Designing for a Flow: Co-creative Approach to Adaptable and Resilient Housing

Co-creative Approach to Adaptable and Resilient Housing

Abstract

This research investigates how adaptability and decision-making in self-organized housing can be supported in hazard-prone Caribbean contexts, with a focus on St. Martin. Where low-income households face barriers to formal housing, self-organized housing becomes a primary means of shelter access. While offering flexibility, such housing often develops under constraints that compromise structural safety, climate comfort, and long-term functionality — challenges intensified by climate change. Assisted self-organized housing approaches offer a way to improve these conditions, yet typically focus on initial construction, providing limited guidance for long-term adaptation. This research addresses this gap by developing Designing for a Flow — a structured guidance integrating circular design principles and co-creative methods to enhance adaptability and resilience in incremental housing processes. Conceptualizing housing as a dynamic process, the approach facilitates "flows" through three interrelated dimensions. Development flow addresses incremental construction and adaptation; material flow supports easy repair and replacement of building elements; and knowledge flow enables collaborative decision-making between residents and professionals. The study adopts a transdisciplinary Participatory Action Research approach within a single-case study in St. Martin, through which collaborative tools — including the Housing Flows Cards and the Designing for a Flow co-design tool — were developed and tested. The findings advance assisted self-organized housing by strengthening adaptability and collaborative decision-making, offering transferable insights for resilient housing development in other climate-affected contexts.