Building adaptability: Designed for time
Recommended paper
“Architecture in reality is placed inside a highly volatile context where it is forced to respond to and act on exogenous demands or suffer premature obsolescence.”
Today’s recommended paper lays out characteristics of adaptability (i.e. capacity for change, fit for purpose, value, time) in the pre-occupancy period (“pre-configuration”) and the post-occupancy period (“re-configuration”). As defined, the pre-configuration period comprises the standardization of building components (i.e. “kit of parts”), while the re-configuration period comprises a set strategies for design, often relative to spatial geometry.
Regardless of ultimate impact, both pre- and post-configuration frameworks are dependent on initial design decisions. As Otherlab’s Saul Griffith says, we need to “make decisions at the start, otherwise we’re locked in.”
Implications to the system vary depending on location and scope of intervention — “urban acupuncture” according to a friend. Necessary levels of adaptability hit the occupant / tenant / building life-cycle at different moments, as elucidated below. Implication fluctuates between space vs. tenancy vs. whole building, with built environment (B-E) systems varying by “component” (modular, tenant-level) or “building” (whole structure). Life cycles for each vary as well… hinting at the secret of a good business model.
What this referenced paper is missing, unfortunately, is the necessary change to today’s conventional project delivery model. Such an opportunity is critical for the future of existing buildings, new buildings, and even new cities. A conventionalism that even WeWork believes it can and should address.
SO — How do we design for time? Where does this leave us re adaptability? The Open Buildings framework, reminiscent of open source architecture, centers around the “desire to empower the user.” From Wikipedia: “If tomorrow’s buildings and cities will be like ‘computers to live in,’ open-source architecture provides an open, collaborative framework for writing their operating software in real world conditions reflecting the principles of the citizen-centered architecture movement.”
“Technical feasibility alone” is not sufficient. Rather, adaptability “brings an emphasis on process and enabling the buildings to ‘learn’ and the users to ‘teach’ or shape the space themselves.” In other words: User empowerment is critical in an open-sourced building, one that is designed for time and tuned to adaptability.
What is the Meaning of Adaptability in the Building Industry?
Authors: Schmidt III, et al. Loughborough University
Link: http://adaptablefutures.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Schmidt-et-al.-2010b.pdf
EXCERPTS
Adaptability as a design characteristic embodies spatial, structural, and service strategies which allow the physical artefact a level of malleability in response to changing operational parameters over time. This strategic shift reflects buildings, not as finished work removed from time, but as imperfect objects whose forms are in constant flux continuously evolving to fit functional, technological, and aesthetic metamorphosises in society. The capacity for buildings to respond to these changes are highly determined through design decisions early on resulting in the building’s design structure — what it is, how it is constituted (Baldwin et al. 2000). Achieving adaptability then demands a shift away from the current emphasis on form and function in response to immediate priorities, towards a ‘context’ and ‘time-based’ view of design.
Open Building’s (OB) roots developed as a reaction to the housing boom post WWII in the 1960s with the desire to empower the user (e.g. Bosma et al 2000, Cuperus 2001, Kendall et al 2004). As a design philosophy, it equates levels of individuals’ control with environmental levels both in design and use in an effort to evince a realistic understanding of how ‘things work’ — understanding limits and roles (i.e. a separation of responsibilities/ ‘power’ amongst a strong collaborative/ multi-stakeholder effort). As a resulting physical object, it bolsters the capacity for change to take place through an ease of tension between building components, particularly at the distinctive levels of short-life/ infill and long-life/ base building. This mindful separation supports a conscious effort by the designer(s) to think about the durability (or foreseeable life) of the materials and systems and their relationships to other components.
This brings us back to the question posed in the introduction: How does one design for time? Technical feasibility alone does not accomplish a sustainable solution. If adaptability brings an understanding of time, it brings an emphasis on process and enabling the building to ‘learn’ and the users to ‘teach’ or shape the space themselves. Adaptability forces design to become an ongoing social process between designer and user over time. The designer must focus on enabling adaptation to take place; as opposed to attempting to control experiences and anticipate the future.
