Abstract
As a neighboring country belonged to the same cultural sphere with the Northeast Asia, China is recently emerging as a center of the world's economy. The social transformations caused by the rapid economic growth are bringing changes in the Chinese housing culture and thus, it is considered that the identification of a user's need concerning a new housing space and social and cultural understanding on China are necessary. Accordingly, this research intended to conduct the basic research on the Chinese housing space design by observing the small apartment users in Shanghai area in terms of not only the tangible element of the residential space type but also the intangible elements such as lifestyle, values, behaviors, etc. The research range was limited to the kitchen area at the center of a house as a place where the exchanges among the family members are most frequently occur, and the research was carried out in the following methods. First, the effective user research method for the analysis of the Chinese small apartment kitchen users was studied through the literature investigation. Second, the 6 families of a research target were selected focused on the small apartments in Shanghai, China and the user research was performed using three methods of User observation, Video ethnography, and Contextual inquiry. Third, the research results were analyzed focused on the flow of human traffic in the kitchen area and user's behaviors. What were identified as a result take account of the human traffic movements in the kitchen areas around the sink-counter-cook top, cooking behaviors and meal areas outside of the kitchen. Through this, the need for the effective organization of the sink-counter-cook top, arrangement of meal area, and placement of storage by section for the kitchen space of China were drawn based on the understanding of the cooking process, and it was identified that such results require comprehensive understanding of Chinese housing culture.