Public Buildings and Multiplicity in Architecture

Abstract

Intreerede

Research and the design of buildings should contribute to creating solutions for the major challenges that are facing the building industry and our urban habitat. The industry is being confronted by potentially disruptive forces that threaten traditional roles and processes across the discipline, including digitalisation, a traditional lack of investment in innovation, a growing global population, and climate change.

Innovative solutions are required. For instance, the majority of buildings should have more productive and transformative qualities. To avoid the creation of architecture that can only be used for a short period of time, attention also needs to focus on a buildings’ intrinsic qualities and the ability they have to create value and contribute to our quality of life. The integration in design of these qualities are a new approach towards buildings and building elements that I would like to call Multiplicity in Architecture.

Public institutional building and public space design are, on the clients’ side, specifically influenced by significant emphasis on economisation and performance-based output specifications. Combined with the fact that they often have to function within increasingly densified urban environments, this leads to new, more multifunctional and hybrid building typologies.

Research of as well as by design can inform how design solutions for Public Building can incorporate multiplicity as a critical property.