WK06 Reading: Environmental Adaptability

Creating flexible and adaptable buildings that can accomodate future activities seems to be one of the most challenging issues for architects to date. The distinction between flexibility and adaptability that the reading makes is an important one if we are to move towards a truly sustainable future. I am sceptical of the readings suggestion of fixed and fluid regions within a building or city as it seems that cities are formed and organised by economical, political, social and incremental organic forces that make it difficult to stage the infrastructure in a fixed/fluid arrangement. It seems that flexibility is an important principle for a design concept and the degree of flexibiltiy suitable for a particular project is the where many complexities arise.

I am interested in the flexibility requirements of different building typologies such as hospitals compared to medium density housing blocks. Essentially a future projection of these typologies looks at dwelling habits, lifestyle and family unit trends for housing requirements and at the administrative, economical and technological changes for the hospital, to name a few. It would seem the housing projection does not involve the same complexity and difficulty as the hospital therefore the problem of flexibility is not as relevant for typologies that involve a limited number of well established activities.


Thought Bytes

Flexibility
unknown future
Adaptability
Flexibility is not Adaptability
Fixed and Fluid regions
Architecture is fixed by nature