Loose-Fit Architecture
Designing Buildings for Change
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Loose-Fit Architecture
Designing Buildings for Change
About This Book
Loose-Fit Architecture: Designing Buildings for Change
September/October 2017
Profile 249 Volume 87 No 5
ISBN 978 1119 152644
Guest-Edited by Alex Lifschutz
The idea that a building is 'finished' or 'complete' on the day it opens its doors is hardwired into existing thinking about design, planning and construction. But this ignores the unprecedented rate of social and technological change. A building only begins its life when the contractors leave. With resources at a premium and a greater need for a sustainable use of building materials, can we still afford to construct new housing or indeed any buildings that ignore the need for flexibility or the ability to evolve over time? Our design culture needs to move beyond the idealisation of a creative individual designer generating highly specific forms with fixed uses. The possibilities of adaptation and flexibility have often been overlooked, but they create hugely exciting 'loose-fit' architectures that emancipate users to create their own versatile and vibrant environments.
Contributors include: Stewart Brand, Renee Chow, Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, John Habraken, Edwin Heathcote, Despina Katsakakis, Stephen Kendall, Ian Lambot, Giorgio Macchi, Alexi Marmot, Andrea Martin, Kazunobu Minami, Peter Murray, Brett Steele, and Simon Sturgis.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- About the Guest-Editor
- Introduction: Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy
- Back to the Future: The Everyday Built Environment in a Phase of Transition
- Learning from the West Coast: Long-Termism and Change: An Interview with Stewart Brand
- NEUBAU: Flexible Self-Build Cities in Germany
- Japanese Innovation in Adaptable Homes
- Adaptability: A Low-Carbon Strategy
- Four Decades of Open Building Implementation: Realising Individual Agency in Architectural Infrastructures Designed to Last
- The Fetish of Flexibility: Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership, 125 Park Road, London
- Flexible Architecture for Evolving Work Practices
- System Separation: A Fitting Strategy for Future Development
- Dead and Dying Shopping Malls, Re-Inhabited
- Shaping Mexico City: Evolutionary Housing for Low-Income Urban Families
- Educational Innovation through Building Adaptation
- Revolution and Evolution: The Architectural Association
- Continuity and Change: Challenging the Disposable Chinese City
- Self-Build and Change: Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong
- Designing Landscapes for Change: Albertopolis
- Counterpoint: Mixing Up the Mediterranean Model: Architecture Amid Urban Flux
- Contributors
- ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: LOOSE-FIT ARCHITECTURE
- What is Architectural Design?
- ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: FORTHCOMING AD TITLES
- EULA