My doctoral research examined if flexible housing designs and making changes to homes can positively support our wellbeing in it. Poor and unsuitable housing is an important socioeconomic determinant of our health. Being able to use the house in a way that supports our needs and make changes to it if unsuitable has various health, financial and psychosocial benefits. However, the extent to which residents can exert this sense of control over their homes can be low in the current UK homes as they are predominantly small, largely inaccessible and hard to retrofit and adapt, and yet expected to dominate the housing stock till 2050. This poses a serious challenge for meeting our increasing and changing demands of our homes as we spend more time at home living, working and ageing, especially post the covid-19 pandemic.
In my thesis, I adapted an interdisciplinary approach combining psychological frameworks with architectural design insights to examine if flexible features and making changes to home can support our wellbeing in it. I found that having a variety of rooms at home, and which are multifunctional and easily modifiable are important for wellbeing. But is dependent on whether residents can easily use these features and make different types of changes to them such as decorations, personalisation, furniture layout and structural changes and maintenance. These behaviours can be dependent on multiple factors and influences, but on an individual level, I found that having the ability (knowledge, skills, awareness of how to) and the drive/need to make these changes to homes play an important role in it.
These findings have important implications for new housing design and resident agency and empowerment in UK housing which is explored in this Fellowship. There has been an increasing need for including residents in the decisions of housing design and building more flexible, resilient and futureproofed homes to support the increase in residential mobility and ageing population. In this fellowship, I will explore the extent to which these findings can be applied to the design of new housing projects, the challenges and restrictions (policy and planning) to adapting existing homes, and various pathways to empower residents in modifying their homes despite the restrictions. Working with partners and networks, I will disseminate key findings with residents and housing professionals through public events, online content, knowledge exchange workshops to ensure the societal and industry impacts of my doctoral research is maximised.
Research Areas:
1. Global Health Innovation and
4. Environment and Sustainability
Publications:
Individual publication links:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102333
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102335
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21030304
Social Media Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadhanaj9/
Twitter: https://x.com/sadhanaj9
Institution Profiles:
- Imperial College London- https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/s.jagannath,
- University of Surrey- https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/sadhana-jagannath
- Google scholar link to all publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BXZ07tQAAAAJ&hl=en