
Resilience to Change / Participation
Resilience to Change/Participation
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SUTD-MIT INTERNATIONAL DESIGN CENTRE (IDC)
Grand Challenge: Sustainable Built Environment
Research Team
Principal Investigators:
Michael Budig
Oliver Heckmann
Research Assistants:
Ray CHERN Xi Cheng, Markus Matthias HUDERT, Amanda NG Qi Boon, LOO Jun Wen, Clement LORK, Zack XUEREB CONTI
Collaborators:
Lynette Cheah, ESD/SUTD
Colin Yip, Arup Singapore
Mentor:
Richard De Neufville
IDSS/MIT
Resilience to Change/Participation
In the context of mass housing, demographic and socio-economic dynamics and urges for more design participation push for resilient buildings that able to accommodate changing user demands. Buildings with flexible infill systems are able to adapt to such changes and thus extend the service lifetime of buildings.
We propose a methodology to assess the resilience of building, by enabling to evaluate how floor plan layouts can adapt to changing user demands. A parcellation tool has been developed based on layouts still devoid of any predetermined room- or unit divisions. Floor plan layouts are taken as polyvalent patterns of adjacent cells, as a support system in which infill elements act as agents to generate apartment parcellations.
The means for this parcellation is an algorithm that moderates and allocates numerous user-preferences regarding size and position simultaneously – by searching for parcel permutations through a graph-syntax representation of poly-valent floor plans.
As data for the accommodation of these dynamic occupational patterns both participatory user demand inputs and predictive demographic models can be used: Regarding the service life time performance of layouts predictive demographic models are used as input-data, measuring the resilience of layouts to respond to them. The intent here is to determine the positive social and environmental impacts of adaptive floor plans by comparing varying degrees of flexibility. Case studies based on the generic design with different levels of flexibility are compared, by matching dynamically shifting occupational patterns with the resilience of the compared layouts to accommodate them. To enable participation the tool can also be used to moderate and allocate multiple user wishes regarding the extent and location of the unit when new residential projects are launched.

Workflow diagram, with participatory user preferences or predictive demographic models as input data for parcelation algorithm

Original layout and respective graph-syntax illustration

Comparison of different levels of flexibility

Diagram on impact of flexibility on service-lifetime
PUBLICATIONS:
Heckmann, O., Budig, M., Ng, Conti, ZX, Cheng RCX., L. (2020).
User-Driven Parcellation Of High-Rise Units for Future Urban Habitation – Participatory Computational Design Tools for Future Urban Habitation
25th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, RE: Anthropocene, Design in the Age of Humans, 2020
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Heckmann, O., Budig, M., Lork, C.,Ng, Q.B.A.,Cheng, R., Conti, Z.X.
Adaptable Buildings: Assessing Resilience to Changing Demands
TAD ‘Open’ 2020 (Under Review)