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The study assesses user satisfaction of workspaces modified at home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby analyzing the flexibility of modern homes in the twenty-first century in the United Arab Emirates.

Data was collected using a structured online survey from 113 participants about their home office created to accommodate working/studying from home. Analysis of survey revealed the importance of type of residence in affecting satisfaction of functionality and well-being.

The collected demographic variables played a crucial role in affecting satisfaction with various elements, from indoor air quality of the working space to the amount of natural light received by the space. Finally, participants who felt the need to add color and change furniture layout, experienced feelings of productivity, commitment and motivation by working from home. The same participants decided to keep the amended changes to their living spaces, even after they return to working from their offices. The study concludes by presenting implications of this experience on future home designs; thereby offering suggestions of authorities, and designers to produce more flexible and resilient houses.

A relatively small sample with limited professions was considered. Further research recommendations include increasing the sample size to target more categories of the residents of the UAE. Future research can expand the criteria used to evaluate satisfaction and include noise levels as well as accessibility.

The study offers suggestions to authorities and designers to produce more flexible and resilient homes, taking demographics into consideration. Roof gardens, shading devices and privacy needs are crucial elements for the future home.

The research provides enough information to inform designers about the future of space interiors, how well they are configured, serviced and how adaptable they are, in order to enhance user satisfaction.

1. Satisfaction was affected by individual differences.

2. Those who changed furniture layout showed least average satisfaction.

3. Females reported higher satisfaction with indoor air quality and lighting than males.

Satisfaction was affected by individual differences.

Those who changed furniture layout showed least average satisfaction.

Females reported higher satisfaction with indoor air quality and lighting than males.

This paper aims to understand how the residents have utilized domestic spaces and furniture during three months' lockdown time for the Covid-19 virus spread measures and to explore how domestic living practices were adjusted which had been the daily urban activities previously.

The research method is a qualitative interpretivist philosophical approach with a quantitative data collection. Short questionnaires were conducted via e-mails with attached links via SurveyMonkey. The sample was the group of people who had been in active urban life before the pandemic and had been actively working at the office spaces.

Separate learning/working spaces were urged at home, at least for the set intervals in the daytime. Production in the kitchen also acted as an interactive production and entertainment. Balconies and terraces were re-discovered and acted as “urban-substitute open spaces”. The living room became the new venue for domestic interaction especially during working-learning breaks, for watching movies, personal care or reading sessions. Computers, tablets and smartphones became the urban activity base due to online meeting applications for social reasons, online shopping, working and learning. The separation of domains at home became essential.

The study only focuses domestic uses of white-collar workers; during the lock-down period, Covid-19 pandemic. Sampling constraints are the employees who were active urban life before the pandemic and working at the office space. Sharing the house at least with one other roommate, sibling or spouse with or without children. Individuals who had not been working outside the home before the pandemic, people aged over 65, retired, permanent home workers, housewives, freelancers and other such demographic structures are excluded from the study.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first wave lockdown began between early March–June 2020, and millions of people were confined to the dwellings. “Staying home” stood for working-learning-shopping-interacting online, more production in the kitchen, using the living room as a domestic multi-functional venue, spending time on the terraces and balconies as domestic open spaces. The active living in the urban context dramatically shifted to “at-home living”.

The study only focuses on the three months' interval in which strict rules for staying home were enforced in Istanbul, Turkey. Schemas, charts and tables are generated concerning the input. The study challenges the making meaning via praxis of “to dwell” and urban living. Nevertheless, the main questions of housing such as production, social aspects, shared spaces, interaction are re-configured and the substitute urban space is created at home.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic compelled people to spend most of their time at home to avoid spreading the virus, signifying staying away from offices, schools and marketplaces and where many people congregate. This situation put enormous pressure on residential buildings, which functioned as alternative spaces to schools and offices. This paper aims to investigate the impacts of home-based online classes because of the COVID-19 outbreak on residential buildings in Saudi Arabia.

This study collected population-representative survey data from 324 eligible respondents using an online questionnaire and conducts descriptive and Spearman's correlation analysis using the SPSS 28.0 program.

This study found that the use of space during COVID-19, home-based learning space comfort and home-based online learning perception affected home-based online space requirements during the school lockdowns. Higher school levels, learning space comfort levels, types of education and number of school-aged children in a house were correlated with various types of discomfort experienced during home-based online learning. Lastly, the parents' preference for their children to continue online studies was correlated with the adverse effects of online learning and the possible advantages of online learning.

Lack of studies about the impact of home-based online classes on residential space requirement and use resulted in insufficient investigation and documentation of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on home-based learning environments. This research contributes to the literature on the factors affecting spatial requirement during emergencies and how significant this relationship is.

The purpose of this paper is to review an emerging type of dwelling, indicated as Smart Home, with a focus on future user lifestyles and needs. Trends toward sustainability and technological changes dramatically alter the concepts of Smart Home. Consequently, real estate decisions are going to be affected by the Smart Home development. Inspired by research in the field of user centered design and future lifestyles, the authors redefine the housing design to increase the acceptance of Smart Homes in the society.

Upcoming trends and developments in housing technologies and concepts are reviewed and analyzed. A multidimensional definition of a Smart Home is suggested which allows a better understanding of the new elements and spaces of this future home. A new concept of a home environment is presented in which virtual space and ambient intelligent space is integrated within the physical space. Furthermore, possible changes in lifestyles enabled by new technological developments are identified. Linking the new home environment concepts with the user's lifestyles provides a research framework for the investigation of Smart Homes. This framework is helpful in addressing the trends of sustainable society inside the domain of Smart Homes and Smart Real Estate.

In this paper, the authors provide answers to questions on the feasibility and impact of new technologies on future lifestyle and dwelling in the domain of real estate.

The presented research framework is not only relevant for academic researchers but also for real estate investors, because it highlights the risks that need to be managed when developing Smart Real Estate.

Focusing on everyday lives and relationships within the household, the purpose of this paper is to suggest that the quality of “home” is altered by the presence of animal companions. Conceptions of home as a haven have been critiqued on grounds of the elision of power relations, yet home has also been understood as a place of resistance to, and refuge from, an exploitative and exclusionary public world. Acknowledging differentiated relations of power and understanding homemaking as a process, this paper investigates the playing out of species relations within home space.

This paper draws on empirical material from a study of companion species in households and public spaces, deploying ethnographic material gained through extended observation and semi-structured and often mobile interviews with dog “owners” in urban and rural contexts in the UK.

Dogs transform domestic space through muddying human lives. This process is twofold. First, life in posthumanist households problematizes boundaries between humans and other creatures in terms of relationships, behaviour and use of space. Second, muddied living involves breaching and maintaining domestic order. Muddied living is characterised by tension, power and compromise. Homes are posthuman not just by including non-human animals, but through elements of dog agency in how home is made.

Little has been written of “home” within sociology, despite “home” capturing a range of social practice. Sociologists examining human–animal companion relations have not considered how relations play out in home space. This paper investigates home as a shared space of multispecies interaction, making the case for a posthuman sociology of home.

This chapter describes sociological research on the material and spatial dimensions of everyday family life in the United States, with a specific emphasis on how children’s agency is manifest in the display and use of childhood and parenthood objects in home spaces. Children’s agency is framed as a juxtaposition of individual control and cultural and structural constraint, but also as it positions children in relation to adults, home spaces in relation to not-home spaces, and families in relation to other social realms such as the marketplace, schools, and the digital world. Three research topics are featured, all of which stem from the author’s projects spanning the last decade. These include parenting roles as shown in the taking and managing of digital and physical family photographs, children’s use of technology as a way to tell the story of parent–child connectedness in families separated into two homes, and young adults’ use of objects and spaces to signify role transition into adulthood. The central themes emerging from this research are supported by a theoretical foundation that combines Corsaro’s (2012) interpretive reproduction of childhood alongside Anderson, Moore, and Suski’s (2016) call for material mindfulness in sociological investigations of the home.

Aligned with the United Nations 2030 agenda of leaving no one behind, a project called The Nest was initiated to create an in-house intentional learning space at two public housings in Klang Valley. In a small unit of public housing, most children in these houses sit on the floor in the living room to do their schoolwork or study with the TV switched on. Poor indoor environmental quality and lack of personal space are among the main reasons that lead to children not being able to study at home comfortably.

The research employed a quasi-experimental approach as the research field setting was not randomly assigned. Observation on the change in the quality of space and post-evaluation interviews with beneficiaries were conducted.

The findings show that besides the tangible space that the Nest project has created, it also has created in-tangible space. It has shown that even small spatial changes to existing spaces could improve children's active learning and the participation of parents in their children's learning.

This study focuses on the home learning experience and parental involvement in their children's learning, so perhaps future research can be done to measure the impact of home learning space on academic achievement.

The research outcomes show that a good quality of learning space influences the children's learning experience at home and the parents' involvement. It will also contribute to the development of the building regulation for high-rise affordable housing in Malaysia. Particularly in improving the optimum requirement to achieve better comfort quality for the learning space at the residential unit.

The Nest project will contribute to raising the awareness among all residents of public housing on the importance of in-house learning space and encourage them to build their own learning spaces through the Do-It-Yourself Guidelines.

The research outcomes show that both parental involvement and the quality of learning space influence the children's learning experience at home. It will contribute to the development of the building regulation for high-rise affordable housing in Malaysia. Particularly in improving the optimum requirement to achieve better comfort quality for the learning space at the residential unit.

Many people living in and around Mumbai face space scarcity within homes, an issue exacerbated for families with members having differing and conflicting spatial requirements. By investigating how families live in existing residential environments, planners and designers can enable families to cope better with space scarcity.

A case study approach is used to examine four small home settings in and around Mumbai, followed by a thematic analysis of the data collected.

This study contributes a framework for studying small homes in and around Mumbai wherein they are characterized by five categories of information: internal zoning pattern, expansion pattern, spatial specialization and stratification pattern, outdoor space appropriation pattern and household adjustment pattern. Analysis through this framework gives insight into how small home settings are used by residents.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study offering in-depth comparative analysis of small home typologies in India.

Although the use of online technology has generated excitement over its potential to increase access to education, most existing research has focused on comparing online and in-person student performance. This study provides empirical evidence that semiprivate space at the family level affects students' access to online education.

Students from 1,565 low-income households in China were surveyed, and a multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted on the hypothesized factors that affect access to online education at home.

The results show that the absence of computers, smartphones and broadband networks at home severely hinders children's access to online education, and even leads to their exclusion from it. Children with their fathers or paternal grandfathers as guardians have a lower probability of receiving online education at home. It was also found that the higher the education level of the head of the household, the more likely it is that children will receive online education at home.

This study is one of the first to examine online accessibility at the family level. It also demonstrates that the semiprivate space at the family level may limit opportunities for students who would otherwise pursue online education at home.

Pandemic process has led re-questioning home environments within adaptations of new activities inside due to the restriction of outdoor usage. This paper aims to reveal spatial transformations carried out through the time spent at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A qualitative study is carried out based on Garfinkel’s (1961) ethnomethodology method (documentary method of interpretation). Analysis focused on the first month of pandemic in which urgent adaptations and solutions produced at home, and the situation in last two weeks of pandemic is analyzed within a control group and comparisons were made. Perec’s (1974) statement of “a user's manual” is used as a checklist of time-space-activity observations proposed on “mondayness, tuesdayness, wednesdayness, thursdayness, fridayness, saturdayness and sundayness.” Instead of daily period, activities performed on a weekly scale were recorded and time-dependent shifts of functions were revealed.

Findings introduced new discussion topics to examine dwelling spaces in “new normal.” Comparisons indicate that hypothesis of gathering all activities in room in terms of “life fits into room” concept is directed through rapid spatial behaviors in daily life as primary adaptation.

Although pandemic process continues after study, analysis of first four weeks are accepted as the period of rapid change and compared by last two weeks of pandemic.

Pandemic indicators proposed in study brings along that there is little information on the subject in literature. Socio-spatial findings address the examinations of spatial transformations into pandemic adaptation.