Compute, Demount, Adapt

Abstract

At the moment there is an increasing shortage of raw materials. The approach of a circular economy can be used to reduce the need for new materials. This includes design for adaptability. During interviews and a literature review, methods that are used to increase adaptability were determined, including oversizing elements and demountable connections. Oversizing elements leads to an initial increase of material use but removes the need to make changes to the structure during the building’s lifespan. On the other hand, demountable connections don’t increase the material use, but do lead to a need for changes being made to the structure. Therefore, there is always a balance between material use and adaptability. The main research question of this project is thus: “How can a computational workflow be used to increase the amount of adaptability in the design of a building’s structure, while minimizing material use?”.
The method of scenario-based design can also be used to increase adaptability, by anticipating how the building could change to meet the user’s needs over time. Scenario-based design can be combined with a computation workflow, which makes it possible to easily test many scenarios. The main reason why there are still limited adaptable buildings being constructed is the higher costs of these buildings. For instance, due to the higher material use of over-sizing elements. To lower the costs, it is possible to only apply adaptability measures where they are needed. 
During this project a computational workflow is created to determine where the measures are required, by applying scenarios to a preliminary design. The workflow can also be used to compare multiple grid-sizes, as this is an important aspect relating to both adaptability and material use. The workflow uses an optimization process to determine the minimal number of changes that are required for the structure to adapt to the different scenarios. Another optimization approach was also used to determine the minimal mass of the structure, after the structure has been adapted. However, this second approach was unsuccessful. 
The optimization process results in the minimal number of elements that need to be demountable or over-sized. The workflow creates a list of which elements need to be replaced with a larger cross-section for each of the scenarios. By combining these lists, all elements that might have to be replaced can be determined per design variant. By comparing mass and lowest number of demountable elements, the most suitable design variant is determined.
A test-case is used to determine whether this approach is beneficial for material use of the structure. From this test-case it was found that the structures optimized by the workflow can result in less material being used over the building’s life span if the scenarios are correctly anticipated. In case the scenarios from the workflow don’t match with the scenarios that will actually take place, the structures from the workflow offer no benefit over the traditional structure. The functionality of the workflow therefore depends on the scenarios that are determined during the design process.