Abstract:
"Home" is supposed to be the word representing happiness, warm-heartedness and freedom todwellers for engraving the essences of their lives in. Home should also grows a dweller's personality in order to be a promising start for the society. However the creation of home containing complexity, variety and transience of human life is not easy-especially for the design of prefabricated "townhouse" limited by small space. Hence this research has concentrated on three main points namely superimposing dimension of functions, hidden dimension to serve human life and hidden dimension for remodeling and renovation. The study is made in Bangkok by participating the lives of two families living in townhouses which are different in terms of size and architectural type the owners of the townhouses are architects paying attention in good life-style and living here long enough to understand the architectural and structural changes clearly. This makes the research worth studying for anyone interested in the future. To create a town house being capable of carring complexity and variety of people to be thereal "home of life", one must view the townhouse in three different pictures: 1. "Visible picture" to serve the superimposltion of functions: This picture is serving basic needs and eliminate the lack or inappropriateness of kicthen, stores, cloth-drying area and greenery space. The picture shows the townhouse as an architecture containing multi-purpose area, vertical superimposition of service space, wall space for storge and potential space for more greenery. 2. "Invisible picture" to save individual life: This picture is a part of shared space having basic aspects needed by individual in different ages as a main factor. By this factor, the simple shared space could turn to be amagic place where one's personality can really grow up. The shared space could be categorized as "mezzanine under the roof of garage" - a snug place for children, "book terrace" - personal space for adults, "front terrace" - a place to serve house-father and "multi-purpose hall" - space for elders. 3. "About to be visible picture" to serve remodeling and renovation: As time goes by, human life changes in many different ways such as ages, numbers and needs. It is impossible to design a town house to meet everyone's physical and mental needs perfectly, one way is to remain tracess for dwellers to pick up and apply for their own lives. To remain the traces means to give imperfect design in some space of the house, to respond to vertical growth of personal space, to remain the traces of structure in the architectural compositions and to possess furniture and other easily-moved architectural compositions.