Not Your Perfect Home? How Malaysian Homeowners Make It Works

Modification of the home has become a ‘culture’ in Malaysian housing development. It is an act of altering an environment, allowing transformation of house into ‘home’. This paper presents the initial findings of a study on the physical modifications of houses by homeowners in the Klang Valley area. Various attributes from fifty houses were analyzed to determine the physical processes of housing modification. This paper concludes with suggestion for more studies on this behavioural phenomenon. The findings to some extent indicate that the current model for providing houses has yet to successfully fulfil the different needs of the people.