Inside the box : responsive design for diverse and changing households

Abstract

Buildings need to be adaptable with relative ease to new requirements, regulations and uses for diverse and changing users. Designing buildings which can adapt to changing demands poses a considerable challenge. Residential satisfaction on dwelling is a function of three groups of variables; the user’s characteristics, the physical attributes of a space and the beliefs and perceptions of the user’s on the experienced space. Particularly in residential environments, the user tries to solve the emerging spatial problems by making some alterations and thus adapting the space to his/her changing needs. With this regard, flexible and adaptable design solutions can be an important potential to meeting the needs of various users throughout a building’s life-cycle. Adaptability reduces the effort and expense involved in adding, changing or replacing building components (such as partitions, doors or plumbing features) throughout the building’s life-cycle. This increases the building’s value, sustainability and most importantly, the users’ satisfaction. In practice however, most buildings are designed and constructed to cater for the present use for the present users. Future adaptability is ignored and not designed for. This research intends to focus on the evaluation of the “dwelling space” in terms of the physical attributes of space. The research will critically review literature on adaptability and flexible designing in order to construct a theoretical platform for understanding the knowledge on how buildings change can be used to inform design decisions of internal spaces of Social Housing units. The research follows an approach which is based on the systemic separation of building components and adjusting buildings to accommodate the frequently changing needs of inhabitants. The objective of the research is to develop a methodology which supports the design of internal unit spaces so that they can be adapted throughout the building’s life-cycle.