ADAPTABLE ARCHITECTURE: EVALUATION AND LIMITATION IN THE CASE OF COOPERATIVE HOUSING

Abstract

The House as a place of living to death should integrate all human development stages. The incapacity of housing to adapt leads to negative externality in the built environment and reduces the living standard. Adaptability as a design approach embodies spatial, structural, and service strategies which allow the physical artifact a level of flexibility in response to changing operational parameters over time. This study aims to develop an adaptable design approach and strategy which is feasible to the context of Arba Minch. Buildings specifically CH (Cooperative housing) are designed as static objects, to serve a specific goal and a specific function. Over time, they are at risk of becoming obsolete and poorly utilized, thus unable to serve to change needs. They are vulnerable to demolishing of mass buildings components and elements to meet the dynamic need. This problem is rooted in; the design philosophy and level of awareness of building professionals about adaptable architecture, construction materials and technology, users' experience of living and working in small spaces, and policy implementation. The objective of conducting this research is to develop design strategies and approach to adaptable CH in the context of Arba Minch. To achieve the objective, site observations of existing CH and semi-structured interviews with users are conducted. Self-administrated questionnaires are distributed to building professionals to have an understanding of the design and construction practice concerning adaptability. From user's perspective interview data was collected and analyzed. The last version Flex 4.0, amongst others based on the support and infill theory of Habraken (Habraken, 1972) is used to analyze adaptability levels of selected housing cases. The assessment result shows about 16.88% of CH in Arba Minch are not adaptive, 79.22% are hardly adaptive, and less than 1% are limited adaptive to changing needs. There is no CH in the study area that can be grouped under the adaptivity class of good and excellent. The less/no surplus of site, non-modular structural grid spacing, and inappropriate level of functional dependency made between support and infill are key adaptability indicators missing in existing buildings. The design approach used, awareness of professionals and users, construction materials and methods, and policy and policy implementation are the identified limitation of un-adaptive practice. Generally, the duplex is a more feasible and adaptable housing arrangement than fourplex or quadriplexand row housin The selection and use of cost efficient and feasible adaptable design strategies and design approach such as participatory design, phased-based design and respecting building as a dynamic and changing object is recommended to enhance adaptive potential. Design should start from the long-term building layer and end with the short-term building layer. Buildings in hot-humid area should be segmented into maximum possible blocks for easy adaptation. The author developed a design approach and strategies for adaptable CH that can sustain in changing conditions. The proposed design can be used in other projects by dimensional alteration.