Defining common housing characteristics such as typology, floor areas, and occupancy rates can be challenging in many countries because of the prevalence of self-built and/or self-promoted accommodation. Yet, for researchers, designers, and policy makers, an understanding of these is crucial. Although housing represents more than one-third of the entire construction sector in Brazil, the characteristics of these houses vary hugely across the fifty-seven million units that form the existing stock. This variety, mostly a reflection of policies, architectural influences, site restrictions, financial limitations, and irregular planning, is not easily documented. In this article, we attempted to bridge this gap through an investigation of housing policies, architectural practices, and statistical information. This enabled us to identify predominant dwelling types, sizes, occupancy density, and stock availability. In order to contextualise our findings, we compared them with those of other cities around the world. Our findings identified typological patterns, such as rectangular plans, overhangs, small- to medium-sized windows, and design simplicity. We discuss how these are influenced by local architectural traditions and consolidated by housing policies.

中文翻译：

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通过对政策、建筑和统计数据的调查来描述巴西住房

由于自建和/或自推住宿的普遍存在，在许多国家定义常见的住房特征（例如类型、建筑面积和入住率）可能具有挑战性。然而，对于研究人员、设计师和政策制定者来说，了解这些至关重要。尽管住房占巴西整个建筑业的三分之一以上，但这些房屋的特征在构成现有存量的 5700 万套住房中存在巨大差异。这种多样性，主要是政策、建筑影响、场地限制、财务限制和不规则规划的反映，不容易记录在案。在本文中，我们试图通过对住房政策、建筑实践和统计信息的调查来弥合这一差距。这使我们能够确定主要的住宅类型、大小、入住密度和库存情况。为了将我们的发现与背景联系起来，我们将它们与世界其他城市的结果进行了比较。我们的研究结果确定了类型模式，例如矩形平面、悬垂、中小型窗户和设计简单性。我们讨论了这些是如何受到当地建筑传统的影响以及如何被住房政策巩固的。