Associated with authors and researchers N. John Habraken (Supports and Infill) and Stewart Brand (How Buildings Learn), adaptability includes strategies that facilitate a building's evolution and its functional changes over time; converted to new needs, uses or simply to be renewed with replacement parts as needed. Material circularity principles take this one step further as architecture is conceived and produced to be completely dismantled into its constituent components and potentially delivered as a kit to a new site and toward multiple service lives.
From individualized fit-out (Habraken) and systemic autonomous layering (Brand), both proposed design solutions framed by their permanence: long-term durability for infrastructure and at the other end of the spectrum easy to replace and redesign elements for short-lived banalities. These strategies outline «open building» theories that have been and continue to be explored most proficiently in the Netherlands.
The 1000-square-meter Natural Pavilion test structure assembled in 2022, designed by dp6 architectuurstudio in the city of Almere, well-known for its architectural prototypes, combines an «open» modular timber framework with bio-sourced and recycled materials. The structural platform frame is completed with CLT floor plates. Wall panels and other flexible infill elements include bio-based or recycled materials along with reused plate glass elements harvested from buildings that no longer required them; all elements are dimensionally coordinated to create many possible configurations.
The structural frame is based on an analogous principle to shipping containers where standardized connectors facilitate stacking 3x3x3m cubes composed of similarly profiled posts and beams. Three-faced heavy-duty moment connector plates fixed to the end of each timber member constitute the vertices of the off-site or on-site prefabricated modular volumes. The built-up perimeters of these open box frames are then simply bolted together at the plates' extending intersections. Steel bars are placed diagonally as needed to brace certain faces against lateral loads.The steel connectors have a furniture-scale quality, like those used in standard modular shelving.
In opposition to the seamless continuity, we have come to expect from our modern building interiors, this pavilion shows the cultural leap required for the design-for-disassembly approach to be more than just another pipe dream in the history of adaptable prefabrication.
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| Modular open frame boxes designed for disassembly |
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