Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering/November 2002/184 177 1. Introduction The cities of Metro Manila and other urban regions have seen the rapid increase of urban poor groups that are in urgent need of housing 1 . Affordability to acquire a decent and permanent housings for these groups has been a major factor for the government to initiate differ- ent programs aimed to solve these problems. One of these programs was focused on the provision of Me- dium Rise Building (MRB) type in the housing projects. Since this type of housing is quite new to the Philip- pines, there are many aspects that have to be examined in order to come up with the designs that are appropri- ate to the needs of Filipino families 2 . Unfortunately, due to unavoidable circumstances, these MRBs were planned in such a way that they provide the most number of dwelling units that will accommodate as many house- holds as possible within the limited lands 3 and budgets. As a result, these dwelling units are made up of single room core units with a limited floor area space. There- fore, coping and adjusting to this new type of housing environment have been the focus of this study that these urban poor residents have been accustomed to live in these limited space dwelling units. The self-built improvements are considered to be one of the major factors in understanding the adjustment behaviors of the residents. Moreover, these self-built im- provements also indicate how the residents have pro- vided the lacking requirements they needed in the stages of their residency. Residents could feel at home and se- cured when they gradually improved and maximized the space. Thus, knowing and understanding such kind of adjustment behaviors are the keys to determine whether the stay will be long or not. This paper, will also provide a better understanding on how the residents have initi- ated the self-built improvements and also how the lim- ited space can be managed as in the case of the MRB dwelling units. Residents have undertaken these improve- ments in response to the continuous changes in the households’ demographic and economic status, while improvement expenditures were constrained by the households’ income, wealth, and financial obligations 4 . The main purpose is to make clear the characteristics of the self-built improvements (transformations) initi- ated by the residents into their dwelling units. And also aims to explain these self-built improvements by two more transformation parameters (household growth and change and profession change). In the context of hous- ing adjustment, household growths and changes are considered to be one of the main factors in the choice of residents to improved their dwelling units 5 and it is more likely that the change of profession also contrib- ute to the transformation process. Thus, these issues will be examined and analyzed using a chronological pattern analysis. Contact Author: Ringer Taruc Manalang, Doctoral Candidate, Munemoto Laboratory, Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University Yoshidahonmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501 Japan Tel: +81-75-753-4899 Fax: +81-75-753-4899 e-mail: ap.manalang@archi.kyoto-u.ac.jp (Received May 8, 2002; accepted September 13, 2002) A Study on Residents’ Self-built Improvements at MRB Dwelling Units in Metro Manila Ringer Taruc Manalang 1 , Junzo Munemoto 2 , Tetsu Yoshida 3 and Cristopher Espina 4 1 Doctoral Candidate, Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan 2 Professor, Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan 3 Instructor, Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan 4 Professor and Dean, College of Architecture, University of the Philippines, Philippines Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine and clarify the residents’ adjustment behaviors in reference to the process of self-built improvements they made into their dwelling units as in the case of the Medium Rise Buildings (MRBs). Three MRB sites in Metro Manila (two in the City of Manila and one in Quezon City) were investigated. A chronological account of the residents’ self-built improvements was investigated together with two parameters (the household structure growth and change and the profession change). In the analysis, we combined the self-built improvements with the two parameters, and as a result, there were eight typical patterns of transformation found in these samples. In addition, we further analyzed these patterns and there were three cases (A,B and C) that described the characteristics and relationships between the self-built improvements and the two parameters. In B case, the self-built improvements were influenced by the two parameters, while A and C cases were not affected by them. Keywords: household structure; profession change; self-built improvement; medium rise building (MRB); Metro Manila