Housing pathology : A new domain or a new name?

The term pathology has its origin in the medical science and is generally defined as the systematic study of diseases with the aim of understanding their causes, symp-toms and treatment. The term has been applied since in many different disciplines; in the context of the built environment being in particular building pathology, social and urban pathology. Though it is the combination and interference of technical, social, spatial and eco-nomical processes that is determining for the health and life cycle of housing stock, they are not interdisciplinary studied in a pathological context. That is to say, the abundance of theoretical and applied knowledge about the different fields of housing management is up to now quite segmented and not combined in a comprehensive pathological domain. The paper defines and explores the field of housing pathology, overlooks the availa-ble knowledge and concludes that, regarding the paradigm shift from new construc-tion to maintenance and improvement of the existing stock, housing pathology should acknowledged and further elaborated as an essential interdisciplinary knowledge domain.

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