept of affordance by extending it beyond Gibson’s original theory, taking into account the material flows and movements, also needs further examination. Further studies might need to add other concepts that better capture e.g. different timescales of flows and formations in the environment. The practical aim of the study has been to contribute to bringing the dwellers’perspective to the discussion on how to develop contemporary housing. All the empirical findings are grounded in the residents’experiential knowledge about affordances gained in the actual processes of dwelling. Our results add to Coolen’s idea that in housing development, it is not sufficient to have only a basic understanding of what people prefer, so that the marketable residence would provide certain basic functions for all. Shifting the focus from a physical entity towards the affordances could push the developers to provide qualities beyond those elementary functions (Coolen 2015, p. 78–79). On the other hand, the basic functions will be reflected on when they do not work as expected and interrupt the usually unconscious flow of daily routines. According to these results, creating higher quality, desirable housing for residents means paying greater attention to the ‘secondary spaces’, the sensory experiences and the related atmospheric qualities, as well as the continuums between interior and exterior spaces. These dwelling features can and should be applied in diverse housing types, settings, tenures, and price categories. Last but not least, our results emphasize the intentional and active role of the resident in discovering, shaping, and creating affordances in the continuous process of inhabiting domestic environments in our everyday life. This means that designing strictly defined functions and attributes of a dwelling is not enough, but the design should leave more space for modifications also by residents themselves. Notes 1. Tim Ingold (2000) also discusses the originally Heideggerian concept of dwelling (as a verb) and what it means to dwell in an environment or in the world. However, he has since turned away from the concept and suggests the concepts of inhabitation and wayfaring instead (Ingold 2011, p. 12). As this is a loaded and complex discussion about HOUSING STUDIES 19 the essences of how living beings inhabit the earth, as Ingold (2011, p. 12) notes, we cannot address it here. 2. Ingold has noted an unsatisfactory compromise between a realist and relational ontology in the background of Gibson’s original theory. In short, Gibson ‘wanting it both ways’ insisted that affordances are real, objective and physical AND constituted only in relation to the perceiver. This has led to discord in the interpretations of the concept (Ingold 2018, p. 40). In this study, we engage in the discussion on ‘relational branch’. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Funding This work was supported by the Academy of Finland Strategic Research Council under Grant [303494], Tekes—the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation under Grants 3355/31/2015 and 3424/31/2015, and Turku Urban Research Programme. Notes on contributors Jenni Kuoppa, PhD (environmental policy), is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tampere, the Research Program on the Politics of Space and the Environment (POLEIS). She is interested in everyday practices in cities, especially housing, as well as experiences of walking and walkability in urban environments. Niina Nieminen, MSc (geography), is a PhD student and researcher at the University of Turku. 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