Indeterminacy

Katharina Kral

Related terms: adaptability, affordance, ecological embeddedness, emergence, flexibility, housing design, polyvalence, user agency,

In its most basic definition, ‘indeterminacy’ means that something is not exactly known, has no set meaning, or can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It denotes “the quality of being uncertain or undefined” (Oxford English Dictionary 2023). In practice, the term arises when something is unclear or intentionally withheld. We come across ‘indeterminacy’ in legal circumstances, where a sentence can be twisted to justify opposing interpretations, or in climate forecasts, when predictive techniques morph into probabilistic guesswork. It can also appear in more personal registers, such as the multifaceted identities that people hold, or in artwork that defies categorization and leaves spectators in a state of uncertainty. All these examples are pointing to a fundamental condition: a world where certainty is less the norm than the exception.

Across disciplines, ‘indeterminacy’ embraces the potential for change, multiplicity, and emergence; that is, when complexity arises not from a single cause, but from the interplay of many simple parts unfolding in ways that cannot be easily predicted. In the environmental humanities, it can be understood as a conceptual and ethical point of reference for understanding dynamic interactions among humans, environments, and constructed systems, emphasizing unpredictability, openness, and interconnectedness as creative conditions rather than obstacles to how we live, design, and interact with the non-human world. Without resorting to control or simplification, ‘indeterminacy’ provides a paradigm for negotiating ambiguity in the face of ecological collapse, social transition, and the climate crisis.

In philosophy, ‘indeterminacy’ pushes back against the idea of epistemological certainty. According to Quine's idea of the ‘indeterminacy of translation,’ for example, language meaning can never be fully pinned down to one fixed interpretation (Quine 1960). In quantum physics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle asserts that we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle with absolute precision: the more accurately we determine one, the less we know about the other (Heisenberg 1927).

‘Indeterminacy’ becomes a creative process in the arts when some aspects of a piece are left open to chance, the performer's choice, or audience participation. While Yoko Ono's event scores redefine performance art as a set of instructions: acts to be interpreted rather than a fixed, finished piece (Ono 2000), John Cage's musical compositions are renowned for embracing the unpredictable nature of sound and randomness.

The term ‘indeterminacy’ is also used in ecological science and systems theory to characterize the erratic, emergent behavior of complex systems that are difficult to anticipate or model precisely (Cilliers 2002).

Across all these fields, ‘indeterminacy’ isn’t something to fix or eliminate; it is a condition to recognize, understand, and engage with – ethically, creatively, and critically.

This entry examines ‘indeterminacy’ as both a conceptual and material condition in the context of multi-family housing. A counterpoint to prescriptive, deterministic design logics, it encompasses spatial, temporal, and social adaptability by inviting multiple uses, interpretations, and ongoing reconfigurations. It emphasizes inhabitant agency over programmatic rigidity, flexibility over permanence, and care over control. Moreover, ‘indeterminacy’ offers a way to rethink housing as a dynamic ecological and cultural process that resists standardized typologies and normative assumptions about domestic life. It draws on histories of open architecture, participatory design, and vernacular spatial practices that foreground the right to appropriate, adapt, and transform across time and difference.

Programmatic Flexibility and Temporal Adaptability

Spatial ‘indeterminacy’ centers on the capacity of architecture to remain unfinished in intent but complete in possibility, offering enough structure for occupation while maintaining enough openness for transformation. Architectural and cultural traditions across the world have long embraced adaptable, multifunctional space. Japanese vernacular architecture, with its sliding panels and tatami mats, enables a fluid transformation of interior space (Nishihara 1968). Islamic courtyard houses, Berber dwellings, and Indigenous housing forms often reflect spatial systems designed for seasonal use, social negotiation, and long-term change.

In contemporary architectural discourse, ‘indeterminacy’ is often explored through related concepts such as ‘adaptability,’ ‘flexibility,’ and ‘polyvalence.’ While all three are central to the design of housing that can respond to unpredictable social and economic shifts, evolving resident needs, and varying personal preferences, each emphasizes a different temporality and degree of transformation. ‘Adaptability,’ for example, is often referred to as a building’s ability for long-term change, such as expansions, conversions, or structural alterations, that allow it to serve different uses over time (Schmidt 2016). ‘Flexibility,’ by contrast, is understood to involve more immediate, minor physical adjustments: strategies include open floor plans, sliding partitions, movable walls, or modular furniture that support daily shifts in use (Schneider and Till 2005). Lastly, ‘polyvalence’ emphasizes the inherent neutrality of spaces to accommodate various functions without requiring any modifications, hence, embracing openness not through change but through design restraint (Leupen 2004). Rather than assigning rooms fixed functions (e.g., bedroom, office, living, or dining room), spatial modules of similar size and character – where, for instance, a bedroom can function equally well as a living room – resist over-specification and enable shifting uses across time and context. “110 Rooms” by MAIO Architects in Barcelona, Spain (MAIO Architects 2016), or Riegler Riewe Architects’ “Wohnbebauung Straßgang” in Graz, Austria (Riegler Riewe Architects 1994), are examples of buildings that deliberately avoid fixed spatial programs, enabling a range of domestic arrangements within a single shell.

As introduced above, ‘indeterminacy’ also speaks to temporal adaptability: the capacity of a space to accommodate change across time. This includes rhythms of daily life (such as a living room becoming a workspace during the day and a social area at night), life-cycle changes (as a household ages, expands, or contracts), and broader societal shifts (such as the increase in remote work or multi-generational living). The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the limitations of overly specified, rigid domestic spaces, prompting renewed interest in housing that can accommodate work, care, leisure, and rest simultaneously. Pandemic resilience research found that flexible apartment layouts can reduce building- and room-level crowding and associated infection risks by facilitating occupant isolation (Yang et al. 2021). The World Health Organization’s “Housing and Health Guidelines” further emphasize that improving housing conditions – including spatial adaptability – can mitigate household crowding and has broad co-benefits for health, climate, and equity (World Health Organization 2018). These extend globally, particularly in regions facing compounding challenges of housing shortages, informal settlements, and limited access to healthcare infrastructure.

Long-Term Use, Environmental Integration, and Sustainability

Spatially indeterminate housing supports ongoing occupation by evolving with its human and non-human inhabitants, allowing buildings to adapt to shifting uses, climates, and ecologies rather than becoming obsolete or misaligned with needs.

This long-term adaptability is increasingly critical in an era of ecological uncertainty and widespread housing precarity, with 2.8 billion people worldwide lacking adequate housing, requiring the construction of 96,000 affordable homes daily to meet demand by 2030 (UN Habitat 2025). As the building sector accounts for a significant share of global carbon emissions (UN Environment Programme 2021), rethinking how we design, build, and inhabit our environments is urgent, especially in light of the uneven burdens of housing insecurity and environmental degradation across the Global South and North (UN Habitat 2022). This dual urgency – expanding housing access while reducing ecological harm – reveals a central contradiction in global housing policy: how to increase provision without reinforcing resource-intensive growth logics. ‘Indeterminacy’ offers a way to navigate this tension through longer building lifespans, reconfigurability, and circular design practices. It points toward a model of qualitative growth: one that broadens access, equity, and use value without necessarily increasing material throughput or carbon footprints.

Acknowledging the varying longevity of building layers – structure, skin, services, space planning, finishes, and furnishings – according to their functions is an essential consideration when planning for long-term sustainability (Brand 1994). These ideas resonate with Bernard Leupen’s concept of the “generic space,” where a fixed structural framework supports interchangeable configurations (Leupen 2004). Similarly, John Habraken’s “supports and infill” theory separates permanent systems from adaptable elements, emphasizing long-term adaptability and inhabitant participation (Habraken 1976). These design tactics foster a dynamic relationship between space and use, where architecture becomes a platform for inhabitation rather than a container for predefined activities. A range of housing projects developed in Japan since the 1970s adopt this approach, allowing for flexible reconfiguration of living units over time through lightweight partitioning and minimal interventions (Kadowaki and Fukao 2001).

Rather than tearing down or overhauling buildings to meet changing needs, ‘indeterminacy’ encourages reinhabitation, reinterpretation, and incremental modification. By resisting obsolescence, this approach to housing contributes to material and environmental sustainability; that is, the responsible use and stewardship of natural resources, ensuring that ecosystems can remain viable and productive over time, not only for humans but also for other species and systems as well. Building on this non-anthropocentric orientation, spatial ‘indeterminacy’ can also enable deeper forms of ecological embeddedness. Reconfigurable interiors, porous building envelopes, and green corridors allow for more flexible relationships with climate, vegetation, and non-human inhabitants. This reframes housing as not only a container for human life, but a participant in wider ecological and multispecies systems. “Next21” in Osaka, Japan (Utida and Shu-Koh-Sha Architectural and Urban Design Studio 1994) is a landmark example of ‘support-and-infill’ housing that merges spatial flexibility and ecological integration. By separating the permanent structural framework (‘support’) from the adaptable interior layout (‘infill’), the building allows residents to modify their living spaces over time without altering the core structure. Rooftop gardens, vegetated terraces, and shared green spaces foster urban biodiversity, support microclimates, serve human well-being, and offer habitat for birds, insects, and plant life, extending the idea of dwelling beyond the human. In this way, “Next21” demonstrates how ‘indeterminacy’ can operate on both social and ecological levels, making room for adaptation, care, and co-existence across species. Another example is the “Aranya Housing Project” in Indore, India, designed by Balkrishna Doshi (Doshi 1989), who understood housing as “a living entity.” The project’s flexible site layout and incremental expansion model empower residents to adapt and extend their homes over time by providing opportunities to improvise. These user-driven modifications often incorporate vegetation, shade structures, and shared outdoor spaces, blurring the line between dwelling and environment. The relationship between social activities and physical structures takes shape in details like shared landings, small balconies, open terraces, and a plinth with steps and ledges, fostering a form of ecological embeddedness that reflects climatic, cultural, and social specificity.

From a political ecology perspective, ‘indeterminacy’ may also contribute to addressing the ‘metabolic rift,’ a term used to describe the disrupted exchanges between human societies and ecological cycles under industrial capitalism. By extending use cycles and reducing the frequency of renovations, along with the associated material throughput and emissions, housing forms designed in alignment with inhabitants’ needs can interrupt linear ‘take-make-waste’ patterns that drive both material depletion and housing dispossession (Deinsberger-Deinsweger 2013; Castro and Pasanen 2019). Instead, such models invite alternative temporalities and values centered on maintenance, care, and long-term coexistence, both among humans and with the environments they inhabit. This aligns with the goals shared by degrowth frameworks, non-extractive design, and circular economy principles, which advocate for reducing energy and resource use in the built environment (Pomponi and Moncaster 2017; Latouche 2009; Space Caviar 2021).

Crucially, by avoiding over-programming, indeterminate housing can encourage people to live well with less space that can be used more flexibly, addressing not only environmental performance but also affordability, accessibility, and spatial justice without defaulting to expansion. It shifts the measure of adequacy from square meters to adaptability, reuse, and ecological relation.

While this entry emphasizes spatial and social forms of ‘indeterminacy,’ housing also operates within broader social-ecological-technical systems. Technological infrastructures, such as energy systems, digital networks, and building services, shape how housing functions and evolves. ‘Indeterminacy’ does not reject these technologies but resists techno-determinism; that is, the idea that technological tools alone dictate or resolve social and spatial outcomes. Rather than treating housing as a closed system to be optimized, it enables incremental, occupant-driven innovation, valuing maintenance, reuse, and contextual performance over replacement. For instance, technologies that allow building monitoring, renewable energy integration, or adaptive climate control can be powerful tools – if they advance inhabitant agency and ecological responsiveness, rather than being seen as solutions for their own sake. In this sense, spatial ‘indeterminacy’ aligns with non-extractive and low-carbon approaches to green building, suggesting that the resilience of future housing depends not only on new technologies but on their contextual, equitable, and participatory deployment. It provides a framework for reconciling social needs, technological capacity, and ecological responsibility, not by simplifying complexity, but by engaging it directly.

User Agency and the Ethics of Adaptation

Central to ‘indeterminacy’ is the concept of ‘user agency’: the ability of occupants to shape and modify space based on their values, needs, and preferences. Drawing from traditions of vernacular and informal architecture, where ‘indeterminacy’ has long been a necessity rather than a choice, these participatory design ideals and post-occupancy adaptation recognize inhabitants as co-authors of space, rather than passive recipients of architectural form. This contrasts with top-down housing production that often reflects market logics or preconceived ideas of domesticity rather than the dynamic, lived realities of urban living.

Today, the majority of people live in urban areas, and this share is projected to grow to two-thirds of the global population by 2050 (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2019). Typically, urban dwellers live in apartment buildings that they did not design themselves to suit their specific needs (Saarimaa and Pelsmakers 2020). These mostly rely on rigid spatial configurations that follow increasingly tighter space standards (Park 2017; Tunstall 2015) and emphasize predefined room types that accommodate only the specific functions they were intended for (Rabeneck et al. 1973). Hence, they often struggle to accommodate evolving household structures and changing patterns of domestic life. The ‘missing middle’ housing gap, commonly described as a shortage of mid-sized, affordable, and family-appropriate units, is one example where housing supply and demand are misaligned (Parolek 2020). A growing issue in many global urban centers, this gap reflects a broader tendency in market-driven housing production to prioritize compact, single-use units tailored to narrowly defined demographics (UN Habitat 2020; OECD 2021). ‘Indeterminacy’ offers a critical counterpoint by fostering spatial resilience through “infrastructures that are neither determined nor determining”, aligning with Yona Friedman’s concept of “mobile architecture,” which proposes a new kind of mobility: not of buildings, but of inhabitants, who are granted a new freedom (Friedman 1958).

This ethical dimension is particularly significant in the context of the environmental humanities, where spatial practice is not only a material concern but also a cultural and political act. The capacity to appropriate and adapt space becomes a matter of spatial justice, especially for marginalized groups who are often excluded from spatial decision-making or forced into inflexible, underperforming housing stock.

Perception, Well-Being, and the Indeterminacy of Quality

The World Health Organization emphasizes that housing quality is a key determinant of health and well-being, particularly for vulnerable populations facing compounding risks from poverty, overcrowding, and environmental hazards (World Health Organization 2018). Adequate space, thermal comfort, ventilation, safety, and accessibility are recognized as baseline conditions for healthy living. However, the experience of housing extends beyond its physical metrics. Across global contexts – from informal settlements to urban high-rises – residents navigate questions of dignity, autonomy, and environmental connection in the spaces they inhabit.

In the U.S., people spend about 90% of their time indoors (Spengler and Sexton 1983) and 62% of their waking hours in their homes (United States, Bureau of Labor Statistics 2025). Similar patterns are found globally, particularly in dense urban environments and during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, yet ‘housing quality’ remains a loosely defined concept. “Flexibility in the built home environment and residents’ behavior of making changes to it” was found to positively affect occupant well-being (Jagannath et al. 2024). Spatial attributes such as daylight access, ventilation, and acoustic privacy are often included in regulatory frameworks, but perceptual and affective dimensions like view quality, spatial privacy, and the ability to retreat remain underexplored and difficult to quantify. Still, research shows that visual access to outdoor environments is associated with reduced stress, enhanced cognitive function, and psychological well-being (Ko et al. 2020). These are not elite concerns, but human concerns, especially in contexts where housing insecurity, density, or environmental injustice make access to light, air, and views disproportionately scarce. Building orientation, façade access, and unit layout all influence the kinds of views and privacy conditions a dwelling affords (Kim, Escamilla-Guerrero, et al. 2025; Kim, Kral, et al. 2025). Yet what counts as ‘a good view’ or ‘an adequate level of privacy’ varies by cultural background, individual preference, and spatial context. Perception-based research challenges universalist notions of housing adequacy by revealing diversity in lived experience (Kim et al. 2022).

In this sense, ‘indeterminacy’ goes beyond spatial layouts; it speaks to how housing supports attention, reflection, adaptation, and retreat. In overcrowded or resource-constrained contexts, where daylight, views, and privacy may be limited or contested, the ability for residents to adapt space according to their own values becomes even more critical. Spatial ‘indeterminacy’, understood as both a material and experiential condition, allows housing to accommodate not only different functions but different interpretations of what makes a space livable, meaningful, or dignified.

This perspective also calls into question conventional standards of ‘spatial adequacy,’ which often rely on rigid metrics such as floor area, room size, or clearances. While these criteria are important for health and accessibility, they rarely capture how people actually live and what they value. By foregrounding ambiguity, openness, and perceptual variation, indeterminate housing reframes quality not as a prescriptive checklist but as a dynamic relationship between space, context, and use, shaped by those who inhabit it.

Indeterminacy Beyond Space

In an age marked by climate crisis, displacement, economic inequality, and shifting domestic norms, ‘indeterminacy’ offers a responsive and inclusive framework for rethinking housing. It challenges the extractive, rigid, and prescriptive logics that shape much of contemporary urban development and housing policy, which often overlook the temporal, cultural, and ecological complexity of how people live.

Instead, ‘indeterminacy’ proposes a model of housing as a dynamic ecological, social, and temporal process, rooted in responsiveness rather than control. It participates in a broader ethical shift that sees uncertainty not as a flaw but as a basic condition of shared life. By embracing open-endedness, emergence, and care, designers can help cultivate spaces that are not only more sustainable and resilient but also more just, diverse, and alive.

While this entry emphasizes the spatial dimensions of ‘indeterminacy,’ the term resonates beyond architecture. In the environmental humanities it describes temporal and ecological processes that resist prediction, such as the porous boundaries of ecosystems, the entanglements of climate systems, or the unpredictability of social-ecological change. It reflects a growing awareness that not all variables are controllable, and not all outcomes can – or should – be predefined. In this broader sense, ‘indeterminacy’ affirms relational ways of knowing and designing that acknowledge the interdependence of human and non-human lives as well as open space for uncertainty, emergence, and coexistence.

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