Design for tenant fitout : A critical review of public housing flat design in Hong Kong

This paper examines changes of space allocation and use patterns over the past 40 yr in Hong Kongʹs small public housing flats. It explores the benefits of ‘Tenant Fitout’, a process which enables individual families to fine tune layouts of their small unfinished flat—‘shells’— to fit their specific needs. The comparison of ‘Tenant Fitout’ patterns was conducted to provide useful insights into the spatial and activity needs of families as these insights can be extremely helpful in developing new shell designs. Also discussed are the advantages of ‘flexibility of shells’ to accommodate several layout options. The paper suggests that, because of the many advantages of ‘Tenent Fitout’, the recent trend in Hong Kong towards building ‘fixed layout’ flats instead of ‘Shells for Tenant Fitout’ should be reconsidered.