Loose-Fit Architecture: Designing Buildings for Change 9781119152651, 9781119463344

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Designing Buildings for Change Guest-Edited by ALEX LIFSCHUTZ

Loose-Fit Architecture

05 | VOL 87 | 2017

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN September/October 2017 Profile No 249

Loose-Fit Architecture

Designing Buildings for Change Guest-Edited by ALEX LIFSCHUTZ

Loose-Fit Architecture: Designing Buildings for Change

05/2017

Introduction

Back to the Future

Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy

About the Guest-Editor Alex Lifschutz

The Everyday Built Environment in a Phase of Transition

Alex Lifschutz 05

06

John Habraken 18

Learning from the West Coast: Long-Termism and Change

Richard Buckminster Fuller, US Pavilion, World Expo, Montreal, Quebec, 1967

NEUBAU Flexible Self-Build Cities in Germany Anne-Julchen Bernhardt and Jörg Leeser 30

An Interview with Stewart Brand

Japanese Innovation in Adaptable Homes

Peter Murray 24

Kazunobu Minami 38

Four Decades of Open Building Implementation

Adaptability A Low-Carbon Strategy

Realising Individual Agency in Architectural Infrastructures Designed to Last

Simon Sturgis 46

Stephen Kendall 54

Langley Hall Associates (architects) / Sturgis Carbon Profiling (carbon consultants), 9 Cambridge Avenue, Slough, UK, 2014

The Fetish of Flexibility Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership, 125 Park Road, London

Flexible Architecture for Evolving Work Practices

Edwin Heathcote 64

Despina Katsikakis 68

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ISSN 0003-8504 ISBN 978 1119 152644 (pb) ISBN 978 1119 463344 (hb)

Guest-Edited by Alex Lifschutz

System Separation

Dead and Dying Shopping Malls, Re-Inhabited

A Fitting Strategy for Future Development Giorgio Macchi

Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson

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84

Shaping Mexico City

Perkins Eastman, Nova Place, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2016

Evolutionary Housing for Low-Income Urban Families Andrea Martin and Jorge Andrade 92

Educational Innovation through Building Adaptation

Revolution and Evolution The Architectural Association

Alexi Marmot 96

Clare Wright 106

Continuity and Change

Ai Weiwei, Courtyard 241, Caochangdi, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 2006

Challenging the Disposable Chinese City

Self-Build and Change Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong

Renee Y Chow

Ian Lambot 114

122

Counterpoint Mixing Up the Mediterranean Model

Designing Landscapes for Change

Architecture Amid Urban Flux

Albertopolis Kim Wilkie

Luca Molinari 130

136

Contributors 142

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EDITORIAL BOARD

Front cover: Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Flexible Towers, Olympic Village, Stratford, London, 2016. © Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands Back cover: Hawkins\ Brown, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), London, 2016. © Hawkins\ Brown Inside front cover: Spreng + Partner, VonRoll university building, Bern, Switzerland, 2013. © Office for Real Estate and Public Buildings of the Swiss Canton of Bern

05/2017

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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN September/October

Profile No.

2017

249

Disclaimer The Publisher and Editors cannot be held responsible for errors or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal; the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Publisher and Editors, neither does the publication of advertisements constitute any endorsement by the Publisher and Editors of the products advertised.

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ABOUT THE

GUEST-EDITOR ALEX LIFSCHUTZ

Alex Lifschutz studied Sociology and Psychology at Bristol University (1971–4), where he undertook research into cognitive psychology. In 1974 he transferred to the Architectural Association (AA) in London. He joined Foster + Partners in 1977, where he worked on the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank Headquarters from 1981 to 1985. In 1986 (with the late Ian Davidson) he formed Lifschutz Davidson (now Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands). He served on the AA Council from 2002 to 2007 and was its President from 2009 to 2011. Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands has an established reputation for innovative design and has won numerous awards, including RIBA London Architect of the Year in 2015. The practice is based in Island Studios, a 19th-century building that exemplifies the philosophy of ‘long life, loose fit’, having been used variously in the past as a laundry, and the offices and recording studios of Island Records. The firm’s work is located mainly in the UK, but also in Europe, the US and Hong Kong. Its projects span a broad spectrum of types, uses and scales, including housing and commercial schemes, department stores and restaurants, bridges and public buildings, urban masterplans and product designs. Lifschutz’s particular interest lies in the ability of design to create environments that are responsive to change. He has developed construction and furniture systems that empower users to alter buildings both in the initial construction process and throughout their life. Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands has acquired experience that comes rarely to architects, of working consistently in one place – London’s South Bank – on a series of projects that have transformed it from a twilight district into a thriving part of the capital. Lifschutz has been closely involved in the regeneration of the area since 1989, working for both the local community and landowners. South Bank projects include: the Hungerford footbridges (2001), now London’s busiest pedestrian river crossing; the conversion of Oxo Tower Wharf into co-op apartments, craft workshops and a spectacular rooftop restaurant for Harvey Nichols (1996); and Palm Housing Co-op, which won the Royal Fine Art Commission Building of the Year Award in 1995. The most extensive scheme was an Urban Design Strategy, completed in 2000, which set out a detailed plan for new landscapes and buildings in the area, many of which were subsequently designed under the practice’s leadership. Exemplifying the range and diversity of the practice’s work are other recently completed London projects including: JW3, a secular meeting place for London’s Jewish community (2013); a flagship bookshop for Foyles, in Charing Cross Road (2014); and the headquarters for Bonhams auction house (2015). In 2016, with artist Leo Villareal, Lifschutz led the team that won the Illuminated River competition to reimagine the lighting of 17 central London bridges. Since 2007 he has been Chair of Body & Soul, a charity devoted to helping children and teenagers living with HIV or affected by other adverse childhood experiences such as late adoption or attempted suicide.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Image © Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands

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INTRODUCTION ALEX LIFSCHUTZ

Cedric Price, Fun Palace: interior perspective, 1964

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Price said ‘an overwhelming desire to “get it right the first time” in architecture and planning encourages the safe solution and the dull practitioner.’ His work foreshadows Archigram and the High Tech movement. Quote from Cedric Price, The Square Book, Wiley-Academy (Chichester), 2003, p 54.

LONG LIFE, LOOSE FIT, LOW ENERGY

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Foster + Partners, Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Headquarters, Hong Kong, 1986 The High Tech movement espoused the aspiration of flexibility, but often this became bogged down by visual considerations. The bank is flexible in use, but within narrow limits.

The imperative for adaptable architectures is even more pressing than half a century ago when these ideas were first conceived in Europe and the US. In 1972, in prescient anticipation of an environmental crisis, then Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President Alex Gordon delivered his paper on ‘long life, loose fit, low energy’. Now, with the intensification of extreme weather patterns, it seems that we are in the midst of that crisis. ‘Our predecessors,’ said Gordon, ‘left us with a stock of buildings, which generally have been pretty adaptable and served for a long time. One suspects that many of our buildings are only going to be really suitable for the functions for which they are designed for a comparatively short time.’1 But how to make architecture with the ability to flex, yet also capable of meeting the challenges of the modern era: unprecedented population growth and urbanisation, social and technological change? John Habraken was one of the first to identify a sustainable architectural strategy in the early 1960s. In his book Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing (first published in 1962), he argued that the external form of a building should be decoupled from its interiors, which should be ‘possessed’ and altered by its users at will.2 In his ‘Back to the Future’ article in this issue of 3 (pp 18–23), he reflects on his concept of ‘open building’ more than half a century after publication of that seminal work. Stewart Brand came to a similar conclusion in the same period, logging in his Whole Earth Catalog the tools ‘to encourage the power of individuals to conduct their own education, find their own inspiration, shape their own environment and share the adventure with whoever is interested’.3 In Peter Murray’s interview with him on pp 24–9 of this issue, he explains how he came to realise that the practicalities of construction limited the extent to which individuals could create their own buildings, noting, for instance, that Bucky domes ‘leaked like mad’. Cedric Price was the first to give architectural expression to loose-fit with his Fun Palace for the Lea River Valley, East London (begun in 1961), and it was Price who linked time and uncertainty to design: ‘Inbuilt flexibility or its alternative, planned obsolescence, can be satisfactorily achieved only if the time factor is included as an absolute design factor in the total design process.’4 Price, like other contemporary thinkers, was interested in democratising the built environment with an architecture that ‘enabled’ rather than determined human activity. The Fun Palace, for theatre director Joan Littlewood, encouraged audience-participation film and theatre, making and modelling. Whether Brand in How Buildings Learn (1994),5 Habraken in Palladio’s Children (2005)6 or Victor Papanek in Design for the Real World (1974), from the mid-1960s there was, according to Papanek, a sense of the ‘cancerous growth of the creative individual expressing him or herself egocentrically at the expense of spectator and/or consumer’.7 With such critiques of the role of the architect and the obvious benefits of a flexible building stock, it is puzzling why the possibilities of adaptation to cope with change in our dynamic age were so ignored. Perhaps those architects of the High Tech movement, inspired by Price, who promised a dynamic architecture composed of interchangeable parts, somehow subverted his ideas into a relatively inflexible, albeit visually exciting, aesthetic. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Headquarters (1986) designed by Foster + Partners (on which I worked) was somewhat flexible in use, but only as a bank or office building. The Pompidou Centre (1976) by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers had similarly impressive credentials, but again was only alterable within strict boundaries.

Those architects of the High Tech movement, inspired by Price, who promised a dynamic architecture composed of interchangeable parts, somehow subverted his ideas into a relatively inflexible, albeit visually exciting, aesthetic. 8

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On the other hand, the brand of grassroots flexibility advocated by thinkers such as Brand and John Turner implied a dilution of authorial or regulatory control: ‘those of us who reject consumer society’s values and whose sense of insecurity increases as we observe our growing dependency on pyramidal structures, centralising technologies and non-renewable resources, look to the immense achievements of the poor for ways out of the megatechnic trap’.8 Most likely, the plasticity provided by loose-fit buildings is of little benefit to economic systems that focus on short-term objectives. Extended life is only of value to long-term property owners or agencies that value the social and environmental benefits. Curiously, at Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands we have found that developers utilise the flexibility we provide for the long-term life of our buildings prior to their construction; for example, to tune apartment layouts and sizes in response to the increasingly volatile property market. This is particularly the case in large urban regeneration schemes such as at Barking Riverside in East London (2016–), where considerable periods elapse between initial planning consent and rollout of the final stages.

We have found that developers utilise the flexibility we provide for the long-term life of our buildings prior to their construction; for example, to tune apartment layouts and sizes in response to the increasingly volatile property market. Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Barking Riverside, Barking, East London, 2016– A typical Barking Riverside apartment building is able to accommodate a number of different layouts.

The plasticity provided by loose-fit buildings is of little benefit to economic systems that focus on short-term objectives. 10

Apartment buildings in this 11,000-home masterplan are designed for alternative internal layouts to provide flexibility in the long term, but also to be altered to respond to the volatile property market prior to construction.

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Environmental Legislation, Building Regulations and Tax Credits The carbon benefits of a long-life, loose-fit building stock are becoming more easily demonstrable. Environmental legislation might now begin to provide the necessary thrust for more flexible architectures – the ‘low energy’ element of Gordon’s entreaty. In his contribution to this issue (pp 46–53), Simon Sturgis shows that, when embodied carbon is accounted for, it takes 100 years for a new PassivHaus to catch up with an existing terraced house that has been modestly improved. The 2010 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive are the EU’s main legislation for reducing the energy consumption of buildings, which are responsible for 40 per cent of energy consumption and 36 per cent of CO2 emissions in Europe.9 These concentrate on a reduction of energy use in new buildings to zero by 2020, and upgrading existing structures to lessen energy consumption by 20 per cent by 2020. However, European legislation is almost silent on the carbon benefits of ensuring that new buildings are flexible, or improving the adaptability of existing stock. For example, UK BREEAM certification assesses a building’s adaptability under the ‘Waste’ category,10 but a full score gains less than 1 per cent credit points. Japan is in the vanguard of attempts to force the market towards loose-fit, partly for environmental reasons and partly in response to its ageing population and declining labour force. In his article ‘Japanese Innovation in Adaptable Homes’ (pp 38–45), Kazunobu Minami reviews the legislation introduced in 2008 that promotes longer life in housing stock. In parallel, major corporations are pursuing research and development to create systems for moveable partitions, bathrooms and kitchens to underpin flexible homes. The Swiss Canton of Bern is a significant long-term property holder with over 2,000 buildings in its portfolio. As its former chief architect, Giorgio Macchi helped frame legislation and design to facilitate building versatility for environmental, economic and operational benefits. On pp 76–83, he describes a strategy known as System Separation, which articulates building elements by their lifespan to permit each to be renewed or altered discretely. The case studies are a hospital and a university building, structures that benefit from frequent upgrades in technology. A new form of co-ownership housing mortgage in the UK in the 1960s encouraged entrepreneurs to come together to develop small sites. Edwin Heathcote describes how the UK practice Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership used this 100 per cent grant to fund a loose-fit apartment building at 125 Park Road in London (pp 62–7). Members of the cooperative were unable to agree the details and finishes, so the architects designed each apartment as a ‘loft’ to be fitted out individually. Large-Scale Speculative Urbanisation Rapid urbanisation since the Industrial Revolution has been effected in various ways, one of the most successful by the partnership between the great landed estates and speculative builders in the development of Georgian and Victorian London: ‘the city raised by private, not by public wealth’.11 Between 1800 and 1900, the city’s population grew from around 1 million to 6.7 million, the majority of new citizens renting terraced houses which are still highly valued as flexible accommodation for living and working. Government played little part in the process; rather, ‘leasehold tenure promoted by hereditary landlords brought half of London into being’, particularly as those estates ‘could not except under act of Parliament, be sold’.12 The clue as to why these terraced dwellings proved so adaptable comes from the way they were procured. Landowners assigned parcels of land to builders to be constructed to pattern-book designs that determined the external form and features, but left the interior layout and fittings to be decided by the families leasing them or by the builder with an eye to the market. As the freeholder might never sell, he would set down minimum standards of construction (later developed into London Building Regulations) to ensure that properties would be sufficiently robust and fit for the long term. In her contribution to this issue (pp 106–13), Clare Wright describes how seven such houses, built for bourgeois families in the late 18th century, morphed into the Architectural Association (AA) – perhaps the world’s best-known architecture school. Her practice, Wright & Wright, was hired in 2011 to provide a masterplan for the school that would deal with its technical deficiencies, such as inadequate disabled access, and provide a template for future improvements including a new lecture theatre and library. The AA occupied the first of its buildings in Bedford Square in 1917, and over the years lateral connections have been made, courtyards filled in, and the buildings incrementally altered. A paradox is that these authorless loose-fit buildings have spawned generations of highly deterministic architects insistent on the hegemony of the designer rather than the user, and apparently oblivious to the heritage of the buildings in which they studied. The most extraordinary lecture I attended at the AA was given in 1974 by the polemicist and marketing guru Conrad Jameson; he was jeered and heckled for suggesting that pattern-book housing was better than anything that architects (and certainly those in the room) would ever produce. Given the example of Georgian and Victorian London, why has so much of the stock built subsequently been so deficient in quality and flexibility? Across the developed world in the post-Second World War period, private enterprise was unable to provide homes on the scale demanded by war damage or rising living

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standards. Governments filled the gap with utopian urban renewal projects – schemes that frequently ran into the sand because of substandard build quality, monocultural living arrangements and poor stewardship. Since the infamous Pruitt-Igoe development in St Louis, Missouri (1954) was dynamited in 1972, many other housing estates across the globe have been demolished or are in distress. Only a few have been able to evolve to overcome their challenges, an example being the Gårdsten complex north of Gothenburg in Sweden (started in 1997) or, more recently, the Quartier du Grand Parc, Bordeaux, refurbished by architects Lacaton & Vassal in 2016. Lacaton & Vassal, Transformation of 530 homes, Quartier du Grand Parc, Bordeaux, France, 2016 The radical reworking of this failed housing estate by the simple addition of cantilevered perimeter balconies has established much better accommodation and also the flexibility to meet future needs.

Since the infamous Pruitt-Igoe development in St Louis, Missouri (1954) was dynamited in 1972, many other housing estates across the globe have been demolished or are in distress. Only a few have been able to evolve to overcome their challenges. Habraken observes (pp 18–23) that complex organisations distribute control on different levels, and government and big business are only two of the three players with skin in the game – the third being the user. But the involvement of building inhabitants has been neglected where urbanisation has been rapid, or where housing shortages have been too great. Numbers have been prioritised over the qualities of appropriation, adaptation and change over the long term. Yes market forces apply to the housing sector, but generally only in space and location – build quality and flexibility are often missing from the equation. The ticking time bomb is the inability of these dwellings to respond to rapidly changing population demographics. As Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till observe in their research paper ‘Flexible Housing: Opportunities and Limits’ (2005), ‘the tendency to design buildings that only correspond to a specific type of household at a specific point in time reflects a way of thinking that is predicated on short-term economics [rather than] the ability to react quickly to changing needs or wants of the existing or potential inhabitants and the market’.13 The assumption that people can move if their accommodation does not suit

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Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Oxo Tower Wharf, London, 1996 Refurbishment of a 19th-century wharf owned by a not-forprofit community group. Once a power station, then a meat warehouse, the building was converted into affordable apartments which are subsidised by designer-maker workshops, shops, and a huge restaurant that floats over the top. The design also prepares the building for future change.

their circumstances is incorrect, not least because of scarcity and the cost of relocating. So we are setting in train a mismatch between supply and demand resulting in underoccupation, inappropriate occupation, or overcrowding (in 2015, 16.7 per cent of the EU-28 population lived in overcrowded dwellings).14 There are other problems with a laissez-faire approach to development. In ‘Continuation and Change’ (pp 114–21), Renee Y Chow relates how the massive urbanisation of China has followed a Western approach, treating the city as a collection of built objects and erasing the patterns that make communities legible, whether streets, alleys or courtyards. The ‘disposable Chinese city’ is merely an extreme version of Western attempts to harness business to drive development without providing it with a blueprint for urbanity. But, as the articles in this issue show, in particular Stephen Kendall’s compendium of examples (pp 54–61), loose-fit or open building designs are more sustainable and, in an age of individual expression, allow users to create more vibrant environments: buildings that live and learn. The same is true for landscapes, which can provide cost-effective and versatile spaces in the city. In his review of Albertopolis in London, Kim Wilkie examines the overlapping roles of the public realm, whether providing the setting for buildings and routes, cleansing air, purifying water and cooling the atmosphere or simply keeping city dwellers sane (see pp 130–35). In Europe, around 30 per cent of the built stock is devoted to our daytime working and leisure environment. Office and retail landlords have long understood the need for interior and exteriors to be decoupled in order to extend the life of their investments as tenants come and go. However, in her article on the evolution of workspace (pp 68–75), Despina Katsikakis shows that this decoupling does not take account of the user who is increasingly ‘co-working’ where and how he or she pleases and ignoring the usual office delineations. In ‘Dead and Dying Shopping Malls’, Reinhabited’ (pp 84–91), Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson point to the failure of owners of malls in the US to anticipate changes in retail habits, leaving swathes of suburban America in possession of redundant ‘big boxes’. Some have been reimagined and reinhabited for many different purposes including religious worship, or medical hubs serving the new Obamacare demographic. In a related text, Alexi Marmot looks at how educational buildings are coping with changing pedagogic patterns, with increasingly mobile students and academics working outside traditional building parameters. Grass-Roots Urbanisation There are many examples of cities built from the ground up, where communities shape their own environments. In these situations there is no ‘new’ or ‘complete’, but a constant organic process of change. Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands’ own experience of this comes from our refurbishing of Oxo Tower Wharf, a London warehouse that had survived many previous lives as a power station and meat factory, for the local community that owned it. There we safeguarded future change even while planning the current works of conversion into affordable apartments and other commercial uses. The most extreme example of a community-built project was the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, a 14-storey, unregulated shantytown of 35,000 people on a plot measuring just 200 by 100 metres (328 by 656 feet). Ian Lambot (pp 122–9) notes that until it was demolished in 1993, the city appeared to work well, being almost infinitely adaptable and extendible: the sky was the limit, at least until the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Authority intervened. However, since it lacked the most basic services (water came from eight government standpipes), it cannot be offered as a model, although it illustrates the urban intelligence of ordinary citizens. Around two-thirds of Mexico City’s dwellings have been constructed by their inhabitants. In their contribution to this issue (pp 92–5), Andrea Martin and Jorge Andrade review the techniques of self-build, much of which is intrinsically adaptable and constantly being altered and refashioned, or expanding into space expressly left for this purpose. As the colonias populares grow, the city authorities are forced to provide infrastructure and services, hence government is involved at the tail end of the process servicing the loose-fit arrangements of the shantytown.

There we safeguarded future change even while planning the current works of conversion into affordable apartments and other commercial uses. 14

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Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Broadwall Housing, London, 1994 An original competition scheme plan showing the upgrading of a traditional London house typology to allow different dwelling patterns: small family, extended family, older children living in the loft and granny/grandad in a ground-floor apartment.

The evolution of the three-centuries-old house typology is also reflected in a contemporary visual appearance and materials.

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Over a million immigrants arrived in Germany in 2015, and it is the second most popular destination for migrants after the US. Anne-Julchen Bernhardt and Jörg Leeser, in their prototypical NEUBAU projects, propose harnessing the energies of these new citizens by providing them with simple concrete-framed structures that they can fit out and inhabit themselves (pp 30–37). In doing so they not only reduce the cost of construction and consequent rent, but also begin to establish their own communities. The Architecture of Time With all the noise generated about sustainable design, and so many new environmental aspirations to be achieved, there is a danger of focusing on the wrong targets and driving off, as diesel car subsidies have induced us to do, in the wrong direction. The key to appropriate building design is an understanding of time, a predisposition towards buildings in continuous flux rather than as static lumps. In this light, the role of the architect is to facilitate change, and to liberate users to achieve their destinies. Simple plans and sections, generous volumes and structural capacities are at the heart of that liberation; and there is nothing shameful about borrowing from past typologies to achieve these ends. The Holy Grail is an architecture that is appropriately flexible, one that recognises modern tendencies for home, work and recreation to overlap. Even if our accommodation is rationed, we are beginning to find ways to exchange and reconfigure space and time to suit different activities not just over the long term, but also by the hour, across the day. 1 Notes 1. See Alex Gordon, ‘Designing for Survival: The President Introduces his Long Life/Loose Fit/Low Energy Study’ RIBA Journal, 79 (9), 1972, pp 374–6. 2. John Habraken, Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, Praeger (New York), 1972. 3. Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, Doubleday (New York), 1995, p 2. 4. Cedric Price, The Square Book, Wiley-Academy (Chichester), 2003, p 56. 5. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built, Viking Press (New York), 1994. 6. John Habraken, Palladio’s Children, Taylor & Francis (London and New York), 2005. 7. Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Granada Publishing (London), 1974, p 41. 8. John Turner, Housing By People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments, introduction to the American edition, Marion Boyars (London), 1976, p xv. 9. See https://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/topics/energy-efficiency/buildings. 10. BREEAM: Wst 06 Functional Adaptability: www.breeam.com/ndrefurb2014manual/content/10_waste/wst06.htm. 11. John Summerson, Georgian London, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT, and London), 2013, p 9. 12. Ibid, p 23. 13. Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till, ‘Flexible Housing: Opportunities and Limits’, Architectural Research Quarterly, 9 (2), June 2005, p 157. 14. See: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Housing_statistics.

Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Concept Housing, 2001 A two-bedroom apartment fit-out using a furniturebased system. The apartment can be bought as a shell with minimal equipment and upgraded by the occupier to suit individual needs. In the final version, sliding storage walls can move aside during the day to provide the same living/working space as a much larger apartment or house – literally exchanging space and time.

Images: pp 6–7 © Cedric Price fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; p 9 Photo courtesy of Ian Lambot; pp 10–11, 16(t), 17 © Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands; p 13 © Philippe Ruault; p 15 © Photo Timothy Soar; p 16(b) © James Brittain

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BACK TO THE FUTURE THE EVERYDAY BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN A PHASE OF TRANSITION

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John Habraken

Henk Reijenga, Westpolder Bolwerk, Berkel en Rodenrijs, The Netherlands, 2005– Example of a street within Reijenga’s 1,500-home residential extension of Berkel en Rodenrijs, with fine-grained distribution of design tasks and thematic architectural variation. No two buildings are exactly the same.

Time is a crucial dimension in architecture, yet architectural education ignores it. While historical environments were able to evolve over centuries, the purist spirit that has prevailed since the advent of Modernism is at odds with the social dynamics of normal human life. John Habraken – a renowned architectural educator and writer both in the Netherlands and the US – examines the issues and argues for a more effective distribution of design control, showcasing recent projects in the Netherlands and Denmark that have achieved this.

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When I visited Dammam, Saudi Arabia, in 1985, I was taken to a neighbourhood of some 20 identical high-rise apartment buildings standing in open space with carefully designed parking facilities, playgrounds, lawns and flowerbeds. The entire project looked as if it had been finished just yesterday. No inhabitants could be seen anywhere. I learned that it had been built a few years earlier to show the world that Saudi Arabia could do modern housing as well as Western countries could. When it turned out that no Saudi citizen wanted to live there, the project was fenced in and immaculately maintained to be proudly shown to foreign visiting professionals. Here was the ideal modern housing project, exactly as it had been designed and not marred by the inevitable tokens of everyday life: laundry hanging from balconies, dirty stairwells nobody feels responsible for, public lawns partly turned into private vegetable gardens or invaded by fast-food sellers, parking lots used to take apart and repair vehicles, and so on. This pristine example demonstrated the way designers like to think of their work. Today, the architectural profession makes a living by designing not only housing, but also workplaces, schools, facilities for sports and recreation and many other kinds of buildings that together make our everyday environment. Anecdotal experience suggests a fundamental difference between the everyday environment as a living organism and the desire of architects to make art. Early in the past century – under the pressure of entirely new ways of building and unprecedented demographic changes – the everyday environment became a ‘problem’ to be ‘solved’ by design. But when architects turned towards these tasks they did not change their ways of thinking and doing. Suddenly everything could be ‘architecture’. They were driven by the rational functionalism of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and had a profound disdain for historical examples of urban fabric. We now worry about the rigidity and coarseness of contemporary environments, discuss long-life loose-fit and aspire to ‘sustainability’, but remain largely unable to design for the social dynamics of the everyday environment. We have not yet learned how to do that. It is true that, with the retreat of Modernist ideology, the architectural profession has slowly, albeit often reluctantly, tried to adapt its ways to a poorly understood reality. More explicit knowledge and particular skills are needed to successfully design attractive, healthy, adaptable and lasting urban environments. We are in the middle of a long period of transition towards a new professional role, and housing is at the heart of it. ARCHITECT AS HERO In Renaissance times, Leon Battista Alberti first described the architect as the inventor of entirely new kinds of building, a person to be distinguished from the traditional master builder who was bound by customs and familiar typology. Andrea Palladio’s genius most seductively applied this new attitude in his life-long practice. His oeuvre was unprecedented and free from local typology. It could therefore be published and followed by foreign practitioners on an international scale. Architecture became the product of a professional class. Modernism’s belief in an ‘International Style’ had its origins in the 16th century. After the Albertian emancipation of architecture from the everyday context, two professional cultures coexisted. The everyday environment remained the product of local

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Neighbourhood near Hamamatsucho Station, Minato, Tokyo, 2008 An example of the countless state-of-the-art, high-density everyday environments in the world that the majority of today’s architects and urban designers depend on for a living.

vernacular. Architecture with a capital ‘A’ became an international phenomenon and dealt mainly with houses of worship, castles, palaces and monumental villas. This separation was mutually beneficial. Architects could occasionally be inspired by a vernacular in the way an artist can be inspired by nature, but the profession created its own history, one that has been carefully recorded as a major expression of art. Modernism changed this peaceful coexistence. New techniques disrupted familiar ways of building, residential typology was considered outdated, and the emerging power of logistics and management developed in the Second World War to move and equip millions of soldiers promised efficient production at a very large scale. Soon the building professions decided that history did not offer any lessons for the new problems they faced. They aspired to design a New World. That aspiration was irresistible. It promised huge profitable projects. Never before had the design profession held such hubris. As an architecture student at TU Delft in the early 1950s I remember one of our prominent teachers calling out in a public meeting that if we failed to succeed in our mission to shape the future, a Third World War might be inevitable. At the same time, however, housing was not considered real architecture and could not be the subject of a design studio. Our teachers – among whom were Jacob Bakema, Jo van den Broek and Cornelis van Eesteren – were busy doing large housing projects that were never discussed in school. But designing a villa was considered a good task for beginners. I asked Van Eesteren to let me do a project for him, and he gave me a site, asking for a highrise apartment on it. This was, of course, a design lesson, not a housing exercise. Only in the late 1960s were a few radical students permitted to graduate on a housing project.

LEARNING FROM THE PAST Modernism’s ideology allowed a romantic admiration for the coherent complexity of environments like Venice, 17th-century Amsterdam or Mediterranean hill towns. Aldo van Eyck’s love affair with the Dogon settlements of Mali is legendary. However, this admiration did not lead to questions of comparison with contemporary practice. For instance, while architects generally admire the Georgian domestic fabric such as that at Bedford Square in London where the Architectural Association (AA) is found (see Clare Wright’s article on the AA on pp 106–13 of this issue), the question of how eight former dwellings came to accommodate an entire professional school without disrupting the coherence of the local environment is seldom raised in discussions about loose-fit and flexibility. Modernist ideology kept us ignorant of specific qualities of the everyday environment. Some of those qualities are briefly mentioned in what follows. Historical settlements could deal with partial change over time, allowing them to endure over centuries in a coherent manner. Function always was a variable in the life of an environmental fabric. Form did not follow it, but had the capacity to accommodate functional change. Nevertheless, architectural education today takes it for self-evident that a studio task starts with a functional programme. In short, the dimension of time is not part of architectural theory nor of education. Several years ago, architect Andrés Mignucci and myself ran an international workshop in Barcelona for young practising architects and urbanists. As a warming-up exercise the class was divided into groups of five or six, and each given an urban block in the city’s celebrated 19th-century urban expansion, which was built following Ildefons Cerdà’s proposal. The students were asked to identify what the buildings in their block had in common. As they were trained to look for something special, this turned out to be an entirely new and bewildering experience for them.

Antoni Gaudí, Casa Milá, Barcelona, 1910 Notable for its unconventional appearance, this building, also known as ‘La Pedrera’ (‘The Quarry’), nevertheless fits thematically into the architecture of Ildefons Cerdà’s famous 19th-century plan for the extension of the city.

We discussed how even Antoni Gaudí’s famous Casa Milà (‘La Pedrera’/’The Quarry’) building (1910) shares many thematic features with the other buildings in the neighbourhood, such as the typical access by carriage to an internal stairway leading to the main floor, space for shops and workplaces animating the pavement, the structural bay size and storey heights. Built environments follow particular architectural values that we identify as types, patterns, themes or systems. Yet today’s dominant belief in invention and originality discourages designers from sharing these forms. Of course, refusing to observe an environment’s thematic qualities is an accepted way of working, but to actually follow such qualities is not. Christopher Alexander’s proposal to work with patterns in 1977 is still read by students, but did not trigger any additional theory about sharing form, except, perhaps, the ‘form-based codes’ movement in the US and its advocates elsewhere.1 When the spontaneous desire to share types and patterns is absent, outside agencies seek to impose coherence by regulation, which in turn meets resistance by designers who dislike them. Historically, thematic coherence was partly the result of a lack of technical alternatives, and local vernacular was the only language one could work with. In today’s world, coherence of thematic variety does not come easily by itself. To achieve it, a deliberate choice must be made. We need to study how types, themes, patterns or architectural systems are shared, and must have the skills to apply that knowledge as part of normal practice. The most striking difference between the urban fabrics that we make today and those of the past has to do with territorial markings. Gates and other means of territorial crossing abound in the historic fabrics of all cultures. They were important means of thematic architecture. Their absence today does not mean that territorial structure is no longer important. Indeed, the abundance of technical devices that protect and control ‘our’ space in the world, often deliberately kept invisible, is amazing. Contemporary territorial structure may well be different from any example from before the motorcar was introduced, but that does not explain why it is no longer a basis for architectural elaboration and a means of social identification. Territorial control in the historical urban fabric always led to minimal public space and maximal private space. The former was unsafe and expensive while the latter could be profitable. Buildings were put right at the edge of public space to make good use of backyard space, and to keep vegetable gardens and animals out of sight and well protected. This produced crowded public spaces and encouraged semi-public gated courtyards for social collectives, causing deeper territorial hierarchies. By contrast, contemporary designers like open space floating freely around buildings, and instinctively seek design control over the largest possible part of the earth’s surface.2 Proper distribution of design control leads to variety. Shared typology, or patterns or systems, produce coherence. Control of all design decisions by a single party in a particular area soon results in repetition and uniformity. Partial change and variety come naturally when individual inhabitants control their own space. The question as to what can be decided individually and what should be held in common naturally arises. When we seek a neighbourhood to settle in, we ask ourselves what we will share with our neighbours, and the answer to that question is often decisive. When many individual parties operate in a particular area without any sharing of values, incoherence will inevitably result.

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Finding a proper balance in the distribution of design control and the sharing of thematic form makes coherent variation possible. All complex organisations distribute control on different levels. Traditional environments usually have public space, streets and squares, as the higher-level framework in which buildings find their place. Modernist urbanism distributed buildings into unshaped spaces and, if space was shaped, then this was only the by-product of the way that buildings had been located. Hierarchical clarity was lost; urbanists and architects found themselves making decisions on the same building for different reasons, causing confusion and design tension. On the other hand, advocates of bottomup processes often fail to recognise the need for a higher-level party – be it one selected from among themselves or invited from outside – to shape and control a collective framework within which individuals ‘can do their own thing’. Everyday life seeks hierarchy. A commercial office building leaves the design of its interior space to the tenant’s architect. The large ‘building’ becomes a two-level part of the continuous environmental hierarchy. The shopping mall is another example. Normally, increasing size and complexity trigger increased hierarchical depth. Contemporary residential construction ignores that rule. In present housing design, dwellings, or as they are mostly known ‘units’, have predetermined interior layouts. The layout defines the distribution of structural elements as well as of piping and wiring. It is also the basis of cost estimation and government approval. In other words, the floor plan must be there from inception to enable most other professions to play their part. Making all layouts the same saves work for everybody, whereas withholding the floor plan at the early stages of design disrupts a century-old professional culture and methodology. In the Netherlands, this outdated philosophy was initially the result of revolutionary legislation in 1902 that made money available for low-income tenants via not-for-profit housing corporations. Governments, as well as investors such as pension funds, want to make sure their money is well spent, and the inhabitant was not considered a reliable party. This heritage has shaped an entire building industry that argues that allowing the inhabitant individual control is more expensive. The opposite is true, as has been demonstrated by recent open building projects discussed by Stephen Kendall in this issue of 2 (pp 54–61). WORKING WITH THE EVERYDAY ENVIRONMENT The everyday environment tells us that we must be able to deal with change and make time the fourth dimension of design; to encourage designers to share thematic forms; to appropriately distribute design control; to understand the relation between complexity and hierarchical depth; to give the inhabitants or users their own level of intervention within the environmental hierarchy; and, finally, to understand territorial structure, the control of space, and how to design for it. It is a tall order, but professionals are slowly beginning to meet these demands. The international Open Building Network promotes the idea of a level of intervention for residents or users in the environmental hierarchy. This network of academics and practitioners has about 350 members from some 30 countries. Kendall’s article gives an overview of the most innovative projects over a period of four decades. It shows how in the last 10 years, initiatives in practice have come from clients who see economic advantage in the

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approach because short-term control by the user results in longer life and better long-term investment returns for a building. He also references Japan’s Act for Promotion of Long-Life Quality Housing of 2008 (implemented in 2009), which recognises the hierarchical nature of building construction. In the Netherlands, a ‘supervisory’ architect is often appointed for the management of urban development to make sure his or her peers, who design the buildings, follow thematic forms to assure coherent variation in an entire neighbourhood. There is also a trend to bring the user into the process. Some of these initiatives are taken by municipal governments, but many are taken by architects, developers, private investors and user groups. The trend is unmistakable, but poorly documented, which, in fact, is the traditional way for everyday environments to renew themselves. Ultimately, well-informed and skilled designers will integrate several if not all aspects of the everyday environment into their projects. Henk Reijenga’s ongoing low-rise, high-density Westpolder Bolwerk project – an extension of the town of Berkel en Rodenrijs, the execution of which began in 2005 – has 1,500 dwellings. No two buildings are exactly the same, but design and implementation were nevertheless organised in an efficient manner. Early on, a handful of building types were defined by Reijenga, and the architects under his supervision collectively selected the materials, colours and details. For all three phases, a team of four or five architects each did several designs of each of the defined house types. The distribution of these varied designs was then decided by the supervisor. The urban design also shows a thematic variation in the combination of well-defined urban elements like streets and canals of different kinds. The project was implemented within budget, and the first part was successfully occupied in the middle of the 2008 recession.3 Sjoerd Soeters and his firm PP HP (Pleasant Places Happy People) carried out the urban design for the Copenhagen Sluseholmen waterfront renovation, for which they deliberately reduced the amount of public space by surrounding urban blocks on two or three sides with open water, and increased territorial depth by arranging houses around collective courtyard space over underground parking. As supervising architect for Sydhavnen, the southern part of this masterplan and the first part of it to be executed (in 2009), Soeters distributed the design of the facades for the terraced houses among some 30 architects, suggesting a few key thematic ingredients. To this day he still receives fan mail from residents.4 CHALLENGING ACADEMIA Until now, the development and endurance of human settlement in harmony with social reality has always occurred in an implicit way. Yet, given our professional involvement today, a more explicit approach must be possible. Without educational programmes, more generally accepted theories and more research, our arrival at a harmonious professional engagement with the everyday environment will take a very long time. In closing, I mention the three most important academic tasks we need to pursue to successfully cultivate it: study the built environment as the living organism that it is; increase its hierarchical depth to include the autonomous dwelling unit; and teach the specific skills needed. We must build a body of knowledge. We seek help from a medical doctor because we trust he or she knows how the body functions. The medical profession collectively improves that knowledge by experience, research and careful documentation.

Similarly, lawyers share knowledge of the law and seek to improve it by experience, debate, social consensus and careful formulation. The design professions lack collectively maintained knowledge of the way the built environment behaves over time because they do not see it as a living organism with its own laws. We are the only profession that has no formally documented body of knowledge about the subject of its interventions. Yet we do intervene. Sustainability demands an increased hierarchical depth that allows each dwelling to adapt individually over time. This is not only advantageous for the inhabitant, but allows renovation whenever a single unit needs it, which, of course, is the case with any freestanding suburban house. In other words, the autonomous dwelling should be considered the living cell in the environmental organism, and its autonomy is an essential requirement for keeping existing stock up to date. Environmental sustainability demands that every dwelling can be renewed, improved, accept new technology or follow new cultural priorities in direct relation to what the market has made available.5 Once transformation over time is recognised as the fourth dimension of design, professional education might begin by teaching students how to follow themes by making variations; how to propose types, patterns and architectural systems to be accepted by a peer group; how to determine the capacity of built spaces to hold a variety of functional arrangements; how to figure out the best way to distribute design control among peers; how to guide spatial design by territorial knowledge; and how to express identity by the design of territorial crossings. There is nothing in these skills that inhibits outstanding design. 1

Sjoerd Soeters/PP HP (Pleasant Places Happy People), Sydhavnen, Sluseholmen Waterfront renovation, Copenhagen, 2009 View of the Sydhavnen neighbourhood showing the thematic variation of the facades. Note also the public space on only one side of each block, the vaulted bridges breaking the cubic space, an entryway to a courtyard inside of a block with cars going down into the sub-courtyard parking, and pedestrians entering the courtyard on level.

Notes 1. Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein and Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, Oxford University Press (New York), 1977. 2. Sjoerd Soeters illustrates this trend by examining Colin Rowe’s comparison of Le Corbusier’s design for Saint-Dié-des-Vosges (1945) with the historical fabric of the city of Parma, Italy. See his post from 4 April 2016 at: http:// thematicdesign.org/sydhavnen-sluseholmen-copenhagen-harbour-renovationproject-2000-2009/. 3. For a detailed description by Reijenga of the Westpolder Bolwerk design process, see his post from 3 May 2016 at: http://thematicdesign.org/thewestpolder-bolwerk-development-project/. 4. For a detailed description by Soeters of the Sluseholmen Waterfront urban design and the execution of the Sydhavnen project, see his post from 4 April 2016 at: http://thematicdesign.org/sydhavnen-sluseholmen-copenhagen-harbourrenovation-project-2000-2009/ 5. For a well-researched argument that the autonomous dwelling unit is a necessary condition for a sustainable built environment, see Frank Bijdendijk’s keynote paper at the Open Building Network Conference, ETH Zurich, 2015, titled ‘The Future of Open Building Resides in the Existing Built Environment’ and available here: http://thematicdesign.org/the-future-of-open-buildingresides-in-the-existing-built-environment-6/. Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 18–19 © Robbert H Reijenga; p 20 © John Habraken; p 21 © Huw Jones/Getty Images; p 23 © Sjoerd Soeters/ PP HP, photo Daria Scagliola and Stijn Brakkee

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LEARNING FROM THE WEST COAST:

LONG-TERMISM AND CHANGE 24

Peter Murray and Stewart Brand

Houseboat community, Sausalito, California, 2013 The waterfront at Sausalito, at the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, is home to a community of houseboat dwellers, of which Stewart Brand is one, and has been a hub of West Coast counterculture since the 1950s.

Stewart Brand has been a key figure in the alternative culture of the US West Coast since the 1960s. The key message in his various publications has been that communities should be enabled to constantly reshape their own environments. In conversation with former Technical Editor of 3 Peter Murray, he describes his lifestyle and influences – from the hippy movement, to time working for California Governor Jerry Brown in the 1970s, to writers such as Gregory Bateson, Frank Duffy and Christopher Alexander – and advocates a loose-fit ‘architecture of systems’, rather than a fixed and limiting ‘architecture of moulds’.

AN INTERVIEW WITH STEWART BRAND Stewart Brand

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Cover of Brand’s How Buildings Learn, 1994 Brand’s book looks at how buildings can be adapted to meet contemporary requirements. It promotes the concept of low-cost standard designs that people are familiar with and that are easy to modify. In this way they can gradually change their buildings to meet their needs.

Cover of Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, 1971 The bible of the hippy movement provided the tools and information they needed to survive in their rural communes. It was republished sporadically up until 1998.

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The ability of buildings to change over time and to adapt to new uses were the key themes of Stewart Brand’s 1994 book How Buildings Learn,1 in which he continued the theme of enabling communities to shape their environment that he had first enunciated in his Whole Earth Catalog, the bible of the hippy movement of the 1960s – a theme that was also central to 2’s editorial approach at the time. In the Whole Earth Catalog of Fall 1968, Brand wrote of 2: ‘This is the only architectural magazine we’ve seen that consistently carries substantial new information, as distinct from the stylistic eyewash characteristic of most architecture journals. It galls my jingoistic soul to see the British publishing so much of the best technological information.’2 The Whole Earth Catalog was a collection of information on products, guidance and ideas aimed at the Californian counterculture. It provided ‘access to tools’3 for the communities that were springing up along the West Coast. Apple’s Steve Jobs has compared it to Internet search engines: ‘It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.’4 Brand edited the publication through to 1984. His comment about 2 was printed next to extracts from the Architecture of Democracy issue of August 1968, co-edited by British architect John Turner, which set out many of the concepts Brand was to espouse in How Buildings Learn: that buildings work best when continually refined and reshaped by their occupants, and that architects should be artists of time as well as of space. Turner’s work about informal settlements (barriadas) in Lima, Peru, appeared regularly in 2 in the 1960s and 1970s. This focus was partly due to the then editor Monica Pidgeon’s links with South America, and partly because of an interest in change and flexibility as expressed in the magazine through the work of other key contributors such as Walter Segal, Frank Duffy, Cedric Price and Charles Eames. The introduction to the Architecture of Democracy issue includes the brief written for Charles Eames’s Immaculate Heart College (1964), which required: ‘A system of buildings that will not be embarrassed by complete changes of program. A structure that can be scotch taped, nailed into, thumb tacked, and still not lose its dignity.’ Later in the issue, John Turner writes: ‘The essential lesson I learned was how to distinguish between architecture of moulds and the architecture of systems. Because the architecture of the barriada is based on a system, it can respond to changing demands and places itself in the hands of the user.’ Falling Out of Love with Buckminster Fuller The concept of ‘access to tools’ was inspired by Richard Buckminster Fuller, another important contributor to 2 at the time. His work on the World Design Science Decade (WDSD) and his concept of ‘spaceship earth’ were important drivers of concepts

Richard Buckminster Fuller, US Pavilion, World Expo, Montreal, Quebec, 1967 Perhaps the finest example of his geodesic art, the building was originally clad with acrylic panels which were destroyed in a catastrophic fire in 1976. Today only the steel structure remains.

Drop City, Trinidad, Colorado, 1967 South Colorado was one of many hippy communes set up in America during the 1960s. The domes, made out of recycled car bodies, are ‘Zones’ designed by the Albuquerque solar inventor Steve Baer. They did not work very well as homes as they leaked a lot and did not make great internal spaces.

about sustainability and recycling, key focuses of the counterculture movement. During the WDSD, Fuller had suggested that architecture schools around the globe should carry out research and put forward proposals as to how the world's resources could be used and distributed more efficiently and equitably. He is best known for his domes: highly efficient thin shell structures made up of geodesic polyhedra with a distinctive triangulated aesthetic, a notable example of which was his US Pavilion for the World Expo, Montreal, in 1967. According to Brand: ‘All of the communes tried to build Fuller domes. It was a great maths lesson, but they leaked like mad because of the enormous number of joints. The interior space was great fun for the first couple of weeks and then horrendously hard to live comfortably in and adapt to well. There were two levels of falling out of love with Bucky in my case. First was the practical one about the domes, the other was almost aesthetic or philosophical. Bucky was too much an engineer and had such an input/output approach with things. Then I spent serious time with the writings of Gregory Bateson that was reflected in CoEvolution Quarterly, which was very Batesonbased.’ Brand launched the Quarterly in 1974, using proceeds from the Whole Earth Catalog. Moshe Safdie’s Habitat housing project, also designed for the Montreal World Expo in 1967, and constructed of 354 identical concrete forms, held the promise of one example of change-based architecture.

Moshe Safdie, Habitat, World Expo, Montreal, Quebec, 1967 Habitat was constructed using prefabricated concrete units stacked in hill-like forms. Safdie said he was seeking a new housing typology for urban living.

‘They were stacking apartments like containers,’ says Brand. ‘One of the designers I worked with, Gordon Ashby, pointed out that the complex would work best if you left the crane there. If a building had been thrown together, it could be re-thrown and the crane was essential. Cranes have been one of the most significant construction breakthroughs in the history of humanity and obviously are essential to cities and high-rise. We have a place on the river in Northern California with buildings over a hundred years old. One of them, which we wanted to turn into a guesthouse, was in an awkward place and so we hired a crane. It picks up the building, swings it over to where we want it, and lowers it onto the foundations. That’s how you move buildings. I love that. It’s interesting that the building we moved had probably been moved 80 or 90 years before; there were marks where they had tied onto it and presumably dragged it across the landscape. Portable buildings are an interesting concept.’ The use of Bucky domes by the counterculture was a classic example of Turner’s ‘mould’ – difficult to build, impossible to enlarge and hard to maintain, they created dysfunctional spaces that could not be satisfactorily subdivided. So were the hippy communes merely one in the long list of utopian experiments that failed to advance quality of life? ‘They advanced the quality of life in those individuals who went through the lessons of doing that. We were students who left the city and reinvented civilisation out in the countryside. What we discovered is that the countryside is insanely boring and the only people you have to talk to are people you are tired of talking to. There wasn’t a good ethic in place of making friends with neighbours, so often there was a local reaction against these long-haired characters. We had a good try. We built the domes and they leaked; we tried free love and everybody ended up hating each

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other. We tried depending on somebody else’s money and that person ended up hating everybody. We went right down the list of all the ways to do things wrong. Then we took those lessons back and applied them in the rest of our lives.’ Working for Governor Jerry Brown A period from 1977 to 1979 as special advisor to California Governor Jerry Brown also influenced Brand’s thinking. Brown was a farsighted politician who supported gay rights and energy conservation; he was nicknamed ‘Governor Moonbeam’ because he was, Brand says, ‘such an enthusiast of all space activities, once he learned from me and astronaut Rusty Schweickart that California was the leading source of procurement for NASA. One of my first jobs for him was organising a big public “Space Day” on the occasion of the delivery of the first Shuttle from California to Florida. There I was at 31 working for a guy who was governor of the largest economic state in the union and a damn good governor at that. Obviously he was not thinking about individual buildings. I got to see how the whole civil service in government works, how different it is from the political elective process. It cured me of my libertarianism.’ About the same time, Brand began writing How Buildings Learn, inspired by his experiences of working in two very different buildings on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus: ‘There was this extremely expensive, atrociously designed building by god-like signature architect IM Pei that put on a good show, but did not work and did not care about the people working inside. The contrast between Pei’s Media Lab building and the architecturally undistinguished and much-adapted Building 20 was pretty much the incentive to try and bear down and fix architecture. How Buildings Learn is the most successful book I have ever written, it continues to bring in several thousand dollars a year. It is used in various kinds of courses from historic preservation to actual architecture design.’ In the book Brand attacks the idea of architecture as art, preferring to describe it as craft. He discusses the benefit of ‘low road informal buildings’ in contrast to the unworkability of magazine architecture designed for its looks rather than function. He quotes Frank Duffy, the celebrated British architect and pioneer of new ways of working, on the flexibility of modern office buildings, and slams the fragmented processes of the building industry. His approach owes much to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language (1977)6 and The Timeless Way of Building (1979),7 which describe archetypal patterns that are so deeply rooted in the nature of things that they maintain their relevance over time. Brand likes the idea of ‘an organic kind of building, based on four walls, which is easy to change and expand and grow as the ideal form of building’. The book formed the basis of a six-part BBC television series in 1997 – entitled ‘How Buildings Learn’ – that Brand has made freely available via the Internet.8

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Christopher Alexander, The slow growth of twelve houses, 1979 Illustration from Christopher Alexander’s book The Timeless Way of Building, published in 1979, in which he writes of that ‘age old process by which people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being’. Alexander was Director of the Center for Environmental Structure at the University of California, Berkeley, and his ideas had a substantial influence on Stewart Brand.

Shifting to the Larger Scale Over the years, Brand has moved from focusing on a large number of very small things – tools – to a small number of very big things. In Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto (2009), Brand called for the rapid deployment of a new generation of nuclear power plants, arguing that technological advances have made nuclear energy safer and any potential danger from nuclear waste is insignificant compared to the damage inflicted by burning coal.9 He also supported genetically engineered crops and geo-engineering. His interest in tools, in flexibility, the ability to change, the ability for humans to have some impact on their environment, runs through his all writing from the Catalog to his role as founder and president of The Long Now Foundation, which he set up in 1996 to promote ‘slower/better’ long-term thinking. ‘In A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander clearly made a connection between the building level and then scaling up to the community and city level.

If I had stayed on the subject it would have been great fun to research and do a very similar book on how cities learn, with sequential photographs over time. I’d say there is close connectivity at almost every level between buildings that adapt and fail to adapt, and how cities do the same. ‘The shift to the larger scale is partly about getting older and more connected. As a young person pretty much all you control is your individual situation. The Whole Earth Catalog was for people who were in their 20s, but once you reach your 40s or 50s your reference and domain is larger – it’s whole communities. The services in a building are infrastructure, but what they connect you to in the world is at the scale of nuclear power, or solar or wind. The level of problem-solving goes from how are you going to keep the rain off your own personal life to how are you going to deal with climate change.’

Houseboat community, Sausalito, California, 1969 The community remains a centre for artists and bohemians. Its boats are characterised by their selfbuilt superstructures and wood-butcher features.

Brand’s own personal life is in a squatter community of houseboats in Sausalito in the Bay Area. ‘There is the most adaptive delicious scene you could imagine. It has gentrified considerably since the ’60s, but it has kept all the wonderful humane elements that were provided by the artists and low-income people here from the start. The fact it was outlawed gave solidarity to the community that would not have otherwise existed. I dare say that is the case in squatters’ cities the world over. It is what artists have been doing in cities forever. In the series I did for the BBC on how buildings learn in London, they took me around some of the places where artists have taken a funky neighbourhood and have started to bring a high level of creativity to the detail and fabric of the place and improved it. They add the galleries, coffee shops, and then they leave and go do the same thing somewhere else. That is the kind of sequence of events extending over a couple of decades that has been common in cities for a long time.’ It is to be hoped that Brand someday turns his attention to the issue of cities so that one might understand what technologies he would suggest are required to deliver liveable urban forms in the face of exponential growth. The expansion of cities in the 21st century is happening at such a pace and their fabric is designed to such a tight fit that their longevity is being fatally compromised by the day. The opening line of the Whole Earth Catalog was: ‘We are as Gods, and we might as well get good at it.’10 We need to get better at making cities that are designed for people, adapt to changing needs and are sustainable in the long term. We need cities that learn. 1 The article is based on a telephone conversation between Peter Murray, Alex Liftschutz and Stewart Brand on 29 November 2016.

Walter’s Way, Lewisham, London, 2016 Walter’s Way was affectionately named after its architect Walter Segal. Completed in 1986, the homes were self-built using a simple and inexpensive plywood system designed by Segal, who believed that a house should adapt to its occupants, and not the other way round.

Notes 1. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, Viking Press (New York), 1994. 2. Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, Portola Institute (Menlo Park, CA), 1968, p 88. 3. As published on its cover each issue. 4. Stamford University commencement speech, June 2005: www. youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA. 5. Eric A Anderson and George F Earle (eds), Design and Aesthetics in Wood, Syracuse State University (Albany, NY), 1967, p 128. 6. Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein and Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, Oxford University Press (New York), 1977. 7. Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press (New York), 1979. 8. See: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0. 9. Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, Viking Penguin (New York), 2009. 10. Whole Earth Catalog, op cit, p 1.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 24–5 © ElOjoTorpe/ Getty Images; p 25(b) Courtesy of Stewart Brand; p 27(t) © Reyner Banham/Architectural Association; p 27(c) Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images; p 27(b) © Timothy Hursley; p 28 © Christopher Alexander; p 29(t) © Underwood Archives/Getty Images; p 29(b) © Byron Blakely/ Architectural Association

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Anne-Julchen Bernhardt and Jörg Leeser

Flexible Self-Build 30

BeL Sozietät für Architektur NEUBAU Venice Biennale 2016

Eight of the 12 typologies demonstrate a variety of distinct self-build systems, while the other four are conventional constructions.

Cities in Germany 31

Can the individuality of self-build and the orderliness of planned urbanism come together, while ensuring future adaptability? Cologne-based practice BeL Sozietät für Architektur have been investigating through NEUBAU – affordable development initiatives for urban peripheries. From an initial hybrid of multistorey housing and self-build erected for a major exhibition, to broader proposals for the outskirts of Hamburg, Leipzig, Düsseldorf and Munich, NEUBAU involves a co-productive process between architects, planners and users that can reduce costs and help build communities – as BeL cofounders Anne-Julchen Bernhardt and Jörg Leeser explain.

BeL Sozietät für Architektur NEUBAU Venice Biennale 2016 opposite: The NEUBAU installation in the Corderie of the Arsenale, the former naval ropeworks that house the core exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale. right: NEUBAU areas are found in the periphery of cities. In this proposal for Hamburg, the relocation of a highway provides space for a ‘city of assembly’.

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Construction of low-cost housing in Germany has been neglected for more than 30 years, resulting in an overheated real estate market in metropolitan areas that cannot satisfy demand. Neither the indigenous middle nor working class can find homes at reasonable rents, and nor can newly arrived immigrants who flock to the big cities where their compatriots and employment can be found. Germany’s population has been shrinking ever since the 1970s, a feature it shares with most western post-industrial economies. While the influx of a large number of immigrants will ease the situation, it will only just compensate for the decline; the total number of inhabitants is likely to remain 82 million, even accounting for immigration levels.1 Despite the overall population standstill, numbers in metropolitan areas like Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Leipzig are predicted to increase by more than 10 per cent in the next 10 years, due to domestic migration from provincial to metropolitan areas.2 Here, city-centre building plots are rare and unaffordable. More inexpensive plots can be found in the periphery of these large cities, however; and there are enough of these for a significant number of housing projects to be created throughout Germany. These are the sites chosen for the NEUBAU project – peripheral locations with moderate land values, good traffic connections and development potential. NEUBAU is a project by Cologne practice BeL Sozietät für Architektur of both urbanism and architecture, based on a self-build housing prototype erected at the International Building Exhibition 2013 in Hamburg. Research started as early as 2010, but the installation of NEUBAU at the 2016 Architecture Biennale in Venice marked a pivotal point in the development of the project. In a 100-square-metre (1,080-square-foot) model, four urban schemes in four different German cities were shown at 1:100 scale. While three of the locations are hypothetical studies, the Hamburg scheme is based on a private investor’s commission on parts of the plot.

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THE HAMBURG PROTOTYPE

Grundbau und Siedler, the completed experimental low-cost housing building erected in Hamburg in 2013 (whose name translates as ‘Base Structure and Settlers’), is a hybrid typology of self-build homes and multistorey housing. On five storeys a single staircase serves three dwellings on each floor. With the ground floor given over to the lobby, workshops and car parking, the building offers 12 plots at the upper levels. A concrete frame provides the structural skeleton; each floor can be individually filled out, spatially and over time, employing self-build methods. By using their own labour, residents can save up to 30 per cent of the construction costs.3 The settlers can buy a package consisting of a plot in the skeleton, all the building materials needed to develop their slab into a dwelling, plus capped-off water, heating and power, and a manual giving detailed instructions for the construction. The facade can be installed from a balcony 70 centimetres (28 inches) wide that runs along the entire perimeter. Railings and safety nets make scaffolding unnecessary. The heavy-duty lift is used to transport materials during construction and converted into passenger use once complete. Internal partitions are independent of the loadbearing structure. And to help residents with limited imagination, a basic layout offers neutral spaces that can be used in a variety of ways. Alternatively settlers can also develop their own personal floor plans. Plots may be sold or leased – in the latter case rents are proportionately reduced by the amount of labour invested. Each plot is functionally independent and neighbours negotiate any particular concerns with each other through normal social interaction. The building process is supported by professional supervision: self-builders are trained by the building materials supplier, and the self-builder’s work is inspected by experts once completed.

The organisation of the floor plans is independent of the load-bearing structure. Settlers can employ a provided basic layout or develop their own individual floor plans.

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BeL Sozietät für Architektur Grundbau und Siedler Hamburg 2013 above: In this prototype built for the 2013 International Building Exhibition (IBA) in Hamburg, the Grundbau (base structure) provides each plot with water, heating, electricity, a lift for materials transport and a perimeter balcony for facade works.

The construction manual provides settlers with detailed instructions on every step of the construction process.

Each plot is functionally independent and neighbours negotiate any particular concerns with each other through normal social interaction.

Each plot is settled individually and independently of the neighbours.

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THE CITY OF ASSEMBLY In NEUBAU, Grundbau und Siedler’s base-and-infill typology is

applied on a much larger scale: the participatory processes that operated within a designated architectural framework are now projected onto urban structures in four proposed ‘cities of assembly’. In Leipzig. the area of the NEUBAU scheme is a former railway station. The Düsseldorf project is located on a former freight yard in Duisburg, a rather deprived town close by. Munich is a boomtown with a suburban agglomeration of 20-kilometre (12mile) radius, and single-family homes form the context for the chosen site there. The Hamburg NEUBAU is on a former highway south of the harbour and within 10 minutes’ train journey of the central station. In NEUBAU, architects and planners provide building expertise and users or inhabitants exercise choice in a co-productive process in which all stakeholders participate. The urban design allocates a hierarchy of spaces and delineates an urban identity individual to each location. Ground-floor spaces are dedicated for commerce, community and cultural activities, with quieter, more private spaces for habitation above. The urban design also supplies larger plots for public amenities including supermarkets, low-emission manufacturing and commercial space, assembly halls and leisure complexes. The aim is to develop highly accessible islands of diversity and community in otherwise bleak areas of the city. The scheme creates order, beauty and functionality: blueprints for buildings whose volumes can be altered, extended and relocated; standard cores that provide spatial integrity, while still allowing adaptation and modification. Citizen involvement in the building process significantly reduces construction costs and encourages social interaction and the formation of communities. ‘City of assembly’ techniques could provide affordable development and urbanisation of city peripheries with a density nearly equivalent to that of 19th-century city blocks.

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A blend of several different economic models would permit municipalities, cooperatives and commercial developers to participate in the creation of cities of assembly with a careful balance of order and spontaneity. Professional construction firms would provide base structures, and their experts would assist incoming settlers with technical knowledge of construction. Some of the most demanding German standards would need to be revised to make it possible for self-build to be achieved to an appropriate level of quality. According to writer Navid Kermani, more than 50 per cent of the population of densely inhabited cities in Germany are migrants or have a migrant background – including the German expellees from the Second World War and their descendants.4 Metropolitan districts are already home to large mono-ethnic colonies or alternatively are culturally very diverse.5 The success or failure of both types is dependent to some extent on the constitution of spaces and architecture. Active participation and collaboration in the construction process is both financially and collectively rewarding, and selfbuild projects can strengthen social ties and bond communities. The enhancements and crafts that migrant settlers bring along add architectural depth to the cities of assembly; they are open to everyone. NEUBAU’s buildings are transformations of proven typologies; at least 12 different types can be envisaged. They blend European courtyard traditions of close-knit communities such as English colleges with French socialist utopian buildings and oriental caravanserais; terraced houses mutate into multistorey housing complexes. Most dwellings share base-and-infill self-build concepts, while mixed-use structures with an emphasis on workspaces are conventional constructions.

A SOLUTION FOR THE HOUSING CRISIS?

BeL Sozietät für Architektur NEUBAU Venice Biennale 2016 above: In the ‘city of assembly’, professional construction firms provide base structures and building expertise. opposite left: In the Leipzig proposal, construction of an underground railway track creates developable land close to the city centre. NEUBAU is developed along the former infrastructure axis. below: In Duisburg, near Düsseldorf, a former freight yard is developed into a heterogenic urban conglomerate around a vast central common space.

In the history of architecture there have been many self-build movements in highly developed societies – some introduced by intent, and others autonomously generated, like the shantytowns that emerged following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kick-starting the social housing movement of the 1920s in Vienna, squatters of the ‘wild settlement movement’ erected makeshift homes with subsistence gardens for more than 100,000 folk on the periphery of the city;6 many are the basis of dwellings that are still in use today. The current housing crisis in Germany needs to be addressed politically but also methodologically. Eschewing the utopian rhetoric of Metabolist superstructures, NEUBAU explores the possibilities of synthesising a planned but informal system of development. It tests the potential of an elastic urbanism, indeterminate yet existing within a distinct urban and architectural form. 1 Notes 1. Claire Grobecker, Olga Pötzsch and Bettina Sommer, ‘Bevölkerungsstand und Bevölkerungsentwicklung’, in Destatis (Federal Statistical Office) and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (eds), Datenreport 2016: Ein Sozialbericht für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb (Bonn) 2016, pp 25–7. 2. For Düsseldorf: Ulrich Cicholas and Kerstin Störer ‘Vorausberechnung der Bevölkerung in den kreisfreien Städten und Kreisen Nordrhein-Westfalens 2014 bis 2040/2060’, in Statistische Analysen und Studien Nordrhein-Westfalen Band 84 Information und Technik Nordrhein-Westfalen (IT.NRW), Geschäftsbereich Statistik (Düsseldorf), 2015, p 17; for Hamburg: Statistikamt Nord, ‘Chapter 1, Bevölkerung, Haushalt und Familie’, in Statistisches Jahrbuch Hamburg 2016/2017, Statistisches Amt für Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein (Hamburg), 2017, p 15; for Munich: Landeshauptstadt München Referat für Stadtplanung und Bauordnung Stadtentwicklungsplanung, Demografiebericht München – Teil 2: Kleinräumige Bevölkerungsprognose 2013 bis 2030 für die Stadtbezirke, Landeshauptstadt München (Munich), 2015, p 13; for Leipzig: Stadt Leipzig, Amt für Statistik und Wahlen, ‘Ergebnisse 5.1 Der städtische Gesamtraum’, in Bevölkerungsvorausschätzung 2016: Methoden- und Ergebnisbericht, Stadt Leipzig (Leipzig), 2016, p 14. 3. Compared to the average construction costs in Hamburg: see Baukosten Bauelemente 2012: Statistische Kostenkennwerte, BKI (Stuttgart) 2012. All stages of construction were indexed with an exact value, with labour costs listed separately. Self-builders chose the amount of work they felt able to do themselves. 4. Navid Kermani in his speech ‘A Perfect Text’, in Ceremony at the German Bundestag Celebrating the 65th Anniversary of the Entry into Force of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany Berlin, 23 May 2014, July 2014, Deutscher Bundestag (Berlin), p 72: www.btg-bestellservice.de/pdf/20099850.pdf; calculated in Jenny Lindner, ‘Jeder Zweite in Deutschland mit Migrationshintergrund?’ Mediendienst Integration, 7 January 2015, https://mediendienst-integration.de/artikel/kermani-redejeder-zweite-hat-migrationshintergrund.html. 5. See Rauf Ceylan, Ethnische Kolonien, Entstehung, Funktion und Wandel am Beispiel türkischer Moscheen und Cafés, Springer (Wiesbaden), 2006, p 209, and Walter Siebel, Die Kultur der Stadt, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main), 2015, pp 285–317. 6. Eve Blau, The Architecture of Red Vienna 1919–1934, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA and London), 1999, p 89.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 30–1, 34, 35(t) © BeL Sozietät für Architektur; pp 32–3, 35(b), 36–7 © Veit LandwehrJones/Getty Images; p 23 © Sjoerd Soeters/ PP HP, photo Daria Scagliola and Stijn Brakkee

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Kazunobu Minami

Yositika Utida/Shu-Koh-Sha Architectural and Urban Design Studio, NEXT21, Osaka, Japan, 1993 Commissioned by the Osaka Gas Company, the structure, infill and cladding were designed and built independently, with one architect, Shinichi Chikazumi, responsible for the shell and 13 others each designing one or more of the apartments. The building is intended to change organically over centuries. .

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By the late 1960s, Japan’s postwar housing boom had resulted in supply exceeding demand. But these buildings were poor quality and short-lived. Since then, the country has seen various initiatives – both public and private – to improve the building stock and make it sustainable. Ranging from construction guidelines, to tax incentives, to technical innovations, they have achieved considerable success. Kazunobu Minami – Professor of Architecture at the Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo, who has worked as an architect for the Japanese government since 1981 – tells their story.

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Around the year 2000, the average lifespan of housing in Japan when demolished was only about 30 years, compared for instance to 77 years in the UK.1 Even today the projected lifespan of newly built detached wooden houses in Japan is a mere 50 years, according to studies by Professor Yukio Komatsu, of Tokyo’s Waseda University.2 There are various reasons for this. Fires following the Great Kanto Earthquake that struck the Tokyo area in 1923 caused a huge loss of building stock, so only a small number of original homes remain in the Tokyo metropolitan area. There was a deficit of four million dwellings in Japan after the destruction caused during the Second World War. In response, much public housing was built after 1951 when the publicly operated housing system was established, but it was of such low quality that it needed to be rebuilt once Japan began to enjoy rapid economic growth. This growth from the 1950s onwards enabled the Japanese population to start to enjoy larger homes with increasingly modern facilities.

Kazunobu Minami, Research and development in Japanese housing, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo 2015 Efforts to develop adaptable and long-life housing in Japan began with the Kodan Experimental housing Project (KEP) in the 1970s, which was followed by various initiatives culminating in the implementation of the Act for Promotion of Long-Life Quality Housing in 2009.

By 1968, the total number of dwellings in Japan began to exceed the number of households, changing national objectives from achieving construction volumes to improving build quality and also meeting increasingly diverse residential needs. Many dwellings, for instance, did not satisfy the demands of changing family structures and lifestyles. The poor quality of their interior finishes and equipment was compounded by poor maintenance. To overcome these challenges, the Japanese government, universities and industrial corporations have collaborated at various times in advancing housing standards, particularly the longevity and adaptability of the building stock. A variety of tools have been used to achieve this, including legislation and economic inducements, as well as research and design innovations. From 1973, the Ministry of Construction and the Japan Housing Corporation (now known as the Urban Renaissance Agency) initiated the research and development of the Kodan Experimental housing Project (KEP), which developed moveable partitioning and storage systems to allow residents to alter their living environments themselves. Recently, with a group of students at the Shibaura Institute of Technology, I examined one of the KEP housing units built in 1982 in Tama New Town, west of Tokyo, to find out whether these moveable systems had provided adequate adaptability over the three decades since their construction. It was found that indeed they had allowed significant adjustments to cater for changes of family size and lifestyle. As children grew, and as they left home, many families used the KEP system to adjust the room arrangements to fit their changing lifestyles.

Kazunobu Minami, Observed types of Kodan Experimental housing Project (KEP) infill transformation, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo 2015 Observed transformations of the interiors of the KEP Estate Tsurumaki 3rd housing in Tama New Town, west of Tokyo, since 1982 when the housing was built by Japan Housing Corporation.

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The Century Housing System (CHS) was another project focused on improving lifespan and adaptability. The Ministry of Construction started research for it in 1980, and it was implemented from 1988. It consisted of a system guidebook which set out guidelines as basic standards for CHS certification.3 The guidelines featured a number of requirements, including decoupling durable base buildings from shorterlife replaceable interior finishes and equipment (fit-out). Thus interior walls of dwellings were to be easily renewed, replaced or moved without impacting other parts. Service lifetimes were set for each component: from 3–6 years for consumables, to 6–12 for items such as bathtubs, 12–25 for kitchens and washstands, 25–50 for interior walls, ceilings and floors, and 50–100 for structural frames. The mutual interfaces between components were studied and details provided to ensure that longer-lasting components were not damaged when shorter-life elements were moved or replaced. The CHS system also set out designs that facilitated post-completion inspections and maintenance, and it provided residents with drawings and information to allow them to understand the capabilities of their CHS housing. NEXT21 was an experimental multi-family housing project that took some of these ideas even further. Developed by the Osaka Gas Company, it demonstrated new concepts of multi-family housing incorporating the sustainable design and advanced technologies that were anticipated at that time. Built in 1993 in an eastern suburb of Osaka, the structure consists of one basement floor, and six floors above ground separately articulated as frame, infill and cladding. The design concept anticipated 21st-century and highly individualised lifestyles in a high-density energyconscious building. A single architect designed the shell, and another 13 architects designed the 18 apartments. The structural system gives great flexibility to adapt to different living arrangements, even to change from residential to commercial uses. The building is assembled from a series of independent components such as the mechanical and electrical equipment to allow for easy replacement. The only fixed part of the building is the in-situ concrete structural frame. This is metal clad to protect it from wind, rain and other corrosive elements and to give the building a lifespan of more than 100 years. Tax Incentives to Promote Longevity Present-day Japan faces similar problems to other highly developed countries in that many people feel that consumer society has not delivered according to their expectations, and environmental problems are not being addressed. Most acutely for Japan, its rapidly falling birth 42

Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Requirements for vertical risers in a private apartment, 2012 Vertical grey water and black water pipes need to be easily accessible to allow replacement every couple of decades. (Redrawn and modified by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands.)

rate and ageing society are exponentially increasing the welfare burden. As there simply will not be a workforce available to rebuild at current rates, the challenge is to transform a society which builds poorly and demolishes quickly into a ‘stockholding’ society which builds well and takes scrupulous care of its assets to preserve them for the long term. Because the average lifespan of newly built homes in Japan has been so much shorter than those of Europe and the US, a new law – the Act for Promotion of Long-Life Quality Housing – was passed in 2008 and implemented in June 2009. The concept underlying the new legislation, which advocates longer lifespans for both new and existing housing, was initially promoted by former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in 2007, and the Japanese government started pilot projects in 2009 by subsidising private-sector research and development. The key concept and the technical requirements of this law are essentially based on the experience of the Century Housing System.

Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Maintenance of common risers, 2012 Vertical services within each apartment are required to be placed so as to be accessible from outside the unit or have easy access from within. (Redrawn and modified by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands.)

Developers or individuals can apply for tax reductions and receive subsidies by designing and building in line with the technical guidelines of the new law. Any individual who has purchased or constructed and occupied housing recognised to comply with the requirements of the law receives a greater income tax reduction, for up to 10 years, than he or she would for ordinary housing. The fixed asset tax, which is the tax on property ownership, is reduced by half for two years longer than in the case of ordinary housing. By the end of March 2017 a total of nearly 808,000 Long-Life Quality Housing dwellings had been approved. The vast majority were detached houses, with only 18,720 apartments qualifying.4 It appears apartment developers find the Long-Life Quality Housing label adds to their costs with little benefit to their marketing. On the other hand, house builders have successfully used the accreditation to help push their sales. One reason for the poor uptake in apartment buildings is that the technical guidelines require shared pipework to be capable of maintenance from the common parts, and this has the effect of reducing the freedom of designing the unit’s layout. Hence this requirement may need to be revised in the future, to increase its application in apartment buildings. There are nine chapters in the technical guidelines of the Act, plus an appendix, and these follow similar principles to the CHS, showing the importance of continuity of thinking in Japan. Once again the durability of longer-lasting elements is emphasised, as are appropriate structural design and earthquake resistance. Simple renewal techniques are advocated for elements of construction with short life expectancy, and there are strategies for maintaining common pipework and access to risers without entering private areas. The Act also stipulates minimum space and volumetric standards to facilitate layout changes to adapt to differing lifestyles. For instance, sufficient floorto-soffit height (2650 millimetres (104 inches) or greater) must be provided to permit alteration of mechanical, electrical and plumbing services. The Act follows through with provisions for long-term maintenance, including detailed requirements for periodic attention to structural elements, protection against infiltration by rainwater, water supplies and drainage. Technical Innovations Promoting Adaptability A number of recent technical innovations show the potential for even greater flexibility in both new and existing housing stock. Three companies – Nomura Real Estate, the Haseko Corporation and Bridgestone – have developed a zero-slope drainage system to

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Nomura Real Estate / Haseko Corporation / Bridgestone, Zero-slope siphonic drainage system versus traditional drainage system, 2015

permit flexible positioning of apartment kitchens. In tandem, the Architectural Institute of Japan has established technical guidelines which support the wide application of this system.5 The three companies are extending their research and development of zero-slope drainage to permit even bathrooms and washing machines to be relatively freely placed, whether in new or existing homes. Mitsui Real Estate has begun to sell apartments in which division walls can be installed and moved by residents in the same manner as furniture. Although bathrooms are fixed, the remaining space is free for the residents to plan. Even kitchens can be relocated to any of seven optional positions. An extraction system draws away cooking smells and returns cleaned air back to the apartments. The Urban Renaissance Agency (UR) owns more than 700,000 dwellings in Japan, many in need of refurbishment. It is deploying an infill refurbishment test project called Rakuinkyo in existing apartments to adapt them to the needs of elderly residents, making them suitable for home-based care.6 In recent years, UR has collaborated with IKEA to refurbish some of its stock. The objective is to provide new residents (with low construction skills) with the simple tools to allow them to self-improve their own dwellings.

above left: In the zero-slope siphonic drainage system, soil pipes run horizontally, allowing a much greater range of locations for bathrooms and kitchens. Traditional soil pipes are larger in diameter and require falls, taking more sub-floor space and restricting locations of kitchens and bathrooms to being close to vertical pipe shafts. (Redrawn and modified by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands.)

left: Siphonic drainage stacks placed in accessible risers near corridors and common parts provide great freedom in locating kitchens and bathrooms within apartments, in contrast to traditional drainage which allows little flexibility and is relatively inaccessible. (Redrawn and modified by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands.)

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Loose-Fit and a Declining Workforce The concept of long life and loose fit, which preserves building fabric by encouraging it to adapt to change, is at the heart of housing solutions for Japan’s future. Promoting longevity is one way to reduce the future burden on a declining workforce. But, aligned with this, Japan also needs to compensate for its coming labour shortage by developing techniques so that fewer construction skills are required for those new buildings that do need to be constructed. The coming era necessitates simple structures with furniturebased fit-out systems that can easily be installed and replaced, whether by residents, users or robots. 1

Mitsui Fudosan Residential Company, Mitsui adaptable housing, Akabane-nishi, Kita-ku, Tokyo, 2016

top: The moveable kitchen system placed in the centre of the apartment. The cooker hood on the counter draws away cooking smells and circulates the cleaned air back into the room.

above: The wheels under the kitchen units allow them to be relocated in several alternative places in the room.

Notes 1. According to the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, ‘Juutaku Takuti Bunkakai dai 14kai sannkou siryou 4’, 30 January 2008, p 2: www.mlit.go.jp/jutakukentiku/house/ singi/syakaishihon/bunkakai/14bunkakai/14bunka_sankou04.pdf. The lifespan of demolished housing in Japan was calculated based on the Housing and Land Survey of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ Statistics Bureau in 1998 and 2003: www.stat. go.jp/english/data/index.htm. That in the UK was calculated based on the English Housing Survey statistics of 1996 and 2001, available at www.gov.uk/government/collections/english-housing-survey. 2. Yukio Komatsu, ‘Juutaku Jyumyou ni tusite’, Jyuutaku Mondai Kenkyu, 16 (2), June 2000: www.f.waseda.jp/ykom/jkf2000.pdf; Yukio Komatsu, ‘Kentiku Jyumou no Syutei, Journal of Architecture and Building Science , 117 (1494), October 2002: www.f.waseda.jp/ykom/ aijjnl200210.pdf. 3. Century Housing System Guidebook, Century Housing System Promotion Council (Tokyo), March 1997. 4. Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Travel, press release, 23 May 2017: http://www.mlit.go.jp/report/ press/house04_hh_000731.html. 5. For the technical guidelines for zero-slope drainage, see: www.aij. or.jp/jpn/books/pdf/3626.pdf. 6. See the Urban Renaissance Agency website: www.ur-net.go.jp/rd/.

Urban Renaissance Agency, Refurbishment of existing apartment using IKEA components, Saiwai-chou, Tachikawa, Tokyo, 2016 The Urban Renaissance Agency, formerly the Japan Housing Corporation, renovates interiors of its old housing using IKEA furniture and building components, reducing the renovation costs and aiming also at attracting younger generations of dwellers.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 38–9 © Osaka Gas Co Ltd; pp 40-41, 45(b) © Kazunobu Minami; p 44 © Nomura Real Estate, The Haseko Cooperation and Bridgestone; p 45(t&c) © Mitsui Fudosan Residential Co., Ltd

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ADAPT A LOW-CARBON For all its merits, the craze for ‘zero-carbon’ new-build is arguably misleading. In fact, retrofitting or recycling existing building stock can be a more eco-friendly option than even the best-intentioned demolition and replacement. Simon Sturgis, managing director of London-based Sturgis Carbon Profiling, is an expert in assessing projects’ ‘green’ credentials. He describes different scenarios for two examples – a 19th-century London terraced house, and a standard out-of-town industrial warehouse/office building – that illustrate his point, and sets out the analytical methods used by his firm.

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Simon Sturgis

ABILITY STRATEGY

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Preserving and adapting existing buildings, in whole or part, is fundamental to a resource-efficient, low-carbon economy. This is because existing buildings and fabric represent a substantial ‘carbon investment’ that we should continue to use and reuse to the fullest extent. By contrast, sourcing and constructing new buildings represents a significant additional ‘carbon expenditure’ even if they are highly energy efficient. Further, it can be shown that more than half of the lifetime carbon emissions of a typical new building now relate to the materials used in its construction and – through repair, maintenance and disposal – over its life.1 This suggests that the efficient use of materials is a key part of a low-carbon future. Consequently the focus of carbon reduction strategies is now swinging towards the retention and adaptation of existing building fabric and the recycling of components and materials. ‘Whole-life’ carbon assessments carried out during the design stages can examine a building’s operational and, more importantly, material performance – all its building-related carbon emissions – over its expected life. Redundant building materials may have negligible financial value but, because reuse is generally more energy efficient than making something new, they can have a high ‘carbon value’. The cost and carbon values of adapted existing buildings can thus now be compared against those of new ones.

Sturgis Carbon Profiling, Levels of environmental performance for a terraced house, 2014 Scenario A is a typical 19th-century London terraced house ‘as built’; B represents the same house with a high-quality deep retrofit; C is a new-build PassivHaus. Scenario B is the most efficient in lifetime carbon emissions.

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These points can be demonstrated by two different UK examples from the work of Sturgis Carbon Profiling that have universal application. The first of these is a comparison of the overall energy and material performance of a retrofitted late 19th-century terraced or row house against a similar-sized high-performance new-build row house. The lessons learned can be applied to any similar property that is more than 10–20 years old and is in a temperate or cooler climate zone. The second example looks at the same issues through the reuse and relocation of a recently built twostorey office/warehouse. This is of the type found in business and industrial parks worldwide. In the UK there are over 14 million two- to three-storey houses of the type described, and in excess of 500,000 office/warehouses, plus a significantly greater number of similar buildings with different use types such as retail, leisure and industrial.2 New-build increases in the UK in both of these use categories are less than 0.5 per cent per annum. It is therefore clear that the biggest potential impact on reducing carbon emissions is to be made through the intelligent and environmentally efficient reuse and adaptation of existing buildings. Adaptation versus New Build Nineteenth-century terraced or row housing is not usually seen as a low-carbon, energy-efficient typology. Indeed the case is frequently made for the demolition of buildings of this age in favour of new ‘energy-efficient’ buildings. However, when all the lifetime carbon emissions are taken into account, the case for adaptation – rather than demolition and new build – is very strong. The following study compares three residential scenarios over a 60-year period. The results would be similar for longer periods. This case study is averaged from a number of retrofit and new-build projects by Sturgis Carbon Profiling that were undertaken over the last three years, in central London, for Grosvenor, a UK-based, global property company.

The baseline Scenario A is a two-storey, 19th-century, brickbuilt terraced house with internal timber floor structure, timber windows, a slate pitched roof and a flat-roofed extension to the rear – typical of much older urban housing in the UK. No work beyond basic maintenance is assumed. Retrofit of the baseline building is Scenario B. This takes a comprehensive, ‘fabric-first’, deep-retrofit approach to improving the building envelope and the operational performance. The house is in a historic Conservation Area, ruling out changes of visual appearance such as external wall insulation. However, internal wall, roof and ground insulation, high-performance double glazing, improved airtightness, solar photovoltaic panels and mechanical ventilation heat recovery (MVHR) are included. Scenario C is the replacement of the existing building with a new building, to PassivHaus standards.3 This scheme is ‘zerocarbon’, as was defined by the UK government’s 2016 target for new homes. The substructure is concrete. The frame, wall cladding and roof are all timber. The study looks at both the operational, in-use emissions, and the embodied emissions from sourcing and introducing new materials and elements of construction. Compared to Scenario A, the improvements in Scenario B have a relatively small embodied carbon cost, but not surprisingly produce large operational emissions savings. The comparison between Scenarios B and C over 60 years is the most interesting. New-build PassivHaus ‘C’ is effectively zero carbon in terms of regulated energy use; however, because of the embodied carbon build, repair and maintenance costs over the period, it has a higher overall lifetime emissions cost than ‘B’, which benefits from retained fabric. Most of the emissions over the PassivHaus’s life are due to replacement of elements such as solar panels and cladding. This is partly because renewal of some items would probably bring forward the replacement of connected elements, e.g. cellulose

A typical 19th-century London terraced house This typology of brick and timber construction, with slate roof, arranged in terraces or rows, is typical of many UK cities. The energy-efficient retrofitting of these properties will far outweigh the benefits of increasing the efficiency of new build.

Sturgis Carbon Profiling, Carbon performance comparison for Grosvenor, 2016 The diagram compares the overall carbon cost over 60 years of: A, general maintenance of a 19th-century terraced house; B, a high-quality deep retrofit of such a house; C, a new-build PassivHaus.

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insulation would probably have to be replaced at the same time as timber cladding. Scenario C has significantly more solar panels than Scenario B, with attendant embodied costs of installation and replacement. It is worth noting that the materials in the new-build ‘C’, while ‘green’, may be less durable than traditional brick construction. This would warrant a higher maintenance cost over time. Alternatively, use of more durable materials (e.g. brick cladding) in the new build would reduce whole-life maintenance carbon costs, but increase the initial carbon cost of construction. Most of the houses in the UK that will be occupied in 2050 already exist today. Therefore the biggest gains are to be made by improving the energy efficiency of existing building stock. Less than 5 per cent of older solid walls have some form of insulation, in contrast to 61 per cent of more recent cavity walls. The graph shows that the gap narrows between Scenarios B and C, with the PassivHaus performing better than the retrofit but only after 100 years. This case study, although based on only a few examples, highlights the importance of taking a holistic ‘whole-life’ view of carbon emissions, and specifically the crucial role of effective retrofits for a low-carbon future. New buildings, especially homes, are of course essential, but the overall impact of intelligent retrofit through retaining, adapting and upgrading existing buildings is likely to be far more significant to the UK’s overall ‘carbon footprint’, than high-performance new build. For this to work to maximum effect, however, the original houses need to have a builtin resilience and flexibility. In the UK, the 19th-century terraced housing is popular because its simple layout and robust nature lends itself to occupier adaptation and change. In any row of what would have been identical units, you will now find any number of variations, including internal structural change, and back and roof extensions. These inherent features have important social and cultural benefits, as neighbourhoods evolve house by house, but the overall urban quality is maintained. This is also a lesson for the design of new housing. Is it sufficiently durable and flexible to enable many decades of efficient use and adaptability?

Sturgis Carbon Profiling, Carbon performance comparison for Grosvenor, 2013 The graph compares the annual carbon costs over 100 years of: A, general maintenance of a Victorian terraced house; B, a high-quality retrofit of the latter; C, a new-build PassivHaus. This shows that, over the period, the deep retrofit is more energy efficient than a new PassivHaus.

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Going up a notch with respect to retrofit performance, the PassivHaus EnerPhit variant will undoubtedly perform better than most new buildings from a whole-life perspective. Clearly therefore the efficient adaptation of existing buildings should be encouraged by governments, through financial incentives including a supportive tax regime. In the UK, for example, retrofit or refurbishment attract a 20 per cent Value Added Tax premium, compared to new build which is zero rated. This is a major disincentive to reducing carbon emissions in the existing built environment. Adaptability and Circularity This next example demonstrates the environmental and financial benefits of radical adaptation, and circular economic thinking in practice. The client, SEGRO, a UK-based, Europe-wide property company, owned a 3,500-square-metre (37,700-square-foot) office and warehouse that was 10 years old and recently vacated. The building was not letting, but there was a demand for a similar building 2 kilometres (just over a mile) away. The initial thought had been to demolish and dispose of the original building and build a new one on the more viable site. Following carbon-related advice from Sturgis Carbon Profiling, and supported by a positive cost assessment, the client decided to pursue an unusual low-carbon approach by dismantling, moving and reassembling the building in the better location. The original structure was a typical ‘out-of-town’ building; concrete foundations and ground slab, steel frame with rib-deck and concrete first floor, aluminium and glass cladding, insulated metal deck roof. The two-storey office areas were fitted out with standard raised floors, suspended ceilings and modular light fittings, and cooled by a fan-coil system. Stairs and a lift connected the two office levels, with toilets on both floors. A detailed examination was undertaken by the project team to see what could be economically recycled. Overall, the steel frame, the cladding, the lift, most of the services, elements of fit-out and the roof deck could all be reused. All concrete needed replacing, as did subsurface drainage and foundations, and roof finish.

Langley Hall Associates (architects) / Sturgis Carbon Profiling (carbon consultants), 9 Cambridge Avenue, Slough, UK, 2014 An example of the benefits of circular economic thinking: a 10-yearold, 3,500-square-metre (37,700-square-foot) shed/office, dismantled, relocated and rebuilt for property developers SEGRO.

A detailed examination was undertaken by the project team to see what could be economically recycled. Overall, the steel frame, the cladding, the lift, most of the services, elements of fit-out and the roof deck could all be reused.

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In total, 70 per cent of the material was reused, resulting in a carbon emissions saving of 56 per cent and a financial saving of 25 per cent when compared with an identical new build. The construction programme for either solution was similar, but as the lift assembly was reused, the normal long lead time for the order did not arise. All of this was achieved with a building not originally designed for reuse in this way. It follows that if the principles of adaptability and elemental reuse are designed in from the outset, the figures quoted above would certainly improve. This building typology typically accommodates a multitude of uses, including industrial, leisure and retail. Cheap and simple to construct, these buildings are found in most countries. Their life expectancy is generally very short, often no more than 20 years for retail units, at which point the structure and fabric are typically discarded for basic recycling. As this example shows, developing strategies for the reuse of this building type is both practical and commercially viable. With pre-planning, and designing in ease of reuse, these benefits can be a significant part of a less wasteful, more resource-efficient and low-carbon future. To answer the challenges of global climate change, the management of the built environment is crucial. Energy from fossil fuels consumed in the construction and operation of buildings accounts for approximately half of the UK’s total carbon dioxide

emissions.4 For a low-carbon economy, improving the way we build new buildings is important, but is a drop in the ocean compared to the potential benefits of preserving and adapting existing buildings, in whole or as components. For any built project we should start by considering what we can reuse or recycle. We should also design new buildings to have the capacity of beneficial reuse. An efficient ‘post-completion’ life cycle means thinking of a building as an organism that is never ‘complete’, and is able to evolve into new uses or even to change locations. These factors may be less eyecatching than ideas for new buildings, but the potential benefits on a global scale are very significant. Valuing Choices How to decide which combination of improvement options will give the best overall financial and energy/carbon performance? Sturgis Carbon Profiling use two principal methods for calculating these benefits: marginal abatement cost curves (MACC), and carbon cost analysis.5 A MACC analysis compares the annual carbon performance in operation or use against the financial performance of various elements, such as double glazing, draught strips, mechanical controls etc. This enables direct performance comparisons to be made to achieve the optimum carbon/cost combination.

A MACC analysis enables direct performance comparisons to be made to achieve the optimum carbon/cost combination.

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The marginal abatement cost is plotted on the vertical axis, and the options for different treatments are ranked from lowest to highest. The width of the column is equal to the amount of carbon saved by the item, and the area of each column equal to the cost or benefit of the item. Items that are below the line are cost efficient, items above the line are not. The MACC illustrated examines various options; however, once the selections have been made, the total carbon benefit to the project is the combined horizontal total in tonnes or kilograms of CO2 saved each year. Each box represents an environmental performance enhancement. It is possible to compare, for example, new double against triple glazing. On the MACC it is possible to see that the latter has slightly better energy performance but is clearly more expensive in overall terms. While this is no surprise, MACC analyses provide accurate comparisons to identify the cheaper options, and to recover the carbon shortfall by selecting a cost-effective item such as door draughtproofing. Carbon cost analysis is similar but is useful for comparing the relative performance of different options for the same task, over a given timeframe. These types of analyses are not difficult and should become an essential design tool for establishing the most effective options to pursue for low-carbon cost-effective solutions, and for avoiding the unintended consequences of focusing on money or operational efficiencies alone. 1

Sturgis Carbon Profiling, Marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) analysis for Grosvenor of 1 Lees Place, London W1, UK, 2015 The MACC ranks financial and carbon performance of retrofit options. Highlighted is the overall energy comparison between double- and tripleglazed windows. In this case the double is better in both cost and carbon performance.

Notes 1. See Sean Lockie et al, RICS Professional Guidance, Global: Methodology to Calculate Embodied Carbon, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (London), 2014, fig.4, http://www.rics.org/Global/ Methodology_to_calculate_embodied_carbon_1st_ edition_PGguidance_2014.pdf. See also Simon Sturgis, Targeting Zero: Embodied and Whole-Life Carbon Explained, RIBA Publishing (London), 2017, Chapter 1, pp 9–10. 2. Data extrapolated from UK Department for Communities and Local Government 2012, UK Office of National Statistics 2008 and UK Department for Communities and Local Government 2008. 3. PassivHaus (new build) and PassivHaus EnerPhit (retrofit) are high-performance building standards developed in Germany in the 1990s. PassivHaus identifies standards for airtightness, thermal bridging, insulation, triple glazing, mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR), to minimise occupational energy use and provide high-quality internal environmental conditions. 4. Ben Stubbs, Plain English Guide to Sustainable Construction, Section 2: Construction and Sustainable Development, Constructing Excellence (London), 2008, p 5, http://constructingexcellence.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2015/02/SUSTAINGUIDE.pdf. 5. For more detail on MACC and carbon cost analysis, see Sturgis 2017, op cit, Chapter 6, pp 109–11.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 46–8, 49(b), 50–1, 52–3 © Sturgis Carbon Profiling; p 49(t) © Sturgis Carbon Profiling, photo Theodore Darviris

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FOUR DECADES OF OPEN BUILDING IMPLEMEN Realising Individual Agency in Architectural Infrastructures Designed to Last 54

Stephen Kendall

TATION Baumschlager Eberle, Solids 1&2, Ijburg, Amsterdam, 2010 The architects perfectly understood the client’s requirements and delivered a stately building of high construction quality and enduring merit. Built empty like any office building with a 15-centimetre (6-inch) depressed slab in the tenant spaces to accommodate horizontal piping, it demonstrates the potential market opportunities for a certified infill industry delivering consumer-oriented fit-out.

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The ‘open building’ approach grew out of research and early projects starting in the 1960s, aimed at overcoming the rigidity of the prevailing top-down housing process in the Netherlands. Geared to ensuring user control and sustainability in the built stock, it involves coordinating stakeholders in the real estate development process, enabling variety and change to become efficient. Architect, researcher and educator Stephen Kendall explains the approach and describes pioneering projects in Europe, Japan, China, the US and Russia, as well as detailing instances around the world where it has become part of public policy.

RPHS Architects, Patrimoniums Woningen renovation, Voorburg, The Netherlands, 1993 This project was ahead of its time, employing a pioneering economic model for ‘cellular renovation’ developed by Karel Dekker along with an equally original infill system developed by Infill Systems BV and installed by Matura Inbouw.

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In the history of 20th-century architecture, two notable achievements were the advent of functionalism, and an unprecedented increase in large-scale, centrally controlled interventions into the built environment. In the 1970s, one of the responses intended to overcome the resulting rigidity, uniformity and lack of sustainability was ‘open building’ – a portfolio of design and decision-making methods originating in the thinking of John Habraken (see his article on pp 18– 23 of this issue of 2) and the work of SAR (Foundation for Architects Research) in the Netherlands, of which he was founding director.1 Parallel investigations and building activity were emerging in Japan at around the same time. Open building methods recognise that sustainable built environment is never finished, that control of its transformation is distributed among many parties including inhabitants, and that observed cycles of change universally organise themselves on levels of intervention, akin to the way any man-made infrastructure system works. Every year since 1996, an international Open Building Network, numbering more than 400, has met to exchange findings from realised projects and research. Open building is not new; it is implicit in office and retail developments everywhere, and increasingly in healthcare, housing and educational facilities, where change – rapid or slow – is a reality. These projects embody the general principles noted above, and in technical terms make an unambiguous separation between architectural elements and spaces expected to last a very long time (the ‘shared’ part of a building) from the parts and spaces with a shorter lifespan (controlled by or for individual households or occupancies). Open building makes all of this explicit, helping to make methodical improvement possible. Two questions are resolved in each open building project: what distribution of individual and collective agency will yield a sustainable environment; and, when interventions are made, what decision-making flexibility is offered to those that follow? Such work is now being realised in many countries, in new constructions and in the reactivation of existing buildings. Each takes account of the contemporary forces at work in increasingly large, fast-paced and complex schemes where efficiency is critical, but where variety and capacity to accommodate change and user agency are equally important performance measures.

Frans Van der Werf, Molenvliet-Wilgendonk housing, Papendrecht, The Netherlands, 1977 After 40 years, this competition-winning project still attracts visitors from around the world. While only a small part of the original competition-winning proposal, it is an outstanding example of a harmonious merging of urban design and architecture, skillfully balancing coherence and variety.

Pioneering Projects The first significant open building project was Frans Van der Werf’s competitionwinning Molenvliet-Wilgendonk housing in Papendrecht, the Netherlands (1977), in which a four-storey base building principle is deployed as a continuous structure, forming streets and courtyards. It is fully within the Dutch architectural tradition with steep tiled roofs, courtyards for gardens, ‘Dutch’ doors opening to front stoops, and galleries that provide access to upper-level houses. Renters selected the location and size of dwellings and the layout of the interiors, as well as parts of the facade of their subsidised dwellings.2 It remains a vibrant mixeduse environment today, occupied by houses and a few offices and shops. Many hundreds of explicitly open building schemes followed, right up to the present day, in Japan, China, Austria, Finland, France, the UK, Switzerland, the US, Mexico and elsewhere, offering glimpses of a renewal of residential development practices and architectural possibilities.3 Another pioneering example in the Netherlands was a rental housing estate in Voorburg, owned by Patrimoniums Woningen, a housing association that intended to upgrade its portfolio of apartment buildings.4 In 1993, the owner employed a new investment model developed by Karel Dekker (KD Consultants) and hired Matura Inbouw to install a pioneering infill system using a technical solution developed by Infill Systems BV that used a certified zero-slope greywater plumbing system held in place by a thin tile laid on the structural floor,5 helping to make one-dwelling-at-a-time renovation profitable and organisationally effective. The signal achievement of this early stage of open building implementation is Next21, a mixed-use project in Osaka, Japan, initiated by the Osaka Gas Company and initially completed in 1993.6 It serves as a continuing experiment with energy systems such as hydrogen fuel cell technology, mutable interior fit-out

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ArkOpen/Esko Kahri, Petri Viita and Juhani Väisänen, PlusHome ‘Arabianranta’, Helsinki, 2005 right: This residential for-sale and ground-floor retail project offered dwelling owners wide choice in the size and layout of their homes, as illustrated by this composite drawing. The scheme won an award from the Finnish Steel Industry Institute, and assured the investor of a profitable asset. below: The building was constructed in part during the long winter months, which was made possible by the use of steel floor and wall assemblies made off-site and quickly erected by cranes on the building site. Each dwelling’s large south-facing balconies can be made more private by moving sliding screens as needed.

They pioneered solutions to the managerial and logistical aspects of open building to allow homebuyers to collaborate in the design of their dwellings, each of which is different in size and floor plan. Yositika Utida/Shu-Koh-Sha Architectural and Urban Design Studio, NEXT21, Osaka, Japan, 1993 This is an example of the unique capacity for government, industry and academia in Japan to partner in driving innovation forward.

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Weinstein Architects, Banner Building, Seattle, Washington, USA, 1995 This condominium/retail project broke new ground by offering completely empty spaces for sale, and helped to spark the redevelopment of this part of Seattle. It provides useful lessons faced by such ‘raw space’ schemes when the building industry and obsolete regulatory and legal systems are not organised to support such projects.

Talli Architecture & Design, Tila housing block, Arabianranta, Helsinki, 2009 This project and Tila II, now under construction, set the stage for service providers to enter the market offering fit-out at varying prices. The image shows a typical empty (based building) 100-square-metre (1,076-square-feet) apartment with two bath/utility rooms, ready for fit-out, including a mezzanine.

components, adaptable facades, mechanical systems and introducing nature into urban environments. Professor Yositika Utida, who led the design team, originally invited 13 architects to each design the fit-out of a dwelling, also using a selection from a facade kit-of-parts. Other architects have since been hired to redesign individual dwellings in the building, experimenting with new infill components and processes. In Seattle, the Banner Building, an award-winning condominium complex designed by Weinstein Architects and constructed in 1995, offered empty doubleheight spaces, each of which was custom-outfitted by its owners. Other ‘raw space’ schemes (advertised as such by their developers) have since been built in cities across the US, demonstrating how open building can be implemented under local regulatory and financing constraints. These new-build projects are akin to the conversion of old industrial buildings to housing and other uses, a critical difference being that, to qualify as open building, the interior layout of each occupancy must be fully independent of the layout decisions of other dwellings in the building – a challenge for plumbing systems that usually penetrate into the ceiling of homes below, causing technical entanglement and legal conflict. Another path-breaking project is the PlusHome ‘Arabianranta’ residential and mixed-used project in Helsinki (2005) by architect ArkOpen. Together with Tocoman, a data management company, they pioneered solutions to the managerial and logistical aspects of open building to allow homebuyers to collaborate in the design of their dwellings, each of which is different in size and floor plan. The Sato development company was thus able to complete the project on budget and on time. Of special note is an ‘upside-down’ floor in the areas where bathrooms and kitchens were likely to be chosen by homebuyers, enabling piping and other systems to be accessible from the homes served. There are now a number of award-winning ‘raw space’ projects throughout Finland, by architects including Tiuri & Lommi, and Talli, which designed the Tila housing block in 2009, and is now designing others like it.7 Also built by Sato, at Tila each occupant bought a double-height space provided with finished bath/utility room (larger units have two), and completed the fit-out on their own, including kitchens in various sizes and positions. A second, mezzanine level can also have a bathroom. Some owners completed their own infill in a do-it-yourself fashion, while others hired professional fit-out companies. Inspired by PlusHome ‘Arabianranta’ and other open-building projects in Finland designed by Esko Kahri, Ulpu Tiuri, Talli and others, the Building Information Foundation – a national quasi-official organisation – published guidelines in 2016 for housing based on general rules of open building and sustainability goals. In Moscow, numerous ‘free plan’ apartment buildings have been initiated by developers and advertised as such. To obtain approval for the Catamaran House project (2000),8 Vladimir Plotkin (Reserve Architects) submitted drawings showing dwelling floorplans (initially, 107 were planned). After consent, the architect deleted the approved floor plans, and the contractor built the empty base building. While construction was ongoing, owners hired designers and fitout companies to complete each dwelling according to individual preferences. Subsequently, the number of dwellings is different, some have changed hands, and some have been combined and their interiors altered. Lingotto, a prominent Dutch development company, hired ANA Architecten to design Multifunk in the IJburg area of Amsterdam in 2006. The building was prepared for subdivision into offices, dwellings and/or student apartments and is making a profit for the owner. Also in Amsterdam, two schemes initiated by Frank Bijdendijk (as former director of the Stadgenoot housing corporation) have been built: Solids 1&2 in IJburg, Amsterdam, designed by Baumschlager Eberle (2010), and Solid 11 in Amsterdam West by Tony Fretton (2011). Both were designed to accommodate virtually any function, and in fact do. Bijdendijk gave them the name Solids because he insisted that they be long-lasting, energy efficient and offer space for variable uses. They demonstrate the potential for long-term return on investment for at least a century. Both mimic the capacity of the city’s historical building stock to accommodate changing functions.

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Mark Koehler Architects (MKA), Superlofts, Amsterdam, 2016 In this new housing concept, MKA, also acting as developer, invites future owners to decide on collective facilities before construction begins. A personal design service – Homelab – is available with an online database to assist owners in designing their own homes. Several projects are underway.

Mark Koehler Architects (MKA), Tom Frantzen Architects, ANA Architecten and others are designing successful open building projects in the Netherlands using state-of-the-art building methods and social media for sales promotion.

Tom Frantzen Architects, Patch22, Amsterdam, 2017 A high-rise using exposed heavy timber construction, with Slimline’s ‘upside-down’ floor system, the project also pioneered legal agreements for a fixed ground lease with flexible positioning of functions within the building.

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Open Building Enters Public Policy In 1997, the Office for Real Estate and Public Buildings of the Swiss Canton of Bern (OPB) in Switzerland introduced a principle for facility acquisition called System Separation – a decision-making strategy aimed at assuring long-term asset usefulness by decoupling technical systems as far as possible according to expected lifespan.9 System Separation, now binding for all public buildings in the canton, has since been used to procure more than 20 projects (see Giorgio Macchi’s article on pp 76–83 of this issue). In 2008, the Japanese government passed the Act for Promotion of Long-Life Quality Housing offering incentives for projects that can remain useful for two centuries.10 The law includes guidelines for technical subsystems design (such as utility systems, structure and facades), enabling their resilience, replacement and upgrading – due to wear-and-tear or to serve changed user preferences – with minimum disturbance of other subsystems or occupancies. Owners of conforming dwellings are given tax breaks. More than 800,000 dwellings have been built in response. With a shift in priorities to a sustainable building stock, many companies in Tokyo now offer one-unit-at-a-time fit-out in the renovation of existing residential buildings, quietly, on time and on budget. The Haseko Corporation, one of a number of companies undertaking open building schemes (called ‘skeleton-infill’ in Japan) for both rental and sale, has also collaborated in a joint research project with Bridgestone (a tyre and chemical company entering the construction products market) to develop a zero-slope grey-water plastic drainage piping system that allows wide variation in the placement of kitchens and is accepted by Japanese regulations. In 2010, the Chinese government’s Institute of Building Standard Design & Research (CBS) began building skeleton-infill projects containing tens of thousands of dwellings in several cities. It is also laying the groundwork for an ‘industrialised’ infill industry, with sophisticated companies now coming to market, one of which (Unity Tech Group) has delivered and installed more than 30,000 fit-out packages for both social and private housing, and is now supplying infill for clinics and hospitals. In 2012, the US government Defense Health Agency began undertaking changes to its methods for acquiring and managing the many healthcare facilities in its portfolio to make them ‘flexible’.11 Other large public and private healthcare clients in both the US and Europe are now demanding and getting flexible facilities, pushing architecture and engineering teams to move beyond rhetoric.

The Next Stage Projects such as those discussed here are appearing worldwide, often undertaken without any knowledge of similar developments in other countries and having no specific name by which to identify them. Though their architectural design, construction, financing and regulatory methods vary, the issues they address are similar and are – again without a common name – increasingly understood as a pragmatic extension of infrastructure planning into the design of buildings – separating long-lasting parts from those that change more frequently, and distinguishing shared (higher-level) and individual (lower-level) agency. Designers using open building approaches are not alone in moving beyond functionalism and supporting the distribution of control beyond the professions. Advances in social media and digital tools are enabling decentralisation, disintermediation, and new forms of community as well, responding to and stimulating innovative design and management strategies, building technologies, financing, regulatory/legal and policy measures. As important, emerging design/ build fit-out companies are pioneering novel means to deliver fit-out or infill services that offer sustainability, resiliency and user control. Further, the old notion that open building is too expensive is increasingly being exposed as fallacious, as social dynamics and new technologies force investors and clients to plan for change. The path from the recognition of change and distributed control as key performance metrics of built environment intervention to widespread implementation of ‘loose-fit’ or open building architecture has not been smooth. Early housing experiments based on the separation of ‘support and infill’ were widely scorned in the architectural press; other visionary projects were never realised. But a shift from rigid functionalism to the use of capacity-for-change as a guiding principle, from centralised to distributed control, is nonetheless becoming evident. In this period of transition, open building or loose-fit should not be cast as a technical solution. Rather, the fundamental shifts in attitudes and practices lie in balancing stability and change, and enabling and managing distributed agency with its related legal issues. The work ahead is to continue improving societal steering mechanisms in consonance with the real pressures facing the contemporary everyday built environment. 1

A shift from rigid functionalism to the use of capacity-for-change as a guiding principle, from centralised to distributed control, is nonetheless becoming evident.

Notes 1. Koos Bosma, Dorine Hoogstraten and Martijn Vos, Housing for the Millions: John Habraken and the SAR (1960–2000), NAI (Rotterdam), 2000. 2. See Frans Van der Werf, Open Ontwerpen, Uitgeverij 010 (Rotterdam), 1993; Frans Van der Werf, ‘Molenvliet-Wilgendonk: Experimental Housing Project, Papendrecht, The Netherlands’, Harvard Architecture Review, 1, Spring 1980, pp 161–9. 3. Stephen Kendall and Jonathan Teicher, Residential Open Building, Spon (London), 2000. 4. Masaki Yashiro, ‘Renovation by Open Building System’, Process Architecture: Collective Housing in Holland, 112, September 1993, pp 44–6. 5. Stephen Kendall, ‘MATURA Infill System’, Automated Builder, May 1996, pp 16–18. 6. Ito Kimifumi (ed), NEXT21: Collective Housing in the Future – Special Edition SD 25, Kajima Institute Publishing Company (Tokyo), 1994. 7. Jorma Mukala (interview with architect Pia Illonen), ‘Tila Housing’, Arkkitehti, 4, 2011, pp 28–39. 8. Bart Goldhoorn (ed), Project Russia 20 – The Free Plan: Russia’s Shelland-Core Apartment Buildings, A-Fond Publishers (Amsterdam), 2001, pp 30–32. 9. Stephen Kendall and Giorgio Macchi, Systems Separation: Open Building at the Inselspital Bern, INO Project, Stämpfli Verlag (Bern), 2008. 10. Kazunobu Minami, ‘The Efforts to Develop Longer Life Housing with Adaptability in Japan’, Energy Procedia, 96, 2016, pp 662–73. 11. Stephen Kendall et al, ‘Healthcare Facilities Designed for Flexibility’, in Romano Del Nord (ed), Healthcare Otherwhere: Proceedings of the 34th UIA/Phg International Seminar on Public Healthcare Facilities, Durban, South Africa, Tesis – University of Florence (Florence), 2014.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 54–5 © BE Architects; p 56 © Frans der Vries; p 57 © Franz Van der Werf, photo John Carp; p 58(t&c) © Esko Kahri; p 58(b) © Stephen Kendall; p 59(t) © Koryn Rolstad; p 59(b) © Stefan Bremer; p 60(t) © Simon Bosch Photography; p 60(b) © Tom Frantzen

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THE FETISH OF FLEXIBILITY

Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership, 125 Park Road, London, 1970 Farrell's original elevation showing split-level parking.

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Edwin Heathcote

FARRELL/ GRIMSHAW PARTNERSHIP, 125 PARK ROAD, LONDON

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Completed in 1970, this residential building on a prime London site is recognised as a pioneering example of the British High Tech style. More importantly for this issue of 3, it was designed so that leaseholders could devise their apartments’ layouts themselves, with maximum allowance for future adaptation – in contrast with the high-spec, investor-driven typology that is prevalent for such sites today. Writer and architect Edwin Heathcote describes the building’s structure, the co-ownership housing society model that made it possible, and how it has fared over time.

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Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership, 125 Park Road, London, 1970 Terry Farrell drawing showing the various possibilities and configurations at 125 Park Road.

A typical mid-level, two-bedroom flat interior photographed in 1970.

‘The basic idea of Housing Societies,’ suggested an 2 editorial in 1970, ‘is that the developer’s profit can be eliminated from such a scheme and “at cost” housing can be provided. In fact it has been estimated by valuers that the cost of the Park Road flats are about 50% below the going rate on the open market.’1 Such a sensible idea. What on earth happened? 125 Park Road is one of those familiar landmarks on the way out of London. Standing on the corner of Regent’s Park, the 11-storey tower was designed by two of British architecture’s most prominent figures, the subsequent knights Sir Nicholas Grimshaw and Sir Terry Farrell, then working in partnership. Completed in 1970, the tower is instantly recognisable from its rounded corners and corrugated cladding. That it looks more like a commercial than a residential structure was utterly deliberate – this was a generic block, an early expression of the High Tech idea of flexible, adaptable space and, after almost half a century, it still looks pretty fine. It emerged from a moment in British architecture when flexibility was a fetishistic dream. Archigram, Cedric Price, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster – each was searching for a kind of building capable of adapting indefinitely to an uncertain future. It is an idea that went rather surprisingly out of fashion, but perhaps this building can be seen as a pertinent paradigm for our era of housing angst.

Designed at the height of Swinging London in 1966, and completed in the slightly less swinging seventies, the flats were financed using the then-new vehicle of a co-ownership housing society and, although it seems extraordinary today, the bank gave a 100 per cent mortgage, with no deposit. This scheme effectively equipped entrepreneurial people to identify possible sites for development and propose buildings. Leaseholders were given a share in the co-ownership company alongside their leases. It would have seemed a scheme particularly suited to architects, yet it does not seem to have enjoyed widespread success. This was perhaps in part because of a lack of the culture of self-build in the UK. And perhaps also because it coincided with a period during which there was a glut of very fine housing in poor repair but in good neighbourhoods that could be ‘done up’ often utilising government grants which encouraged just that, sometimes even covering 100 per cent of the costs of renovation. Notting Hill and Islington, remember, were still down at heel in the late 1960s, and artists were buying places in Holland Park and Chelsea.

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These were indeed very different times. Farrell and Grimshaw, both members of the housing society, got penthouses; and with architects, a surveyor, lawyers and an engineer as partners in the project, all the professions were covered in-house, with each resident being allocated a mortgage commensurate with the size of their dwelling. According to Farrell, even with this remarkable-looking deal he was unable to afford the mortgage on his flat and ended up subletting half of it to John Young (then working with Richard Rogers on the Centre Pompidou).2 It is almost inconceivable that this kind of development could happen today. Firstly, such a prominent site would have been landbanked by a developer long ago, as London’s overheated property market has made every site an investment opportunity rather than a place to live. Secondly, any development on a site as prestigious as this would now inevitably be aimed at investors rather than inhabitants, and at the very top of the market rather than the middle. London in the late 1960s was a city of social housing, commercial building and bombsites; more luxurious properties were being built only in the suburbs and beyond. The new model is also fiercely wasteful. High-spec interior fit-outs have become de rigueur for this kind of project, with each apartment becoming a kind of show home. Much of this top-of-the-line stuff is destined for the skip as buyers bring in their own interior designers to strip the flats back to a shell.

Having all the structure in the frame and the facade meant a great deal of flexibility. 66

125 Park Road was not fitted out at all. The architects apparently considered a standard fit-out, but it became too difficult to agree the details and finishes, and ultimately every resident did their own. The result is an intriguing mix of approaches including glassblock dividing walls, serving hatches, open plans and bedsits as some residents bought neighbouring flats to expand and others subdivided theirs to sublet or sell. As Grimshaw said in a BBC documentary in 2014, ‘you could have 14 bedsits to a floor or one big flat’.3 Having all the structure in the frame and the facade meant a great deal of flexibility, even if, as Farrell suggests, by modern floor ratios it was a little uneconomic.

The block in 1970, showing the original pink sign (now replaced).

Plans illustrating potential configurations of a typical floor, from completely open-plan wraparound to heavy subdivision into small apartments.

In the end, the subdivisions appear to have become concretised despite the dream of flexibility. Long-term leases tend to act against change, as does ownership itself. A glance at the flats that have come up for sale in recent years shows layouts very much like they might have been 40 years ago – although interestingly the relatively small size of some of them (and the one single bathroom in an age of massive residential bathroom oversupply) seems to keep prices a little lower than you might expect for such a prestigious location. The block was an instant success. After opening it quickly became known to cabbies as the ‘Sardine Can’ due to its corrugated cladding. Regarding the genesis of the look, Farrell says: ‘Nick [Grimshaw] had a 2CV and I had a Renault 4 – and then there was the Jean Prouvé influence … and that was it.’ There was originally intended to be what Farrell refers to as ‘a glass skirt around the bottom’ that would have accommodated maisonettes, but which, for reasons of cost, was abandoned. The planners were, according to Grimshaw, horrified at the idea of an aluminiumclad tower on the verge of Regent’s Park, yet somehow it went through.4 The tower remains both a landmark on the way into London, and an indicator of how small changes in regulation and the encouragement of a cooperative approach to building can catalyse something really special. On its own this is not a solution to the UK’s housing shortage, but it is a lesson in how finance and regulation can allow architects and construction professionals to realise entrepreneurial, cooperative and innovative designs. This was always a flexible building, but it was the flexibility of the economic and legislative conditions that allowed it to become a reality. 1 Notes 1. Architectural Design, Issue 10, 1970, p 483. 2. Telephone interview with the author, 16 December 2016. All of Farrell’s quotes in this article are taken from this interview. 3. From the BBC TV programme ‘The Brits who Built the Modern World: The Freedom of the Future’, 2014. 4. Ibid. Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 62–3, 64, 67 © Farrells; p 65 © Tim Street-Porter; p 66 © Tessa Traeger

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FLEXI ARCHITE FOR EVO WORK PRA 68

BLE CTURE

Despina Katsikakis

LVING CTICES

Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM), Google HQ, 6 Pancras Square, London, 2016 The open elevations communicate the informality and productivity of Google’s workplace.

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How can architecture for workspaces be future-proofed? From shifts between favouring open planning or subdivided spaces, to practical demands brought by new technologies and working patterns, firms face a real challenge in adapting to change. Despina Katsikakis advises and lectures internationally on workspace thinking and design. Here she looks at trends in the field over the last few decades, and suggests how businesses might best prepare for future developments – through a loose-fit approach. Arup Associates, 1 Finsbury Avenue, London, 1984 The building projects technical sophistication behind a secure facade, implying that only the initiated can enjoy the wonderful atrium and large floorplates.

Gort Scott, Walthamstow Central Parade remodelling, London, 2016 This transformation of a 1960s office block was designed to appeal to the local creative community, using the attractions of a cafe to blur the threshold between the street and the 50 businesses housed within.

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When Frank Lloyd Wright designed a new office building for the Larkin Company in Buffalo, New York, over 100 years ago, he reinvented the workplace by embedding the latest technologies to support new ideas in management. As Wright reflected: It is interesting that I … supposed to be concerned with [aesthetics], should have invented the hung wall w.c. (easier to clean under) and adopted many other innovations like the glass door, steel furniture, airconditioning and radiant or ‘gravity heat’. Nearly every technological innovation used today was suggested in the Larkin Building.1 Each detail in the architecture of this extraordinary building had a business purpose to support a commercial strategy, accommodate innovative work processes and broadcast a particular set of business values frozen in time. Cut to any Google building today – for instance their facility at 6 Pancras Square in London (2016), by architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) – and much the same thing is happening, with corporations using architecture to augment their corporate identities and work practices. Over the last four decades of the 20th century, trends in workplace design changed at an ever-increasing pace, reflecting both evolving theories on best work practices and shifting practical or technological requirements. In the 1960s, the office was seen as a communications system, opening up to facilitate the free flow of information unobstructed by partitions or narrow floorplates. But by the 1970s in Europe, labour laws and a focus on privacy, acoustic and personal control led to a dominance of workspaces subdivided into individual cellular offices. In the 1980s the desktop computer and network technologies brought a desire for changing design guidelines to cope with increased heat, cables and increased density and, with those new standards, a spate of new technically sophisticated buildings with deeper floorplates and higher specification, such as Arup Associates’ 1 Finsbury Avenue in London (1984). From the 1990s onwards, the laptop, together with betterconnected virtual and digital tools, has reduced the need for synchronous communication and colocation of office workers for the purposes of carrying out predetermined tasks. This, alongside the realisation that office space is typically highly underutilised, has seen a shift in the purpose of the office from a place of ‘heads-down’ work to a space for social interaction. Although there is a growing appetite for idiosyncratic working environments – such as the 2016 remodelling of the 1960s Walthamstow Central Parade building in London by architects Gort Scott, with its mixeduse co-working scheme to appeal to local creative enterprises – many new office buildings remain standardised and soulless metaphors of bureaucratic efficiency. The Social Workplace Connectivity and access to knowledge are the features of contemporary business that are redefining how and where work is accomplished. Modern corporations rely on highly motivated individuals empowered by technology to be able to work autonomously but who nevertheless need face-to-face

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interactions in inspiring spaces with like-minded people, to support the increasing richness of their business transactions. Successful co-working environments have an authenticity that comes from supporting spontaneous social interactions with networking/community events, good coffee and healthy food, services and ubiquitous wi-fi. Co-workers form communities, sharing their ideas, networking and having evocative experiences. Besides the shared physical space, the best co-working spaces also offer online collaborations with private social networks and discussion forums. Corporations are becoming more agile and reliant on dispersed talent networks using open-source innovation: in other words, seeking useful inventions outside their organisations, and making their own internally developed innovations as widely available to others as possible. In parallel to this, the nature of employment is also changing. Lifelong careers are becoming less and less likely, and job security is decreasing. The Intuit 2020 Report states that more than 80 per cent of corporations are planning to increase their use of flexible workforce in coming years.2 This aligns with the desire of new workers not to work for a company, but instead to be a part of a community, with 40 per cent of the workforce projected to be independent by 2020.3 Owner-occupier and single-tenant buildings that reflect the flatter, more open work cultures and communities within them, have been prevalent in Australia and the Netherlands. The atrium of Macquarie Bank in Sydney (2009), by Clive Wilkinson Architects, and the cutting-edge headquarters of Deloitte, The Edge in Amsterdam (2015), by PLP Architecture, are examples of the way some corporations are attempting to facilitate social interactions, building on urban typologies such as the street and the square, albeit encapsulated within their buildings. Choice and control are the consistent expectations across all generations at work today. Consequently, in addition to the move towards a more urban building typology, accessing and using big data and user input will significantly change the way buildings are designed and used. The Edge features a seamless app and sensor system that assigns workspaces that best fit users’ preferences, and allows them to control the brightness of the lighting and the climate of their particular areas. Even the coffee machines recognise individuals when they approach and dispense the blends and add-ins they desire. Embracing Incompleteness Office work will increasingly occur in a dispersed network of social and adaptive working environments, empowering users and teams to link together in different contexts and types of collaboration. In the modern city, each of us will pick from a menu of different environments that access our social networks and support our personal needs and aspirations day by day and indeed hour by hour. Real estate, and not just in the workplace sector, will increasingly become a service industry focused on people rather than on assets. Design and management of buildings will be less about the ‘hardware’ of work – whether desks, partitions, technology or specifications – and more about the ‘software’: the cultural, social and value systems of the organisation.

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Clive Wilkinson Architects, Macquarie Bank, Sydney, 2009 The atrium refers to the urban precedent of a street in order to create informal activity along its edges.

The atrium of Macquarie Bank in Sydney and the cutting-edge headquarters of Deloitte are examples of the way some corporations are attempting to facilitate social interactions, building on urban typologies such as the street and the square, albeit encapsulated within their buildings.

PLP Architecture, The Edge, Amsterdam, 2015 The atrium builds on the urban precedent of the piazza, in order to generate social activity within the building.

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Linehouse, WeWork Weihai Lu, Shanghai, 2016 Office use rescues the iconic former opium factory in an old residential district of the city, using the found spaces to create echoes of a grand hotel.

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Remaining relevant in the long term requires us to embrace adaptability and incompleteness, constant transition being mediated by user participation.

AHMM, Google HQ, 6 Pancras Square, London, 2016 The self-build internal fitout system uses timber panels and simple tools, echoing architect Walter Segal’s elegant and minimal approach to self-build housing to enable office users to easily alter the workplace environment.

Loose-fit buildings that offer simple, easy-to-reconfigure floorplates with good-quality natural light and an open, cloud-enabled servicing backbone will be more resilient to changing demands. More interactive and intermittent patterns of occupancy within offices also mean that medium-depth buildings with atriums, with a variety of spatial typologies and good environmental conditions, may become more suitable for many users, as deep centralcore buildings struggle to provide natural thermal, air and daylighting conditions, while shallow-depth configurations cannot provide larger spaces for groups and new types of collaboration. New ways of supplying and servicing flexible workplaces are needed. Building owners must plan for an overall reduction of office space but with the remainder being used more intensively. The reduction in individual rentable space can be compensated by providing and activating communal amenity spaces outside of the tenant’s unit. Office developers may need to acquire the skills of retailers, restaurateurs or theatrical impresarios to configure inclusive environments that are attractive to workers, creating special and exciting places to work. The focus on services rather than uniformly standardised space is already allowing the office sector to reuse obsolete buildings drawn from other use classes rather than create, as it has so often in the past, its own purpose-built and rapidly outdated structures. Examples include design studio SelgasCano’s remodelling within Lisbon’s oldest food market for Second Home’s Lisboa co-working space (2017); or WeWork Weihai Lu (2016), Linehouse’s transformation of a former opium factory in Shanghai. The B-side of this brave new world, that we need somehow to guard against, is a proliferation of office flophouses, affordable but disagreeable spaces to which lower-tier staff are consigned. Remaining relevant in the long term requires us to embrace adaptability and incompleteness, constant transition being mediated by user participation. Transition should be considered the key feature of the way offices are built, with new designs and tools that embrace creativity and appropriation to allow people to shape their everyday spaces in ways that support their constantly evolving priorities. 1 Notes 1. Quoted in Edgar Kaufmann (ed), An American Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright, Horizon Press (New York), 1955, pp 137–8. 2. Emergent Research in association with Intuit, The Intuit 2020 Report, October 2010, p 5: available for download at http://about.intuit.com/futureofsmallbusiness/. 3. Ibid, p 21.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 68–9 © Google; pp 70-1(t) © View Pictures/UIG/Getty Images; pp 70-1(b) © Photo Dirk Lindner; p 72 © Clive Wilkinson Architects, photo Shannon McGarth; p 73 © Ronald Tilleman, courtesy of PLP Architects; p 74 © WeWork/Seth Powers; p 75 © AHMM

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SYSTEM SEPARATION

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Giorgio Macchi

A FITTING STRATEGY FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

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The need for constant renewal of the building stock can seem at odds with the desire for historical continuity. System Separation offers an answer. A strategy developed by the Office for Real Estate and Public Buildings of the Swiss Canton of Bern, it involves categorising different building components according to a hierarchy of lifespans: longer-life elements are designed to encourage future spatial possibilities, while shorter-life elements can be modified without disruption to more enduring ones. The office’s former chief architect Giorgio Macchi here outlines the strategy, illustrating it through two recent projects where it has served as the guiding principle. 78

The Office for Real Estate and Public Buildings of the Swiss Canton of Bern (OPB) owns a portfolio of approximately 2,000 public buildings with a value of 5 billion Swiss francs (CHF), serving its population of one million inhabitants. The Office annually makes investments of 150–200 million CHF on building projects affecting around 20 per cent of its stock. Given the size of its holdings and its experience of constant building transformations, the organisation began 20 years ago to develop a strategy known as System Separation, aimed at facilitating the process of change, and this strategy became binding for all of its projects.1 System Separation provides a methodology that separates the components of buildings into a hierarchy of three levels that can be altered with varying degrees of ease. Key elements such as structure, being less modifiable, are treated differently to more ephemeral fit-out and equipment. The strategy steers both procedures and the design of the built environment. The motto of System Separation is ff.ff – signifying the strategy of ‘fixing few’ elements to maintain flexibility, but ‘fixing [them] firmly’ to maintain reliability. This anticipates that long-term changes to buildings will inevitably occur and should not be inhibited by short-term decision making, such as limiting storey heights or structural capacity to make apparently expedient initial cost savings. The System Separation notion is that a building’s value is enhanced if it can be easily renewed and transformed, constantly acquiring layers of culture and identity in use over time. A key part of the approach is that users and operators must be educated in the potential of their buildings to respond to development; equally, planners and other decision makers need to be briefed and explicitly mandated to facilitate rather than limit this process of alteration.

System Separation sees building fabric in long-, mediumand short-term perspectives. Long-life Primary Systems with lifespans of more than 100 years include structure and foundations, floorplates and facades; mid-life Secondary Systems, lasting say 25 years, are the internal elements like lifts, mechanical and electrical plant and fit-out; and more transient Tertiary Systems, with a five- to 15-year expectancy, consist of equipment, fittings and furnishings. This systematic allocation of building components into the three definite loose-fitted systems is the first strategic principle of System Separation. Designing according to this hierarchy of lifespans means that replacement or modification of shorterlife elements does not affect or damage those of greater durability. The second strategic principle is flexibility, assured by the Primary and Secondary Systems being designed for openness; and the third is area-availability, assured by the Primary System being designed in such a way that the building can be extended to the maximum over time. Building planning needs to be seen in long-, medium- and short-term perspectives as well, underpinned by appropriate budgets. Project briefs are viewed in terms of ‘process’, i.e. the strategic priorities and overall functional requirements; ‘organisation’, referring to a more detailed analysis of activities and adjacencies; and, at the most detailed, the ‘operational’ level, which deals with individual spaces, technical equipment and human resources. This approach to understanding how a building is to be used contrasts with more usual technical briefs which are based on very large, highly detailed datasets of requirements that are generally outdated even before the building, whose shape they have determined, is complete.

HKK Architekten Partner, Hegi Koch Kolb + Partner Architekten and Kamm Architekten (Primary System), IttenBrechbühl AG (Secondary System) and HWP Planungsgesellschaft (Tertiary System), INO building, Bern, Switzerland, 2012 previous spread: Internal view of the access zone, part of the Secondary System. The separation into Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Systems allows for technical, functional and managerial alternatives at a given time and for development over time. Designing for openness creates explicit architectural form and atmosphere, along with implicit flexibility. opposite top: The INO university hospital building is the first project guided by the strategy of System Separation. Shown here is the competition model of the Primary System. The Primary System is the long-term part of the whole, designed for openness and assuring flexibility for medium-term Secondary Systems (infill and technical structure) and short-term Tertiary Systems (equipment). above: The concise urban shape of the Primary System establishes visual orientation and a stable shell for a complex interior changing over time. The balance between what is firm and what has to be kept open for development is the basic challenge when designing buildings that last.

INO: A UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL BUILDING INO (Intensiv-, Notfall- und Operationszentrum) was the first project guided by System Separation. Completed in 2012 as part of the University Hospital of Bern, INO is a highly sophisticated building containing intensive care units, accident and emergency wards, operating theatres and laboratories. These are rapidly developing medical fields, and great changes occurred even during the planning and implementation of the building, which started in the mid-1990s. The innovative Primary System, or building structure and shell, designed by the Swiss practices HKK Architekten Partner, Hegi Koch Kolb + Partner Architekten and Kamm Architekten, was the result of an international competition involving architects not necessarily specialised in hospital planning. It was concerned instead with the urban and architectural challenge of creating a robust Primary System – attractive, well positioned and designed for openness. The subsequent competition for the Secondary System – in other words, for the interior organisation and fit-out – was open exclusively to highly experienced hospital planners, the winning team of IttenBrechbühl AG working closely with the hospital staff in developing the design. The Tertiary System designers, HWP Planungsgesellschaft, were directly appointed on the basis of their expertise, as were the project managers. The sequential planning of the three system levels and the ability to manipulate their content independently provided a paradigmatic shift in decision making. The openness previously created by the Primary System allowed the competition for the Secondary System to be

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focused on the challenge of organising the hospital facilities. This increased the pressure on the designers, as well as the jury and client, to be highly rigorous. At the same time the inherent flexibility of the Primary System was tested and confirmed. The Primary System has a distinctive architectural form and comprises a gross area of 51,000 square metres (550,000 square feet) on spacious and very flexible floors. The concrete frame has columns demarcating a grid of 8.4-by-8.4-metre (28-by-28-foot) bays, each of which includes a central zone of 3.6 by 3.6 metres (12 by 12 feet) that can be knocked out to introduce daylight, for vertical access or to make visual connections. Each storey of the building is provided with dedicated mechanical and electrical plant rooms, and services are laterally distributed via raised floors and false ceilings, allowing the concrete ceiling to be kept free of all mechanical, electrical and public health (MEP) installations. Openness in building design should not be mistaken for indecisiveness; rather, it demands highly coherent and intelligent decision making. INO has become a pioneering medical institution and because of its adaptability can continue to retain its cutting edge.

Spreng + Partner, VonRoll university building, Bern, Switzerland, 2013

VONROLL UNIVERSITY BUILDING The vonRoll Building – realised by Bern architects Spreng + Partner – was completed in 2013, and it also observes the principles of System Separation. The initial scheme was for the Chemistry faculty. Although planning constraints limited the size of a first stage, the well-situated site called for a strategy that would maintain its potential capacity for future expansions. A well-briefed jury selected a very robust Primary System; but before the design of the Secondary System commenced, the government decided on a radical change of use, allocating the new building to the University of Teacher Education and Human Sciences. Because of their lower technical requirements, the new users promptly proposed incorporating an additional floor of space and reducing the average storey height. The ff.ff motto suggested this would diminish future adaptability and the ability of the university to compete with its peers in the rapidly changing field of education, so the original Primary System was retained. Belying the rather mundane envelope of the building is the extraordinary space within it, measuring 100 by 80 metres (328 by 262 feet) and comprising a gross floor area of 56,000 square metres (600,000 square feet), with a floor-to-soffit height of 3.3 metres (11 feet) and a floor-to-floor height of 3.6 metres (12 feet). The internal fit-out is strictly decoupled from the concrete structure, and all mechanical and electrical plant is visible and accessible. The potential to upgrade to a high-tech laboratory building is fully documented, and vertical or lateral building expansion also assured, according to the principle of area-availability.

left: With its refined austerity, the building recalls the former railway factory that previously occupied the site. Spaces and materials express a noble reserve. In accordance with the principles of System Separation, the Primary System is robust and open to future changes and development. opposite: The library. Openness is a quality to be designed and not an additive manifestation of possibilities. To create simplicity with an inherent capacity for conflicting and dynamic priorities requires explicit decisions from both client and architects. The System Separation strategy provides appropriate support.

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The internal fit-out is strictly decoupled from the concrete structure, and all mechanical and electrical plant is visible and accessible. 81

Spreng + Partner, VonRoll university building, Bern, Switzerland, 2013

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Ground-floor plan. The building houses the University of Teacher Education and Human Sciences of the University of the Canton of Bern. Although it is currently relatively low-tech in terms of engineering, the possibility of future transformation into a high-tech building for natural sciences is assured according to the principles of System Separation.

The key challenge for architects is to design attractive buildings that respond to their context, are robust yet open to change.

Note 1. The current guidelines, in German, are accessible on the website of the OPB (www.bve.be.ch) by following: Amt für Grundstücke und Gebäude, Fachstellen, Nachhaltig Bauen und Bewirtschaften, Systemtrennung.

A FLEXIBLE AND SUSTAINABLE BUILT ENVIRONMENT The key challenge for architects is to design attractive buildings that respond to their context, are robust yet open to change. Such buildings have Primary Systems with no structural complications, minimal obstructions, high load capacity, generous internal storey heights, building components separated by life expectancy, clearly stated mechanical and electrical plant capacities for changing uses on every floor, plus structures and logistics ready for additional space to be added laterally or vertically. The latter is especially important in well-connected urban areas, which need to be developed densely – whether now or in the future – to limit carbon, as travel to and from a new building has almost the same impact on the environment as the building in operation. System Separation promotes sustainable development in many other ways. The openness of buildings encourages inclusivity, appropriation and continuing social development. Independent and autonomous elements of building construction can be retained and redundant elements removed with minimal waste and without wholesale demolition, to preserve precious embodied carbon. With reduced running costs over a whole-life basis, these buildings are also environmentally and economically viable. And importantly, long-life structures retain references to historical change, preserving the patina and memory of our heritage and our ever-changing cultural identity. 1

The access zone. What has been built at a given time will be completed by thousands of users and countless interventions: architecture emerges by its use over time. System Separation is oriented towards this developing perspective, generating buildings that welcome instead of predicting.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images © Office for Real Estate and Public Buildings of Swiss Canton of Bern

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Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson

DEAD AND DYING SHOPPING MALLS, RE-INHABITED 84

ZED Events, Zombie paintball, 2017 Since offering zombie paintball to sell-out crowds at an abandoned shopping mall in Reading, Berkshire, in 2011, ZED Events has expanded to seven other UK locations. Several US malls have similarly installed paintball, but more as a spectator experience without the zombies.

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The living dead could be coming to a shopping centre near you! Zombie paintball experiences are just one of many inventive reuses of failing malls identified by architectural educators and writers Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, who have been tracking trends in suburban retrofits for over a decade. From medical facilities to megachurches, and from offices to community colleges, they cite projects the length and breadth of the US – and beyond – that take advantage of the vast floor areas and parking facilities of these sites, and give them a sustainable future.

The mass culture of the second half of the 20th century, characteristic of the ‘consumers’ republic’ that is the United States of America, produced a surplus of built space dedicated to shopping.1 Suburban strip centres, big-box stores and shopping malls, easily accessed by car from arterial roads and highways, were built at a rapid clip on large tracts of former green fields, grazing lands, desert scrub and filled wetlands on the metropolitan periphery, rendering ‘Main Street’ retail obsolete. The typical one- or two-storey North American mall is an agglomeration of large, windowless department stores connected by double-loaded corridors – often skylit – lined with smaller shops. There is close to 2 square metres (22 square feet) of shopping-centre space per capita in the US, compared to only 0.2 square metres (2 square feet) in Europe,2 and this surplus is unsustainable. Approximately one-third of enclosed malls in the US have died or are dying, covering over 13,000 hectares (32,120 acres) or more land area than the cities of Boston, Massachusetts, or Manchester in the UK. In the 1980s and

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1990s, tenants often relocated to newer, competing malls. Today they are more likely to close shop, relocate back to Main Street or go online. (E-retailing, meanwhile, is producing its own troubling surpluses of massive distribution centres, wasteful packaging and idling delivery trucks in residential neighbourhoods.) The size of malls, anywhere from 30,000 to 120,000 square metres (320,000 to 1.3 million square feet) each on 20 to 40 hectares (50 to 100 acres), leaves many as stranded white elephants. This provides opportunities for the virtuous strategy of building re-inhabitation, or the creative reuse of obsolete structures and their parking surrounds for new non-retail uses. A database we have been maintaining for over a decade tracks examples of suburban property types that have been retrofitted into significantly more sustainable places. Of the approximately 1,500 shopping centres in the US that were at one time enclosed, 1,035 are still operating, and 196 are in various stages of complete or substantial redevelopment with a more urban pattern of new buildings and uses. Ten have integrated green infrastructure or become parks. Another 119 have undergone substantial or complete re-inhabitation. This does not transform the morphology of generally lowdensity buildings that are separated by use and dependent on private cars. But it does provide opportunities to re-localise economies with more community-serving uses and retain the embodied energy of the real-estate product shells that remain. While the focus here is on the re-inhabitation of dead and dying shopping malls, this is happening in conjunction with more systemic changes that are gradually transforming the social, economic and environmental performance of the larger landscape.3 This is not a zero-sum game between cities and their suburbs, as all metropolitan areas require stewardship and skilful regeneration to stem the spread of energy-wasting and resource-intensive sprawl. One of the primary advantages of older shopping malls is the communities that have grown around them. The needs of these neighbours go beyond shopping and entertainment to include medical and other services, jobs, education and physical activity. Another advantage are the vast expanses of surrounding tarmac ready for creative re-imagination. The timescales for retrofits vary. Mall owners often pursue short-term projects, whether temporary pop-ups or events that keep the lights on and stabilise vacancies to retain existing rent-paying commercial tenants. Creative entrepreneurs have embraced the ‘undead’ post-apocalyptic ambiance of vacant malls and converted them into profitable sites where patrons play zombie paintball or engage in drone racing. Others have made use of their lack of inhabitants to serve ‘the Cloud’ as data centres or solar farms, as at the former Eastgate Mall in Indianapolis. Medium-term approaches comprise cosmetic changes, such as new signage and rebranding with a bright coat of paint, to eke out enough income to keep an existing property economically stable without major new investment for up to 20 years, the typical lifespan for a conventional shopping mall between major renovations. These re-inhabitations may become incubators for a range of locally owned ‘mom and pop’-type businesses. Longer-term projects require significant investment to provide higher standards of building performance suitable for new institutional and public uses.

MEDICAL MALLS AND OFFICE SPACE One of the more successful approaches to regeneration, not inappropriately, has been to insert medical clinics or to completely convert properties into medical malls. The retailing of healthcare services in the US started in 2000, and accelerated in 2010 when the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) created more than 22 million new ‘health shoppers’ seeking consumer-oriented services at convenient times and locations, whether in person or online. Between 2000 and 2014, 44 per cent of outpatient visits occurred in the evenings and at weekends, increasingly in more dispersed locations closer to ageing baby boomers’ homes and combined with shopping.4 In addition to the 900 walk-in clinics attached to a chain of pharmacies around the country, 16 malls now have major health clinics and medical offices breathing new life into them and improving healthcare access.

Gresham, Smith and Partners, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, One Hundred Oaks Mall, Nashville, Tennessee, 2009 With a focus on the ease of the patient experience, the floor plan for the medical centre, on the second floor of the One Hundred Oaks Mall, is laid out as if the different clinics were shops. Each has its own waiting area along the public corridor and transitions back to the most private spaces along the exterior wall.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean credited one such example with reinvigorating a neglected part of his city. The 1967-vintage One Hundred Oaks Mall had seen much better days when Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) chose to move some of its outpatient services from a crowded, parkingchallenged, midtown Nashville campus into the mall’s vacant second floor. It offered 42,000 square metres with room to grow, ample parking and a new marketing tagline: ‘“Convenience” is about to become a medical term. Take Exit 79, then left.’ Gresham, Smith and Partners’ 2009 gut renovation introduced warm colours and furnishings that dramatically changed the feel of the interior to something akin to a hotel lobby. A new facade with grand entrances and large windows welcomes patients from well-organised parking lots landscaped with 400 new oak trees and rain gardens. Patients sign in to an electronic kiosk and are given pagers, freeing them to visit the shops at ground-floor level while waiting for appointments. Cyril Stewart, then Director of Facility Planning at VUMC, cited increased patient visits at the mall location.5 The mall owner has also been pleased, upgrading the retail and extending the model to other dead mall properties. Suited to cheap space with plenty of parking, by far the most common new use for former malls is office space. Government offices are placed in malls when ownership has defaulted to the municipality or when local officials want to support a mall’s success, as in the move of the town hall into the Voorhees Mall in New Jersey. Local government can provide tax breaks or other incentives to encourage job creation in dying malls. This was true for the many conversions of dead department store space into call centres in the early 2000s. Examples include the Eastgate Mall in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Bon Carré Technology Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and more recently Southlake Mall in

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Perkins Eastman, Nova Place, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2016 Faros Properties, the new owner of the 1965 Allegheny Mall, which was converted to corporate office use in 1994, plans to restore the former street grid, convert the larger area into a mixed-use tech hub, and attract more creative office use. Perkins Eastman’s redesign of the mall’s 166-metre (544-foot) concourse provides shared event and collaborative space to support leased coworking and corporate office spaces. The upper circulation path is designed as a walking trail with distance markers in the carpet.

EOP Architects, Southland Christian Church, Lexington, Kentucky, 2009 The church hired EOP Architects to convert the former two-storey Lexington Mall into their Richmond Road campus (one of four in Kentucky). The campus houses a 2,800-seat worship centre, age-differentiated youth education areas, and a warehouse for ministry work. The LED-lit metal panel sunscreen is intended as a contemporary expression of a stained-glass window, and the sloped columns at the front as ‘the forest’ whose ‘trees’ form crosses.

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Atlanta. Increasingly, corporate owners have been retrofitting mall space for their own use. Google took over the Mayfield Mall in Silicon Valley after Hewlett Packard left. The Ford Motor Company converted 22,300 square metres (240,000 square feet) at the Fairlane Mall in Detroit into office space. While these examples do not offer the vibrancy of walkable urbanism increasingly sought by firms seeking to hire cityloving millennials, they do offer mixed-use amenities, from food courts to fitness centres as, for example, at Perkins Eastman’s Nova Place in Pittsburgh (2016). MEGACHURCHES AND ETHNIC MALLS Changing demographics and social lives in suburbia are also driving two very distinct new uses in obsolete shopping centres: megachurches and ethnic malls. Both are explicit efforts to create new kinds of community hubs for groups that have otherwise found limited opportunities for connectedness. Although church attendance in general in the US has been declining, megachurches (with attendances over 2,000) continue to grow, especially in suburban communities in the south and west such as Las Vegas, areas with sprawling development patterns and more transient populations.6 Spacious buildings with abundant parking provide for large Sunday services as well as small group activities throughout the week, from bible study to sports and art classes. These religious institutions use various design means to represent their missions. In 1999, Church At The Mall in Lakeland,

Florida, added the classical raised portico and steeple associated with Baptist churches onto the front of the former mall. EOP Architects’ 2009 design of Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, a reuse of the Lexington Mall, deliberately avoided traditional iconography. The architects have stated that Southland wanted a design to help attract people who might not otherwise attend church. The growth in ethnic malls caters to new faces in suburbia, especially growing numbers of Asians and Hispanics. Historically ignored by mainstream retailers reluctant to alter product lines, the escalating buying power of these groups is increasingly recognised, particularly by immigrant entrepreneurs themselves. Mexican immigrant José de Jésus Legaspi has been very successful in retrofitting dying US malls into Hispanic malls that serve as vital community centres. The properties he owns or has consulted on are typically subdivided by narrow pathways lined with hundreds of small booths for vendors selling goods and services, much as one would find in a mercado in Latin America. They usually have a Spanish-speaking pharmacy, health clinic, cinema, nightclub, legal offices, and even a radio or television station. Legaspi always includes a stage for frequent performances, whether a quinceañera fashion show, Mexican wrestlers, pop stars, or his house mariachi band. His largest mall, La Gran Plaza Mall in Fort Worth, Texas, acquired in 2004, also includes a community college, Baptist church, town hall, and classrooms for Ballet Folklorico Azteca.

Mercado at the Plaza Fiesta, Atlanta, Georgia, 2015 In 2000, in response to a 230 per cent increase in the Hispanic population of DeKalb County, the new owners of the former Buford Clairmont Mall (built in 1968) renamed it Plaza Fiesta and reconfigured it to serve Spanish speakers. Its community-building status goes well beyond tacos and Western wear. In addition to the targeted retail, services and events, the mall’s management developed political muscle by agreeing to host a political rally for immigrant rights that attracted 50,000 marchers in April 2006.

Although church attendance in general in the US has been declining, megachurches continue to grow, especially in suburban communities in the south and west such as Las Vegas. 89

Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects, ACCelerator Lab, Austin Community College, Austin, Texas, 2014 Instead of chopping the former mall department store into individual classrooms, the 90-metre (295-foot) long space was outfitted with 600 computer stations. Students work through remedial maths modules at their own pace while instructors in red or blue jackets roam the room and respond to visual signals to give assistance.

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SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES Educational activities are perhaps the most forwardlooking uses that communities can bring to a dead or dying mall. Schools of all kinds have moved into obsolete big-box stores, strip malls, and malls, especially charter schools and community colleges, both of which have been growing in number. Efforts to rethink public education have driven up the number of charter schools in the US sixfold between 2000 and 2015. The Sage International School of Boise, Idaho, moved its high school into the Parkcenter Mall in 2016. When those students graduate, if they follow national trends, 42 per cent will attend a two-year community college, perhaps studying in another former shopping centre. In 2010, Austin Community College (ACC) bought the former JC Penney department store at the Highland Mall in Austin, Texas. The design concepts by Barnes Gromatsky Kosarek Architects and ACC not only retrofitted the windowless box, they also innovated methods of teaching remedial maths. The ACCelerator Lab cut the attrition rate in maths by more than half, particularly benefitting black and Hispanic students.7 In 2012, ACC partnered with RedLeaf Properties to purchase the entire mall and started renovations in 2016 with a programming focus on workforce innovation, culinary arts, creative media, healthcare training, childcare and business. RedLeaf, in partnership with Greystar, also started building new mixed-use housing on top of the mall’s car parking. The masterplan by McCann Adams Studio envisions ACC not as a standalone campus, but as the heart of a new mixed-use neighbourhood well served by public transport. The arrival of lightrail in 2010 and ACC’s investments have already had transformative ripple effects on the surrounding area.8

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX As these examples show, inside-the-box innovation, such as reinventing healthcare, office, worship and education spaces, often leads to complementary outside-the-box benefits. These retrofitting schemes help reconnect insular, consumerist shopping malls to their surrounding neighbourhoods and communities, conferring more sustainable results. The designers of new large-span buildings – in shopping centres, office parks or other suburban settings – ought to consider schemes that explicitly anticipate future retrofitting and reuse of both building floorplates and car parks. Imaginatively expecting and enabling evolutionary change, responsive to evolving needs, is perhaps the key to having the longest new life. 1

Notes 1. See Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, Alfred A Knopf (New York), 2003. 2. Cushman & Wakefield, ‘Global Shopping Center Development Report: Americas, Europe, Asia’, Spring 2014. For the latest guide see http:// cwglobalretailguide.com/. 3. See Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, John Wiley & Sons (Hoboken, NJ), 2011; June Williamson, Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb, Island Press (Washington, DC), 2013; and Emily Talen (ed), Retrofitting Sprawl: Addressing Seventy Years of Failed Urban Form, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 2015. 4. Katherine G Carman, Christine Eibner and Susan M Paddock, ‘Trends in Health Insurance Enrollment, 2013–15’, Health Affairs, 34 (6), 2015, pp 1044–8. 5. Cyril Stewart, ‘Vanderbilt Health at One Hundred Oaks: Transforming Architecture, Healthcare and a Community’, presentation at the American Institute of Architects convention, Denver, Colorado, 19 June 2013. See also Todd Hutlock, ‘The Ultimate Recycling Project – Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks Outpatient Clinic Mall’, Healthcare Design Magazine, 12 January 2012: https://healthcarecouncil.com/the-ultimate-recyclingproject-vanderbilt-health-one-hundred-oaks-outpatient-clinic-mallhealthcare-design-magazine/. 6. Amanda Sakuma, ‘The Super-Sized Growth Behind Megachurches’, MSNBC, 24 October 2014: www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-super-sizedgrowth-behind-megachurches. 7. Virginia Tech pioneered the modular system. See Paul Fain, ‘Texas-Size Math Lab’, Inside Higher Ed, 20 March 2015: www.insidehighered.com/ news/2015/03/20/austin-community-colleges-promising-experimentpersonalized-remedial-mathematics. 8. Julie Chang, ‘ACC Campus Sparks Renewal Around Half-Vacant Highland Mall’, Austin American-Statesman, 26 August 2014: www. mystatesman.com/news/acc-campus-sparks-renewal-around-half-vacanthighland-mall/sGp22yh3F68Rjl9j0xDp0J/.

The design concepts not only retrofitted the windowless box, they also innovated methods of teaching remedial maths. McCann Adams Studio, Highland campus masterplan, Austin Community College, Austin, Texas, 2011– At final build-out, the masterplan for the campus shows a mix of educational facilities, tech companies and small businesses in the former Highland Mall, surrounded by residential and mixeduse buildings flanking a town green connecting the mall to a recently built transit station. The first 300-unit mixeduse building, built on top of the car parks, opened in spring 2017.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 84–5 Courtesy of ZED Events; p 87 © Vanderbilt University Medical Center; p 88(t) Courtesy of Perkins Eastman; p 88(b&c) © EOP Architects / phebus photography; p 89 © Vespasian/Alamy Stock; p 90(t) © Casey Dunn, courtesy of Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects; p 90(b) © Elizabeth Day and McCann Adams Studio

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SHAPING MEXICO CITY Andrea Martin and Jorge Andrade

EVOLUTIONARY HOUSING FOR LOW-INCOME URBAN FAMILIES

The need for affordable housing in major cities is a familiar challenge worldwide. Mexico City’s poorer residents have demonstrated true ingenuity and flexibility in meeting it – as Andrea Martin and Jorge Andrade, cofounders of the housing research collaborative Taller de Vivienda at the Metropolitan University of Mexico, explain. They outline how the form of subdivided urban colonial mansions known as vecindades has influenced that of the randomly planned self-built neighbourhoods termed colonias populares, and examine both: from initial settlement, through expansion and densification, to saturation.

Typical layout of an inner-city vecindad, Mexico City, between 1920 and 1941 Vecindades were very popular as low-income housing from the late 19th century to the 1950s. Their rooms form a U shape around a long narrow courtyard where services and activities are shared. The high ceilings allow the addition of lofts for sleeping. Rooms facing the street are usually shops.

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As in most cities in the developing world, people in Mexico City have evolved their own methods to provide themselves with affordable homes. About two-thirds of the city’s population – which totals 21.2 million in the metropolitan area – live in selfbuilt dwellings or neighbourhoods. Two of the most popular arrangements are vecindades and colonias populares. The first comprise grand colonial houses subdivided into multiple small homes, a popular housing typology in the capital over the last three centuries as they provide inhabitants with flexible space to adapt according to their own needs. The second constitute relatively randomly planned neighbourhoods that have sprung up on low-value land in the city’s outskirts since the middle of the 20th century, housing the most disadvantaged segment of the population. The Rise and Stall of Vecindades In the 1500s, Spanish conquerors founded Mexico City over the remains of the ancient city of Tenochtitlán. During the 18th century, magnificent palaces and noble houses were built in the inner city sharing a similar layout: a courtyard dwelling scheme

with one or more quadrangular patios, outdoor staircases and one or two storeys. After the Reform Laws of 1859, through which the Mexican government expropriated the Church’s property, the city endured major urban changes, as the extensive confiscated assets were transformed into public schools and social housing. Rich families moved to the suburbs, and their large colonial houses were abandoned or subdivided and sublet to increase the number of dwellings and shops, hence becoming vecindades. Two types of vecindades coexist in the central area of the city today: the old colonial houses, and new ones mimicking the old ones, built after the city’s fast industrialisation period at the beginning of the 1900s. Their communal character made them resilient to urban speculation and pressure for change of use. Nonetheless, slow deterioration due to rent control in the 1950s, as well as overcrowding and extensive damage caused by the 1985 earthquake, destroyed or depopulated many of them. Despite the many setbacks, several low-income groups have fought to remain in the inner city, either because of tradition, emotional attachment or the economic potential of the area. Saturation and gentrification, however, are slowly driving them out.

Development of the colonia popular in Pedregal de Santa Ursula, Coyoacan, Mexico City, 1954 onwards

Drawn here from aerial photographs, this informal settlement started as a few single-room makeshift dwellings. There was no basic infrastructure (water supply, sewerage, electricity or road access). Private speculators sold the land, which they illegally subdivided into blocks, each comprising 30 lots of 250 square metres (2,690 square feet).

By 1974, most lots had at least one building. Some public water supply stations were provided around this time, but there was still no municipal sewerage. Two crossroads were paved and connected to the city’s street grid. A marketplace and secondary school were built in one of the open spaces, and a community centre and second primary school in the other.

The colonia’s expansion began a decade after the initial settling, as more dwellings appeared along the incipient grid of dirt roads. No water supply or sewerage existed yet, although some roads now had public lampposts. A primary school and a church were built in one of the large open spaces provided for services around the mid-1960s.

Property deeds started to be formalised in 1978. By the early 2000s, most lots were inhabited by several related nuclear families whose initial tworoom dwellings had evolved into family co-op apartment buildings. Today all streets are paved and connected to the city’s grid, basic infrastructure is complete, and facilities fill most of the public open spaces.

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The Act of ‘Building’ while ‘Dwelling’ From the mid-20th century onwards, exponential unplanned urbanisation led to the proliferation of colonias populares as the sole means for affordable accommodation in the city. Housing needs for the large influx of rural migrants at the time surpassed the public and private sectors’ capacity to satisfy demand. Most low-income newcomers settled in the city’s fringes on empty land of little commercial value, or potentially hazardous sites, which were hastily and randomly planned for urbanisation, thus beginning the lengthy growth cycle of a typical colonia popular over several generations. This ongoing process adds multiple new settlements each year, generating a budget ‘burden’ on the city, as it has to provide expensive infrastructure and services while receiving little back in the way of taxes.1 The colonia popular of Pedregal de Santa Ursula in Coyoacan began to be settled in 1954.2 Its story is similar to that of most colonias populares. Initially, its urban arrangement consisted of a rudimentary grid of dirt roads unconnected to the city’s urban layout, with no infrastructure, facilities or services of any kind. Scattered makeshift structures, usually of 20 to 30 square metres (215 to 323 square feet), were put together by young families on lots with no legal tenure. After many years of expansion and densification, pressure from settlers eventually forced city officials to provide the growing collective with infrastructure and services. Slowly but steadily, electricity, running water and street pavements were introduced, and some services and small shops started to burgeon. In time, nuclear families evolved into extended ones. With more family members in the labour force, and the formalisation of property deeds, construction of permanent rooms with durable materials followed. The layout of the structures – closed rooms facing courtyards with external staircases, much like the traditional vecindades – allows related families to share bathrooms and kitchens, to cut construction costs. It is common for extended families to live together, either because grown offspring remain to start their own families, or because they return to the nest after some time to build their homes within their parents’ lot. Through an intricate web of social networks and monumental communal efforts, these families have gradually transformed a hostile environment into a new, vibrant neighbourhood.

Intersection of Santa Ursula Avenue and San León Street, Mexico City, 2017 Wide avenues such as the one in the photo are used for vehicle circulation as well as for traditional local farmers’ markets. There is a mix of uses throughout the neighbourhood.

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The Fragoso family’s dwelling in Santa Ursula, Mexico City, 1967 onwards opposite top: Two independent structures – one makeshift and one permanent (shown in plan and section) – were self-built by a 5-person family (NF-1) with a group savings scheme. Six years later, the by-then 7-member family moved the makeshift structure against the permanent one, with access to one side. They also reinforced the permanent structure’s foundations, and replaced the asbestos sheet cover with a concrete slab. opposite middle: By 1976, with two nuclear families resident, the makeshift bathroom was moved to the back to be shared. Between then and 1990, the new family (NF-2) added three rooms and a bathroom with their own savings. By 1991 another nuclear family (NF-3) built three more rooms with a paid foreman’s assistance. NF-4 moved in a year later, after building a large room and bathroom. In 1999 NF-1 improved the original structure, adding another room with an architect’s technical assistance thanks to a loan from the City’s Housing Institute. The site now accommodated 16 family members. opposite bottom: By 2005, the growth pattern changed from linear/ concentric to vertical. A second floor for bedrooms, accessed by an internal staircase, was added by NF-2. In 2006 NF-4 did similarly to their dwelling. These additions involved them demolishing the concrete slab. With an architect’s technical assistance thanks to a loan from the City’s Housing Institute, NF-5 built a new dwelling above NF-3, accessed by an external staircase. This was repeated in 2007 to house NF-6. The total number of residents was now 28.

Jorge Andrade Architect, Xacalli Housing Development, Xochimilco, Mexico City, 1997 below: This small development of 50 dwellings was planned with participatory design, underscoring community life and individual family needs. Groupings of 5 and 10 dwellings facing a large open space form 10 shared courtyards. Dwellings can grow and have different floor plans. This 2013 rendering shows dwellings at different phases of the incremental process. bottom: The provision of growth for each dwelling goes from 69 square metres (743 square feet) in the initial phase, up to two possible increments of 25 square metres (269 square feet). The base structure allows for variations in configuration and size of the dwellings. Individual expression can be achieved with different morphology and variations in facades.

Success Story? Over and over, the settlers of colonias populares have proven that they possess the organisational capacity and efficiency to develop their own housing. They live in their dwelling while building it, which allows them to build relatively flexible frameworks that better adapt to their sociocultural background, economic capabilities and changing needs. It is worth noting that settlers intuitively follow a similar pattern of growth: rooms in the front aligned to the street and inner rooms around a central courtyard, much like vecindades. They usually do not have a preconceived design plan. This is the case of the Fragoso family.3 Their building process in Santa Ursula, illustrated here, began in 1967 when they set out to house a nuclear family of five. By 2007 the dwelling had grown to house six nuclear families: 28 people in all. Nonetheless, the lack of financial resources needlessly lengthens this process, sometimes stalling it altogether. Furthermore, the lack of professional technical and design advice affects building structure and quality standards. Increasingly, the gradual saturation of private open spaces, poor natural light and ventilation in the dwellings has a negative impact on health and quality of life. Much could be done with better planning and some technical intervention to prevent the waste of resources, and to avoid expensive mistakes in order to create more sustainable urban developments. With this in mind, Taller de Vivienda (TAVI), a housing research collaborative within the department of Architecture in the Metropolitan University of Mexico (UAM), was founded in 1986. TAVI has partnered with several nongovernmental organisations, government agencies, community groups and universities in Mexico and other countries to do research and work in the field of rural, urban and social housing design. One example of this work is Xacalli, a small urban development designed by UAM Professor Jorge Andrade for Xacalli’s Housing Group in Xochimilco, built in 1997.4 Using participatory design tools, the concept was inspired by the courtyards of vecindades and the incremental growth of colonias populares. All dwellings are different in size and distribution while preserving their unity by giving regulated options for possible growth and using the same materials. The scheme proved successful for the 50 families that still live there today. It is evident that there is still much to learn from these incremental settlement processes, in which social capital is undoubtedly the most important asset. 1 Notes 1. See Jan Bazant, ‘Procesos de desarrollo urbano de las ciudades’, Pensar el Futuro de Mexico 14, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico City), 2011, pp 34–5. 2. See Jorge Andrade, Dwelling transformations: Santa Ursula case study, unpublished Master’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1981. 3. See Guillermo Ruiz, Construir Habitando: 4 casos de studio en Santa Ursula, unpublished thesis, UAM-X, 2011. 4. See http://tavi.xoc.uam.mx/proyectos/construidos/Proyecto_Construido_%20 Xacalli.pdf.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 92, 95(t) © TAVI – Jorge Andrade & Andrea Martin; pp 93 (tl, tr, bl), 94(r) © Jorge Andrade/Architect; p 93(br) Imagery © 2017 Cnes/Spot Image, DigitalGlobe, Map data © 2017 Goole, INEGI; p 94(l) © Google 2017; p 95(b) © onnis luque

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EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION THROUGH Alexi Marmot

BUILDING ADAPTATION

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Hawkins\Brown, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), London, 2016 The floor area has been doubled and the original building transformed by a new wing and staircase, extra floors and cantilevered perimeter space encircling every floor.

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How can school and university buildings adap pt to accommodate growth and ge in educational sig gnificant chang technologies? How can new buildings be designed that will stand the test of future change? Architect and planner Alexii Marmott, Proffessor off Faciility and Environment Manag gement at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London, looks at innovattive upgrad des off olld ed ducattionall building gs and conversions of other facilities into contemporary schools, colleges and universities. She identifies general priinciiplles and d useffull toolls thatt can hellp gners educators,, architects and desig working in the field.

Pietro Canonici Sepulchre, Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna, Italy, 16th century Learning in the presence of a master before the spread of printed books and reading. Canonici, a distinguished lecturer in civil law, died in 1502.

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Continuing Growth and Change in Global Education From modest rural schoolrooms in the global south to grand architecture in colleges and universities in wealthy nations, educational buildings are multiplying and changing. Every nation today recognises the importance of education in developing its people, its society and workforce so that they can better participate in an increasingly knowledge-based global economy. Learners at every level are becoming more numerous as both the global population and participation rates in education increase. Pre-school, primary, secondary, college, university and lifelong learning are all expanding. For architects, project managers, contractors and their clients, the design and refurbishment of educational facilities is a flourishing sector. There are at least 1.4 billion current learners across the globe – about 500 million in primary schools, 700 million in secondary schools and over 200 million in tertiary-level education.1 In the UK alone, university floor space covers 21 million square metres (226 million square feet), while the annual capital investment in university buildings is £2.5 billion.2 Historically, most education took place in the presence of a sage, a learned teacher, lecturer or professor who shared knowledge through the spoken word and manuscripts. Printed books began to proliferate over scarce handwritten manuscripts from the mid-15th century with the invention of the printing press, thereby reducing the importance of face-to-face education. Once the basic skill of reading had been mastered, all the world’s knowledge, it was argued, could be discovered through self-study, through reading alone. Yet today, more than five centuries later, most children still flock daily to a place called ‘school’, and young adults attend a place called ‘college’ or ‘university’, where their learning is still guided by teachers and stimulated by being in the company of other learners, learning with and about them. Digital technologies of the last few decades are potentially a huge disruptor of the way in which we learn. Online journals and books may potentially render obsolete printed journals, books and libraries – yet sales of printed books are increasing in some countries while ebook sales decline. Free TED videos presented by the most brilliant minds and articulate speakers in the world are watched by millions, while mass open online courses (MOOCs) have grown to provide learning to 35 million people between 2011 (when the name was coined) and 2015,3 and the numbers continue to grow. Virtual learning environments are predicted to displace face-to-face educational sessions, yet digital technologies for remote learners who can be ‘anywhere’ still need to be housed ‘somewhere’. Harvard Business School, for example, has created the HBX Live, a digital classroom with walls formed of multiple large screens using sports-casting technology so that students across the globe can simultaneously share ideas with one another and the lecturer. Harvard Medical School is now emulating this innovative form of delivery using a digital immersive space.

Library, University of Bologna, Italy, 2016 Recently installed desks, cabling, lighting and computers transform learning possibilities within this historic building, while leaving the structure, frescoes and ceilings in tact.

Place Matters However, human biology and social preferences generally still favour the rich, multisensory effects of face-to-face encounters that are hard to emulate virtually. Place still matters. Architects and their education clients still need to invest in places of learning for increasing numbers of people, applying a variety of pedagogies within different spaces for group teaching and learning, simulated environments, immersive classrooms, peerto-peer and social learning places, individual learning places and external places.4 Learning analytics that explore differences between those who achieve high and low grades often find that attendance in class and at the institution is associated with success. Designers and educators are thus striving to create a ‘sticky’ campus or learning place that attracts students, where they want to and do spend more time, enabling more interaction between teachers and learners, and with the digital assets that aid learning. Diverse teaching modes need to be accommodated: active and passive learning; making and reflecting; ‘chalk and talk’; ‘sage on the stage’; ‘guide by the side’; digital hubs; student centres; individual assessment and group work; personalised and group learning; and local and global transmission in real time to proximate students or remote learners. Educational places are tasked with keeping the staff and learners engaged while also acting as a focus for their local community, acknowledging that learning assets in schools, colleges and universities can be shared more widely, spreading knowledge beyond the pupils to their families and to the broader society. The halls, libraries, art rooms, gyms and grounds of schools, colleges and universities may house events to which the public is welcomed – political discussion, voting, music and theatrical events, fairs and displays. Adaptable buildings and spaces open for extended hours across most of the year are an essential prerequisite to meet these demands.

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Alexi Marmot Associates (AMA), Adaptation ladder, 2017 A framework for selecting the level of design intervention. Each rung raises the complexity, time and expense of change while increasing the possible benefits.

The Adaptation Ladder The adaptation ladder devised by Alexi Marmot Associates (AMA] provides a framework for choosing the right level of design intervention when faced with refurbishing an existing building to meet emerging needs, or designing for the future long-term adaptability of new buildings. It has parallels with Stewart Brand’s ‘shearing layers’ concept of site, structure, skin, services, space plan and stuff.5 Each rung of the ladder increases the complexity, time and expense of change while extending the opportunities that the change can deliver. The lower rungs (easy steps) introduce inexpensive changes that can be executed quickly, the superficial items that are the simplest to change: furniture, equipment, wall finishes and floor surfaces, new surfaces for writing and presentation, changes to portable equipment, external blinds and signage. Noticeable changes can be implemented within just a few days or weeks, as, for example, in the world’s first university, the University of Bologna, established in 1088, where new desks, cabling, lighting, computers and digital projection have transformed learning possibilities while respecting its many historic buildings, and even its frescoes and painted ceilings. Many historic buildings in educational establishments around the world have been transformed in similar ways. Small projects with small budgets that create a big impact include improved entrances, better catering in more obvious locations, student centres and spaces for community engagement and display.6 The next rung up the ladder is slightly more disruptive and expensive, entailing changes to internal walls and services. By ripping out some walls and adding others, the floor plan, layout, room sizes and connections between them can be reinvented. Equipment and the routing of power, Internet, media and lighting can be updated while ventilation and air-conditioning may need to be changed. Some buildings require the upgrading of plumbing and drainage services, especially in teaching and research laboratories, or where user numbers are multiplied. Consarc Design Group’s conversion of a historic library into a graduate student centre at Queen’s University Belfast (2016) is an elegant example of repurposing an existing building through internal changes.

The conversion of a historic library into a graduate student centre at Queen’s University Belfast (2016) is an elegant example of repurposing an existing building through internal changes. 100

Consarc Design Group, Lynn Building, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2016 The Venetian Gothic Revival library building of 1868 has been sensitively remodelled into a graduate student centre housing seminar and lecture rooms, areas for group and individual study, and social gathering spaces.

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The next rungs up the ladder realise more ambitious change by altering the external envelope of the building. New openings, windows and doors, exterior cladding and additional insulation can all be deployed to refresh a building’s appearance and outlook from within, to make it more sustainable, and to make places for new educational practices. Extra wings might be inserted and floors added. By adding a new wing and staircase, extra floors and a cantilevered perimeter belt of additional space on every floor, Hawkins/Brown recently transformed the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London (UCL) into a far larger, more collaborative and expansive environment for studios, workshops, displays, crits and public gatherings. In Malmö, a heritage port building has been refurbished by Kim Utzon Arkitekter into offices for the World Maritime University, with a new, distinctive, metal-clad wing of teaching and circulation spaces juxtaposed against the old.

Kim Utzon Arkitekter, World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden, 2015 below and right: The dramatic new block of teaching and circulation spaces is juxtaposed against the office wing conversion within a former port building.

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Towards the top rung of the adaptation ladder, with a fresh perspective on the real estate, site and buildings below, new possibilities emerge, premised on the understanding that, for an educational institution to flourish in future, it may not be well served by refurbishment. A whole building may need to be sacrificed to allow a new phoenix to rise from the ashes, usually one that is larger, grander and essential to meet expansion. The Dr Chau Chak Wing of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Business School (2015), designed by Frank Gehry and reminiscent of his 2004 Ray and Maria Stata Center for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is an iconic example of the design freedoms that a new building makes possible. It may be memorable, attract excellent academic staff and students, and become the image of the institution. However, the bespoke quirkiness may inhibit future change. By contrast, Manchester Metropolitan University has invested in a large new building of three linear wings designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (2012), with 12-metre (30-foot) clear floor spans allowing many different uses to be accommodated: from large lecture theatres to small offices for the business school, student services and the university hub.

Gehry Partners, Dr Chau Chak Wing, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Business School, Sydney, 2015 Inventive forms and bespoke quirkiness internally and externally are thought to attract new students, but they may mitigate against future change within this iconic building.

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Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Business School and Student Hub, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK, 2012 Fourth-floor plan. Three adaptable 12-metre (30-foot) wide linear wings house teaching spaces, a social hub, offices and other facilities.

The building and its services are designed for ready accommodation of a variety of uses and for anticipated future change. Services are routed through the floor void and ceiling soffits, enabling spaces to be reconfigured without adding or moving mechanical services.

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Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy When in 1972 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President Sir Alex Gordon articulated his inspired formulation of ‘long life, loose fit’, he included a third concept: ‘low energy’.7 Extending the life of a building through adaptations avoids the premature loss of embodied energy, of invested capital, while preserving a sense of continuity and of history. Victorian Board Schools in UK cities are an excellent example of educational buildings that have proved robust and adaptable for over a century of educational change. Their high ceilings and windows provide lowenergy lighting and ventilation, and opportunities to insert mezzanines for additional needs.8 Their structures are sufficiently attractive and sound, yet malleable enough to allow ready conversion into workshops, offices or apartments when educational needs have diminished within the area. Many postwar schools have neither endured so well nor provided as comfortable, healthy and energy-efficient internal environments due to their less robust materials and construction, and meaner floor spaces and heights. More recent school models combine sustainability and construction quality with student-centred design, and are likely to last longer.9 Visionary Architects and Clients Those with the power and funds to determine capital investment are attracted, not infrequently, by the phenomenon termed the ‘edifice complex’.10 Whether the client is a headteacher or bursar, a vice-chancellor, chair of governors or estates director, the birth of a new piece

of architecture is usually more alluring than stretching the life of existing buildings with their patina of the past. Vision both from architects and from their clients is essential in exploiting the adaptability inherent in older buildings, and in creating new buildings that are sufficiently robust to meet future demands. How can architects design future-proof buildings? A suggested checklist includes incorporating demands for future adaptability into design briefs,11 then testing earlystage designs through a series of scenarios. Such scenarios might include imagining what could be done if, for example, the number of students were to double; if permitted CO2 emissions were halved; if the building had to be converted from natural ventilation to air-conditioning or vice versa; and if uses were to change from classrooms to laboratories, staff offices or student residences. Scenario testing in this way can help to pinpoint design changes that will encourage long-term adaptability: for example, strengthening the foundations and structure to allow for extra future floors; providing oversized and accessible vertical and horizontal service routes; or creating ‘soft spots’ in floors for additional ducts, services and staircases to be inserted later on. However, it is usually enduring architectural qualities that ensure the longevity of a building for which adaptations will be worthwhile: thoughtful placement on the site; respect for the surrounding landscape and urban fabric; colours and textures; materials and details that weather well; and creating comfortable and sustainable internal conditions that do not cost the earth. 1 Notes 1. Global estimate of learners compiled by the author from UNESCO and World Bank gross enrolment ratios and population by age group data for 2013: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.ENRR; http://data. worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.ENRR; http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ SE.TER.ENRR. 2. Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE), HE Estates Statistics Report 2015: www.aude.ac.uk/resources/news/view?g=7f6f8a923d5d-4afc-aca3-e860b68ee928. 3. Online Course Report (OCR), ‘State of the MOOC 2016: A Year of Massive Landscape Change for Massive Open Online Courses’: www. onlinecoursereport.com/state-of-the-mooc-2016-a-year-of-massivelandscape-change-for-massive-open-online-courses/. 4. AMA Alexi Marmot Associates and HAA, Spaces for Learning, Scottish Funding Council (Edinburgh), 2006. 5. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built, Viking Press (New York), 1994. 6. RIBA and HEDQF, Small Budget, Big Impact, RIBA (London), 2011. 7. Craig Langston, ‘Measuring Good Architecture: Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy’, European Journal of Sustainable Development, 3 (4), 2014, pp 163–74. 8. Phillip Steadman, ‘English Elementary Schools: From the Central Hall to the Pavilion Plan’, Building Types and Built Forms, Matador (Leicester), 2014, pp 123–60. 9. Prue Chiles (ed), Building Schools: Key Issues for Contemporary Design, Birkhäuser (Basel), 2015. 10. Deyan Sudjic, The Edifice Complex: The Architecture of Power, Penguin (London), 2005. 11. Julian Robinson et al, ‘Building Performance’, in Ian Taylor (ed), Future Campus: Design Quality in University Buildings, RIBA (London), 2016, pp 113–33.

Cross-section showing the horizontal progression from the student hub and coffee shop on the left to the Business School on the right, and vertical progression from large lecture theatres on lower floors to seminar rooms at mid level and offices on the highest floors.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 96–7 © Hawkins\ Brown; pp 98-100 © AMA Alexi Marmot Associates; p 101 © Queen's University Belfast; p 102 Photos by Torben Eskerod; p 103 © Jacqui Dean Photographics; pp 104(t), 105 © Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios; p 104(b) © Hufton + Crow

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Wright & Wright Architects, Architectural Association masterplan, Bedford Square, London, 2010– Sectional perspective through the AA’s Bedford Square terrace.

REVO EVO THE ARCHITECTURAL 106

Clare Wright

UTION UTION ASSOCIATION 107

The Architectural Association conducts its pedagogical alchemy in a labyrinthine terrace of grand Georgian townhouses in London’s Bloomsbury. Intimately intertwined with the school’s sense of identity, the buildings form a responsive and still-evolving armature for activities. A new masterplan commissioned from Wright & Wright Architects, currently taking shape, will consolidate the AA as a physical, institutional and cultural entity. Clare Wright, one of the practice’s cofounders, explains how.

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Bedford Square historical plan, 1795 Survey of 1795 showing the west and south sides of Bedford Square. The Georgian townhouses have proved extremely adaptable over time.

Founded in 1847 by those who went on to become its first students, the Architectural Association (AA) has always been a place of independent thought. Discourse and debate are highly prized, and ideas constantly explored through making and drawing. This was revolutionary at the time, and the school's radical origins, no doubt, do something to explain the steady stream of prize-winning architects it has helped produce. The school's central London location and its buildings have been no less formative. Since moving to a set of Georgian townhouses in Bedford Square in 1917, the AA has developed a worldwide reputation. Its successes and sense of self are intimately bound up with its home here. The adaptation of the original residential buildings created a sense of campingout impermanence, reminiscent of the so-called ‘found space’ favoured in theatrical circles as a spur to creativity, and this happened to be in an extraordinarily beautiful example of domestic architecture. According to the Historic England listing for 28–38 Bedford Square: ‘The presence of the Architectural Association in one of London's most important squares did much to promote the interests of Georgian London, especially amongst the many international architects and writers who came there.’1 For example, in his book London: The Unique City (1967),2 Steen Eiler Rasmussen, who lectured at the AA in 1928, ‘captures the homely spirit for which London's Georgian squares and terraces have since been venerated.’3

Architectural Association drawing studio, Bedford Square, London, early 1960s Students in a drawing studio at the AA during the early 1960s. Studio spaces were housed at the rear of the building overlooking a series of courtyards.

Historical Development Established in 1847 by a group of young articled pupils dissatisfied with their limited architectural education opportunities, the AA’s origins were transient. The first home, Lyon’s Inn, was followed by Conduit Street in 1859, a set of rooms in Great Marlborough Street in 1891, and the Royal Architectural Museum in Westminster in 1902. When the latter proved unsuitable, the AA took up an inexpensive lease for Nos 34–35 Bedford Square in 1917. The timing was critical. Women played their part, admitted years before they would be at either Oxford or Cambridge, boosting student numbers as men were away fighting in the war. When the men returned, they brought with them friends from overseas. The new place was thus radically egalitarian and international, and changes made to the buildings from 1919 to 1921 reflected their political approach. A new studio was built in the mews, and within the Georgian houses, stairs and walls, including load-bearing ones, were swept away to create as open a building as possible. Quite quickly, though, load-bearing walls were reinstated, presumably as reality kicked in. The Library, a memorial to AA members killed in the Great War, has survived, though it spans two original dwellings. That and other rather naive structural alterations then made have caused some movement in the buildings, which only adds to the patina of change. In 1927, the AA secured the lease on No 36, which was amalgamated with the rest, with a conglomeration of singlestorey buildings added around a court, housing a museum and extended lecture room. Thus, in an ad hoc way, the AA’s yin-yang combination of the elegant and beautiful Georgian front and gritty, edgy, rebellious back began to take shape. After the Second World War, walls were swept away again, perhaps, again, reflecting members’ desire for openness and collaboration. Constant radical change in a different direction came between 1959 and 1979. Architects John Winter and Rick Mather both carried out extensive work reorganising the buildings. The social spaces – lecture hall, exhibition room, library and bar – were in the primary spaces on the ground and first floors, with the bar cleverly placed as a sort of market square through which everyone passed. Studios were relegated to the small spaces in the attic. One cannot help wondering whether the AA’s ‘unit’ teaching system, which sprung from this, was a product of function following form, and so a new worldwide pedagogy was born. Certainly there were more and more subdivisions of space, with tiny individual rooms created that were hardly big enough for two people. Apparently, paranoia thrived at this time, along with creativity.

Architectural Association, Bedford Square, London, 2011 Courtyards to the rear of the AA are used as test-beds for experimentation and construction, inculcating a gritty, rebellious ‘back of the house’ spirit that contrasts with the pristine Georgian frontage.

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Architectural Association Library, Bedford Square, London, 2016 Exploiting the Georgian piano nobile space, the AA library is currently housed on the first floor overlooking the square. In Wright & Wright’s ongoing remodelling, it will ultimately move to a double-height volume two floors immediately above, preserving its relationship with the square.

Wright & Wright Architects, Architectural Association development timeline, 1917–2009 Plans showing the development timeline. Over the years, the seven houses have been repeatedly subdivided and remodelled to create spaces for different activities, including studios, the library, jury rooms, bookshop and the famous AA bar.

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Building the Future: the Wright & Wright Masterplan One can see that the changing space in which the AA has grown up has had a real impact on its identity, though little has been altered in the last 30 years. Now, as its hundredth anniversary in Bedford Square approaches, the school is taking stock, and seeks a more stable and permanent environment. Having secured long leases from Nos 32–39, the design changes required to allow it to continue to compete on the world stage have been developed. Commissioned by then AA President Alex Lifschutz in 2010, Wright & Wright Architects are implementing this as a phased, longterm strategic masterplan. Informed by forensic investigation into the history of the Bedford Square buildings and the AA’s occupation of them, the masterplan can unfold in various ways, rationalising and reallocating spaces while causing minimum disruption to the school. The core aim is to extend the existing armature of the building, rather like an organism growing and changing. The homely domestic scale, which helps lead to informal encounter and incident, and has characterised the AA over its long history, will be retained. For instance, the new location of the main lecture hall in the former Ching’s Yard enables it to be overlooked by people casually circulating around it. At the same time, the circulation is upscaled, with the proposed reopening of the front door of No 35 to form a new entrance into what is now the lecture theatre. Vertical and horizontal circulation will be vastly improved, with a lift connecting the entrance to the bar, a new dining room and terrace, as well as to the library. This is moved up the building, but transformed into a double-height space, with its privileged relationship overlooking Bedford Square preserved.

Wright & Wright Architects, Architectural Association masterplan, Bedford Square, London, 2010–

The core aim is to extend the existing armature of the building, rather like an organism growing and changing.

above: Sectional perspective showing the AA as a remodelled armature for different activities. below: Plan of the basement level showing the various phases of construction. The masterplan will rationalise spaces and functions to optimise the school’s efficiency, but will also preserve its distinct sense of identity.

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Architectural Association entrance hall, Bedford Square, London, 2008 Circulation spaces are vividly transformed by activity.

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Architectural Association, Driftwood Pavilion, Bedford Square, London, 2009 The square is regularly used as a site for construction exploration by AA students, such as the 2009 Summer Pavilion shown here.

Continuing Relevance The historic Georgian townhouses continue to prove extraordinarily adaptable for the AA’s formal and informal uses. Seven bourgeois family homes have continuously metamorphosed to provide teaching and making spaces for around 1,000 staff and students. Doubling in size requires a different approach to circulation, and one that does not destroy the inherent domestic quality of the buildings. Disabled access will be provided throughout the buildings, along with a secure environment for young students who have come together from all over the world. They need a stable base in which they can make friends and form relationships with staff and other students, which is a very different model from the 1960s transient tutorials. The buildings are adapting quite easily to meet these new demands and to providing highly serviced environmentally state-ofthe-art workshops, passively ventilated, using original chimneys and lavatory stacks. The spaces between the buildings provide great flexibility for change, some as inside space, others as outside workshop yards. Even the square itself serves its purpose, with beautiful temporary structures built by the students and the annual erection of an elegant marquee for end-of-year graduation. It may seem like a paradox that so many of the most avantgarde, determinist architects in the world trained in this Georgian environment, and many of them would fight hard to protect it. It is loved because parts of it are very beautiful. In its domesticity it has a human scale, and in places the proportions, light and delicate detailing are a sensory delight. However, it is not preserved in aspic. It is altered, and the old plays off a gritty, messy new vitality. It is this combination, and its inherent ability to continuously renew and refresh itself while retaining its historic core, that touches the human spirit. 1 Notes 1. Historic England, List Entry 1244548, 28–38 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3ES, 11 January 1999: www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1244548. 2. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, London: The Unique City, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1967. 3. Historic England, op cit.

The spaces between the buildings provide great flexibility for change, some as inside space, others as outside workshop yards. Even the square itself serves its purpose, with beautiful temporary structures built. Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 106–7, 110(b), 111 © Wright & Wright Architects; pp 108, 109, 110(t), 112 © Architectural Association Photo Library

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Renee Y Chow

CONTINUITY

The newly outward-looking economic stance that China adopted in the 1980s was reflected by a Western-style building boom. As widely spaced towers replaced traditional courtyard-based environments, urban legibility was lost – and the new buildings were not designed to last. In recent years there has been a backlash: adaptive reuse is now encouraged, as are loose-fit approaches to new design for greater durability. California-based architect Renee Y Chow traces these shifts, and highlights projects that have sought to redress the balance – including one by her own practice, Studio URBIS.

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Studio Zhu-Pei, Pace Gallery, 798 Art Zone (Dashanzi Art District), Beijing, 2009 In renovating these industrial buildings, the architect maintained the interior flexibility of the space.

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CHANGE CHALLENGING THE DISPOSABLE CHINESE CITY 115

Nearly a century ago in the then developing Western world, an urbanism emerged of towers surrounded by open space and ringed by motor vehicles, a morphology intended to address concerns of overcrowding and disease in cities. This solution of light, air and separated uses was founded on certain premises: the aggregation of large amounts of capital wealth, the emergence of new vertical and horizontal technologies (elevators and automobiles), and the assumption of limitless resources. Despite debate and new priorities, this approach continues to be the global development option of choice, rapidly erasing centuries-old city legibilities. In this regard, China is no different. Whether in repetitive towers or clusters of iconic buildings, this kind of development dominates Chinese cities. In the late 1980s, China embarked on an economic revolution, with government officials envisioning a country that would lead in the 21st century. One vehicle for achieving this was the city. Not only were cities to be economic engines, they were to be showcases of progress. This was a remarkable about-turn for a country that once focused on industrial self-sufficiency and intentionally discouraged the development of urban life. When Deng Xiaoping rose to power in 1978, he initiated a series of reforms that included inviting foreign investment in Chinese cities. Special economic development zones were established, first in southeast China, up the coast, and eventually inland to the centre regions of the country. To entice international investment, these districts had special tax rules, preferential policies and unique land-use rights. Harnessing the capital of centralised landownership, an enormous migrant workforce, and a willingness to advance the newest technologies, development became a competition to quickly build more, to build taller, and to build the unusual. The model of towers on cleared sites aligned well with the Chinese intent to radically change the image of their cities. The resulting urbanisation is unprecedented. In the early 1980s, just 21 per cent of the Chinese population lived in urban areas; today over half do.1 To accommodate this change, 40 per cent of building land is created annually through the demolition of buildings,2 some dilapidated and some relatively new. Building in China is intentionally short-lived – profit motives decrease construction quality, and GDP growth encourages construction over reuse in a ‘perpetual cycle of destruction and creation’ that results in disposable Chinese cities.3 While this churn of building stock brought contemporary lifestyles not imagined 40 years ago, it also erases everyday patterns – street markets, collective alleyways and shared courtyards. Today, shops are swept into malls,

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and streets widened for cars. Elevated highways and rail lines link regionally but rend locally. The legibilities within and between Chinese cities disappear as the relational conditions of urban fabrics are ignored. In making the city, the architecture and internal arrangements of (iconic) buildings are prioritised over the relationship between buildings. As a result, city identity is transferred to its component parts, and legibility is lost. While contemporary Chinese urbanism impresses from afar, it is disorienting as experienced. This object-based urbanism is now being challenged by Chinese officials. When current President Xi Jinping took control of the Chinese Communist Party, he pledged to crack down on excesses in a country with a large economic divide. As a result, a directive was issued in February 2016 banning ‘weird’ buildings as well as gated communities, to be replaced with sustainable and eye-pleasing development.4 Throughout Asia, the foundations of urbanism now include participatory place-making, resource efficiency, and cultural sustenance. Here, loose-fit could be key. Loose-Fit as an Urban Strategy for Change Loose-fit balances continuity and change. It clarifies the relationship between longer-lasting and more rapidly changing elements. It suggests that there is not a one-to-one match between the more ‘permanent’ and the more ‘transitional’, and that slack is needed between these lifecycles. As an urban design strategy, loose-fit balances legibility as large-scale continuity with the pieces of a city that change more rapidly: individual buildings, streets and parks. Unlike infrastructure, megastructure and building support, which are physical organisers, legibility is a shared cognition of how individuals read and navigate a city. It is defined through continuities and relationships contributed by the parts of a city. Prior to the middle of the 20th century, legibility was extended informally as pieces of a city were added or changed. Loose-fit allowed urban form to be appropriated for evolving uses in unexpected ways. Every environment could be provided with a capacity that allowed complex changes made by multiple agents, changes that nevertheless reinforced urban legibility. For example, inner-city Beijing has a legibility characteristic of Chinese capitol cities. This quality has been maintained through centuries of physical change. Historic Beijing was a walled city, a rectangle oriented in cardinal directions with two or three gates in each wall. The territory within Beijing was subdivided by boulevards that emanated from the gates and was bifurcated by the dominant north–south axis established by the position of the Imperial

Palace. At the smallest scale, the urban fabric was built through an aggregation of courtyards. The siheyuan courtyard is commonly described in its ideal state: a compound with two to four courtyards surrounded by one-room deep, multibayed pavilions, all ringed by a rectangular wall. This south-facing courtyard type was arrayed latitudinally over long distances, but required more frequent hutong lanes longitudinally. This fabric filled the space between the boulevards that subdivided the larger walled city. As a result, Beijing’s hutong lanes have strong directionality and orientation. In examining what is longer lasting and what has changed, the depiction of the siheyuan as a walled rectangle masks the loose-fit in the fabric. By comparing the 1750 Qianlong plan of Beijing with the same area today, the most permanent buildings are the pavilions, postand-beam structures with clay tile roofs that are more difficult to modify. These pavilions are organised by height to ensure sunlight into neighbouring compounds. The masonry walls are easily modified, shifted to correspond with evolving lifestyles and family structures. Between the courtyards and surrounding pavilions is a loose-fit zone in which walls have shifted, accommodating change while maintaining the legible city.

Renee Y Chow, Plan of Nanluogu Xiang, Beijing, 2012 The urban fabric of Beijing’s hutongs holds a capacity for change with the longevity of legibility through a looseness of fit, highlighted in red, where the masonry walls have been built and rebuilt. This allows the courtyard compounds to expand and contract according to changing patterns of dwelling. The street to the west is Nanluogu Xiang; to the north and south are Chaodou and Banchang hutongs.

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Recent Reuse and Revitalisation For many decades, the Chinese government suppressed interest and incentives for reuse. Today, a growing awareness of the environmental costs of demolition coupled with an awakening to the loss of ‘heritage’ are slowly affecting Chinese development practices. The financial and regenerative successes of the preservation of historic districts such as Xintiandi and Tianzifang in Shanghai, or Nanluogu Xiang and Liulichang in Beijing, have sparked cultural pride as well as concerns about gentrification, displacement and authenticity. In these locales, conservation is often key. Industrial buildings and districts, on the other hand, have spurred interest in reuse. The flexibility of large spaces with good light, reclaimed by art and design communities globally, is giving new life to abandoned industrial buildings, converted to museums, offices and homes. For example, textile mills along Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek and military equipment factories in Beijing have been reclaimed by artists, their successes transforming these districts into art destinations. At the centre of the Beijing complex known as the 798 Art Zone or Dashanzi Art District, are factories from the 1950s. To maximise natural light, these spaces have high vaulted ceilings with north-facing glazing, ideal for the production and display of art. The Pace Gallery, renovated by Studio Zhu-Pei in 2009, maintains the inherent adaptability of the spaces.

A profound shift in recent years has been towards the revitalisation of the countryside. In 2013, President Xi called for the construction of a ‘beautiful countryside’ in which ‘money is not squandered on unnecessary things’.5 Here, heritage and adaptive reuse combine to form more progressive designs. Some projects emphasise eco-farming, others focus on tourism or community development. Examples include the reuse of a granary, now the Xihe Cereals and Oils Museum and Village Activity Center by architect He Wei (2014), or that of two houses and a yard converted by Zhang Lei/AZL Architects into the Tonglu Librairie Avant-Garde Ruralisation Library in 2015.

Nanlougu Xiang, Beijing, 2012 There is a growing interest in the conservation of historic districts throughout China, such as the Beijing hutong shown here, both in terms of cultural preservation and revitalising centres of tourism.

Studio Zhu-Pei, Pace Gallery, 798 Art Zone (Dashanzi Art District), Beijing, 2009 Industrial districts are also being reused, frequently by artists as workspaces and galleries. (With permission from Zhu Pei, Principal of Studio Zhu-Pei.)

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Zhang Lei/AZL Architects, Tonglu Librairie Avant-Garde Ruralisation Library, Tonglu, Zhejiang Province, 2015 Many Chinese architects are now focusing on the reuse of buildings in rural villages. Here, the heritage of the vernacular building is combined with adaptive reuse to explore new architectures of place.

left: The experience of moving through the village is maintained through solid ground walls along the edges of the street, while the public legibility is intensified through the transparency under the raised roof.

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Designing Loose-Fit While the use of loose-fit can be found in all these examples, there remains the challenge of inserting it within new construction. What is the initial structure that supports change and extends legible continuities? While commercial and retail spaces have long been designed with a capacity for change, the frameworks in many contemporary Chinese commercial buildings and malls are internally organised, where the longer-lasting structures do not reinforce urban legibility or even minimal connections between neighbouring buildings. As an alternative, in 1999 artist Ai Weiwei began designing and developing a community of art studios in Caochangdi, an urban village and renowned arts district located in the Chaoyang District of northeast Beijing, which have both the light and spatial flexibility of industrial buildings as well as the scale and collective intimacy of the hutong. Can the same be done for higher-density residential fabrics? A competition sponsored by the Shanghai Qingpu government in 2004 for a ‘new’ canal village served as an opportunity to translate traditional processes of continuity and change into explicit professional ones. The brief called for schemes that would ‘bring back the awareness of the natural evolution of man-made habitats, inspire a new paradigm of city development, one that is neither urban nor suburban, and provoke a dialogue between Chinese heritage and contemporary living’. For its proposal, Studio URBIS thus took on the challenge of designing a residential fabric with loose-fit that both extended the legacy of place and embedded agency for change.

Ai Weiwei, Courtyard 241, Caochangdi, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 2006 top: In 1999, Ai Weiwei built his own studio in what then was a village on the outskirts of Beijing. As an art community grew up around his space, he designed additional studio complexes. Shown here is the office space of Trace Architecture Office (TAO) . above: The interiors of the studios are designed to be flexible, and the exterior spaces of Courtyard 241 reference the materials and scale of the hutong.

In 1999 artist Ai Weiwei began designing and developing a community of art studios, which have both the light and spatial flexibility of industrial buildings as well as the scale and collective intimacy of the hutong. Renee Y Chow/Studio URBIS, Proposal for a new canal village adjacent to Zhujiajiao, Qingpu District, Shanghai, 2004 opposite: The competition proposal embeds loose-fit or slack in both transition zones between built and unbuilt spaces as well as within the transformed wall zones, highlighted in red. As is the case in Beijing, the walls in the competition project build the identity and legibility of the canal village and also serve as the zone for change.

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Renee Y Chow/ Studio URBIS, Plan of existing historic canal village, Zhujiajiao, Qingpu District, Shanghai, 2004

The radiating walls (shown in red) maintain the legibility of the regional water systems as the organiser of this village. Areas toned dark-grey are claimed by households; light grey is access shared by several households; and white are the public spaces.

Shanghai sits in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River Delta. To make productive agricultural fields from these flood-prone lands, a regional system of ponds and canals with dikes and levees control drainage and provide irrigation. The land is divided into long parcels that radiate perpendicularly from the edges of the canals. The competition site was adjacent to Zhujiajiao, one of the distinctive villages that inhabit this landscape. The dimensional system in the Studio URBIS proposal is organised in increments of primary uses and bands of slack intended to allow design interpretation for the initial structure as well as to accommodate finer-grain choices and changes by residents over time. Some of the bands are transitional zones between private and public; others are held in the form of walls. As in the example of Beijing, the loose-fit of the wall zones aims to give both identity and legibility to the new canal development. Lessons in Loose-Fit In China’s mandate for progress, continuity has not so far been valued. Instead, images of progress have generally been of iconic buildings, by necessity separated from their context. This fragmentation has led to a loss of distinctiveness within and between Chinese cities. With a new political direction for urban development, the value of legibility as an urban legacy should grow. This legacy is not about preservation; with loose-fit it is about ongoing change that makes each place evolve in a unique fashion. Legibility is not static – it is longer lasting. Like culture, it must be continually practised, cultivated and transformed. 1 Notes 1. Adam Minter, ‘Has China Reached Peak Urbanization?’, Bloomberg View, 18 July 2016: www.bloomberg.com/view/ articles/2016-07-19/has-china-reached-peak-urbanization. 2. Quin Yanfeng, ‘Most Homes to be Demolished in 20 Years’, China Daily, 7 August 2010: www.chinadaily.com.cn/ china/2010-08/07/content_11113982.htm. 3. Wade Shepard, ‘”Half the Houses will be Demolished Within 20 Years”: On the Disposable Cities of China’, CityMetric, 21 October 2015: www.citymetric.com/skylines/half-houses-willbe-demolished-within-20-years-disposable-cities-china-1470. 4. Cao Li, ‘China Moves to Halt “Weird” Architecture’, New York Times, 22 February 2016: www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/world/ asia/china-weird-architecture.html. 5. Amy Qin, ‘Architects Seize on Potential in China’s Countryside’, New York Times, 17 June 2016: www.nytimes. com/2016/06/18/arts/design/architects-see-potential-in-chinascountryside.html?_r=0.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 114–15, 118(b) © Zhu Pei; pp 116-17, 121 © Renee Y Chow; p 118(t) © Renee Y Chow, photo LI Wenhong; p 119 © Zhang Lei; p 120 © TAO, photos Chen Hao

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SELFBUILD AND CHANGE Ian Lambot

KOWLOON WALLED CITY HONG KONG

Kowloon Walled City Hong Kong 1989-90 Part of the south elevation, showing some of the city’s earliest buildings – brick built and just one room wide. Hong Kong’s Public Works Department had no dealings with the city’s developers, allowing them to build with few or no plans or drawings.

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Despite its dystopian appearance, the nowdemolished Kowloon Walled City is fondly remembered by some former residents. Over the half-century from 1946, it grew without input from architects or planners, from a squatter camp inside an abandoned military fort to the most densely populated place on earth. The 14-storey amalgam of interlinking buildings housed over 35,000 people, along with factories, shops, schools and all other normal urban provisions. It has much to teach us about bottom-up, community-driven development – as former Hong Kong-based architect Ian Lambot explains.

Kowloon Walled City Hong Kong 1960 and 1987 As these diagrams show, the grain of the city changed dramatically during its 46-year life, as the early patchwork of self-built two- to fourstorey buildings that emerged during the 1950s were gradually replaced by taller and larger ones. From the 650-plus buildings that were recorded in the early 1960s (top), that number had dropped to somewhere closer to 300 by the time the clearance was announced in 1987 (bottom).

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For 45 years – from 1946 to 1993 – Kowloon Walled City cut a dark presence in the heart of Hong Kong. On a site measuring little more than 100 by 200 metres (328 by 656 feet), without legislation and with little or no regard for basic services, planning regulations or building standards, the city not only survived, it positively thrived. Through a continual process of demolition and rebuilding – with never an architect in sight – it grew from a near-barren site to become, at its peak, a solid mass of buildings averaging 14 storeys high with a population of well over 35,000. A hangover from Hong Kong’s colonial past, the site – originally a small (walled) military compound – remained Chinese territory, permanently beyond the control of the Hong Kong authorities. In the early years of the 20th century, this was not a problem. The fort was some distance from the city and largely abandoned, existing mainly as a tourist attraction. However, the Second World War and Mao Tse Tung’s rise to power changed all that. Returning residents and an ever-increasing flood of refugees from China saw Hong Kong’s postwar population of around half a million explode, rising four-fold to some two million by 1950 and doubling again to four million before the end of the 1960s.1 Despite the initiation of a huge public housing programme in the mid-1950s, squatter settlements became the norm, many surviving well into the 1980s.

Kowloon Walled City Hong Kong 1989–90 An aerial view taken one year before the clearance operation began, ending with the city’s demolition in 1993. At its height, Kowloon Walled City comprised some 300 individual buildings housing upwards of 35,000 people, all squeezed on to a 2.6-hectare (6.4-acre) site.

below: The vast majority of units in the city were apartments of differing sizes and quality. Those on the city’s perimeter with views out were often as good as those found in other working-class areas of Hong Kong, but those further inside quickly became very basic indeed, as here for this elderly resident and her daughter-in-law; just a single windowless room with a small lavatory, washing area and kitchen in the corner.

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top left: Looking down Lo Yan Street, one of the city’s four main thoroughfares. Rarely more than 2 metres (6.5 feet) wide and dropping some 12 metres (39 feet) along its length, all deliveries to and from the street’s many factories had to be carried by hand. top right: Clean drinking water was available from just eight government standpipes, seven around the city’s perimeter and only one – shown here – in the city itself. This meant a long climb with heavy buckets for most, but for those nearby, in particular the many food factories that congregated in the area, hosepipes strung along the alleys proved an easier option. bottom left: Encrusted in cobwebs and years of detritus, the haphazard appearance of the electric metering belied a certain order, ensuring that with experience bills could be delivered to the correct apartment and any illegal connections spotted. bottom right: Looking west along Lung Chun Back Road, the only alley to run east–west through the city for any significant distance. The door to the Salvation Army kindergarten is on the right, facing the open shutters of a fishball ‘factory’ on the left.

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And for the first 15 years of its life the Walled City was just one such settlement among many, its network of basic timber and corrugated metal shacks springing up on a first-come, first-served basis as new arrivals found a suitable piece of land to claim as their own. The individual units were small, with a footprint of little more than 20 to 25 square metres (215 to 270 square feet). Water came from wells and a few government standpipes, while lighting and cooking relied on kerosene. Open drains by the sides of the alleys took away the waste and sewage, with a dedicated mainline sewer along one side of the city only being completed in the late 1960s. Even so, within a short space of time these early shelters were being improved and expanded in line with the other squatter settlements thereabouts. Timber shacks were rebuilt, at first in brickwork and, as time went on, in reinforced concrete. Developers moved in, making deals with resident owners to construct some of these new buildings, the owners retaining the same floor area they had before while the developer sold off the extra space. Whenever possible, neighbours joined forces to create a single building with a larger footprint, inserting a communal staircase in the alley that had once separated them. Rising Higher The city’s special status was well understood, but even so it was not until the early 1960s – with the demand to live and work there continuing to grow – that a small group of developers decided to test their luck by building higher than the permitted four storeys allowed in squatter settlements elsewhere. Taller buildings began to appear and, when the authorities took no action, the floodgates opened. Over the next 10 years, the Walled City grew very rapidly indeed, with many buildings rising to 10 storeys or more. It was only when one ambitious developer attempted to build beyond 14 storeys that the Civil Aviation Authority stepped in and demanded that the 45-metre (150-foot) height limit (due to the proximity of Kai Tak Airport) be respected. The extra storeys were demolished. How these buildings remained standing remains a mystery. Except for those around the perimeter, all construction materials and equipment had to be carried in by hand. Fresh water for concrete was limited and much of it had to be mixed in small batches. But amazingly it worked. Growth was organic, with groups of smaller buildings being torn 127

down and replaced by single larger ones. Fresh water remained restricted to just eight government standpipes, so many developers installed artesian wells and pumped groundwater up to tanks on the roof, from where it could be distributed to the building’s residents for a fee. Due to the everpresent risk of fire, a properly metered electricity supply was finally installed in the early 1960s, though illegal connections continued to cause severe problems well into the 1970s. It was a constant game of cat and mouse, as the city’s residents and developers tested just what the authorities would allow before intervening. In terms of building standards, government policy was to take no action whatsoever. Taking Control In time, several of Hong Kong’s other government departments were allowed access, though only to offer advice. The city’s schools and factories, and the numerous dentists and doctors who ran clinics there, were all monitored, but only the Fire Department had the power to close down any operation they deemed unsafe. A council of city ‘elders’, known as the Kai Fong, operated as the intermediary between residents and the authorities, while also helping to settle disputes within the city itself and registering ownership of the different properties.

It was a constant game of cat and mouse, as the city’s residents and developers tested just what the authorities would allow before intervening. In terms of building standards, government policy was to take no action whatsoever.

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top: The confusing jumble of buildings, erected cheek-by-jowl and with every rooftop colonised by ad hoc extensions, is well captured here. Offering welcome fresh air and views denied to those living in the apartments below, the extensions were well used – especially in the cool of an early evening.

above: Numerous convenience stores were dotted around the city, some on the buildings’ upper floors, but more usually along any of the main alleys. This is one of the smaller such units, run by a family who both lived and worked in the same space – the family bedroom separated from the shop and main living area by a basic wooden screen.

top: With just two lifts in the entire city, access to the upper floors was invariably by stair, a long climb for those living on the upper floors. Over time, this was alleviated somewhat by the introduction of an extraordinary network of intersecting stairways, bridges and corridors that allowed the city to be traversed at different levels.

above: There were over 300 registered factories in the city when the clearance was first announced in 1987, mostly located on the ground or lower floors of the various buildings. Many were involved in food production of various kinds – notably barbecued meats, noodles or fishballs – but there were also more industrial processes, including metalworking, cloth making or, as here, plastic injection moulding.

As the city continued to grow, developers became ever more creative. If there was a building with a neighbouring staircase, it was often coopted for use by the new building. Tenants expanded out over the alleys and new premises were squeezed in wherever space allowed. Neighbouring rooftops were colonised and buildings began to be linked at different levels, allowing the city to be traversed without ever coming down to ground. Buildings were inserted wherever there was space, usually as very basic shells. Most residents adapted to what they were given, but the basic structures were flexible enough to allow walls to be removed or added. As there was no zoning, people used their spaces in any way they wished, whether as factory, workshop, office or residence. Everything was agreed on an ad-hoc basis by those residents directly affected, and somehow it always worked. By any normal standards, living conditions for most were grim and a high degree of tolerance was required – in particular by those living next to noisy or noxious factories. But for all that, the city remained a popular place to live and work, and by no means by the poorest in society. Apartments on its perimeter were as good as any in other parts of Hong Kong, and many made a good living there. There was also a strong sense of community. At every stage, the city’s development was decided by the residents themselves, without the intervention of any ‘higher’ authority. And for all its many faults, it proved that given the chance people are quite capable of sorting out their own problems – a lesson that many city planners might care to learn from. In the end, however, there was one aspect of life in Kowloon Walled City that its residents could not control: the land on which it was built was never their own. When, in 1987, the Hong Kong authorities decided it was time for the city to go, they had to bow to the inevitable and leave, albeit a decision made easier by significant compensation payments and offers of a new apartment in one of Hong Kong’s many public housing estates. There was surprisingly little dissent and the city was finally demolished in 1993. The site is now a park. 1 Note 1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hong_Kong.

Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 123–4, 125(t), 126–7, 128(t), 129 © Ian Lambot; pp 125(b), 128(b) © Greg Girard

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DESIGNING LANDSCAPES FOR CHANGE ALBERTOPOLIS

London’s first cultural quarter – dubbed ‘Albertopolis’ after Prince Albert, who initiated it in 1851 – has proved exceptionally adaptable over time. Home to several world-famous museums and educational institutions as well as the Royal Albert Hall, its individual buildings and street plan have continuously evolved to cater for increased capacity needs and changing attitudes to public space. Landscape architect Kim Wilkie – who redesigned one of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s courtyards and is now collaborating with Niall McLaughlin Architects on the remodelling of the Natural History Museum’s grounds – reviews its history to date. 130

Kim Wilkie

Dixon Jones Exhibition Road London 2012 The Cromwell Road originally had the grand entrances to the museums, but traffic congestion has forced a relocation of the principal pedestrian route to Exhibition Road, upgraded by architects Dixon Jones, to provide a more informal set of entrances.

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London is not a triumphal city; it feels more like a dog that has settled comfortably in its bed. The main approaches to the capital still follow the dry routes of the curving prehistoric flood terraces of the Thames. In place of Berlin’s Unter den Linden or the Champs Élysées in Paris, London’s processional route twists and turns through Hyde Park Corner in an attempt to find straight lines. Albertopolis is a rare exception to this pattern. Following the highly successful and profitable Great Exhibition of 1851, Prince Albert encouraged the Royal Commission to use the proceeds to buy up a substantial area of South Kensington adjacent to the site of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. The land was 10 times cheaper than Bloomsbury and allowed plans for an ambitious cultural quarter of new Victorian buildings laid out in a formal axial grid culminating in the Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall. The architecture of the buildings and the layout of the streets took their inspiration from the Continent, but the plan has proved remarkably flexible in its ability to change street hierarchies and take advantage of the open spaces along the public roads. Albertopolis has become a much-loved part of the capital and the old dog has accepted its cultural bone. The 1851 vision was grand. The quarter was to house music, science, engineering, art, geography and natural history. More importantly the institutions combined the display of extraordinary collections amassed from all over the empire with research, teaching and performance. Imperial College sits alongside the Royal Colleges of Art and Music. And this didactic connection between beauty and science, and between scholarship and collection, is perhaps the key to the success of the place. The area is alive essentially because of the

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ideas it promotes over and above its landscape or architecture. That said, the buildings and the spaces are exceptional and have adapted well to the evolving city. In the design of landscapes for change, ease of movement and strength of identity are key elements. Effortless connection allows people to flow between spaces in an uncalculated and instinctive way. And a strong identity brings people together with a clear purpose and sense of place; a destination that is part of the cumulative personality of the city. A New Axis and Approach to Existing Civic Buildings As the principal route into London from the west, the Cromwell Road presented the grand entrances to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and Natural History Museum (NHM). The elegant carriageway has now developed into a roaring arterial road and no longer provides a welcoming space for people on foot. In its place, the semi-pedestrianised Exhibition Road, designed by architects Dixon Jones and opened in February 2012, runs at 90 degrees to the main road and has become the natural route for visitors. The big front doors along the Cromwell Road have had to adapt to the changing public realm. Smaller, less palatial entrances and urban spaces are taking the place of grand ceremonial arrival. This both changes the character of the public realm and suits contemporary ideas about the approachability of such institutions. Exhibition Road is becoming more and more interesting. A series of new public spaces will zigzag up it. The remodelled V&A Boilerhouse Yard space by architects AL_A opens this year. The NHM will create a new public square at street level: Museum Green could become a perfect space for outdoor exhibitions showing the overlap

Aerial view of Albertopolis London, 2011 The drum-shaped Royal Albert Hall is in the foreground with Imperial College in the heart of the district marked by the Queen’s Tower. Museums line Exhibition Road with its diagonal grid to the left of the picture.

The 1851 vision was grand. The quarter was to house music, science, engineering, art, geography and natural history.

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Kim Wilkie John Madejski Garden Victoria & Albert Museum London, 2004 opposite: The central courtyard of the V&A has been redesigned as a pivotal garden space as part of the museum’s Future Plan.

The changing climate is going to be a central factor in the landscapes of the future. Ninety per cent of the UK population already lives in cities. London is the largest metropolis in Europe.

Niall McLaughlin Architects with Kim Wilkie Natural History Museum scheme London, 2016– opposite: Proposals for the eastern grounds showing the geological and botanical timeline from the Cambrian epoch. below: Proposals for the western grounds showing the new terraces that will explore how humans and nature can thrive together in the city.

between the NHM and neighbouring Science and V&A museums. Transport for London will embark on a refurbishment of South Kensington tube station, and local residents have been promoting the redesign of the Yalta Memorial Garden beside the Ismaili Centre. Imperial College has refurbished Prince’s Gardens to the east of Exhibition Road, and now has a great opportunity to do something with the grim car park on the west side of the road. It could create a really significant new public space and a more welcoming entrance to the university. The potentially rigid axial arrangement has proved successful at adapting to changes in movement, reorientation of entrances, and massive increases in visitor numbers. The area’s buildings have also continued to grow and evolve. As the museums have expanded, they have built new buildings and spaces within their grounds. In 1909 the original grand Italianate Francis Fowke-designed front door to the V&A was sealed into an internal courtyard by the Aston Webb wing. And as part of its major, ongoing Future Plan, in 2004 the museum turned the internal courtyard into the John Madejski Garden, a pivotal central space for visitor movement and orientation. The Royal Geographical Society has made a new garden within its walls, and in 2016 the NHM received planning permission to transform all of its grounds into outdoor galleries. The flexibility of urban landscape is not critically determined by urban forms. A mile down the road, the more organic layout of Hyde Park Corner has also had to adapt to changing movement patterns. The Arch was originally oriented north–south as a gateway between Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park. The pressure of traffic, following the opening of Victoria station, required the Arch to be moved and reoriented east–west in 1883. The space became dominated by vehicles, making it hard for people to walk through the area’s parks to the river. Road schemes in the 1960s and a landscape masterplan since 2000 have helped to reverse the damage and stitch the public realm back together. The triumphal arch at Hyde Park Corner has now become synonymous with memorials to peace. The place works for movement and has a strong concept and identity. A Landscape for People and Nature The changing climate is going to be a central factor in the landscapes of the future. Ninety per cent of the UK population already lives in cities. London is the largest metropolis in Europe, and ironically suffers both from some of the lowest rainfall in the country and from major tidal and fluvial flood risk. The open spaces through the city will have to fulfil a number of roles simultaneously or provide venues for temporary uses. As well as offering ease of movement and strength of identity, they will have to help clean the air, purify the water, cool the atmosphere, nurture the wildlife and keep people sane, healthy and stimulated. The NHM is trying to show both how we got here and where we turn next. While in the eastern grounds the geology and natural history of the planet will be displayed, in its western grounds the museum will explore how urban space can work with human beings and nature. Prince Albert’s vision of the connections between engineering, science and art will make Albertopolis a perfect place to show how a changing climate and an evolving city can work together. 1 Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 130-1 © Paul Riddle; p 132 © Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands; p 133 © A.P.S. (UK) / Alamy Stock Photo; p 134(t) © Ed Reeve/Getty Images Pp 134(b), 135 © Kim Wilkie

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Mixing Up the Mediterranean Model Architecture Amid Urban Flux Luca Molinari

The Radical movement born in 1960s Italy sparked a rethinking of the urban landscape. Its key proponents, such as Andrea Branzi, understand the city as a constantly fluctuating organism, rather than an ever-expanding Modernist assembly of parts with fixed functions. Luca Molinari – Professor of History and Theory of Contemporary Architecture at the Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, Naples – reflects on how this organic model recalls that of traditional Mediterranean towns. He traces the spread of its influence around the world in recent decades, and asks whether it could be a solution to the decline of suburbia in economically advanced nations.

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Gambardella Architetti, Villa Capri, Itri, Latium, Italy, 2012 The house demonstrates Gambardella Architetti’s design process of using the existing concrete skeleton as an opportunity for a new intervention.

The call for a different, adaptable form of architecture is gaining momentum worldwide. As indicated by other contributors to this issue, new flexible forms of programming are required to replace a more limited postwar, functionalist approach to design. In the Mediterranean context, where the contrast between the historical and modern fabric of the city is even more pronounced, architects and planners are starting to test the accepted ‘Mediterranean model’ as a physical and social strategy for ongoing development. In 2006, Italian theorist Andrea Branzi declared that the Modernist city, the functional metropolis that the West has grown accustomed to over the last two centuries, was destined to undergo substantial change.1 No more new buildings, land consumption or rigid mono-functional boxes, but an urban body in constant flux from within, like a perpetual anthill stretched across the horizon that would adapt to the changing needs of a fluid social body. The picture of the city, inclusive of its physical, economic, technical and regulatory shape – one that was built during a well-defined social and productive time – was clearly fading into the distance, giving way to a new era. The Archizoom Alternative Such words echo Branzi’s work on No-Stop City by Archizoom Associati, of which he was a founder.2 Beginning in the 1970s, the project theorised the disappearance of the modern city, on behalf of an infinite universe of objects and micro-environments populated by a nomadic society. This world of objects and mass production would replace houses, putting into effect, with paradoxical evidence, an identification with the market and its rules. Archizoom’s research into ‘non-figurative architectural language’, developed by studying the serial and obsessive repetition of primary elements of the typewriter, aimed to establish a line of continuity with the Dada culture and the music of John Cage. On the other hand it tended to anticipate the repercussions of conceptual thought in architecture by shifting attention away from the architectural object and focusing on the processor bit that had become the matrix of the contemporary city. The endless proliferation of dwelling units in a relentless pattern, or the construction of mirrored models in which giant images of transistors turn into new urban objects inside a neo-countryside, became some of the theoretical icons that, in the 1960s and 1970s, attempted to define an alternative to Modernist representativeness. These objects that give body to the dwelling space contrast with the ‘machine for living in’ advocated by Le Corbusier, and with its inherent idea that every space has a defined function and precise time and duration of use.

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Francesco Librizzi, Casa G, Cefalù, Sicily, 2014 The stair defines the visual and symbolic centre of the apartment.

Section showing the strong relationship between the interior and the urban landscape of Cefalù.

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Radical International Interpretations Between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, the international Radical period, through the works of Archizoom, Superstudio and Archigram, was the first true cultural and figurative experience that tried to look at the world through a concept of time and duration of use different from how the Modern Movement, as well as both Marxist and liberalist economics, had done so up until then. It was the first time that the idea of modernity as unlimited growth was challenged. In addition to that, it was also the first time that the diarchy of firmitas (solidity over time) and utilitas (functionality of form) theorised by Leon Battista Alberti in the late 15th century was seriously called into question. One of the undisputed strains of Western classical culture, this diarchy was consistently being interpreted by Modernist culture on the basis of mass production and the democratisation of a service (the house) that had previously pertained only to the wealthier classes. The new machines for living in dreamed of by the masters of the Modern Movement were intended to last forever, despite the utter conceptual and experimental fragility of the new materials; and the idea of infinity was applied to the use of resources and to a consumption of land deemed necessary for the growth of our cities. The principle of a modernity for the purpose of serving the common good was applied during the postSecond World War period of Welfare State with symmetrical ideological formulas both in the West and in the East. Only with the systemic crisis of the 1960s and the eruption of a new generation of authors did we witness the epistemological change needed to construct tools and materials for a new phase.3 The idea of a nomadic community, of spaces flexible in their use, formal definition and time, as well as the principle of mobility in its urban form and the introduction of technology as a second-skin architecture, are all conceptual viruses that were inoculated by the Radical culture and then reworked in both London and Milan, where they took hold respectively at the Architectural Association and in the Domus Academy with Memphis, over the following decades. Not only in the UK and Italy, but also in the United States with the work of Ant Farm, in Austria with the provocative researches of Coop Himmelb(l)au and Haus-RuckerCo, and in Japan with the Metabolists, the idea of architecture as a product with a limited lifespan and an unstable internal status influenced by an ever-changing society was finally accepted for the first time. It is these powerful insights, now commonplace, that we have been experiencing over the last decade, along with dramatic social repercussions of both the economic crisis and the cultural and anthropological resistance to a dying system. Rethinking Urban Real Estate The ever more established idea of an architecture of maximum flexibility and adaptability today addresses a declining or rapidly ageing population together with a lack of affordable housing for the younger generations of city dwellers, and the aggressive presence of the virtual in our public and private lives. These are not separate elements, because both cases have to do with widespread and global phenomena that are dramatically changing the idea of city use, its physical and symbolic boundaries and, consequently, its real estate market. The demographic situation, in full ebb in Western countries with advanced economies, will affect the expansion process of cities, transforming suburban sprawl areas into ‘shrinking cities’, as is happening today with the outskirts of Tokyo.4 Suburban residential areas – designed for privacy, based on the model of the nuclear family home, and viewed as the only model of housing possible – are undergoing a period of deep structural crisis due to changes in the social framework and in the values that once characterised them. Given the financial difficulties of governments unable to effectively manage the upkeep and safety of ever larger areas, we should expect to see real neglect of a patrimony that has become inapt and rigid in its conception. By contrast, the same cities will experience a densification of their hubs and most strategic areas, as well as the birth of a new definition of mixed housing types that will fully challenge the Modernist ideal of the city based on the separation between workplace and home. The Fordist model of the city appears to be in crisis with respect to the Mediterranean model. In the latter, embodied by the original and resistant centres of most southern European and Middle Eastern cities, the basis has always been the consolidation of functions and their interchangeability, the maximum flexibility of public and private space, and the ability to construct interpersonal relationships and exchange basic services. It is a phenomenon in which certain Italian urban contexts and Mediterranean countries are gradually showing renewed interest, on account of the widespread systemic crisis that has affected the spending power of the middle and working classes and of local governments – a crisis that has also undermined the pattern of suburban growth that characterised these same centres during the second half of the 20th century. The debate on the densification of our existing properties, on the recovery and functional transformation of modern housing and on the progressive reduction of land consumption, is profoundly changing the cultural and economic outlook of the real estate market, and is adhering to a radically different view of the temporal life of architecture. For the first time in Italy the house is no longer considered a safe-haven asset

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Gambardella Architetti, House, Piazza Vittorio Veneto, Montesarchio, Campania, Italy, 2009 The architects transformed an abandoned concrete skeleton at the entrance of Montesarchio into a functioning building with shops at the ground floor and apartments above.

to be transferred from one generation to the next, as it was during the second half of the 20th century. Today, a different social attitude is emerging which considers the house as a limited-time investment subject to a different social mobility and to a less stable and poorer market. The Edges of Mediterranean Modernity In recent years we have witnessed certain small-scale examples that demonstrate how architecture in Italy and Greece is rethinking its tools when confronting a context of changing social desires and alternative economies. Writer Roberto Saviano posed an interesting challenge in an interview for an Italian broadcast in 2016, in which he suggested that new migrants be allowed to occupy the uninhabited suburban areas of southern Italy, thus giving them the chance to become neo-colonists capable of revitalising the numerous abandoned areas there.5 Other new dwelling experiments in abandoned contexts, especially in mountainous regions, are producing interesting solutions that contrast with the traditional idea of a stable intervention plan for the temporary use of these areas. In the early 1970s, architect Renzo Piano designed a flexible module for local communities to meet and discuss future transformation, which could improve a different urban quality. It was the beginning of a new form of ecological sociability related to the loss of population within small villages in southern Italy. Today we are facing a different phenomenon due to the crisis of the existing real estate model and to an emerging call to reduce source and ground consumption. The work of Francesco Librizzi and Cherubino Gambardella also appears symptomatic from this point of view. In the first case, this young Sicilian-born architect and designer has produced a series of interiors – such as Casa G in Cefalù, Sicily (2014) – whose pivotal point came from identifying several essential, moveable or connectable, elements that redefine the structure of the domestic interior. By way of background on his work, throughout the last century the culture of Italian interior design has been a remarkable generational training ground for formal and symbolic reflection on the flexibility of domestic space. But it was not until the exhibition ‘Italy: The New

New dwelling experiments in abandoned contexts are producing interesting solutions that contrast with the traditional idea of a stable intervention plan for the temporary use of these areas. 140

diverserighe studio, Opificio Golinelli, Bologna, Italy, 2015 An abandoned factory has been transformed into a centre for knowledge and culture.

Domestic Landscape’, curated by Emilio Ambasz at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1972, that absolute flexibility was joined with the concept of time of use and consumption in regards to the house as object and product of a market of mass production. The works of Archizoom, Superstudio, Ettore Sottsass Jr, Gaetano Pesce and Gae Aulenti, which were exhibited in the MoMA show, physically reflected on this aspect of social and political criticism regarding a reality subject to profound change. They marked the beginning of a new phase that mediated both conceptually and formally on the crisis of design as a stable form, as the works of Memphis from the 1980s and those of the new generation of Italian designers clearly show. The research carried out by Cherubino Gambardella and Simona Ottieri at Gambardella Architetti in Naples and Milan instead investigates the edges of Mediterranean modernity, not only with respect to the purist fascination of the first revolutionaries, but above all with that side of anonymous and popular architecture that became an instrument of colonising land in the name of a new ‘democratic beauty’.6 In the last few years they have been asked to convert abandoned ‘skeletons’ in two distinct villages in central and southern Italy (Itri and Montesarchio) into new domestic architecture. This attitude recalls the debate on the recovery of waste produced by the economic boom, and does so in a visionary manner, by rethinking it as a paradigmatic occasion for the transformation of a territory. The same firm’s recent work in overhauling the public spaces of three existing schools in Matera and Naples resumes the idea of rethinking the use of communal space to turn today’s cities into exceptional places for community building and new practices. In a similar vein, the work of Aristide Antonas on abandoned shops in the centre of Athens revolves around their conversion into open workshops, traversable and occupied by transient communities of citizens and by young creatives. Such works as the collective interventions of diverserighestudio for the Opificio Golinelli, a science education hub in Bologna (2015); those of Labics on the MAST exhibition space, library and kindergarten, also in Bologna (2014); the ongoing work on social housing in northern Italy carried out by TAMassociati; and the theoretical research of Marco Navarra on the Mediterranean ‘repairing city’7 – all speak of a common framework of research and experimentation, addressing a deeply changing financial and social market which brings with it a range of desires and demands. A key to rereading much of the new architectural work created over the past decades lies in embracing a vision of contemporary reality that reaches beyond the obsessive idea of architecture as resistant to time and change, a vision that instead views architecture as an active, flexible body. It is a key to saving the territorial patrimony from a deep crisis that will surely have a say in its slow but inexorable abandonment. 1 Text © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 136 © Giuseppe La Spada; pp 137, 140 © Gambardella Architetti, photos Peppe Maisto; p 138 © Francesco Librizzi studio, photo Alberto Moncada; p 141 © diverserighestudio, photo Giovanni Bortolani

Notes 1. Andrea Branzi, Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at the Beginning of the 21st Century, Skira (Milan), 2006. 2. Andrea Branzi and Archizoom Associati, NoStop City, HYX (Orléans), 2006. 3. See: Mark Swearton, Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel (eds), Architecture and the Welfare State, Routledge (London), 2015; Ákos Moravánszky and Judith Hopfengärtner (eds), Re-humanizing Architecture: New Forms of Community, 1950–1970, Birkhäuser (Basel), 2017. 4. ‘The ageing process is most advanced in high-income countries. Japan is home to the world’s most aged population. 33 per cent were aged 60 years or over in 2015. Japan is followed by Germany (28 per cent aged 60 years or over), Italy (28 per cent) and Finland (27 per cent).’ From United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Population Ageing: Report 2015, UN (New York), 2015, p 15: www. un.org/en/development/desa/ population/.../pdf/ageing/ WPA2015_Report.pdf. 5. Roberto Saviano for Sky TG24, 24 April 2016. 6. Cherubino Gambardella, Le Malaparte impossibili: One House, One Thousand Architectures, LetteraVentidue (Syracuse), 2017; Cherubino Gambardella, Life with Objects, Skira (Milan), 2012. 7. Marco Navarra (ed), Repairing Cities, LetteraVentidue (Syracuse), 2008.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Renee Y Chow is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California Berkeley, as well as the founding principal of Studio URBIS. She is the author of Suburban Space: The Fabric of Dwelling (University of California Press, 2002) and Changing Chinese Cities: The Potentials of Field Urbanism (National University of Singapore Press, 2015). She received her MArch from MIT where she also taught before joining the faculty at Berkeley. Ellen Dunham-Jones is co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (John Wiley & Sons, 2008, updated 2011) and the forthcoming The Retrofitting Suburbia Case Studies: Designs for 21st Century Challenges. She is Professor of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she is Director of the MS in Urban Design, and is a former Board Chair of the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Jorge Andrade received his Master’s in architecture from the Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), and was a research fellow at SAR (Foundation for Architects Research). He has designed various low-income housing projects, two of which – Cohuatlán and Xacalli – were featured at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. He teaches architecture at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco (UAMX) in Mexico, where he founded and directs the TAVI Housing Workshop – a research group on housing design – with Andrea Martin. He has lectured and run workshops in several universities in Mexico, the US, Canada, Argentina, South Africa and others. Anne-Julchen Bernhardt studied architecture at Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH Aachen) and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She has worked as an architect in Berlin and Cologne, and as an assistant professor at RWTH Aachen, where she has been a professor of building typologies since 2008. In 2000, with Jörg Leeser, she established BeL Sozietät für Architektur, which has received numerous awards, among them the Kunstpreis Baukunst of the Berlin Academy of the Arts. Stewart Brand is a key figure in West Coast alternative culture. In the 1960s he was part of the Merry Pranksters, led by author Ken Kesey. He published the Whole Earth Catalog from 1968 to 1972 (and occasionally thereafter). In the late 1970s he was special advisor to California Governor Jerry Brown. His book How Buildings Learn (Viking Press, 1994) was screened as a six-part documentary by the BBC in 1997. He is currently co-chair and President of The Long Now Foundation, and chairs its Seminars About Long-Term Thinking (SALT).

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John Habraken was Director of the SAR (Foundation for Architects Research) and founding chair of the Department of Architecture at Eindhoven Technical University in the Netherlands. He taught at MIT from 1975 until his retirement. His first book, Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, first published in 1962, is still in print. His other publications include The Structure of the Ordinary (MIT Press, 1998) and Palladio’s Children (Taylor & Francis, 2005). Edwin Heathcote is a writer and architect. He is architecture and design critic for the Financial Times, and the author of around a dozen books. He writes for GQ magazine, is an 2 Editorial Board member, and a contributing editor for Icon, as well as regularly writing for l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui and a number of other publications. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the non-profit online design writing archive Readingdesign.org. Despina Katsikakis is an industry leader with an international reputation for thought leadership on the future of the workplace. A former Chairman of DEGW, she has over 30 years’ experience working with corporates such as Accenture, Barclays, BBC, BP, Cisco, GSK, Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley and Unilever, guiding them on how to align workplace and policies to support innovation and employee engagement. She leverages her understanding of corporate occupiers and future trends to advise cities, developers, investors and their design teams on how to future-proof schemes around the world. She lectures regularly, and contributes to research and publications.

Stephen Kendall has worked in architectural practice, research and education for more than 40 years. His focus on ‘open building’ encompasses new design methods, logistics and technology needed to give buildings the capacity to accommodate change. His teaching, consulting and writing recognises the increasing size and complexity of projects and the dynamics of living environments, the workplace and the marketplace where design must go beyond short-term uses to assure a sustainable building stock. His new company – Infill Systems – seeks to bring to market products and services for efficient and customised interior fit-out. He was Senior Joint Coordinator of the CIB W104 Commission – Open Building Implementation from 1996 to 2016. Ian Lambot trained as an architect and worked briefly for the Richard Rogers Partnership before arriving in Hong Kong in February 1979. After stints running an architectural modelmaking studio and working with Foster + Partners – on the early stages of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Headquarters – he set up Watermark Publications in the UK, specialising in producing books on architecture and engineering. Jörg Leeser studied architecture at RWTH Aachen and the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL). He has worked as an architect in New York and Cologne, as an assistant professor at RWTH Aachen, and as a visiting professor at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. Since 2011 he has been Professor for Urban Context at the Peter Behrens School of Arts at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf. He is the cofounder, with Anne-Julchen Bernhardt, of BeL Sozietät für Architektur. Giorgio Macchi is the former chief architect of the Office for Real Estate and Public Buildings of the Swiss Canton of Bern (OPB), where he was responsible for commissioning architects and engineers to carry out public building projects for the canton that prioritise the System Separation strategy developed by the OPB. He studied architecture at ETH Zurich and graduated with a diploma. He joined the building department of the Canton of Bern in 1974, where he headed various large projects and worked on numerous competitions and awards. In 1990/91 he worked as an assistant professor at the Chair of Architecture and Planning at ETH Zurich.

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

LOOSE-FIT ARCHITECTURE

Alexi Marmot, architect and planner, combines academic and professional roles as Professor of Facility and Environment Management at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL and a professor in Sydney University's School of Architecture, Design and Planning. She is founding director of AMA Alexi Marmot Associates, which is focused on evidence-based consultative design. Passionate about learning environments, she has advised over 30 universities and schools and written guidance on learning spaces for several funding bodies. She leads UCL’s Bartlett Global Commission for Learning Environments, and is a governor of Working Men’s College Camden, Europe’s oldest extant adult education institute. Andrea Martin has been involved full time in architectural design, both in academia and in her solo practice, for the last 35 years. She holds an MSc in architecture from MIT. She is full professor at Metropolitan University in Mexico City (UAM-X), where she cofounded the TAVI Housing Workshop with Jorge Andrade. She has been published in several national and international architectural journals, and was recently a visiting professor at the University of Washington and a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley. Since 1998 she has been a member of the CIB W104 Commission – Open Building Implementation. Kazunobu Minami is an architect who has worked for the Japanese government since 1981. He has received several awards for his design work, including the Best Architecture Award from Chiba City, and the International Illumination Design Award. He also received the best book award from the Association of Urban Housing Sciences in 2016. He obtained his PhD in architecture from the University of Tokyo, and his MSc from MIT. He was a joint coordinator of the CIB W104 Commission – Open Building Implementation from 2003 to 2010.

Luca Molinari is Professor of History and Theory of Contemporary Architecture at Università degli Studi della Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’. Since the 1990s he has combined his academic and research activities with curatorial work and writing. He writes as an independent critic for Italian and international newspapers, and is editor of the architecture and design series for Skira. He is a member of the advisory board of the Italian Ministry of Culture. He curated the Italian Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale. He was scientific director of the Milan Triennale’s architecture and town planning sections from 2001 to 2004. Peter Murray trained at Bristol University and at the Architectural Association (AA) in London. He worked at 2 from 1969 to 1974. He was subsequently editor of Building Design and the RIBA Journal. He started Blueprint Magazine in 1984, and the London Festival of Architecture in 2004. He is currently Chairman of New London Architecture, Chairman of The London Society, and a visiting professor at IE University In Madrid. Simon Sturgis is Managing Director of Sturgis Carbon Profiling (SCP). He is the Chair of the RIBA Sustainable Futures Group, a CABE Built Environment Expert, and advises the BCO, the ULI and the UKGBC. He provides low-carbon advice to the property industry. Clients include WWF, Grosvenor, Google, M&S, Gatwick Airport, Land Securities and Warwick University. He is currently leading a team of industrywide experts to define carbon reporting for the UK. He is the author of Targeting Zero: Embodied and Whole Life Carbon Explained (RIBA Publishing, 2017).

June Williamson is co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (John Wiley & Sons, 2008, updated 2011) and the forthcoming The Retrofitting Suburbia Case Studies: Designs for 21st Century Challenges. Her most recent book is Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb (Island Press, 2013). She is Associate Professor of Architecture at the City College of New York. Clare Wright studied at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow. She set up Wright & Wright Architects with Sandy Wright in 1994. The practice has won many competitions and awards for their carefully crafted contextual buildings, including the masterplan for the AA, and libraries for the Royal College of Art, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and Magdalen and St John’s Colleges Oxford. She is currently working on the Geffrye Museum, Lambeth Palace Library and a masterplan in Prague.

Kim Wilkie is a landscape architect who collaborates with architects on strategic and conceptual design issues. He helps to integrate buildings with their settings to create good public places. He has worked on a series of projects in Albertopolis, London, over the last two decades and is currently designing the transformation of the Natural History Museum grounds with Niall McLaughlin Architects and Peter Wilder Associates.

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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

FORTHCOMING 1 TITLES

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018

MARCH/APRIL 2018

Profile No 250 ISBN

Profile No 251 ISBN

Profile No 252 ISBN

Volume 87 No 6 978 1119 340188

3D-PRINTED BODY ARCHITECTURE Guest-edited by NEIL LEACH AND BEHNAZ FARAHI Some architects dream of 3D-printing houses. Some even fantasise about 3D-printing entire cities. But what is the real potential of 3D printing for architects? This issue focuses on another strand of 3D-printing practice emerging among architects operating at a much smaller scale that is potentially more significant. Several architects have been working with the fashion industry to produce some exquisitely designed 3D-printed wearables. Other architects have been 3D-printing food, jewellery and other items at the scale of the human body. But what is the significance of this work? And how do these 3D-printed body-scale items relate to the discipline of architecture? Are they merely a distraction from the real business of the architect? Or do they point towards a new form of proto-architecture – like furniture, espresso makers and pavilions before them – that tests out architectural ideas and explores tectonic properties at a smaller scale? Or does this work constitute an entirely new arena of design? In other words, is 3D printing at the human scale to be seen as a new genre of ‘body architecture’? This issue contains some of the most exciting work in this field today, and seeks to chart and analyse its significance. Contributors include: Paola Antonelli/MoMA, Francis Bitonti Studio, Niccolò Casas, Behnaz Farahi, Madeline Gannon, Eric Goldemberg/MONAD Studio, Kyle von Hasseln/3D Systems Culinary Lab, Rem D Koolhaas, Julia Koerner, Neil Leach, Steven Ma/Xuberance, Neri Oxman/MIT Media Lab, Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, Gilles Retsin, Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg/Nervous System, and Patrik Schumacher/Zaha Hadid Architects.

Volume 88 No 1 978 1119 379515

Volume 88 No 2 978 1119 254416

SU+RE: SUSTAINABLE + RESILIENT DESIGN SYSTEMS

CELEBRATING THE MARVELLOUS: Surrealism in Architecture

Guest-edited by JOHN NASTASI, ED MAY AND CLARKE SNELL

Guest-edited by NEIL SPILLER

In the 21st century, architects and engineers are being challenged to produce work that is concurrently sustainable and resilient. Buildings need to mitigate their impact on climate change by minimising their carbon footprint, while also countering the challenging new weather conditions. Globally, severe storms, extreme droughts and rising sea levels are becoming an increasingly reoccurring feature. To respond, a design process is required that seeks to integrate resilience by building in the capacity to absorb the impacts of these disruptive events and adapt over time to further changes, while simultaneously being part of the solution to the problem itself. This issue of 2 is guest-edited by the interdisciplinary team at Stevens Institute of Technology who developed the winning entry for the 2015 US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition, the SU+RE House. While particular focus is paid to this student-designed and -built prototype home, the publication also provides a broader discussion of the value of designbuild as a model for tackling the issue of integrating sustainability and resilience, and what changes are required across education, policy, practice and industry for widespread implementation. Contributors include: Bronwyn Barry, Michael Bruno, Alex Carpenter, Adam Cohen, Ann Holtzman, Ken Levenson, Brady Peters, Terri Peters, Karin Stieldorf, Alex Washburn, Claire Weisz, and Graham Wright. Featured architects: 3XN/GXN, FXFOWLE Architects, Local Office Landscape Architecture (LOLA), Lateral Office, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Snøhetta, Structures Design/Build, and WXY Studio.

We are entering a new era of architecture that is technologically enhanced, virtual and synthetic. Contemporary architects operate in a creative environment that is both real and digital; mixed, augmented and hybridised. This world consists of ecstasies, fears, fetishisms and phantoms, processes and spatiality that can best be described as Surrealist. Though too long dormant, Surrealism has been a significant cultural force in modern architecture. Founded by poet André Breton in Paris in 1924 as an artistic, intellectual and literary movement, architects such as Le Corbusier, Diller + Scofidio, Bernard Tschumi and John Hejduk realised its evocative powers to propel them to ‘starchitect’ status. Rem Koolhaas most famously illustrated Delirious New York (1978) with Madelon Vriesendorp’s compelling Surrealist images. Architects are now reviving the power of Surrealism to inspire and explore the ramifications of advanced technology. Architects’ studios in practices and schools are becoming places where nothing is forbidden. Architectural languages and theories are ‘mashed’ together, approaches are permissively appropriated, and styles are not mutually exclusive. Projects are polemic, postmodern and surreally media savvy. Today’s architects must compose space that operates across the spatial spectrum. Surrealism, with its multiple readings of the city, its collage semiotics, its extruded forms and artificial landscapes, is an ideal source for contemporary architectural inspiration. Contributors include: Bryan Cantley, Nic Clear, James Eagle, Natalie Gall, Mark Morris, Dagmar Motycka Weston, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Shaun Murray, Anthony Vidler, and Elizabeth Anne Williams. Featured architects: Nigel Coates, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Perry Kulper, and Mark West.

Loose-Fit Architecture Designing Buildings for Change Guest-Edited by Alex Lifschutz

CONTRIBUTORS

Jorge Andrade Anne-Julchen Bernhardt Stewart Brand Renee Y Chow Ellen Dunham-Jones John Habraken Edwin Heathcote Despina Katsikakis Stephen Kendall Ian Lambot Jörg Leeser Giorgio Macchi Alexi Marmot Andrea Martin Kazunobu Minami Luca Molinari Peter Murray Simon Sturgis Kim Wilkie June Williamson Clare Wright

The idea that a building is ‘finished’ or ‘complete’ on the day it opens its doors is hardwired into existing thinking about design, construction and planning. But this ignores the unprecedented rate of social and technological change. A building only begins its life when the contractors leave. With resources at a premium and a greater need for a sustainable use of building materials, can we still afford to construct new housing or indeed any buildings that ignore the need for flexibility or the ability to evolve over time? Our design culture needs to move beyond the idealisation of a creative individual designer generating highly specific forms with fixed uses. The possibilities of adaptation and flexibility have often been overlooked, but they create hugely exciting ‘loose-fit’ architectures that emancipate users to shape their own versatile and vibrant environments.

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN September/October

Profile No.

2017

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