Adaptable office buildings: theory and practice

Abstract

PurposeThe importance of adaptability in office buildings has increased during the past years, mostly due to factors like rapid change, both in private and public organisations, new and innovative work place design and growing environmental concerns about building redundancy.Design/methodology/approachThe research design of the study presented here is a comparative case study, where recently built office buildings by 11. Norwegian real estate developers are assessed with regard to 16 different adaptability measures.FindingsThe study shows that office buildings built by owner‐occupiers are more adaptable than office buildings built by the group who develop property for renting and management, and considerably more than the office buildings built by the group who develop property for sale to investors. A short‐term perspective on property investment, i.e. that of the group who develop property for sale to investors, does not favour adaptability concerns. A long‐term perspective as well as a use‐value perspective on property investment, i.e. that of the owner‐occupier stakeholder group, on the other hand, do favour adaptability in office buildings.Research limitations/implicationsWhether this research can help making buildings more adaptable, depends on whether the real estate customers, i.e. the users, they who pay for using the office building, understand the value of adaptability and are willing to pay the extra cost of adaptability. The building professions, including the real estate developers, claim that they know how to make office buildings adaptable.Originality/valueThe value of this paper may lie in demonstrating that this knowledge is not used in practice.

Adaptable buildings for sustainable built environment

“…The importance of 'adaptable buildings' has been frequently discussed in literature, particularly with regard to various facets of building adaptations, such as 'technical and functional performance of adaptable buildings' (Gann and Barlow, 1996;Slaughter, 2001;Kendall, 2003;Larssen and Bjorbery, 2004), 'stakeholders' motivation and benefits' (Arge, 2005;Kalita, 2006), 'regulations and policies' (Kincaid, 2002;Adeyeye, Bouchlaghem and Pasquire, 2010;Ren, Shih, and McKercher, 2014), 'sustainability' (Kincaid, 2000, Thomsen andFlier, 2009) and 'risk' (Remoy and Voordt, 2007). Adaptable buildings are defined as 'dynamic systems that carry the capacity to accommodate a set of evolving demands regarding space, function, and components ' (Adaptable Futures, 2012).…”

“…Challenges within the built environment are identified in the areas of 'environment considerations' (Kincaid, 2000;Geraedts, 2008), 'innovations in technology' (Flanagan and Tate, 1997;Nutt, 2000), 'planning and policy issues', 'social requirements', 'political forces' (Gann and Barlow, 1996) and 'economic considerations' (Arge, 2005;Douglas, 2006). To respond to these macro level challenges, buildings need to be changed in terms of the 'function' they house, the 'capacity' to achieve the performance required for the population they hold and the 'flow' of reacting to internal and external environmental forces (Slaughter, 2000).…”

Adaptable healthcare facilities through modular solutions

“…Moreover, adaptability describes the level of effort required for implementing the changes required. Enabling adaptability, in other words 'future-proofing', requires extra investments, which is why the amount and location of its application should be carefully evaluated (Arge 2005;Carthey et al 2011, Pati et al 2008, Pinder et al 2017and Vimpari et al 2014). …”

“…Great potential value could be realized by optimizing adaptable solutions in the retrofits. The implementation of adaptability is a long-term investment as its value is gained from small change adaptation procedures throughout the remaining service life of the facility (Arge 2005 andCarthey et al 2011). These adaptation procedures decrease the need of heavy renovations and potentially prolong the operational service life (Bjørberg and Verweij, 2009).…”

“…The four elements of CRA (adopted from Kasanen et al 1993:246 Figure 2. CRA process phases (Lehtiranta et al 2015;Kasanen et al 1993) (Arge 2005;Carthey et al 2011 andPinder et al 2017). ........ 22 Figure 6.…”