This book analyzes the reasons of spontaneous transformation in self-built houses in the context of developing countries. Recognizing Housing Transformation as a natural phenomenon, the book focuses on self-built houses in the city of Dhaka. Firstly, it explains the explicit reasons behind spontaneous housing transformations. Then the book carefully unveils the implicit values that are hidden behind those explicit reasons. The entire book is an ethnographic journey, which expresses unique stories behind houses in transformation.

This book describes and analyzes the phenomenon of spontaneous transformation in self-built houses in the context of developing countries. After describing briefly the history of self-built houses and the phenomenon of transformation around the world, it focuses on its context, the city of Dhaka. Firstly it describes the physical patterns of spontaneous transformation. Then it explains the explicit reasons behind those transformations. Finally, it carefully unveils the implicit values that are hidden behind those explicit reasons. The entire book is an ethnographic journey, which not only expresses unique stories of living with transformation, but also captivates the reader throughout with its compelling way of qualitative judgment.

Sustainability is the major concern in today's world. In built environment, it has tremendous significance. Housing, as its major bulk, needs serious attention on all the three major pillars of sustainability. Turning to the environmental aspects, there are different active and passive design elements that can be incorporated with housing. However, it varies from context to context. This book tried to identify environmentally sustainable elements of housing in the hot-humid climate in Malaysia through extensive literature review. After that, it conducted field survey to find out the affordable ones among them which could address the big group of middle income people in the country. With that, the study tried to find out the economic feasibility of those environmentally sustainable elements. Categorizing them as user-controlled and designer-controlled elements, results showed that several user-controlled passive and active elements were not affordable, though they had been highly regarded as sustainable elements. At the end, the study highlighted the significance of adding affordability to sustainability so that it can eventually contribute to the biggest bulk in built environment.