Responding to the built environment challenges: design for adaptation

Abstract

The current building stock in the UK only vaguely fits the evolving needs of businesses and users. This leads majority of existing buildings to be demolished, renewed, refurbished or redundant. However, maintaining a redundant building stock is economically unviable and a socially unacceptable solution, as these buildings generate no income while the building owners are responsible to pay taxes for the buildings. Also, scrapping and rebuilding relatively young buildings is neither economically nor socially desirable and does not correspond with the demand for durability and sustainability. Therefore, to survive a more complex array of needs, modern buildings are required to be designed to improve space, environmental and safety standards and adapt for potential change situations. In this sense, adaptable buildings focus on potential bespoke solutions that are flexible for varying customer needs. Buildings with adaptable potential may survive in the immediate future; however, the traditional maladaptive buildings will remain as redundant stock unless they find a correct use. This paper investigates the design strategies for adaptability in middle range buildings (4-12 storeys) while explaining the capacity of adaptable buildings to respond to the built environment challenges. A comprehensive literature review was undertaken to identify the strategies and design parameters for adaptability in buildings, and eleven interviews were carried out among the construction professionals to identify the practicality of promoting adaptable building strategies within the UK construction industry. NVivo-10 software was used to analyse the empirical data, and the results explained market demand, user requirement, stakeholder awareness and challenges like cost, risk, technology and existing planning policies are the key issues that need to be addressed when promoting adaptable buildings.