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Our ever-evolving built environment is continuously facing emerging needs for housing, work, health, and mobility, among others. Yet, buildings are usually designed and set up as finished permanent objects, reflecting the one constant scenario in mind of defined form, function, and performance. Since change is increasingly inevitable in our life, enlarging buildings’ adaptive capacities in response to arising variables and changing conditions over their lifecycle becomes a necessity in seeking global sustainability demands. The concept of building adaptability has been a notable subject in this respect, increasingly stimulating and proposing regenerative alternatives to today’s often obsolete buildings. This paper critically reviews the existing body of knowledge on the concept of adaptability in building research. The main focus is made on the evolution of the concept interpretations and related paradigms, and on the development of its applications and strategies in the light of promoting models and trends. Drawing on the literature as a source of evidence, the paper analyzes and classifies the content of existing studies published in scientific journals and gray literature, focusing on a timeframe from 2015 up-to-date. Moreover, the paper aims to build a constructive discussion to identify potential gaps between the actual state of the art and emerging needs, which should be addressed by further research.
Rand Askar; Luís Bragança; Helena Gervásio. Adaptability of Buildings: A Critical Review on the Concept Evolution. Applied Sciences 2021, 11, 4483 .
AMA StyleRand Askar, Luís Bragança, Helena Gervásio. Adaptability of Buildings: A Critical Review on the Concept Evolution. Applied Sciences. 2021; 11 (10):4483.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRand Askar; Luís Bragança; Helena Gervásio. 2021. "Adaptability of Buildings: A Critical Review on the Concept Evolution." Applied Sciences 11, no. 10: 4483.
Housing crisis is an evitable outcome of most of post-disaster scenarios due to the massive destruction they usually produce. Therefore, the reconstruction process and particularly in terms of housing is considered as an evident prerequisite in handling disasters' aftermaths. Temporary accommodation alternatives have been widely assumed in a variety of post-disasters cases as a primary step of the reconstruction process. Yet despite this fact, they have been broadly criticized for being unsustainable and resource-consuming. This matter can negatively affect the recovery process of the disaster-affected communities at different levels. Those effects can be even more serious when hitting developing countries, turning them more vulnerable. Still, there is an insistent need to find a rapid action to accommodate the disaster-affected people following their displacement while reconstructing their permanent homes. This paper proposes an incremental housing strategy which could form a key part of a proactive strategy that has not been offered by conventional methods. It provides time-efficient housing construction approaches while responding to the immediate large-scale interventions. Likewise, it bridges over the two phases of temporary and permanent housing in one integral transformable process that relies on efficiency and adaptability. The paper also discusses the sustainability aspects of executing the incremental strategy and examines its qualitative outcomes that contribute to a circular built environment in disaster-disrupted communities.
R Askar; A L Rodrigues; Luis Braganca; D Pinheiro. From Temporary to Permanent; A Circular Approach for Post-disaster Housing Reconstruction. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 2019, 225, 012032 .
AMA StyleR Askar, A L Rodrigues, Luis Braganca, D Pinheiro. From Temporary to Permanent; A Circular Approach for Post-disaster Housing Reconstruction. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. 2019; 225 (1):012032.
Chicago/Turabian StyleR Askar; A L Rodrigues; Luis Braganca; D Pinheiro. 2019. "From Temporary to Permanent; A Circular Approach for Post-disaster Housing Reconstruction." IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 225, no. 1: 012032.