Study on building plan for enhancing the social health of public apartments

Mass-produced in a short period of time, Korea's public apartments contributed to easing the housing anxiety of the common people. Nonetheless, they also gave rise to problems of social exclusion and conflict, becoming undesirable facilities that weakened social health. This study examined ways of producing an improved building plan that can raise the level of social health of public apartments, which were consistently built in the past but will no doubt continue to be developed in the future. For this study, the survey method was employed through a questionnaire with visual contents especially developed to raise the level of social health based on two ideas. One was to increase the possibility of social interaction among residents, and the other was to increase opportunities for residents to interact with society as well as for their social integration. The results showed that residents had mostly favorable views on the proposed plans: in particular, they favored highly the formation of a lobby in each apartment building as a venue for social interaction. They also responded very favorably to the plan of creating within the buildings spare space that will be used not only to promote a communal culture, but to open to outside society as well for integration. This study showed vital ideas to ensure the recovery of the residential function of promoting social health in the public apartments of Korea. It has significance in inspiring an innovative approach to allow social mixture in a relatively different feasible manner from the conventional approach. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.