الفهرس 
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Abstract
It is obvious that the housing problem in Egypt is still getting worse despite the abundance of a lot of different housing projects and of large numbers of
housing units. Those projects are mostly limited to certain social groups and are usually difficult to reach to truly low-income groups, which makes it a necessity to re-study the economic assessment of housing in all aspects of design and spatial elements of the housing unit itself.
When talking about reducing the cost of housing construction one should note that all solutions have been running in one direction; to reduce the area of a housing unit and introduce the use of low-cost material in the construction.
However, the spatial aspect of the house is often overlooked in the process. The relationship between the house and the user’s functional and perceptual needs is seldom studied in efficacy.
The main goal of this thesis is to devise a functional evaluation expert system for small dwellings, which are designed for low-income groups in Egypt based on their socio-cultural characteristics.
This thesis investigates the lifestyle of low-income inhabitants in Egypt, in order to explore their socio-cultural characteristics, essential needs, the amount of satisfaction with existing housing and their aspirations for the future housing.
Furthermore, it illustrates the points of divergence and convergence between the ways of thinking for the two major participants in creating a residential environment for low-income groups in Egypt: The architect and the user.
Thereafter, the functional performance in the internal spaces of low-income houses has been analyzed in order to infer an evaluation criterion for lowincome houses based on dwellers’ lifestyles and their socio-cultural characteristics. Finally, a functional evaluation expert system has been devised.
By applying this expert system the overall cost of the construction of lowincome houses could be controlled through the re-formulation of the house
spaces and its elements and reducing the surface area of houses without any negative effects on functional and perceptual properties.
The Research focuses on the spatial elements and the functional use of internal spaces of low-income housing units in Cairo. All external relations are
out of the scope of this research such as environmental, contextual aspects,building materials, construction methods and all other economic aspects.
The Research as a whole is divided in three parts; first is the theoretical section which uses the analytical methodology, through carrying out a social survey and studying three real case studies in order to induce the characteristics of low-income dwellers in Cairo. The second part studies the functional analysis of the elements of low-income dwellings. The third part is performed by
experimentation, applying a computer system to devise the targeted evaluation system.