EFFECTIVENESS OF BALCONY OF RUSUNAWASURABAYA IN ANTICIPATING ADAPTATION

Daily activities of human are centralized at domestic spaces of dwelling/home (Monteiro, 1997). Thismeans that most activities of low income households will occur at their low cost apartment unit.Rusunawa in Indonesia is the low cost apartment that provides dwelling for the poor families by renting instead of purchasing. Rusunawa units usually consist of four different spaces, three of which: kitchen, bathroom / toilet and balcony are considered as service area; and only one spacenamely the multi-functional space which can beconsidered as the living area. This multi-functional space inevitably has to accommodate all the household activities. At least private and semi-private activities have to be carried-out in this space, while the public activities for residents of rusunawa are commonly tolerable to be conducted in the corridor although this space is actuallya communal public space, through which each resident of the floor can reach their unit from the stair hall. Therefore the multi-functional space will sooner or later be overwhelmed to accommodate the increasing activities both in terms of either the number of activities or the amount of space area. The multi-functional space must be able to adjust the needs with the existing space through adaptation. Buildings need to adapt. A building that is more adaptable will be utilized more efficiently and stay in service longer (Moffat and Russel, 2001). In the case of adaptation, rusunawa units can only expect the reliability of the balcony. Indeed residents of Rusunawa can still hope to adapt their space through the installation of mezzaninewithin the multi-functional space, however this requires funds, and not all dimensions of rusunawa units will allow construction of this mezzanine.Adaptation throughoccupying the corridor is eitherillegal. Therefore in rusunawa units, the existence of balcony is crucial. However, not all balconies can be effective in solving the problem of space shortage. By investigating balcony types that exist in 14 rusunawa locationswhich are spread-out all over the city of Surabaya,this paper intends to describe the rusunawa balconies in Surabaya to classify the possible benefits, and to analyze how the effectiveness of the balcony,especially in the problem solving of the occupants in overcoming the lack of space.