Managing Metabolism

Abstract

Currently there is a high demand for more housing dwellings, a change in housing compositions, mis-match between household profiles and their space and lastly a growing demand in sustainability, circularity and adaptivity. Re-adaptive housing prevents demolition, transformation to non-housing functions, is more sustainable and continuously meet the space demands from changing households. Yet, re-adaptive housing seems not be the norm of housing construction. The fundamental question is whether (re-)adaptive principles can be applied in practice along, what (dis) enables it and how re-adaptive housing can be managed.

Through researching the (re-)adaptive theories of Metabolism, Structuralism and Open Bouwen an own definition of re-adaptive is proposed as there is no definition of re-adaptivity yet. After the literature review, case studies are researched in the empirical study. Case studies are supplemented with interviews and a survey. As a result, enablers and barriers are allocated and addressed in terms of providing proposals to improve re-adaptive housing new construction in the Netherlands. For both the allocation and the addressing, a professional panel has been discussing these findings and shed a critical backlight from different actors within a project team.
The main four themes that came forward were 1) financial; 2) legal; 3)design and 4) governance.

Newly constructed re-adaptive housing in the Netherlands can be managed by a) first finding an investor who is willing to have a long-term vision for its financing to be paid back as re-adaptive housing shows a higher yield but over a longer time than usual housing construction; b) having the municipality and/or other larger legal bodies willing to make policy changes (or introduction) in new flexibility in-use-policies with regards to the current building policies on a national level; c) offering a tenant contract with ownership over infill to the residents; d) providing the architect a very specific and clear brief/design assignment on re-adaptive architecture and e) setting up a different resident organisation with a more extensive communication between owner-resident and a continious management, even after the construction phase.
(Re-)adaptive housing and above stated recommendations also lead to role changes of stakeholders as residents play a stronger role since they take partly a designing, financing and ownership role. An additional stakeholder is the resident representative. Construction engineer and architect will have to work closer together. And the the owner/organisation will have to play a bigger role after construction as continuous guidance and management is needed.

Re-adaptive housing never re-visits the initation phase (when renovation or transformation is happening) but rather has the introduction of the ‘re-phase’ which enablers (re-)adaptation of the housing unit. This phase is imbedded to such an extent that systems and information of what the possibilities are (within architectural space/design but also structural) are clear and set for residents. The operation phase (becoming more a loop) is longer due this re-phase, and also results in shorter life cycles and thus less need for maintenance. Lastly, the design phase is longer and the construction phase is shorter in comparison with regular housing. It can be concluded that re-adaptivity is a process as its continuous / open ended, has a certain procedure to be followed (especially during the re-phase), doesn’t have a definite duration, is event-driven and neverending.

In order to enable re-adaptive housing in the Netherlands, re-adaptive housing should be seen, initiated and followed through as a process and not a project.