541 Shehayeb, D., Turgut Yildiz, H. & Kellett, P. (Eds.) (1111). The Appropriate Home: Can We Design “Appropriate” Residential Environments? HBNRC: Cairo, Egypt. Proceedings of the First HBRC & IAPS-CSBE Network Joint Symposium (ISBN 977-17-4798-3). Paper previously presented in: THE APPROPRIATE HOME IAPS-3rd Symposium XXll UIA World Congress of Architecture UIA - I S T A N B U L 2005 3 - 7 July THEORETICAL MODEL OF ‘HOME’ THE CASE OF THE CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN CONTEXT Nagwa H. Sherif, Dina K. Shehayeb, Eman A. El-Nachar INTRODUCTION Whilst most designers think of home as a physical private space; this definition of home leaves a large portion of ‘home environments’ unaccounted for, and therefore overlooked by the design professions. The results are misuse, alterations and increasing stress. To understand the socio- psychological processes that relate to the function of dwelling, and how they are influenced by design, one has to draw on knowledge from different fields, and in order to provide compatible concepts useful in the design process, a multidisciplinary approach is required. The objective of this paper is to present a theoretical framework integrating findings from disparate studies that address: perceptions of the designed environment, the relation between the perceived environment and behavior, and those that relate socio-psychological processes to physical characteristics and users in the home environment, including the particularities of the Egyptian case to capture the fundamentals of the appropriate home. A literature review led to the identifying the key issues related to the design of home environment and complementing them with the Egyptian empirical studies. Based on this analysis, a comprehensive model was developed addressing the problem of designing the appropriate home as a function of its users' characteristics, their needs, and behavior. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The role of the physical environment in human behavior has always been an underlying assumption in design theories. Aware of the negative consequences of adopting this deterministic view of the Modern era, designers today are more wary and the issue is currently in discourse. The probabilistic view is the prevailing one in E-B, where the environment makes some behaviors more probable than others (the environment here is addressed in its socio-physical totality which includes the designed physical environment, the furniture, landscape, as well as people and their behavior, Rapoport, 1990). While for design purposes one should not overlook that the same designed environment is adapted, through semi-fixed feature elements, non-fixed feature elements and social norms, to a variety of socio-physical totalities, or settings (Rapoport, 1990b). Therefore the "fit" between the settings and behavior is complemented by a "loose" relationship between the designed physical environment and the different settings it allows (Rapoport, 1991). It follows that the role of the designed physical environment is essentially possibilistic. Within this view the concept of “Functional Opportunities” (FO) serves as tool to integrate E-B issues and facilitate their utilization in the design fields (Shehayeb, 1995). Existing related concepts