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Housing quality is determined by both objective and subjective dynamics. This research was conducted to explore the importance of users’ memory as a tool for assessing housing quality. While objective features of the surroundings generally require physical measurements, subjective features can be supported by residents’ memories. Memory studies can therefore be used as a research tool to understand the housing environment as they provide important references to the past, present, and future. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between users’ (residents) memory and housing quality.

The methodology comprised a literature review of spatial quality studies and a field study of a modern housing estate in Istanbul. For the field study, housing quality was examined through the memories of residents in the neighbourhood, buildings, and units. With the research, site observations were made, a questionnaire was issued to residents, and in-depth interviews were conducted with residents who had lived there the longest. New dimensions of housing quality problems were then discussed in the conclusion with reference to residents’ memories.

Memory studies can be used as a research tool to understand the housing environment, as they provide important references to the past, present and future. In the conclusion, new dimensions of the housing quality problems were discussed with the help of the residents’ memories. It was seen that different dimensions of housing quality can be revealed with the help of user memory.

In all, 40 of the total residents (101) accepted to make questionnaires. In-depth interviews were conducted with three long-term residents that are the only ones still alive and had lived the area since the beginning of the life after construction.

With the aim of developing new tools and methods to analyse housing quality, this research presents a new perspective by utilising users’ memories to evaluate spatial quality.

The proposed definitional framework can be used to define housing typologies of cities in developing countries. It aims to define housing typologies in the capital city of Albania, Tirana, using the proposed hierarchical framework within the dynamics of four political periods: Ottoman, establishment, socialist and postsocialist.

This study proposes a new definitional approach for the housing typologies through a hierarchical framework that defines the typologies based on their political period and legality statuses departing from the case of Tirana, which is featured by a heterogeneous context. Such context is characterized by uncontrollable urban development, making typology definition problematic. Furthermore, beyond the form, spatial and functional features, it presents their exterior distinctiveness as an innovative element. The methodology used in the study includes archival research, image documentation, spatial, functional and exterior distinctiveness analysis of housing typologies and exploration of housing form features in different political periods.

The study identifies urban formal housing typologies in Tirana detached houses, apartments, mass housing, social housing, gated communities, informal detached houses and housing with in/formal additions.

This definitional approach can be used to define housing typologies for cities featured by heterogeneous urban context.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the interaction of enclosure and disclosure, and analyze the dynamics of this bond. It also investigates the interaction between open spaces and closed spaces in housing areas as fundamental public and private realms of the neighbourhoods to understand the relation between physical and social environments.

The research aims to grasp the effects of open spaces on the development of the physical and social structures in a community at the intersection of enclosure and disclosure. To display potentials of the relation between these two notions, the behavioural treatments at the intersection of open space and housing units as the basic modules of the pattern, and the effects of spatial organization forms on them are explored. The methodology of the study is formed through the clarification of tangible and intangible facts simultaneously, conducted by spatial and behavioural analysis.

The intersection of enclosure and disclosure in neighbourhoods receives both practical and academic attention. The zone not only creates appropriate conditions for a vital urban life, but also helps to generate social structure in the neighbourhood. Furthermore, although the modernist settlements are criticized because of urban monotony and lifelessness since the last two and three decades of the twentieth century, it is seen that the situations in which “the spatial organization of housing units” and “the formation of urban pattern of the settlement” were dealt synchronously generate vividness and achievement in an urban context.

The study aims to grasp how the intersection zone is affected by the differences of “urban activities in open spaces as one of the main indicators of vividness” and “spatial organization of dwelling units with a perspective from the other side of the border”. Moreover, to understand the capacity of the intersection zone in physical reality, the research aims to evaluate theoretical data through the actual dynamics of daily life. The combination of various research methods that constituted mostly spatial and behavioural analysis is one of the most robust sides of the research.