Adaptable Timber Complex: From Student Housing towards a Mixed-use Community

Abstract

The site is located on Heertjeslaan, TU Delft Campus South. The main problem is the contradiction between social needs and the campus development plan. On the one hand, the student housing corporation DUWO plans to build student housing on the site, which can help alleviate the student housing shortage in Delft. On the other hand, TU Delft is developing the Campus South area into an innovative hub, providing more places for institutes and companies. The campus claims that the student housing can only serve for 15 years until the arrival of the companies. However, it is unreasonable to demolish the existing student housing due to the increasing student amount and housing demands. The project aims to design an adaptable timber building that is convertible and expandable from student housing towards a mix-use community with a low cost. In the first 15 years, the project will be affordable and livable student housing (Phase I). After that, the site will be developed into a research & business area as a part of the 'innovative hub', accepting institutes and companies to settle in. The building can be partly transformed into offices, labs, and studios for the institutes and companies and can gradually expand if needed. Finally, the building might develop into a mix-use community with residential, research and business programs (Phase II). In this way, Campus South can become an innovation hub as planned and, at the same time, takes responsibility for the student housing shortage.The research is closely connected with the design part. It aims to evaluate the adaptability of multi-storey timber buildings by analysing the independence of shearing layers, mainly focusing on the joint design between building elements. The paper compared two cases, the Library and Seminar Centre (Case 1) and Pile up Giesshübel (Case 2), to determine how joint design affects the adaptability under the scene of altering the function using the Dependency Structure Matrix model. The clustering analysis studied the dependencies between the building elements and classified elements into shearing layers. It found that Case 1 has fewer dependencies between elements and can be better decomposed into independent layers than Case 2. The impact analysis studied the propagation impact of chosen elements in the space plan, skin and services layers. It proved that Case 1 is much more adaptable than the other case when changing the space plan and services due to its relevantly detached joint design in critical positions. Besides, the two cases both show good adaptability when changing the skin. The paper provides a methodology, based on Brand's 'shearing layers' model, to verify an existing building's adaptability or assist in designing a new adaptable building.