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INTRODUCTION
Architects seldom receive useful feedback about the performance of completed buildings, except from the satisfied or dissatisfied clients or users. Evaluation by the actual users of a building is therefore important for improving design quality. This is as vital in the context of public housing as it is in private housing. In one, the motive is social service welfare; in the other, customer satisfaction geared towards profit-maximization. The focus of the reported research is on public housing: it evaluates the residential environments of five low-income and three medium-income public housing estates of the Lagos State Development and Property Corporation (LSDPC), Lagos, Nigeria.
Public housing - housing provided by the state for households who lack the necessary resources to obtain it for themselves - has been the object of many evaluation studies (Husock, 2000; Rigatti, 2000). Designing buildings for public housing presents a unique challenge to the architect, because these structures are intended for people who, generally speaking, have a different socio-cultural status from that of the architect. This study reports a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) involving, first, an expert rating appraisal conducted by four evaluators, and, second, an analysis of residents' satisfaction.
Completed residential buildings should not only be fit for the purpose of the users, but also be able to perform their functions in such ways as to ensure relative residents' satisfaction (Liu, 1999). This is, however, without prejudice to the need for routine maintenance to ensure that buildings function well at all times (Ikpo, 2009). POE is a structured approach to evaluating the performance of buildings when fully operational, that is, after they have been occupied. The main purpose of this study is therefore to appraise how certain quality and performance characteristics of the residential environment contribute to creating conditions congruent with residents' satisfaction.
RESEARCH PROBLEM
The LSDPC was established in 1972 primarily for the provision of public housing (Fadahunsi, 1985). The LSDPC is therefore the dominant provider of public housing in Lagos, Nigeria. In more than three decades of existence, the Corporation has developed residential estates in various locations in the state, and for varied categories of clients. As the implementation agency of the mass-housing programme of the first civilian administration (1979-1983), the LSDPC embarked on massive construction of low-cost housing...