What is to come?
This is the last post for this month, and for our current theme on Adaptability in Infrastructure, but it is clearly not the end of the issues that we need to consider on this subject and so we will return to it later in 2018. Some of the issues remaining include:
Adaptability v Flexibility? Are they the same? Mark Neaseby suggests that it is dangerous for us to think of these terms as interchangeable. Flexibility has connotations of deciding now what may occur in the future and ‘building it in’. I think of the technical college in the UK that, allowing for a potential future need for super tall machines, built one of its instructional areas with extra high ceilings. The need never eventuated, but the cost of heating that building in the cold UK winters greatly increased their operating costs and reduced the use that could be made of that space. Adaptability does not mean that we decide NOW what will be needed in the future, but rather that we design so that WHEN we know what is required, we are easily able to change.
Adapting v Adaptability? Adaptability is a functional characteristic, and one that is going to be essential for future infrastructure design. Adapting is an action, and there is going to be considerable need for this as well, as we cope with infrastructure that is no longer suitable for its designed task, or where its designed task no longer exists.
Questions now include:
- What are the other key questions/ issues that you would like to discuss?
- What examples of successful Adaptation or Adaptability in design do you know of?
- Please share with us, who is working in this area and what are they doing.
Wishing everyone a most prosperous and exciting 2018! Please rejoin us January 9 as we now take a short seasonal break.
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