The Imperative of Spatial Agency in the Tectonics of the Affordable Home

This thesis explores the imperative of spatial agency in the context of affordable housing within a capitalist free-market economy and an age in which agency has been stripped from the architect and inhabitant alike. It defines the concepts of spatial agency of both the architect and inhabitant as well as the means to achieve this, namely prefabrication and adaptability as frameworks within the social sciences and architectural discourse. These definitions will then be further evaluated via their practical applications in several case studies dated between 1936 and the present. Ultimately, a flexible and low-impact solution will be implemented into the design of off site housing units for the Roden Crater housing project as well as one possible solution to affordable housing crises in an effort to utilize the once profit-driven means of prefabrication towards a more socialist end.