Transitional Spaces as an Integrated Design Approach Enhancing Social Cohesion in High-Rise Dwellings

Creating compact, high-density communities is increasingly becoming a strategy toward promoting sustainable development, accommodating population expansion, and limiting human impacts on the local and global environment. High-rise structures have substantially improved urban scenery and served as a symbol of urban city growth. Although this has resulted in major economic benefits, the emphasis of high-rise building structure on aesthetics but has resulted in a lack of social shared experiences within built-up spaces among its occupants. Furthermore, the present COVID-19 crisis has underlined the community desire for social spaces in dwellings. In view of this, SDG-11 aims to improve the capacity for integrated and sustainable communities through participative human settlement management and planning. Transitional spaces are characterized as spaces that facilitate social interactions between outdoor and indoor environments. The research focuses on exploring the significance of transitional spaces in the context of high-rise apartment buildings. It examines the types of transition space and the experiences of high-rise building inhabitants and their interaction with transitional spaces in order to improve social sustainability. The objective is to investigate the potential of these “in-between” spaces in creating a social shared experience in the context of increasing high-rise buildings and provide recommendations for future design.