307. Open
building
There is
something odd in the bascs logic of traditional building. Two types of logic
that do not fit together are combined in one system, of two hierarchical levels.
One concerns the basic support or carrying structure of the building, and the
other concerns the ‘infill’ of apartments or offices. This was shown in a
publication 55 years ago by architect John Habraken[i], followed by later
publications.
The basic support
structure, of, say, an apartment or office building, consists of the
foundations, roof, support structure, access (to people and utilities), and
possibly the façade. That has a long life, of some 100 years. It is subject to
efficiencies of size, in design and construction. It contains all that serves
the community of occupants, as a collective. Hence central control is required.
The infill
of apartments or offices serves the individual occupant, without need for
central control. It
has a life of some 10 years, after which spaces are
re-designed and re-built, in renovation and transformation, to suit new users,
tastes, fashions, and practices, and to utilize or accommodate new materials,
parts, technologies, etc. for walls, ducts, installations, furnishings and
facilities.
Different
as they are, they have been integrated in one long process of design and
construction. In time, it starts with few people (architect, developer),
abstractly (in design). Then, as the process develops, more people become
involved, such as builders, financiers, suppliers, installators, and then
estate agents and users, and the structure becomes increasingly concrete. It also
is under central control throughout.
Since at
the start future use and users are unknown, there is an inclination to design
uniform stereotypes that can also be built cheaply. It is not oriented to users
but to cost control.
Renovation
and transformation of the infill, however, is a shorter term process, concrete,
and with many people, and involvement of users, and therefore oriented to
diversity, and tailor-made, from the start.
To combine
the two into one process is like combining the building of roads (also with a
life of some 100 years, with little involvement of users) with the production
of cars (with a life of some 10 years, involvement of users in choice of
design).
It would be
much more logical to separate the two processes, while taking into account the
connections between the two, concerning access, the fit of ducts etc., and
standardized measures. Such connections also apply to the separate systems of
roads and cars: width of the road, type of surfacing, tarmac, signalling, etc.
For the
infill one could use pre-fabricated modules from which users can choose, that
can easily be assembled on location, and computer-based design aids for their
configuration, with the users involved. Those modules can be made so that they
can be disassembled and re-used. The user might sell them when moving out, or
even lease them. Like cars. With novel technologies, old logics of the
efficiency of large scale, uniform production are falling apart, with the use
of computer-aided design and production of unique forms, shapes and
functions.
John
Habraken has battled to get his idea implemented, with some success, e.g. in
Finland and Japan. Yet the established institutional structure of the old
process is tenacious and difficult to shift. It entails a tangle of legal
regulations and control concerning finance, safety, liability, lending,
mortgage, insurance, etc., which are apparently difficult to disentangle, against
established mind frames, positions, and interests. The ruling ideology of
architects is that only centralized control without distinction of levels can
produce good architecture.
This yields
another case of what earlier in this blog I have called ‘system tragedy’: the
perpetuation of dysfunctional social systems, due to rigidities and
entanglements of roles and positions, blindness due to habit, and ideological
entrenchment.
On a more
fundamental, philosophical level, what we see here is also a manifestation of
the contrast and tension between on the one hand the general, abstract,
universal, and permanent, in ‘one size
fits all’, controlled from the centre, versus the decentralized, differentiated,
individualized, and variable. In building, the first may still apply, more or
less, to the base structure, but the latter applies to the infill. They should
be separated.
No comments:
Post a Comment