The AF exhibition was launched from October 1st at The Building Centre’s Vincent Gallery and was produced by a-small-lab (Chris Berthelsen) for AF.  The exhibition is a series of collages on the topic of adaptability, each collage provides a different perspective on the topic and is framed around a frequently asked question.  The collages provide a glimpse into the array of research that has been conducted over the past four years and aim to prompt the viewer to engage in further discussion on the topic via twitter or the AF website.  The questions are not ones we can easily answer and often situate themselves in the complex web of project contingencies.  The AF work has focused on developing tools and resources to help clarify needs and provide improved and more nuanced responses to the topic of adaptability.  The AF team is in the process of producing a small booklet which will elaborate on each question and will be available online soon.

Collage 01:  What is Adaptable Futures?

Collage 02:  What is adaptability?

Collage 03:  Does adaptability = sustainability?

Collage 04:  Who cares about adaptability?

Collage 05: What makes a building adaptable?

Collage 06: How do buildings change over time?

Collage 07: What does it cost? and why?

Collage 08: why is change messy?

Collage 09: how do you design for time?

Collage 10: we can adapt… (how do we use our creativity to get more value out of the buildings?)

FlexiRents is the final year project by Preet Panesar from DS17 (architecture and film design studio) at University of Westminster.  The scheme explores adaptable live/work housing solutions.

Modern lifestyles changing needs

Project description:

I began by addressing a common flaw found in modern urban housing, such as dense terrace housing, flats and apartments. These typologies fail to accommodate the constant change in people’s circumstances. Having been born and brought up in London, I have had firsthand experience with space negotiations in the home. Being one of seven living in a three bedroom house it never felt like a tight squeeze yet we all constantly fought for our ‘own’ space. With the regular arrival of guests and visitors we would often feel like we had reached the house’s maximum capacity. Yet space was always found somewhere, beds were shared, floors doubled up as mattresses and we managed. As we changed and grew, the house also grew and saw dramatic changes. We added an extension to our kitchen to provide more living space, we had a loft extension to make our 3 bedroom house a four bedroom, and at one time we also partitioned the master bedroom to carve out an extra space.

Techniques for expansion

These processes seen diagrammatically are very common changes that take place throughout London to typical terrace homes. Yet in Bermondsey (our given site for exploration) , where the main housing typology is an estate flat, the space for expansion is minimal and most likely nonexistent. Yet high density high rise seems to be the planners/governments solution to the housing crisis, where there is no room for expansion within the typology. Moreover, extensions such as those done in a house cannot be done as easily in a housing block.

My design involves providing a core unit of space which can expand and contract over time as ones needs change. The expansion is carried out using a giant sliding gantry crane on the roof of the building and a series of add-on rooms that can be attached on to the facade or carved into the space within. These rooms range from balconies and conservatories to spare bedrooms and meeting rooms. The Building is lifted on columns that open up the ground floor. The space below will be used as workshops by local labour to fit out and maintain the add-on spaces.

Extension Possibilities

The final proposal is a study of two typologies, a vertical tower and a horizontal block. The Work Space is provided along the north of the site whereas the south facing rooms all belong to the Residential Units. The individual units have been designed with partitions enclosed within the existing walls. These can unfold and click out to form divisions of space internally . The Add- On spaces are designed to accommodate different internal functions, clients can also order custom made add ons.

By designing these flexible Live/Work spaces in this way, the aim is to encourage integration between the various members of the community that live and/or work in the building.This is achieved as spaces would need to be constantly negotiated and compromises would need to be made regarding allocation of additional rooms and who takes what space and for how long.

Component study for adaptable spaces

Exploratory model for an adaptable room

Exploratory model for an adaptable structure

by Vincenza Santangelo, PhD in Quality of Design

The visual map below is the result of the project “Reintepretation. Abandonments as potentialities” coordinated by Vincenza Santangelo with the students Marta Chiogna, Elena Maranghi, Yasmin Sarah Menouer, and Antonio Maria Privitera within the workshop “Teatri Abitanti. Architetture per i beni comuni” by Marco Navarra, 24-30 April 2012, Teatro Valle Occupato, Rome.

Photo by Sergio Bonuomo

The abandonment of the Valle Theatre in Rome is a typical model of a widespread condition in Italy of abandoned theatres; a result of cutbacks in funding, poor political choices and obsolete planning. Despite the constant demand for cultural spaces, almost every town from Northern to Southern Italy has an abandoned theatre, closed for years, often converted into storage. The theatres represent an architectonic heritage which have been emptied of their meaning and reflect a general disinvestment in culture.

Examples of abandoned theatres across Italy

The student project embodied a quantitative investigation of abandoned theatres in Italy, the work illustrates and summarises the phenomenon with the creation of a visual atlas.  It highlights a densification of abandoned theatres within large cities, but also the sporadic spread of abandonment across Italy especially in the South – mirroring the investment in cultural buildings since the 1980’s, often lacking management and planning programs.

In this era of progressive abandonment, emerges the first form of activation for this heritage asset through different modalities of occupation, (re)appropriation and restitution to the community of some theatres: Valle Theatre and Cinema Palazzo in Rome, Marinoni Theatre in Venice, PAC in Milan, Coppola Theatre in Catania, Garibaldi Theatre in Palermo, which together outline an Italian network of “proactive resistances”. They represent uncommon and alternative management modalities, as well as creative reinventions of the codified spaces of a theatre – stemming from new strategies for reactivation and rethinking overall design strategies for cultural buildings.

Despite the urgency and importance of the phenomenon, there is still a lack of official (comprehensive) documentation to collect data on the abandoned structures and tactical devices for intervention, proposing the need to create such documentation.

Across Italy there’s an increase of initiatives to occupy, restore and provide restitution to the community for some of the abandoned cultural buildings by groups of artists who are (re)activating/ engaging planning by suggesting alternative uses for these spaces.

The contamination of different arts, the consequent demand for flexible spaces and current debates around common goods all highlight the urgency to rethink the regulations and incentives to construct and manage cultural buildings.

The image above depicts a collection of international projects for the (re)appropriation of unused public buildings primarily burgeoning from the mobilization of citizen groups: the CZKd in Belgrado, the Cinema Nova in Bruxelles, the Kulturzentrum in Brema, the Matadero in Madrid, the UFA-Film in Berlin and many others. These case studies trace strategies, actions and instruments which led to the acknowledgement and to the support by the administration for the occupation and self-management of the public buildings.

Workshop Teatro Valle from AdaptableFutures on Vimeo.

Vincenza Santangelo is an architect and holds a PhD in architecture and urban planning as an International Doctorate QuoD – Quality of Design.  Her thesis focused on interrupted public works in the Italian landscape.

She has taught and tutored at the Faculty of Architecture of University Federico II in Naples, the Faculty of Engineering of University of Calabria and, currently, at the Faculty of Architecture of Second University in Naples where she has run national and international workshops.

She has been involved in national and international research projects and in design competitions and exhibitions. Her contributions have appeared in several publications, among which are Urbanistica Informazioni, Compasses. Architecture and Design, and Ailati, Catalogue of Italian Pavillion of the XII Biennale of Architecture in Venice.

She’s a co-founder and co-owner of the architecture resource website – ARCHIvitamins.

 AF is in the process of discussing possible research plans to advance the study into abandoned theatres in Italy by cataloging project examples and tactics with Vincenza  and how the work might begin to fulfill the resource void aiding both communities and government agencies wanting to (re)activate cultural assets around the world.

Hosting our first international student competition has been invaluable for the research – seeing how the AF concepts can be embedded into design solutions. The competition asked students to illustrate how the life of their proposal – whether product, building or urban intervention – would unfold through time: over an hour, day, year, decade, or perhaps a century.  We received a large number of submissions from 26 countries of which thirty were shortlisted from which the judges selected three winning submissions (a joint first place and a third place) along with five submissions deserving honourable mention (view short-listed submissions). Regarding the winning submissions, Daisy Froud of AOC stated;

“I’m really glad that the two joint winners reflect two very different approaches, one more traditionally architectural – it’s a big building with bits that slide, but that is nonetheless rooted in thinking about how people in central London live and work – and one that has more in common with social sculpture, its speculations based on research into a specific cultural and perhaps even ‘small-p political’ context.”

The integration of time in their design proposal was framed around three criteria presented in the brief:  strategies for change (AF frame cycle), building layers and design guidelines (spatial, material and mind set).  Students were allowed to submit two A0 boards and/or a three minute film. The three competition winners will share a £3,500 cash prize and have been invited to participate and present at this autumn’s AF event in London.

Given the limited time each submission has to be understood, projects which offered a clear explanation of the ideas and illustrations supporting the design application were much more successful.  The jury tended to engage better with projects that explored more than just the technical solution; ones which dealt with the context in which the project was situated – the social, political and economic issues unravelling both the how and the why change would be needed.  David Rowley of Nightingale Associates commented;

“The competition resulted in a wide range of approaches to adaptability, some much more likely than others to be viable, given the need to consider the likelihood/frequency of change in conjunction with the benefit, cost and difficulty of achievement.”

Proposals which were too product specific were not favoured – they were felt to be too symbolic of the post-war 1960’s perspective of developing a particular system that can be applied to multiple contexts (one product fits all) – many of which were presented as a metabolistic approach (mega-structure w/ units that could be plugged in and out) offering too deterministic of a solution.

Successful submissions were ones that illustrated an understanding and depth to their proposal and allowed for a debate to occur around the innovativeness of their ideas. The international jury of architects was inspired by the quality of the visual and narrative ideas presented.  Testimony to the high quality of the submissions, all the winners and runners up will be published in the upcoming AF book. Søren Nielsen of Vankunsten Architects observed;

“The DAF competition introduces a new and important agenda to architectural education: The discipline of designing for future change which is crucial for the topical resource saving discourse. The proposals have delivered a full range of strategies for adaptability, some of which contribute substantially to the research field by pointing towards new social and urban potentials from integrating time into the design mind set.”

David Rowley added,

“I was impressed by the time and effort many of the students put into the submissions, and how effectively they showcased their ideas using both presentation boards and film.  The best submissions fully embraced adaptability with sustainability in its broadest sense, taking into account social and political factors as well as accounting for the visual environment and longevity.”

AF intends on running the student competition again next year as Professor Simon Austin finished with,

“The response to the competition has shown that young designers are enthused about, and challenged by, the need for sustainable architecture to have multiple lives.”

Charles Holland, a director of FAT and one of our collaborating partners, spoke about our collaborative work at the Live! Croydon housing seminar.  Spanning a packed morning, the event served as both a showcase for Croydon and an awareness raising exercise of the scope of the housing challenge in the borough over the next 20 years – delivering 20,000 new homes for a predicted 13% population increase.  The focus was on family homes, high densities and encouraging residential growth within the town’s metropolitan centre.

Given this focus on high density, centrally located residential development, the wealth of vacant and redundant 60’s and 70’s office tower blocks  has not been overlooked – conversion was the focus of a series of speakers presentations:  Charles Holland delivered a thoughtful presentation sketching the potential options for conversion, while the Bauhaus case study presented by Daren Nathan of Durkan demonstrated both the feasibility of conversion and its sound economic basis (£200/m² less outturn cost versus similar new development).  Reiterating that conversion is defiantly something Durkan would consider doing again, Daren noted a number of successful features of the project:

• The generous site allowed for a crane to be used for construction.
• The structure allowed for the number of floors to increase by three, using a lightweight steel frame structure.
• Retention of the original stair cores was cost effective and simple.
• The inclusion of 5, 2-bed mews houses at ground level which sold incredibly well despite the developers doubts over their town centre location.

And also some valuable lessons:

• Retention of the original lift cores, which did not match current lift standard sizing’s cost considerably more to install than removing the entire shaft.
• Adding a basement car park below an existing structure was challenging and possibly unnecessary given Croydon’s excellent transport links.
• Solar PV panels were problematic to install and added no significant value to the development.

Bauhaus developed by Durkan

Vincent Lacovara from the council’s placemaking team rounded out the conversion session by highlighting Croydon’s willingness to accommodate refurbishment and retrofit of 1960s stock, including commercial to residential transformations, and a number of successful schemes elsewhere in the UK and abroad – e.g. urban splash’s developments, the rotunda with Glen Howells Architects and Park Hill with Studio Egret West.

Overall a thought provoking day for AF, developers and those in the public sector charged with steering the process. The next step for AF & FAT’s collaboration will be to look specifically at St George’s House (known as the Nestle Tower), a 1960s podium/ tower office block, which represents one of the 9 housing typologies laid out in the Croydon Housing Typologies document.  This is a very timely application with the Nestle organisation vacating the building in the near future.  In relationship to exploring possibilities for the Nestle building, we have started looking at the surrounding urban setting focused on George Street, branching off occasionally, highlighting opportunities with adjacent spaces, smaller vacant buildings and passage ways.

1960′s Nestle Tower

The AF team has recently been working with final year Construction Engineering Management and Architectural Engineering & Design Management students at Loughborough University in order to explore the concept of adaptability in buildings. Students were asked to work in groups and case study a building of their choice, with a view to investigating the ways in which the building had been designed to accommodate change and the ways in which it could have been designed to be more adaptable. Yesterday the students presented their case studies to us.

The case studies covered a diverse range of building types, including educational facilities (The Chobham Academy, Ravensbourne College, Loughborough Design School) healthcare buildings (Kentish Town Health Centre, King’s Mill hospital) and entertainment venues (The O2, The Etihad Stadium and the University of Phoenix Stadium). Other interesting case studies included the Das Park Hotel, Snoozebox and Adaptahaus.

We were not only impressed with the high quality of the presentations, but also the research that the students undertook to develop their case studies. This included interviews with project stakeholders (architects, clients, facilities managers), site visits and questionnaire surveys. The case studies provided a fascinating insight into the wide range of strategies and solutions that can be used to make buildings more adaptable, and the physical and social factors that influence adaptability in the built environment.  We will be posting a select number of the case studies on the website over the next couple of weeks.

AF recently facilitated two half day workshops with Nightingales Associates for two of the practice’s ongoing projects – the Bio Innovation Centre in Liverpool (science sector) and the Baron Road Primary School in Blackpool (education sector).  The workshops are the second and third with the practice following an initial workshop held on St. Mary’s Hospital, Kettering Old Persons Unit project (healthcare sector) rounding out the practice’s three major sectors of work. The workshops were organised by David Rowley one of NA’s Directors of Design Research and Innovation and attended by members of the project team and sector held in their Liverpool and Rochdale offices.  The workshops help test the applicability of the AF toolkit utilising a series of exercises as a platform to discuss the project and its adaptability while providing the practice with an expanded view of how they may approach adaptability on the project (and future projects).  One of the attendees at two of the workshops Chris Brightman-White said afterwards:

“These were both stimulating and challenging and generated a wide range of responses and ideas. The review of each project provided new insights and also identified practical opportunities to enrich the project as well as offering a route to broaden our contribution to these clients.

Thought leadership sets us apart from the majority of practitioners and, in addition to its knowledge value,  offers both a route to engagement with new clients and a tool for producing more effective and creative buildings.”

The workshops have proven additionally beneficial for the AF team as well, Robert Schmidt III from Loughborough University added:

“NA’s knowledge of adaptability has brought additional insights to the research and has provided significant direction in transferring the research into practice.” 

The AF team have since compiled workshop reports summarizing what adaptability aspects had already been addressed on the projects and suggesting other ways adaptability could be, whilst considering the drivers and constraints on the projects. The reports are formatted in three sections providing the team feedback in both written and visual forms:  a text summary, annotated drawings and appropriated AF diagrams.

Baron Road Primary School in Blackpool

Bio Innovation Centre in Liverpool

In addition to the workshops, two presentations were given to a wider group from both offices.  David Rowley spoke on the numerous sustainability activities the practice is involved in helping to put NA at the forefront of practicing sustainable architecture.  On the AF side, we provided a general overview of the research and its future direction (slides).  You can watch the AF presentation online on our Vimeo channel (we recommend you download the slides to follow easier!). For a summary of NA’s involvement so far with AF click here.

AF Presentation to the Rochdale office

At a recent FREI (Festival of Real Estate Investment) conference in Montenegro, Milorad Vucinic a studio director from IBI+Nightingale (an AF collaborator) talked about their architectural practice’s involvement with the Adaptable Futures project.  The presentation (a summary of NA’s involvement with AF to date) was a part of the ‘Achieving Sustainability at all Scales’ presentation given by Neno Kovacevic – Executive director of IBI Montenegro who talked about their holistic approach to sustainability at all scales, from master planning to specific projects. Inclusion of the AF project in the presentation was part of IBI+Nightingale’s efforts to include and promote adaptability in their holistic approach to sustainability.

The conference programme included presentations and panels discussing methods for sustainable development and included representatives of major hotel chains and developers, as well as designers, local and from abroad. On the same panel with IBI+Nightingale, Foster + Partners gave a presentation on “Sustainable Architecture: Current Designs and Future Thinking”.

Of Nightingale Associates involvement in the AF project so far, Robert Schmidt III at Loughborough University has said: “NA’s knowledge of adaptability has brought additional insights to the research and has provided significant direction in transferring the research into practice.”

Images are taken from the FREI website.

Introduction

Figure 1 Exterior of church (left) Sheffield City Centre (right)

On April 2^nd – 4^th, the AF team engaged with a cohort of enthusiastic undergraduate and graduate architecture students from Sheffield Hallam University to investigate the potential for adapting St. Vincent’s church and its large multi-tiered site that houses a collection of derelict buildings.  The three day workshop involved a series of exercises designed to encourage students to think about adaptability, the site and the use of film as a medium to communicate their architectural interventions.  The aim was to broaden their approach to design by thinking about their intervention(s) as a serious of small, incremental changes over time rather than one large transformational step at a single point in time, integrating ideas around time and change through a time-based medium (film), using new software.

Day one

What does adaptability mean to you?

Figure 2 Students present ideas about adaptability

After brief introductions, the students broke into three groups and spent the morning discussing adaptability.  The first exercise asked the students, ‘what does adaptability mean to you?’  After brainstorming their thoughts on post-its each group stuck their ideas on the wall and presented some of their core thoughts for discussion.  The students immediately picked up on some of the core issues surrounding adaptability, including looking both to the past as well as the future, allowing for an appropriate level of leeway and the interplay of context and the building.  The dialogue allowed the students to make connections between contingencies which exist outside the conventional understanding of what constitutes adaptability, unravelling synergies and tensions between several issues.  Figure 3 below captures the topics raised by the students with the underlined text highlighting some of the ones elaborated on in discussion.

Figure 3 Graphic capturing thoughts about adaptability

Types of change

The second exercise asked the students to think about the types of change that a building may have to endure over its life and plausible solutions to accommodate those scenarios over time.  In a similar fashion as the first exercise students discussed this in groups before presenting their thoughts to the collective.  They were asked to plot the scenarios and solutions on a timeline which featured cyclical periods of time (24 hour, 7 day and seasonal) as well as a linear timeline (Figure 3 and 4).  The exercise provided an opportunity for the students to think about how a building might need to change to accommodate different needs or conditions from day to night, weekday to weekend, spring to winter and over years of use.  An example of a solution that was talked about was the use of seasonal landscaping (e.g. shading from trees) to help mitigate climatic changes throughout the year rather than the use of mechanical systems. On the long-end of the timeline certain materials, building systems and use types were debated as lending themselves better to long-life durability and flexibility (and social acceptance).  An array of ‘side’ topics arose from the exchange including the fact that they had never really had to think about the long-term reality of buildings, particularly how to design for it.  One aspect that became clear is that all design interventions are temporal and whether we have designed for it or not, buildings change, so how can we ease the accommodation of that change while allowing for the integrity of our design to remain (since facility managers and/ or users probably won’t)?

Figure 4 Graphic illustrating captured changes/ solutions over time

Figure 5 Students present change scenarios

Site Investigation

After lunch, the students went to investigate and document the site.  In a slight contrast to simply photographing the site, students had to think about capturing sequence(s) of images rather than the perfect image to superimpose on to – the possibility of time lapse, dynamic photo montages and sequence photography are all methods to incorporate time into photography.  The integration of time reinforces the student to think about how one experiences or moves through the building, the site or the surrounding neighbourhood as opposed to a static object in Cartesian space.  It also strengthens understanding the building in its context as it begins to construct a narrative.  These of course are not new to architectural thinking, but an evolution in its explicit consideration as part of the representation/ communication process (for more on this thinking read Latour and Yaneva 2008, Give Me A Gun and I’ll make all buildings move).

The site, whilst only being a 10 minute walk away, felt disconnected from the city centre, separated by the B6329 – underlined by the fact that many of the students had never been past the church before.  The church’s site sits atop a hill and is heavily sloped and tiered into two main levels – the lower level consisting of a group of ancillary buildings.  At first glance, the exterior of the church appears like any other of its period that is still in operation, supported by the full parking lot (on both tiers).  But upon closer inspection the car park functions as a commuter parking lot, physical signs of a lack of care are evident and made abundantly obvious once stepping through the main door (Figure 5) where the interior of the church has been stripped of all its religious valuables and moved to the congregations new home 11 years ago.  The interior now is filled with an interesting sea of eclectic items, ranging from a large sofa chair to a hoover from the early 90s.  One can easily see traces of what was a beautifully ornate space with some of its décor in remarkably good condition while other pieces (including the confessional booths) in great disarray.

Figure 6 Interior of St. Vincent’s church

The students spent an hour documenting the site before retreating to the architectural office of Race Cottam, located on the adjacent corner, to hear from Mathew Hayman from the City Planning Department.  Matt presented a historic overview of the area (or quite simply its deterioration) and how the council hoped to see the site (re)developed in the future.  The presentation made clear the ambition for the church to once again become a focal point of the community, but at the same time illustrated the many issues which have hindered its reuse (e.g. perception of safety, neighbouring buildings, and low footfall in the area).

Opportunities and constraints of the site

Upon returning to the studio, students split back into their groups to reflect on the site conditions (constraints and opportunities), which were captured in a third discussion.  Many of the issues came out on both sides of the coin depending on how they were interpreted, some of the key topics discussed were the lack of amenities in the area, the building’s historic value, its massive scale, site accessibility, ownership and building regulations (the topics are captured in Figure 7 below).  Some of the key questions amongst the groups that began to take prevalence included:

• How can better use be made of what they have now?
• What are the quick wins that can be done without large investment from any one organisation?
• What kind of temporary activities (quick and dirty) could draw a range of groups together to generate excitement and appreciation for the site in preparation for a larger investment in the future?
• Who would want to take on a longer term investment in the site?  How could this be shared amongst different organisations?
• In building momentum, how do you engage with the growing, energetic, yet transient community of students in the area, providing them with a reason to interact with the site?
• Can you connect to/ build off of the soon to be complete Edward Street Park (what value / activity will that add to the area)?
• Can you tie into one or both of the universities or the success of the Creative Arts Development Space (given the neighbouring student accommodations)? (i.e. how do you link to large communities not necessarily associated with the area)
• Can you connect to the commuters who use the parking lot? (e.g. day care/ after school programme?) Or with the owner/ church community?
• Can you improve on the site’s connectivity to the centre? The surrounding uses/ amenities?
• How do you use and/ or improve on the area’s topographic barriers?

Figure 7 Opportunities and constraints around the site

Mapping and Storyboarding

The day concluded with a presentation on visualising (mapping) information and storyboarding in an effort to get the students to begin to think about alternative ways of visualising the site outside of conventional architectural methods – i.e. how might they use film as a medium to convey the dynamic aspects of the issues at hand by conveying a narrative of architectural intervention (Figure 8). The students were introduced to a three step process as a way of developing their ideas – sketching out a storyboard, animating the storyboard (animatic) and finally developing the animatic into a film.  As a first step the storyboards can explore several aspects of the finished film including the narrative, scene, filming technique, sound, action, etc.  The animatics are meant then to further ‘test’ those ideas by quickly ‘mocking up’ the movie using the imagery from the storyboard with rough timings, effects, transitions, audio, etc. To help them visualize the intended output, students were then shown some examples of animatics and films from the AF website illustrating examples of how to bring to life the concepts considered in the storyboards.

Figure 8 Mississippi River bed changes over time (left) Edward Tufte’s Path of life (center) Ward Shelley’s Media role models (right)

Day two

Day two started with the students developing their ideas via informal tutorials and sketching them out prior to returning to the site to gather additional footage and/ or images for their films.  The afternoon was spent with an introductory tutorial on Adobe After Effects (a composition and motion graphic software) which served as the primary software for developing their films (in addition to some use of Adobe Premiere and Quicktime Pro).  While potentially being utterly complicated, the familiar interface of Adobe allows the students to quite quickly understand the basics and see the intriguing possibilities of the software.  In many ways it is very much like developing layered images in Photoshop, but with the associated use of a timeline to allow the layers to change over time.   The tutorial presents a foundation for how they can use the software to create their films (or comedic animations of ‘dead’ pigeons found in the building the day earlier).

Figure 9 Adobe After Effects Interface

Day three

On Wednesday the students spent the day developing their storyboards and film ideas.  In the afternoon, we were joined by Ivan Rabodzeenko from SKINN, a not-for-profit development agency working in the area (Shalesmoor, Kelham Island & Neepsend, i.e. SKIN Network).  Ivan gave the students a brief introduction to SKINN and the interesting work they’ve been doing in the area (including the CADS development).  The students then presented their work from the three days, which while still evolving, allowed the groups to communicate and share their thoughtful and interesting responses to the conditions at hand.  Playful yet viable interventions of scattered billboards, a slice through the building and site and strategically inserted studio pods presented some entertaining food for thought.  The next step involves each group taking their ideas forward and submitting a finished film to our student design competition at the beginning of June.  The competition provides the students with an incentive to have their work aired to a wider audience.  In addition, the students will also have the opportunity to exhibit their films at CADS this summer.

Figure 10 Student storyboard example

Concluding Thoughts

The workshop sought to encourage students to think beyond an immediate design solution and to understand the possibility for making tactical design interventions over time.  Creating a film gives the students a new skill that they can use in future projects.  Film serves as a familiar way to communicate to (and engage with) a broader audience outside of the architectural and construction community, and can help provide an increased capacity to imagine how the site could be transformed now and in the future.  The workshop is our third of its kind and is contributing towards a revised perspective on architectural education. The workshops themselves have become a great platform for engaging the community, council and the students in a discussion forum, where the students bring fresh ideas and knowledge from a demographic which is generally underrepresented in these types of conversations. The council and community bring real design considerations and a valuable voice that differs from their tutors.  The workshops have received positive feedback from the students as an opportunity to a) develop a new skill, b) take a refreshing break away from their yearlong projects and c) sharpen their design thinking and illustration skills; whereas, on the other hand, the community organisations and council see it as an important way to communicate design ideas and to excite the broader community about the possibilities to change an area. There is a plan in the works to run a longer and cross-disciplinary workshop in Sheffield this autumn.

This guest post comes from Chris Brown, the Chief Executive of Igloo Regeneration.  The text originally appeared as part of a joint submission to our design competition last year with Ash Sakula Architects which was one of the winning submissions (see image above) for an adaptable neighbourhood.  Chris actively writes on his own blog as part of the Regeneration and Renewal website.  Igloo has been involved in several interesting and successfully adapted projects including the recently completed Porth Teigr in Cardiff designed by FAT Architecture one of our collaborators.

Collaborative consumption

Collaborative consumption is a major trend in sustainability at the moment. For example, Zipcar, the largest of the car clubs where cars are shared by communities in half-hour slots, is now a billion dollar company in America. At the other end of the scale, the social centre at 56a Crampton Street in south London includes a bicycle repair space with a full set of tools, which the local community can share to fix their own bicycles. Sustainability is driving away from consumption of goods to consumption of services.  Of course, car rental companies and bicycle repair shops have been doing things like this for ages. However, the ways and means of sharing resources have become more innovative against a backdrop of the likelihood of resource shortages and the need to reduce the production of greenhouse gases. The question for us is how we can apply this to the built environment.

Commercial office buildings are inhabited for less than a quarter of the time. That is to say, for 10 hours out of the 24-hour day (40%) and for five days out of seven in a week, on top of bank holidays (65%). In addition, people are either ill or on holiday for about 15% of the time.  Ideas about the working environment have become more flexible with the increasing popularity of hot desking and serviced offices. Equally, a mobile workspace is embraced more and more; from home, in the café or park, at clients’ premises or while on the move.

Space is underused

Businesses want to be functioning 24 hours but employees don’t want to work night shifts, so they have offices in different time zones. Consequently, all around the world, office buildings lie empty most of the time. And as the world’s population grows and urbanises, even more offices are built that lie empty most of the time.  In the developed world, as the economy changes from an industrial to an information age, fewer factories and more offices are needed. This increasingly mobile and knowledge working population requires more smaller homes as people live longer, have children later and divorce more. But while space per office worker reduces, residential space per person is increasing. Small homes are inefficient to build and to run.

The cities we have inherited are generally far from efficient. They are often low density with poor streets and public spaces. They are often not nice places to be, which is why people flee to the suburbs to even more low density where there is a reliance on cars. Such a reliance is unsustainable as petrol becomes more expensive and the resources scarce.  Life in suburbia doesn’t bring people happiness, however, as they lose contact with community, commute further to work and consume more as a result. Leisure is increasingly digital and mobile, as smartphones and tablet computers deliver television and social networks to us wherever we are in a compact format.  As a result of spending more time commuting, and more money and time eating out and social networking, we increasingly use ‘home’ just as a place to sleep and procreate. Web-based networks, such as couchsurfing.org, suggest that many young people in society no longer feel the need to nest. They carry their life in a bag, travelling extensively and moving base regularly.

Making better use of expensive space

So, what if we could use our buildings and places more flexibly and more efficiently: buy the use of the space rather than the space itself?  Perhaps we should aim to occupy a building half of the time instead of a quarter? This opens up the possibility that the entire doubling of the world’s urban population between now and 2050 (three billion extra city dwellers) could be accommodated in existing buildings. Therefore reducing environmental destruction through mining or greenhouse gas emissions for building materials.

But could a future like this ever work?
Would people accept it?
How wouldit be organised?
What would it look like?

In this groundbreaking piece of commercially grounded research and development innovation, we have set out to provide some potential answers to these questions.
Market-driven adaptation
Innovation tends to be driven by markets so we need to understand the market drivers behind these changes.  Is new build value greater than total development cost including external costs of mining finite resources and production of green house gases (excluding land)?
If yes: Is it greater than total development cost as above including the value of the land and any buildings?
If yes: Is it greater than the value of the land and the enhanced value of the buildings plus the value of embodied carbon and social value of existing fabric and use?
If yes: Consider demolition and redevelopment with new maximum sustainable adaptable buildings.
If no to any of the above: Consider value enhancement through adaptation.
Similar questions can be asked for existing buildings and spaces.
Is the building/space in the highest value use?
Is the building/place fully utilised (intensity of existing use, 24/7)?
If yes: do nothing
If no, consider: Change to highest value uses
Add meanwhile buildings (beach huts, roof pods, floating spaces)
Create Nomad Pavilions (intensify 24/7 use within buildings)
Ameliorate and animate space between buildings
Add transition spaces (cafes, libraries, outdoor seating)

Monitor, Feedback and Adapt
This process doesn’t stop, it is a continuous process of questioning.

Have social, climate, physical, institutional, technological or market conditions changed?
If no: do nothing
If yes: go back to stage one.
Space Efficiency – Nomad Pavilions

The technology is in place to use internet booking systems to find somewhere to work or sleep with short notice. There is already the demand from travellers, low budget workers and sofa surfers Storage lockers, which are accessible 24/7, can be used to store possessions. At the moment, serviced offices are more like car clubs. A further stage of innovation could be to design buildings with spaces that can be used for both work and sleep during a 24-hour and seven-day period?  These same principles would apply to the buildings that we once called offices and in the future will be known as Nomad Pavilions. With sliding and pivoting walls, furniture that folds or rolls away, these buildings would convert incrementally from office to residential at the touch of a button each weekday evening. Many offices already have showers and Wi-Fi.  It’s a bit like living in hotel but with all your own possessions. 

These moves would also require innovations in our regulatory system. For example, which use class these would fit into – currently sui generis but potentially B1/C3? Also, there would need to be consideration of the security of tenure desired by occupants as well as how prices might be controlled.  As mentioned above, markets always adapt. If this increased use of space were to generate higher revenues, which more than compensate for higher costs (particularly if the embodied carbon in buildings and in combustion engine travel starts costing more) then the funds for these buildings will be forthcoming.

Pods

It is no longer as simple as travelling from point A to point B; people want to be in different places at different times. Caravans and campervans serve this function but are dated and underused. Instead we could designate pod sites all over the place, in the city (on the roof, in the yard, on the riverbank) and in the country (on the beach, in the hills). These pods would be designed to operate as workspace and as living space, and move to meet demand. We would hire them by the time slot: 8am-6pm five days a week or 6pm-8am plus weekends.  Our personal belongings, which are increasingly few in an anti-consumerist information world, would live in our secure private store (accessible 24/7). Thus, accommodation costs would be halved, our discretionary disposable incomes would double and we spend more time travelling.

In-between times and places

At the beginning and end of the day, we would move from our working place to our sleeping place and we would meet our friends virtually, in the spaces between buildings (streets, squares, parks) and as we travel. Libraries will re-establish themselves as public spaces where our communities store all the things that we share between us, along with cafes and shops.  Where building uses overlap, we would use these, probably ground floor, transient spaces as our social spaces to eat and meet and also to wait for our private space to come available.

Architectural education sets the foundation as to how architects learn in practice and can provide insights into how value systems are shaped. Cuff (1991) insists that architectural education has, for a considerable amount of time, been very much based around learning how to be creative and thinking for yourself; while (Lawson et al. 2003) adds that ‘knowing by doing’ is a readily accepted method of educating within architecture.  A strong criticism of the education system is that “adaptive use is the destiny of most buildings, but it is not taught in architectural schools” (Brand 1994). Most programs emphasis innovation and novelty (Glasser 2000), very little education goes into how to change existing buildings, thus there is little knowledge taken forward from education into practice in this area (Kohler & Hassler 2002).

Dyckhoff (2011) states, “Too many architects design for this moment, the perfect idealised space on the inside, iconic form on the outside. But put the people in here and it just doesn’t work.” The quote suggests that architects tend to ignore the medium of time and how users will occupy and appropriate space over time, in order to concentrate on the ideal aesthetics and performance of a building (Schmidt III, et al. 2010).  The dismissal of time can be seen as highly problematic, considering a building and its demands will continue to change throughout its life span.

It could be argued that this idealised, timeless view of buildings emanates directly from architectural education, where students are able to explore their own creativity to a much greater extent than when in practice (Glasser 2000). This is a critical time for a burgeoning architect and the only time where they can really design whatever they desire (UIA 2005), essentially opening their minds to what could be possible. This educational process is essentially indoctrinated in the visual where architectural students are asked to complete one graphic representation after another for one project after another as a series of design studios aimed at developing a visual portfolio of their academic career exploring the creation of objects in space.  Whilst architectural education produces fantastically free thinking architects in the sense of form, does it actually close the mind of many architects to the idea of time and how a building they create transforms throughout its existence?

Film becomes an interesting intervention for students to investigate beyond the object in space into the complex interplay of contingencies in time.  Dynamic in nature, it could provide a useful medium to expand an architect’s design consciousness. It is not suggested that film should replace other visual aspects of architectural education, but simply taught alongside them as a way to develop an architect’s ability to conceptualise the evolution of a building – a complex perpetually evolving product that is as much a social process as a technical object.

How does the process of producing films help architects envision time better?

It forces the student to bring the building to life – partially through the movement evident in any film (the moments, experiences, intervals, sequences), but also through the story the film tells. Intuitively, even in its simplest form (a sequence of images), a film still shows an account of an event or a series of events (a story). A film can focus a student to look beyond the initial form and function and give the building a timeline in which a ‘life’ can play out. It allows students to think about the building as a series of events rather than just what the building looks like, or how it will function at a single moment in time (how will it transform with users and in space, performance, scale, use, or location?). It allows them to think beyond initial occupation, to query what can happen in the future not just as a linear progression, but also as cycles of time – days, weeks or seasons.  Most importantly it ‘moves’ architecture past its initial form into a more accurate depiction of its spatio-temporal reality.  It embodies  a sense of what Till (2009) refers  to as ‘thick time’ – time is an embodiment of the past as much as the future – moving beyond a simplistic linear production unpacking the immediacy, multiplicity, connectedness, and powerfulness.

Adding scenarios to what was once a singular vision is one of the key advantages to producing films in architecture. Film allows the ability to ask ‘what if’ using different scenarios, which is a question of what could happen over time, not about absolutes derived from an initial brief. Scenarios can play out a variety of ways within the film, illustrating options, changes over time or simply a multitude of futures.  It intuitively creates an environment where the architect is forced to think longitudinally about the building and its context. Architecture should not and cannot be about absolutes.  For example, Norman Foster’s design of the Swiss Re building (the gherkin) in London, Foster is quoted as saying “In the end unless you are doing a building for yourself, you have to let go at some point. So you will come into a building, see the way it is used and there will be shock horror. I don’t think, it’s not, you know a disaster, but you know it could be better.” (Norman Foster, 2011). Here, Foster is essentially saying that the users are using the building in a way that is unintended (in a poor way) – this is partially due to the fact that once complete the building was meant to be fully occupied by Swiss Re, however, this never came to fruition.  On the other hand, it is partially due to Foster’s focus on creating a ‘beautiful’ object for a particular client at a particular moment and not on deriving a variety of possible futures that could allow the building to be successful under a handful of contexts.  If this had been the case, would he have been so shocked by the way the building is being used?  Would he have designed something differently?

This blog entry is an abridged version of an article that will be published in the upcoming issue of cSUR from The University of Tokyo.

BRAND, S., 1994. How Buildings Learn: What happens after they’re Built. New York: Penguin.

CUFF, D., 1991. Architecture: The Story of Practice. USA: The MIT Press.

GLASSER, D.E., 2000. Reflections on Architectural Education. Journal of Architectural Education, 53(4), pp. 250-252.

KOHLER, N. and HASSLER, U., 2002. The building stock as a research object. Building Research & Information, 30(4), pp. 226.

LAWSON, B., 2005. How Designers think. 4th edn. Amsterdam: Elsevier Ltd.

LAWSON, B., BASSANINO, M., PHIRI, M. and WORTHINGTON, J., 2003. Intentions, practices and aspirations: Understanding learning in design. Design Studies, 24(4), pp. 327-339.

SCHMIDT III, R., EGUCHI, T., AUSTIN, S. and GIBB, A., 2010. What is the meaning of Adaptability in the building industry?  16th International Conference on “Open and Sustainable Building”, May 17-19 2010.

TILL, J., 2009. Architecture Depends. Cambridge: MIT Press.

UIA, 2005. UNESCO/UIA charter for architectural education.

Recently, one of our collaborators discussed with us a project in which the client asked them to construct the adjacent parking structure floor to floor heights the same as their new building. The idea is that when the new building reaches capacity they will be able to easily convert the parking structure into inhabitable floor space (parking would move to a neighbouring site).  It made me think about what other constraints might hinder the practicality of such an act and how feasible would it be to convert a conventional parking structure to other uses?  Is it simply an issue of increasing floor to floor heights, typically designed at a minimum for cost efficiency given the weight of the concrete structure, or would more unconventional design measures need to be considered either initially or at the point of conversion?

For example, what do you do with the ramps?  – Do you design them as a modular solution which can be disassembled and easily removed upon conversion or do you try to fit them out with a new use such as slanted travelators?  If they remain, one would expect the need to get more use out of them (other than circulation) given they probably take up a large portion of the floor area. Could it be for supplemental uses in addition to the main use, such as an entertainment park for skateboards or bicycles? Consideration of conversion from an initial design perspective, would suggest placing the ramps on opposite ends of the open parking space minimizing their disruptiveness. Structurally you may also need to consider additional live load and deflection capacity as well.  How do you deal with future servicing – do you pre-cut openings in the slab? Most parking garages are quite deep so how do you get natural light into the center?  What capacity do you have to remove portions of the floor and retain structural stability?  Where and how do you install the probably necessary additional vertical circulation such as lifts?  What about logistics of the conversion – e.g. getting equipment in and out of the building (e.g. lift capacity and size)? The simplest conceived change would be enclosing the structure either by attaching to structural elements of the existing façade or by installing a self-supported second skin wrapping the existing building. Given the variety of design contingencies, it would seem plausible from an initial standpoint to consider the possibility of conversion albeit at an additional cost, but considering it from a post-construction standpoint seems extremely difficult to implement a change of use.  An example of a project that includes a car park designed to be converted to other uses in the future is the City of Melbourne’s Council House 2 (CH₂), which was one of the first buildings in Australia to use the new Green Star rating system as part of its design process and includes a car park as its basement that is level rather than ramped to allow it to be converted.

When I searched for parking structure conversions I found more of the opposite – various uses getting converted to parking structures (suggesting the needs of a parking structure to be less than other conventional uses).  A few interesting conversion projects:  A theatre converted into a parking structure in Michigan; a parking structure to office back to parking structure in Chicago; and a parking garage to academic building in Florida.  If anyone has examples of other projects, please get in touch as we would love to learn about them.

Peckham’s multi-storey Car park

On a similar note, we undertook a student workshop last year in Peckham with The University of Tokyo. The workshop looked at the capacity to adapt six town centre buildings, one of which was a multi-storey car park.  Somewhat over-scaled for its location, set back from the main street and with poor vehicular access, the car park  is generally seen as dangerous, lacking a (legal) use and aesthetically unpleasing.  Its one saving grace is its structural attachment to the neighbouring (and extremely popular) cinema.  But for a few summer months each year, the car park thrives as Hannah Barry gallery‘s sculpture park and Frank’s cafe and Campari Bar move in.

The students were asked to consider how the building could be converted to accommodate different or additional seasonal uses.  Student responses primarily focused on using the space as is, with small-scale cuts, and insertions creating a linear public ‘park’ offering different experiences / activities and adapting the module of the car park to other activities as one moved up the ramps mixing retail, entertainment and restaurants.

It is not disputed that buildings will need to change over time to accommodate the irresolute demands of its users. Nor, that the more conducive to change a building is, the longer it will remain useful, making it inherently more sustainable. However, buildings are usually built to fit a specific purpose for a particular moment in time, defined in a financially strict brief and proposed by a client that is generally not an expert in the built environment. In such a commercially driven industry, this means that none of the actors have a specific remit to consider the future of the building, rather, just the completion and documentation of it, and the conception of the next. This is in stark contrast to research highlighting architects interest in continually learning about their buildings in order to expand their knowledge in an ever more competitive business.

Currently there is a lot of attention being paid to feedback techniques that attempt to encapsulate knowledge of a building in use, and subsequently feedback relevant information to architects in order to improve design quality (Gorgolewski 2005). However, these techniques concentrate on the energy performance of a building and/or user satisfaction within it, the information is generally captured by way of a questionnaire or survey and is presented in some form of written report (Bordass & Leaman 2005).  Whilst this information is of some use to architects, it does not give a holistic view of the building and has a very narrow focus. The fact that the majority of feedback is produced in written form also does not sit well with architects who generally work in a visual way (Cohen et al. 2005).

It is imperative therefore, that feedback to architects is better understood, that way improvements can be made into how this information is delivered. Something completely absent from literature is the link between feedback, architectural values and operational behaviours. A feedback mechanism should be developed that enables the architectural community to engage with feedback in a more productive manner. It is suggested that in order for feedback to be productive and utilised effectively it must take into account what architect’s currently value and how they work day to day. This idea was articulated and explored in (Kelly et al. 2011).

Developing a better understanding of how buildings change over time is arguably crucial to informing architects concerned with extending the life of buildings. It shouldn’t be an attempt to predict exactly how buildings may change in the future as, “all buildings are predictions and all predictions are wrong” (Brand 1994), but rather an attempt to construct a platform for capturing and understanding how knowledge regarding the way buildings change can better be used to inform design decisions. Adaptability can no longer be seen as a ‘one size fits all’ solution and should be developed with the complexity it affords; lessons can and need to be learnt from the building stock in its entirety, which should only improve the design of adaptable buildings in the future.

With many of an architect’s values being visual it seems only right that the most suitable feedback mechanism will also originate in that area.  If this is the case, it is suggested that architects would be inspired to use it and proven benefits from lessons learnt would be embraced within the architectural arena. For this reason, one of the avenues to be explored will be the value of developing a web-based tool situated around diagrammatic architectural drawings, photographs and film to further understand how buildings change over time.

In order to effectively improve adaptability feedback the following questions are considered:

1)  How do architects think about future change in their projects and what strategies/solutions do they implement to accommodate change?

2) Do assumptions made in relation to the future appropriation of buildings accord with the actuality of change?

3)  How might design decision-making in pursuit of adaptable solutions be informed?

4)  How does feedback effect an architect’s design decisions?

5) How can different types of change in a building in use be captured?

Standing the Test of Time.  None of the buildings below (and the one above) were originally designed to accommodate their current use, but have all been adapted successfully.  What is it about these buildings that has allowed them to accommodate such a dramatic change?

Building above is The Baltic Flour Mill in New Castle, was a flour mill now a gallery, restaurant and bar.  The three below are The Mailbox in Birmingham was an old post office/ sorting office and is now a mixed use of retail, restaurants and offices; The Halo Nightclub was a church now a nightclub in Leeds; and Dunlop Birmingham was an old tyre factory now offices and residential.

References:

BORDASS, B. and LEAMAN, A., 2005. Making feedback and post-occupancy evaluation routine 3: Case studies of the use of techniques in the feedback portfolio. Building Research & Information, 33(4), pp. 361-375.

BRAND, S., 1994. How Buildings Learn: What happens after they’re Built. New York: Penguin.

COHEN, L., WILKINSON, A., ARNOLD, J. and FINN, R., 2005. Remember I’m the Bloody Architect! Architects, Organizations and Discourses of Professions. Work, Employment, and Society, 19, pp. 775.

GORGOLEWSKI, M., 2005. Understanding how Buildings Evolve, The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference, Sept 27-29 2005, pp. 2811.

KELLY, G. SCHMIDTT III, R. DAINTY, A. STORY, V., 2011. Improving the design process for adaptability: Linking feedback and architectural values Egbu, C. and Lou, E,C,W. (Eds.) Procs 27th Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2011, .

Registration is now open!

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 10th! Given the end of term and project deadlines for some universities we’ve decided to extend the deadline.  The 10th of June is the latest possible date and hope this helps students wanting to submit a proposal.

In an effort to share feedback from queries about the competition, we will use this post as an evolving piece of information for interested applicants.  Feel free to post queries/ comments here and we will respond to them in a timely manner.  Many thanks for everyone’s interest.

Are team-based submissions okay?  Submissions can be team-based or individual (as long as all participants are students).  Teams should not exceed 4 individuals.  The prizes are obviously not scaled!

Does the submission have to be a building?  No, your submission may take a variety of forms and scales, e.g. a public space, a product, a building system, or a cluster of buildings (e.g. a neighborhood).  The key is to illustrate how your proposed solution responds to a variety of changes.  A good way to do this is to envision a series of plausible scenarios.

Can I submit if i graduate in May?  Yes, you can submit if you graduated after December 1st, 2011 (six months prior to the deadline).  If you graduated prior to December 1st, 2011 you are not eligible to entry the competition (sorry).  If however you have a project that you think is interesting and highly relevant to the research you can email it to us directly at competition@adaptablefutures.com.  It <span style=” style=”color: #000000;”>Can I submit a studio project?   Yes, we are happy for you to submit your studio work as long as it… a) is submitted in the format of the competition A0 boards or a QuickTime film and b) responds to the competition criteria (i.e. your studio project might not be about time and change, but the competition requires you to think about how your submitted design can accommodate change over time).  Please don’t simply submit a studio project without proper consideration towards the three bullet pointed criteria in the competition brief.

AF held our first project workshop last week.  Traveling to Nightingale Associates office in Oxfordshire, we spent the morning with them ‘trying out’ some of the tools.

Designed to be as interactive as possible, we explored stakeholder perspectives with post-it notes, brainstormed change scenarios, and sketched the effect of proposed adaptable solutions on a projects concept.  AF will be providing the participants with material based on the outputs they generated, enabling them more easily to assimilate the adaptable ideas as the project develops.

In an effort to rethink how the information from the more ‘polished’ diagrams can be simplified and more engaging particularly in a workshop format we started sketching ideas to re-visualize some of them. The diagrams present a mixture of possibilities: a) briefing/ charrette tool to brainstorm ideas (i.e. ‘blank’ versions), b) simple concept or information to sell ideas (as is),  c) a parti-diagram to help communicate ideas (i.e. modifiable), d) guidance tools encouraging designers how to consider design parameters and e) project analysis to verify ideas (i.e. consultancy).

We will continue to explore how to visualize them adding additional ones as well over the next couple of months and look for any suggestions from you!

I recently caught a piece on 60 minutes (an American news show) on how bad the home owning situation has gotten in the US highlighting the ‘dire’ manevour by the city of Cleveland.  With an estimated 11 million homes currently foreclosed on across the US, cities are now faced with a huge amount of vacant homes and pressure from remaining home owners to act as they see their property values continuing to fall due to the blight of their abandoned neighbours.  The typical scenario which we are all too familiar with (step 1): homes are foreclosed on or loanees walk away and abandon their loans/ homes.  Step 2, banks then recover the full amount of the mortgage (plus any expense and interest) typically through Fed Government guarantees/ mortgage insurance and then abandon the homes (they have no interest in taking care of a home once they got their money).  Step 3, thieves steal anything that has resale value (foreclosures are publically listed) devaluing the home and making a refit a much bigger task than the home’s current market value.  The solution by the city of Cleveland (step 4) = demolish the houses at the taxpayers’ expense (not to mention society with the increased waste).  The assumed worst part is that the banks retain ownership of the vacant lot which is now more valuable and easier to resell in the future.  Being an architect and conducting research on the topic of adaptability, I found it extremely hard to watch as there was no reflection on the sustainability perspective of such a mindless practice.  But where does that leave us, what alternative solutions are there?  How do we keep the existing homeowners in their homes or get new people in there before thieves raid the homes?  Where is the critical point of interjection?  It seems by the time we get to the extreme fourth step we’ve eliminated a lot of possibilities.  First thoughts…could the banks be held more liable on the homes by not receiving their full guarantee if the homes are abandoned (e.g. incentivising them to renegotiate mortgages possibly cutting the principle or interest rates)?  If no one buys the home at foreclosure could they be given back to the original owner with a subsidy from the Fed Government (i.e. instead of giving the money to the banks, give it to the homeowners and allow them to pay the government back at a slower, more manageable rate).  Could some type of temporary use or a rental company which specialises in foreclosed property help establish a renter’s market (which could help renters work towards purchasing the home or provide the needed time for the original homeowners to get back on their feet)?

Upon further reflection, I started thinking my initial thoughts rely primarily on tweaking the social context (e.g. government regulations, market rates), but could the physical design of the homes help prevent at least the ridiculous act of step four and find new life for the homes or at the very least the materials that constructed them?  The most straightforward answer would be to design the homes for disassembly strategically designing the building components to be disassembled without compromising their integrity and quality (e.g. accessible and reversible connections).  This would enhance a growing reuse/ recycling market and increase work for deconstruction contractors.  Another thought would be to imagine how the homes could be adapted, e.g. subdividing the home into smaller, more affordable units or converting them into alternative uses depending on their location and physical configuration.   What ‘other’ uses could a detached home be suitable for?  Could they, in a similar fashion as Georgian or Victorian terraces, be converted into doctor offices, lawyer practices, retail shops, etc?  How crazy would it be to conceive homes with businesses running out of the ground floor or the front room and living quarters above?  This was a common form of habitation around the world and still exists in many places in Japan (amongst other places).  The primary problem with suggesting alternative uses is the mono-functional context in which many of these homes sit.  Can a single business survive within a sea of ‘suburban style’ detached homes?  What balance or other infrastructure is needed?  As these peripheral residential areas of American cities continue to be reinvented through the adaptive reuse (conversion) of shopping malls and box stores, can the same reuse philosophy be applied to residential homes?  I remain unsure of the best solution, but feel this is interesting and current context to test the ‘scalability’ of the research.  Your thoughts please

Circle K is an international chain of convenient stores started in 1951 in Texas, USA (now Canadian owned).  In the 1980s and 90s the company filed for bankruptcy and developed a new corporate plan which closed many of their shops.  Around 2000, Paho Mahn, a professional photography, took an interest in mapping out and photographing converted Circle Ks in the Phoenix area.   His photographs show an array of new businesses (e.g. restaurants, cleaners, florist, tattoo parlor, grocery store, check cashing) occupying the vacant shells.  New occupants modify the exteriors with new signs, window/ door locations, paint and random objects.  Interiors completely gutted and some subdivided to support two shops.   The photos offer an interesting glimpse into the evolutionary nature of our built environment.

Now, if only the same thing could happen to all the McDonalds worldwide…

BBVH architects (Rotterdam) have designed a terrace house archetype for the GoldenPlover estate project in Rotterdam-Hoogvliet.  Potential owners can go to their website and through an online program customize the house in a variety of ways through a series of determined variables.  The first step is to select which lot you would like, you can then decide if you would like to add an additional floor or scale either the ground or first floor horizontally by an additional 1.5m.  Other features include choosing the type of patio doors, roof light, location of kitchen, and the configuration of the staircase, bathroom, entrance lobby and bedrooms above.

The user-friendly approach includes a price tag for every option and finishes with a printable itemized list of your decisions.   While the program is geared towards allowing owners to customize their new homes initially, it’s clear that the designers have thought about a variety of ways in which the home could be configured some of which are not locked in with the initial decision – which would be an interesting addition to the program showing owners which options could still be activated at a later date and which ones could not!

Many of us are familiar now with the term ‘meanwhile use’ in the UK which has particular relevance towards the refitability and convertibility strategies of our project.   For those unfamiliar, ‘meanwhile use’ is the temporary use of vacant buildings (or land) until such time that they can be brought back into commercial use again.  SQW consulting produced an informative report in May 2010 on the business case and learning points for Meanwhile Use.  The report states that there are approximately 25,000 vacant shops closed due to the recession in the UK (13% of UK shops sitting empty), while over 250 meanwhile projects are underway.  Nearly 75% of the projects are in vacant retail units, but other types of spaces are increasingly being used including offices, housing, pubs, places of worship, car showrooms and building sites.  More than half the uses are arts/ culture related, but informal learning opportunities and cheap office space are a growing trend.  As an attempt to get around some of the legal constraints (such as use classes) they have produced a standard ‘meanwhile use’ lease which can help interested parties.  The idea of ‘meanwhile uses’ can also be extended to the use of public building outside their normal operating hours (‘moonlight’ meanwhile use) – this is a consistent idea with several of our case studies (e.g. Kentish Town Health Centre, PS340).

A current example (Jan 2012) of a ‘meanwhile use’ space in London is pictured above (both photos) on Finchley Street which has been redesigned by Meanwhile space to accommodate individuals or groups looking for temporary work space (can also host an event).  The space was formerly a restaurant (in the O2 Centre) and can be rented for £10 per person per day or £250 per person per month.  The space is quite versatile – open plan with a variety of working areas (or you can bring your own desk) and is ideal for start ups, creatives and community focused groups.  For more information