| Popis: |
Cities are confronted with persistent sustainability problems and are in need of theories, approaches and instruments that allow them to enter into a transition towards sustainable urban development. Because it is clear that a sustainable built environment should be able to adapt to unknown future requirements efficiently, research on the effects of change on urban systems and on methods to incorporate these changes in the built environment is gaining momentum. Change and adaptability are prolifically studied on urban levels (e.g. urban decline, urban regeneration and urban resilience, amongst others) and on the building level (e.g. Habraken's Supports, Open Building levels, pace-layering, transformable kit-of-parts systems, as well as theories dealing with material/component/building re-use). However, relationships between urban systems, emerging effects and the way urban areas are materialised have not been studied to such an extent, even though it is clear that adaptable urban systems will have to be supported by sustainable and adaptable materialisations. These relationships are located on the urban neighbourhood scale, as neighbourhoods are seen as the most basic self-replicating entities in an urban system, and most closely linked to the building level. This paper is part of ongoing trans-disciplinary research that studies whether sustainability is influenced by introducing adaptable buildings and infrastructure in existing urban neighbourhoods. The aim is to develop theories and approaches that will help to determine to what extent redeveloping existing neighbourhoods in an adaptable way can facilitate their future evolution. Because unambiguous nomenclature is crucial in trans-disciplinary research, the term 'urban fragment' is introduced. Building on literature from various fields of study on the urban and building scale, this paper presents a theoretical framework to study the links between adaptable buildings and adaptive urban environments - this is done by analysing concepts from complexity theories, linking them to sustainable urban development and comparing the result to research on adaptable building approaches. The paper acknowledges that this research is at an early stage; it is presented in order to invite broader discussion on the topic, including approaches and methods for the ongoing research. |
