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Michel,

Here is the article you asked for on adaptive architecture for p2p
communities. I hope you find it interesting. And if you notice anything
needing some editing or improvement, feel free to point it out. I've
ccd this to those I seem to recall were in the earlier discussion.
Please forward if I've missed anyone.


Adaptive Architecture, Collaborative Design, and the Evolution of Community

There are many anachronisms relative to the contemporary situation
perpetuated today in the practice of architecture and two of the most
 obvious are the delusions of permanence and perfection; the notion
that the purpose of design is to realize some kind of ideal adaption
relative to the topography and situation of a site and as a consequence
if design is proper then the function of space need never change and
structure will never go obsolete. And, of course, the higher the
'profile' of the designer the greater the tendency toward these
assumptions of permanence and perfection. the design becoming inviolate
relative to the designer's prestige, changing from architecture to
sculpture.

In reality, we live in a world of change steadily increasing in pace
and degree. A world where the works of even history's greatest and most
famous architects are very routinely demolished and are lucky to
survive a generation. Western society is more mobile than ever before,
property value more volatile, and the structure and character of
households more dynamic and complex. The environmental effects of
Global Warming alone will compel a relocation of some two billion
people in the coming decades. The effects of rising, and increasingly
volatile, energy costs and the need for nations to reduce carbon
footprints may double that number as once conventional modes of living
-like conventional suburbia- become untenable and people are compelled
to seriously consider the energy and carbon overheads of their daily
life. Currently, real estate market bubbles are bursting all over the
globe, forcing radical corrections of property value in the wake of
decades of irrational finance industry practice, casting people out of
their homes and compelling society to consider radical new ways of
housing itself in the face of unreliable, unsafe, and increasingly
userous mortgage based systems. Social trends have steadily increased
the pace of home renovations. While the market increasingly favors
homes of generic aspect, homeowners are increasingly demanding
customization to suit a burgeoning diversity in aesthetic taste and the
structure of the family itself. The nuclear family no longer defines
the model household. New household models based on the return of the
extended family unit and the emergence of new non-related family groups
are emerging. And technology too is having its impact, altering the
architectures of domestic infrastructure systems with increase
frequency while producing new trends in work and leisure activity that
can radically effect the organization of the home and logistics of the
household. The past two decades have seen home design slowly adopt the
notion of the extra bedroom as optional 'home office' predicated on the
assumption that trends in home-based work favored the use of
information technology. And yet we are on the verge of a revolution in
independent industrial production and associated entrepreneurship that
goes far beyond the limits of a home office and which remains
completely unanticipated in home design even as designers themselves
are leading this work trend.

Clearly, contemporary trends favor a habitat of more freely adaptive
architecture and nowhere is this need more acute than in the growing
number of intentional communities inspired by growing social
dissatisfaction with the dysfunctions of the contemporary habitat.
Attrition rates for intentional communities are typically high in the
industrialized world owing mostly to social issues; to unrealistic
expectations, a lack of effective social skills, sociopathic behavior
patterns cultivated in the mainstream habitat's anonymity, and an
essential lack of cultural knowledge for what community is and how it
works. In the western world especially, generations of Industrial Age
development has cultivated an essential cultural sociopathy rooted in
the presumed inexorable logic of the Market. Traditional communities
were systematically destroyed in favor of an isolated nuclear family
unit identifying primarily with the macro-community of the
nation-state. The culture of community must be relearned through trial
and error and an incremental evolution, yet this is only possible in an
environment conducive to that process. An environment where concepts of
property and propriety are not presumed absolute and where the physical
structure of the habitat is not fixed and does not get in the way of,
or unnecessarily complicate, experimentation.

An important characteristic of vernacular architectures of the past was
an accommodation -indeed, an anticipation- of spontaneous adaptation.
Vernacular building technology is not the product of any formal
development process. It is the product of cultural evolution involving
the peer-to-peer negotiation between owner/builders and their
community, owners and craftsman, apprentice and master-craftsman, and
the habitat, time, and the environment. Together, these result in a
system of building and design convention peculiar to a location and
regional culture. Today, they have tended to become stratified as
'styles' in the modern era, their evolution stunted by the compulsion
toward 'cultural preservation' in the face of contemporary
nation-states compulsion toward sociocultural homogenization. Many of
their building methods are no longer functional or practical in the
contemporary context because of so many generations of stunted
evolution, missed technology integration, changing economics, and
environmental changes. They are mimicked for aesthetics alone. But for
a long time they embodied a very organic, collaborative, human process
of habitat cultivation -albeit operating at a pace measured usually in
generations. Many have sought to revive vernacular building techniques
in an attempt to recapture their organic collaborative qualities but
long evolutionary stratification has made many of them largely
anachronistic and non-functional in a contemporary context,
particularly in terms of their labor overhead and thus slow possible
pace of evolution. Is it possible to invent a new vernacular adapted to
the contemporary situation exhibiting these same functional and social
qualities and serving as a medium of community cultivation? In this
article we will explore some of the new building technologies that hint
at this very possibility. Spontaneously adaptable building systems with
quick low-skill assembly and high technology integration that combine
some of the benefits of machine production and advanced technology with
a potential for the same organic cultivation of community design, now
possible at an unprecedented pace of evolution more in tune with the
contemporary pace of change.

Types of Adaptive Architecture:

There are basically three 'schools' of adaptive architecture; adaptive
reuse, functionally generic architecture, and adaptive systems. These
further break-down into more specific building systems and design
approaches. Adaptive reuse is based on the repurposing of a 'found'
structure -often a pre-existing piece of architecture that has become
obsolete in its original purpose. This is most common in the context of
commercial, municipal, and industrial structures with large span
interiors that allow for easy retrofit or sometimes the erection of
whole light independent structures within the shelter of the larger
structure. Adaptive reuse also applies to vehicles and other industrial
artifacts like ISO shipping containers and has been explored with
everything from culvert pipe to the external fuel tanks of the Space
Shuttle. Adaptive reuse also can apply to entirely new prefabricated
structures and building systems which are simply employed to a purpose
they were not originally designed for. This is common with light
industrial and farm structures and their sometimes highly modular
building systems.

The chief limitation of adaptive reuse as a strategy for adaptive
architecture is that one is limited to the very providential adaptive
potential of a found structure one has no control over the form of.
Potential adaptability thus varies greatly, usually being greater the
simpler the form of found structure and the larger its structural
spans. In general, this approach is most often limited to discrete
dwellings and does not suit community development unless the found
structures are truly vast -like very large industrial, commercial,
transportation, and municipal buildings. Early era industrial
buildings, of course, are the basis of most 'loft' apartment conversion
based on their large size, large spans, easy compartmentalization using
built-up partition walls, and numerous windows. Few other types of
buildings have been so comprehensively reusable. Modern industrial
buildings, which are predominately based on steel frame and panel
structures rather than masonry, are nowhere near as versatile in this
respect and require radically different approaches to reuse.

Functionally generic architecture is based on structures intentionally
designed for perpetual adaptive reuse -a level of design foresight
that's rare today and typically limited to large scale commercial and
industrial buildings. These are structures with no pre-determined
purpose for any of their interior space -except, perhaps, in a very
generalized sense relative to the environmental character of large
zones of the structure. Instead, they are designed to accommodate as
many uses as possible anywhere within them as necessary over time and
with the aid of non-permanent retrofit that conforms to the dimensional
limits of the larger structure. This concept is closely related to the
notion of 'skybreak' architecture where a large independent roof or
enclosure structure like a dome is used as a simple weather shelter for
light independent modular, and freely adaptable structures built inside
it, the elimination of the burden of weatherproofing allowing these
structures that lightness and adaptability. This is how Buckminster
Fuller actually intended the geodesic dome to be used for housing -as
opposed to the rather tricky and unreliable wooden frame dome houses we
commonly see today- and it has seen more recent interpretations in such
designs as Shigeru Ban's Naked House where a greenhouse like structure
provided skybreak shelter for a compound of traditional Japanese rooms
put on boxes on casters like pieces of furniture.

This functionally generic design concept was once almost the exclusive
province of commercial office building design, until in the wake of the
Lofting movement a few residential developers realized the advantage of
designing new buildings as ready-made loft apartment structures. We
tend to think of buildings as being whole structures when, in practice,
they actually tend to be organized into several primary and largely
independent elements; superstructure (which does the work of holding
the building up), foundation, roof, floor/deck, ceiling, outer
enclosure, partition walls, and furnishings. In some vernacular
architectures, superstructure, foundation, floor, and roof were the
only substantial or 'permanent' elements of a structure. Everything
else was temporary, moveable, and light. This strategy was adopted in
modern times for the design of commercial office buildings where it was
necessary to lease space on a square-foot basis and allow tenants the
freedom to organize the internal layout of their workspace to suit
their particular operational schemes and choices of amenities and
equipment. This strategy became particularly important in the
Information Age with the need to accommodate a rapidly evolving
assortment of technology in the workplace. Though sometimes elaborate
to the point of absurdity on the outside, office buildings are designed
with simple post and beam superstructures of as large a span as
practical and organized into simple floor levels. This superstructure
defines the primary routing for a networked utilities infrastructure.
Hanging or 'curtain' exterior wall systems and large glass windows
provide the basic environmental enclosure. Everything else is
non-load-bearing partitions of light framing or sometimes modular panel
systems which are all considered temporary or disposable.

This strategy affords a building a much longer life and great economy
in use over time because of how freely the interior design can be
adapted to suit the needs of changing tenants and unit space demands.
Within the limits of its primary structure, it anticipates change and
can evolve freely to suit the needs of its inhabitants, the
relationship between exterior and interior forms not especially
critical and interior design more readily adaptive to any overall form,
even if not always efficient in materials use.

In this strategy we see an important demarcation in architectural
responsibility. The building owner is concerned primarily with the
rarely changing macro-scale architecture of the building while tenants
are concerned with the frequently changing interior design or
micro-scale architecture. The building owner may need to be consulted
on some changes to the interior space, particularly where they involve
the tear-down of built-up partition walls and modifications to
non-modular utilities components as incorrect changes could impact
other tenants or damage the superstructure. But for such things as the
rearrangement of modular office partitions and the like, the building
owner need have no concern.

This notion can be expanded to larger whole-community scales where the
macro-scale architecture becomes the province of community-level
management or collaboration while the micro-scale in-fill architecture
becomes the province of the individual household or 'building'. This
can serve as an effective solution to the limitations in functional
scale of wholly adaptive building systems, maintaining freedom of
evolution at the discrete dwelling/facility scale even if freedom of
macro-form is more limited by heavier structural systems. Thus we
arrive at the concept of the conjoined or collective Community
Macrostructure and the Urban Megastructure, the best example of this
being Paulo Soleri's Arcology; a whole city based on a single
community-managed megastructure of vast size. Though often accused of
'megalomaniaclemegabuild', the Soleri arcology is actually a
functionally generic structure that is only 'designed' at the
macrostructural scale. Everything else is up to the inhabitants in the
form of in-fill structure, which is essentially no different from how
cities already work except that it's organizing its 'backplane' in 3D.
The notion of the independent building structure -and by extension
independent property- is another one of those anachronisms perpetuated
by contemporary architecture. Just turn any wide angle picture of a
city sideways and you realize that most structures in our habitat are
no more independent than the peripheral boards plugged into the
backplane of a personal computer and thus real estate no less virtual
than the domain name real estate of the Internet.

Now, there are much more advanced forms of functionally generic
architecture that, for reasons unclear, seem to have been largely
overlooked in commercial development and remain unexplored. Though
designed for free adaptability, the contemporary office building or
loft apartment building doesn't include any integral systems of in-fill
structure interface that would actually facilitate this spontaneous
adaptability with the greatest convenience through some degree of
smaller scale modular component interface. With the exception of
hanging ceilings and raised 'access' flooring, these buildings
typically rely on very wasteful methods of interior refitting borrowed
from the primitive interior finishing methods common to suburban
housing. As a result, the interior refitting of these buildings incurs
large and unnecessary degrees of waste in labor, time, materials, and
cost and much higher degrees of wear and potential damage to the
superstructure during conversion. This author has often suggested the
notion that the superstructures of large buildings -and especially
community scale macrostructures- should include an integral plug-in
socket grid over its entire surface area derived from the
formed-in-place sockets used for climbing form systems in heavy
concrete construction. Spaced in a dense grid akin to a raised floor
system, this would allow the simple screw-in surface-mount attachment
of an endless variety of fittings allowing for easy routing of all
utilities hardware, the installation of mezzanine structures and other
secondary support structures, and a standardized modular panel system
for all finished walls, floors, ceilings, facade cladding, window
framing, and large equipment and appliances. And all of this could be
quickly removed and re-arranged as necessary without wear on the
superstructure itself. It would seem that, in the context of
contemporary trends, this would be a logical approach even for the
production of conventional suburban housing.

Adaptive systems are building systems where whole structures are freely
adaptable by virtue of easily demountable and manipulated modular
components. This is the ideal form of adaptive architecture, where both
the micro-scale structure of the discrete dwelling and the macro-scale
structure of a whole community are freely and spontaneously evolvable
at potentially the same very high rate of change if necessary. These
systems are also potentially useful in the context of retrofit or
in-fill structure in both the adaptive reuse and functional generic
architecture contexts, providing the basis of light structures that can
flesh-out the interior of other larger structures.

Such systems tend to fall into two categories; unit module systems and
modular component systems. Unit module systems are based on relatively
large modular units comprising one or more rooms which serve as
complete prefabricated, sometimes pre-finished, structures akin to
appliances that can be assembled into larger complexes, either directly
or with the use of an external support superstructure. One of the best
and largest examples of such architecture is Moshe Safdi's Habitat 67,
built for the Montreal Expo and based on large interlocking stacked
concrete modules forming a vast multi-storey complex.

Modular component systems are those where structures are built from
relatively small size modular components, usually in some combination
of frame, panel, and fixture modules all scaled for relatively easy
assembly by hand and in some rare cases designed for robotic assembly.
Space frame structures are the common example of this form of
structure. Both of these types systems are sometimes referred to as
'plug-in architecture', though in general the term is more
appropriately applied to modular component systems based on integrated
component attachment methods needing few or no tools.

The chief limitation of adaptive systems is scale. As a general rule,
given a particular structural material, the bigger the building the
bigger its parts. In order to keep components within a manageable size,
many building systems must compromise to some degree on maximum clear
spans and maximum load bearing capacity. This is particularly the case
with modular component building systems intended to be assembled by
hand. However, even with such limits systems based on modern materials
are still impressive in performance, usually topping-out in the area of
ten storey high structures with spans under 40 feet. With the advent of
future nanofiber composite and diamondoid materials we may see these
dimensions increase dramatically but for truly large communal
structures as those in the contemporary urban environment heavier
construction systems may remain necessary. In such a situation the
functionally generic architecture approach would supersede but these
same wholly adaptive building systems are very likely to find roles as
in-fill and finishing structural systems for macrostructures built with
other methods.

Contemporary technology for adaptive systems is a relatively recent
phenomenon commonly associated with Modernist design, though some
vernaculars have exhibited characteristics of modulariity and were
often inspiration to Modernist designers -traditional Japanese
architecture based on the 'ken' system of geometry derived from the
dimensions of tatami mats being particularly significant. One would
imagine that the many virtues of modular construction, its high
adaptability, and it's potential for industrialized production would
make such systems an inevitable evolutionary leader. But, in fact,
while countless modular building systems have been devised across the
20th century, very few have survived to the present day or achieved any
kind of broad use in the building industry. The chief reason for this
seems to be the difficulty in matching the logistics of the real estate
market to the logistics of Industrial Age mass production. Many modular
building systems have been devised for the sake of one or a few
building or home designs which their inventors/designers believed ideal
in some way but which had no hope of enough market appeal to justify
the cost of tooling for mass production. Early Modernist designers were
particularly focused on the concept of industrializing housing as a
means to making it accessible to all. But they commonly relied on a
model of industrialization derived from the example of the automobile
industry, regarding the house as a whole unit product like a car or
appliance and seeking an idealized essential architecture for the house
applicable to all housing needs akin to that of the car. (with the
adoption of pressed steel welded unibody construction in the late
1930s, virtually all automobiles became manufactured in the exact same
way and all car designs largely cosmetic derivatives of the same basic
architecture) Many hundreds of designers across the 20th century sought
the ideal universal -or at least one-size-fits-most- house
architecture. They all failed. Though it may often seem as though the
typical American suburbanite is subject to a habitat of tragically
soul-crushing banality, sameness, and squalor little improved over the
project tenement housing of urban areas, the sliding scale of economy
by amenities and the spectrum of variations by climate and regional
cultural aesthetics is still sufficient enough that a universal house
design becomes impossible. No single contemporary prefab home design
has ever sold more than a few thousand units in their entire production
lifetime -not even those deliberately designed as mass production
housing for the poorest and presumably least picky members of society.

Other designers/inventors more pragmatically sought to devise
multi-purpose building systems rather than specific building designs
-as was the case with the many developers of the various space frame
building systems. But many of these designer/inventors refused to
assume the personal responsibility for establishing manufacturing
industries for them, assuming this to be the role of already
established large companies, and putting themselves, again, in the
position of having to prove the pre-existence of a sufficiently large
market. Those that did assume this responsibility -because no one else
would- quickly found themselves limited to the use of very high cost
low volume component production for demonstrating their technology. To
bootstrap production, they would then seek to focus on commercial
'glamour' architecture where the premium cost of their systems was more
tolerable than in other construction markets. For most this proved to
be a trap, their small businesses never able to get enough building
projects to bridge them to continuous production of standardized
component lines that could bring their prices down to something the
mainstream market could tolerate. This was often exacerbated by a
failure of these ventures to actively pursue cultivation of broad
spectrums of boilerplate designs that could expand their market. Most
settled into this vertical market niche, waiting for the architects and
the projects to come to them, and abandoned their original ideals.
Historically, most space frame manufacturers have proven business
failures, either being ruined outright with shifts in architectural
fashion or surviving by being absorbed into other commercial building
products companies. The more successful companies have survived by
going international in marketing but even the single largest and oldest
space frame producer in the world -MERO-TSK -still, after nearly 70
years in business, cannot get enough work to move beyond on-demand
production and now assumes, as a business policy, that it's simply not
possible. Once regarded as the epitome of Industrial Age and High Tech
building technology, modular space frame systems have been in existence
now for almost a century yet no standardized commercially manufactured
component sets currently exist (with the exception of very light
systems for store display and theatrical uses) and building a modest
home with them can still cost millions.

More recently, designers and inventors have begun exploring the
possibilities of repurposing industrial building systems that are
already in production as the basis of multi-purpose architectural
building systems. Repurposing prefab modular industrial structures was
common among Modernist designers throughout the 20th century but
limited to discrete building designs, largely because the building
systems being repurposed were themselves limited to a few kinds of
structures. But the late 20th century saw the emergence of a number of
industrial building systems of much more generic aspect intended for
such applications as industrial automation, custom shop-floor
furnishings, and prototype machine tools. Leader among these are the
aluminum T-slot profiles based on extruded aluminum beams with T-shaped
slots formed in their sides. Manufactured by many companies around the
world, this building system has produced a huge family of standardized
industrial components offering many possibilities for repurposing to
architectural applications. Several companies are now developing
housing based on these parts. This strategy offers the potential to
overcome the problems associated with past modular building systems by
virtue of the fact that the primary components are already in mass
production worldwide, eliminating the need to prove the pre-existence
of a market sufficient to justify tooling-up production. These new
architectural uses simply present a new extension of an already
existing market. However, components specialized to the architectural
application are still very necessary, though thankfully limited largely
to finished panels much easier to fabricate and incurring no added
costs for production on demand when compared to conventional on-site
building finishing -typically the most expensive and labor-intensive
part of conventional construction. Also, many designers and inventors
have been caught up in the current fad of repurposing the seemingly
unlikely ISO modular shipping container and, though mostly employing
traditional adaptive reuse to them, some are exploring them as the
basis of more standardized unit module building systems based on
standardized modifications. Again, the advantage here is that one is
repurposing a component that is already in mass production worldwide
and thus needs no pre-justification for its production.

As new digital fabrication technologies are coming on-line, the cost
premium for on-demand production is beginning to drop. Minimum
necessary volumes for production are steadily shrinking. designers can
now employ modular and other alternative building systems at their own
convenience rather than aspiring toward meeting the demands of mass
production. This is one of the key forces behind the recent surge in
interest in Modernist Prefab housing. It was once unthinkable for most
designers and inventors to actually experiment on the scale of entire
buildings. But today, this is becoming increasingly practical,
resulting in a remarkable explosion in cottage-scale architectural
experimentation which, in turn, is spawning new cottage-scale
entrepreneurship. This has only just begun to impact modular
construction technology, largely because so many of the modular
building concepts of the past were forgotten and remain to be
rediscovered by contemporary designers/inventors and because, for the
most part, they continue to operate largely in isolation of each other
because of professional competitiveness. But its clear the virtues of
modularity are coming through in these new designs and we may soon find
ourselves in the midst of a new modular building technology boom. In
the immediate future, production of sophisticated modular building
systems will be as practical for owner-builders as other more
conventional building methods and may become the basis of significant
development movements. We are already seeing hints of this with the
T-slot technology.

The role of adaptive architecture in collaborate community development:

Adaptive architecture offers the potential to radically alter the
logistics of habitat compared to common contemporary development
methods, expanding personal and social control over development and
shifting things back to a mode of habitat more akin to that of
pre-industrial times. It does this by reducing or eliminating the
barriers of cost and time in the physical adaptation of structure and
by the decoupling of the value of buildings from land, fundamentally
altering the perspective of property. The wholly demountable building
is an astoundingly disruptive technology when you think about it.
Traditionally, the value of land has been interdependent with how it is
used -how it's 'developed'- and thus interdependent with the structures
put on it. This relies on the essential non-changeability of
conventional architecture -on that irrational assumption of
architectural permanence. This has created the very peculiar phenomenon
-or cultural delusion...- of perpetual real estate appreciation, which,
as we have painfully learned in the past few years in the western
world, is not sustainable. The demountable building has a value
independent of land because, at any time, it can be picked up and moved
whole to some other location or even sold off as parts. It can also be
radically altered in value and use through a reconfiguration of
components. This reduces the value of land to that based purely on
demand for raw space while affording the structures on it a very
independent valuation based on unit component condition and
re-salability. This would not automatically mean that a building must
radically depreciate like an automobile or mobile home. Their
depreciation is based on their engineered obsolescence -their
deliberate design for irreparability. However, unlike a conventional
building which has its value tied to land, it would depreciate
according to the vicissitudes of market value on a discrete component
basis, some parts wearing faster than others, some retaining market
value relative to demand, some even appreciating. In other words, the
relative value of the structure over time becomes akin to the values of
furniture. You can buy the cheap and disposable stuff, buy stuff that
lasts, or even buy antiques that appreciate in value.

Whether as part of primary cultures or later cultures, most people in
the world for most of human history did not individually own land;
either because they had no need to own it in any formal sense to use it
or because ownership was limited to small ruling classes/castes. Though
we often think of cities today as somehow a very recent advent of
civilization, for most of history people have, out of simple necessity,
lived at an urban density in a village-oriented habitat -even when that
village was no more than a shared cave or a mobile collection of light
huts or tents. The use of space in such early communities was subject
largely to a peer-to-peer process of negotiation between immediate
neighbors and often the whole community, initially in a very casual
manner but increasingly formally as the nature of the built habitat
became more sophisticated and the structures involved more substantial
and dependent upon communal labor to create. Often community leaders,
elders, or sometimes the ruling-class land owners or their assigned
representatives assumed the role of mediator for these negotiations.
All space was essentially 'free' for use but communities tended to
create specific collective structures for protection, resource
efficiency, and convenience, compelling one to participate in a
negotiation for one's share of space and location in the community
layout. In such an environment egalitarianism tended to prevail because
of a very direct peer pressure for fairness and equity and a dependence
on one's neighbors for building labor -if not for survival in general.
As a result, most personal dwellings tended to be consistent in basic
space, form, and design, though were free for elaboration,
customization, and decoration within the limits of personal labor or
labor one could trade for or coax free from one's neighbors in some
way. One was always cognizant of the fact that one's rights to any
particular space in a community were secondary to the needs of the
community as a whole -or for that matter the will of the ruling lord or
the like who might actually own the land and could decide at any
particular time that he had better uses for it. But as a participating
member of the community one was always assured that if one was
compelled to move, the community would pitch-in collectively to make
that move as convenient as possible and provide one with equivalence in
replacement accommodations -or even some improvement as compensation
for being compelled to move. And, of course, these decisions -because
the labor involved could be so high- were very well deliberated and did
not happen that often except where communities relied on architecture
that required regular structural replacement -as in the case of
buildings employing lighter organic materials.

This very social process of negotiation and deliberation over the use
of space resulted in a typically very organic and evolutionary
character to the architecture of early communities with a very specific
hierarchy of social propriety played-out in structure in a sometimes
fractal-like self-similarity of hierarchical architectural
organization. This was particularly apparent in communities that
developed vernacular architectures based on walled enclosures and court
or atrium structures -clustered dwellings surrounding a shared open
space deriving from the most efficient use of a walled enclosure- where
a successive hierarchy of enclosed open spaces physically denoted the
levels of social propriety in the community, as well as sometimes
indicating phases of growth. The smallest of these open spaces
represented the family domain, which in turn surrounded a space
defining a small village, tribal, or extended family level of domain,
which in turn could be organized in larger cities around massive public
squares or plazas linked by primary thoroughfares and sometimes used to
compartmentalize major tribal, religious, ethnic, or social class
divisions and then in later periods often became the basis of
organizing communities around trades and industries with trade guilds
given habitat territories just like a major tribal group. (from this
may derive, in modern cities, the tendency for regional commercial
specialization in cities almost as if it were being organized like a
gigantic department store or market bazar)

Though early dwellings were often based on high labor construction
-particularly stone and earthen construction- and could sometimes
withstand the elements for centuries, attitudes about their permanence
and value were very different from that of dwellings today. A
relatively young community would, of necessity, rely on smaller simpler
dwellings that were more easily changeable based on the need for the
community as a whole to work out its ultimate persistent architecture
as a process of trial and error and because the net pool of labor was
relatively small. As the structure of the community became more
stratified with experience, it was safer for individuals to invest a
lot of their own elaboration on initial structures and thus they would
tend to expand in size. In situations where there was an upper-class
land-owner such as a feudal lord, they generally regarded all buildings
as disposable no matter what amount of labor might have gone into them.
Serfs/tenants had little incentive to invest in their dwellings where
their future was less certain and so would tend to keep dwellings
simple unless they were in closer proximity to civil structures
dictated by the ruler and which thus had a better chance of being left
unmolested across generations. In some cultures all or most structures
were automatically disposable because they relied on light materials
that needed whole replacement on a regular basis or because religious
traditions -often with a rationale in disease control- required the
ritualistic destruction of a dwelling after the death of an occupant.
In Japan, the cultivation of the 'ken system' and modular building
vernaculars that so inspired Modernist designers was in part compelled
by frequent war, earthquake, whimsical edicts by nobility, and
outbreaks of fire that required a very pragmatic attitude about the
long term survivability of architecture and created the need for
structures that were light, potentially demountable, and easily
replaced with more valuable personal possessions kept small and easily
transported. It was a common practice in Japanese cities and towns
prior to the Meiji Period to build communal fireproof safety vaults of
heavy masonry in which residents would quickly secure valuables removed
from their homes when word of an advancing fire reached them. Clearly,
this modern notion of the house as a permanent repository of life-long
accumulated wealth is a very recent concept that seems very dependent
upon the security provided by the home insurance and banking
industries, which as we have increasingly seen is incapable of coping
with disaster or disruption on a regional scale.

Adaptive architecture compels a similarly pragmatic attitude about the
disposition of the personal dwelling and the nature of property. By
decoupling the value of structure from the value of land through
demountability, new -or perhaps we should say more traditional- models
of property become apparent and we return to a situation where habitat
becomes a social construct rather than an economic construct. In the
conventional real estate market there generally exist only two options
in the disposition of dwellings owing to the strict coupling of
structure to land value; total ownership and total lease. One either
owns ones dwelling and its land whole or own rents a dwelling owned
whole by someone else. Mobile homes have created the potential third
option in the form of ownership of dwelling independent of rental of
space -which was actually a common situation in earlier times- but the
horrendously poor quality of mobile homes and their very rapid
depreciation relative to their cost and the high cost of rental space
to put them on has made this a userous option of last resort for a
desperate underclass unwilling or unable to move to cities. With
adaptive architecture that has a high degree of demountability (and
with that perpetual incremental maintainability like conventional
buildings) one can regard a building as a portable possession akin to
the furniture inside it and thus a broad spectrum of options opens up
between these two ownership extremes. A commercial land owner now has
options to lease space much like space in an office building without a
large investment in structures or can choose to build superstructures
to increase density of use without a great investment in finishing. A
home owner now has many possible gradations of ownership to transition
between on the way to full scale home ownership with labor cost largely
eliminated by modularity and industrial production of building
components a home owner can easily assemble himself. They can invest in
a home incrementally, relocating as necessary to obtain more more
space, and choose at any time between components that are new or
used/refurbished and bought on a house parts aftermarket. The scale of
dwellings can freely fluctuate according to their varying use. One can
add or sell off parts of a home incrementally as one's household space
needs grow and shrink.

But what's most interesting here is the potential in the community
context for collective land ownership with a peer-to-peer socially
collaborative process of space allocation. Like these early
communities, a community based on adaptive architecture can assume
collective ownership of a large piece of land -perhaps through the
model of a corporation- and then use any social process it desires to
allocate space for its individuals with the whole habitat free to
evolve at a very rapid pace to accommodate trial-and-error cultivation
of experience and refinement of overall community architecture. There
are many possible models to explore in this context; Kelsonian models
of community investment corporations, group collectivization of
discrete parcels, state ownership and granting of land as a commons
under community management, and so on. These things become practical to
explore because one's personal investment in structure remains
independent of location and independently fungible down to the discrete
component level.

Such models anticipate the situation of Post-Industrial civilization,
where progressive functional failure of nation-states coupled to
cultural trends of demassification and the rise of industrial
independence result in communities, both physical and virtual, becoming
the essential functional geopolitical and geoeconomic entities and
needing to cultivate a system of property rights more akin to a global
system of squatters' rights than what we are familiar with today. In
this environment, very different cultural models of property are likely
to emerge. Western civilization has generally adopted a rather
primitive concept of property rights deriving from medieval religious
notions of divine right and dominionism -god as ultimate landlord
granting rights to his chosen upper-caste authorities (his will
reasoned out of success in warrior conquest) for similar disbursement
by grant, lease, or sale. It's a weird model that assumes that
everything must be owned by someone in order to exist or be of use. In
contemporary law this model persists, with bureaucratic nation-states
assuming the role of earlier kings and popes and the concept of divine
right rooted in the sometimes near-psuedo-religion of patriotism along
with it. We really haven't progressed very far beyond the Magna Carta
in the past 800 years... In primary cultures, with their commonly
animistic belief systems, a much more sophisticated model tends to
prevail. The earth owns itself -often being attributed with some
existence as an organism or personality- which, most of the time,
deigns to allow human beings to do as they please on its surface. It's
up to the community to figure out how to manage this use according to
the balance between the needs of individuals and the group as well as
the dictates of natural order and balance. Thus property rights are a
negotiable social convention limited by the willingness of a community
to recognize and defend them by force where necessary. This is the
actual logical/physical reality of property, this model more
sophisticated -despite our common perceptions of these cultures as
primitive- by virtue of that fact that it does not attempt to disguise
this essential fact with mythology or religion. In the future property
will increasingly be measured in terms of 'use bandwidth' over material
possession -your rights to use as opposed to ownership of some measured
portion- as is the case of the 'real estate' of a computer network. We
can only speculate at how this cultural evolution may play out, but it
is clear that the unique virtues of adaptive architecture and their
impact on the conventional real estate market may play a very important
role in it.

Current Adaptive Building Technology:

Let us now explore some of the specific currently available/viable or
anticipated adaptive building technologies. Sadly, as noted previously
most of the modular buildings systems developed in the 20th century
never survived to the present day and wait to be rediscovered by
contemporary designers. Still, current technology -crude as some of it
may be- still offers us a vast potential for experimentation.

Pavilions, Skybreaks, Lofts, and Tectonic Architecture: Simultaneously
one of the oldest of all architectural forms and the most modern,
pavilion architecture represents one of the simplest and most immediate
models for adaptive architecture. A 'pavilion' is any form of structure
based on a free-standing -often column-supported- large-span roof
structure without load-bearing walls which is outfit for habitation
based on largely free-standing furnishings and partitions. Depending on
mode of use, such structures may feature no side enclosure or use any
combination of non-load-bearing walls, windows, screens, shutters, or
even curtains. Sometimes referred to as 'open plan design', functional
areas are defined by the type and clustering of furnishings which can
often be freely reconfigured on demand. Partitions and opaque enclosure
walls can be used to form complete enclosures for more privacy and in
some cases furnishings may be designed as free-standing self-contained
rooms, as in the case of some enclosed bed and lounge designs. Long an
extremely popular dwelling concept among the classic Modernists, it is
perhaps best epitomized in the design of Phillip Johnson's Glass House
in New Canaan Connecticut, based on a steel framed glass enclosed box
completely open on its interior save for a cylindrical enclosure
containing a bathroom and fully functional as the architect's own home
for much of his long life. Dwellings of this sort have evolved in
various forms in many cultures and are the basis of many vernacular
architectures, typically associated with tropical climates as glass is
a relatively modern industrial material. The most advanced of these
vernacular forms was realized in the traditional Japanese house, with
its extremely refined traditional system of design, very sophisticated
wood joinery, modular tatami mat flooring, hanging ceiling systems, and
tile roofing systems. In the western tradition, pavilion structures
were often the basis of temple and public architecture employing the
early civilization's most advanced forms of stonework, evolving to
produce many early domed buildings.

Given contemporary building technology and materials, a countless
variety of pavilion structures are now possible, often using repurposed
prefabricated structures. Good examples of these can be found among
prefab alloy park shelters. Countless materials can now be employed,
from earth block to the most high-tech high performance materials,
though the concept still favors lighter structures or modular component
buildings systems. The ability to define space through free-standing
furnishings offers incredible potential for design creativity in
furnishings and appliances and can readily make use of Living
Structures and their various building systems. However, it remains
little used outside of the context of Modernist Minimalist homes in
relatively remote locations, largely because of the limitations on
privacy imposed by open plan design and the use of large window
expanses that demand landscaping for privacy or the use of walled
enclosures. These were not such limiting issues in earlier times and in
non-European cultures but today many households think it necessary to
compartmentalize homes to the point where even every child has a
self-contained apartment of their own. Still, there is great potential
in this simple form of structure in larger sizes or large compounds as
the basis of communal habitats developed through collaborative design,
This approach would treat a very large pavilion structure or pavilion
complex as a public and communal structure freely and dynamically
organized internally by employing various forms of free-standing public
and personal structures with as little or as much enclosure and privacy
as individuals might want. In such a structure private space becomes
defined by furniture -or to put it another way, furniture rises to the
level of entire specialized modular rooms within the larger communal
space, the chief trade-off being that the more privacy you employ by
tighter enclosure of these spaces the less access you have to the
ambient light of the overall communal environment.  Consider, for
instance, a community habitat based on rooms akin to the 'capsules' of
a Japanese capsule hotel elaborated into much more fully-featured room
modules in a large variety of functions. A number of Modernist
designers explored this 'room as appliance' concept in the 1960s.

This brings us to the concept of the Skybreak mentioned earlier; a
large clear-span weather-shelter enclosure for a whole habitat composed
of lighter structures. The Skybreak is an evolution of the concept of
pavilion architecture and was first devised by students of Buckminster
Fuller as the ultimate approach to the use of the geodesic dome in a
residential role. Typical 'dome homes' employ an inefficient strategy
of trying to partition the interior of a dome structure in the manner
of a conventional house. The end-result is overcomplicated carpentry
and odd shapes that never suit conventional furnishings. The more
effective approach is to treat the dome as a largely independent
structure -like a pavilion- and outfit its volume for habitation with
similarly independent structures. The Skybreak employs this on a very
large scale, the idea being to use a transparent dome as a weather
barrier over an entire large piece of property then landscaping the
interior to one's tastes and erecting largely independent but light
structures -ideally of modular component composition- to make the space
habitable. The skybreak structure itself is not intended as a perfect
climate control enclosure. It just creates a barrier against the major
elements; rain, snow, wind, and intense sun. The smaller interior
structures can be heated and cooled independently. This may seem
inefficient but, in fact, is much more efficient in that one is not
attempting climate control of the whole structure and can more
effectively exploit and control the solar gain or reflectivity over the
whole structure. In Buckminster Fuller's time it was never possible to
cost-effectively realize a transparent skybreak dome as he envisioned
due to limitations in materials. Today, however, we not only have the
means to do this using geodesic domes, there are a vast assortment of
large span structures based on rigid framing, tension roof systems, and
pneumatic structures as well as new material such as teflon impregnated
fiberglass cloth and Texlon membrane that allow for the creation of
skybreaks in an endless variety of forms. With such structures one can
take the concept of the communal pavilion to a much larger scale,
employing its same approach to the collaborative creation of an
interior habitat based on Living Structure style construction for an
entire village community and including extensive interior open spaces
and gardens. Skybreak designs at the scale of the individual dwelling
have already been explored by a number of designers in recent times.
This large scale use, however, remains to be explored outside of the
context of commercial buildings employing tension roof covers but seems
increasingly likely as we continue to break new records in the
construction of large greenhouse and zoo enclosures.

Though such grand demonstrations of communal pavilion architecture
remain in the future, there is one form where it has been well
demonstrated; lofting. As we discussed earlier, the conversion of older
industrial and commercial buildings into loft apartment buildings is a
very common, practical, and commercially very successful demonstration
of the principles of adaptive reuse. It also represents another
variation of the concept of pavilion architecture, these old and
functionally generic structures adapted to habitation in essentially
the same way and thus being akin to pavilions with multiple floors. The
key difference is the employ of much more substantial demising walls in
what is intended to be a largely unchangeable division of space. And as
we also mentioned earlier, the commercial success of loft apartments
has also resulted in new buildings being built specifically for this
for of use. Such buildings have already been used as the basis of
co-housing communities and so their potential as the basis of community
architecture is well demonstrated. However, this concept remains very
crudely implemented to date because, curiously, few professional
architects have shown much interest in the potential of functionally
generic structures, even though most commercial buildings are exactly
that in practice. The basic 'wedding cake' structural form common to
commercial buildings and earlier industrial buildings is an
exceptionally versatile form -as well demonstrated by the vast
diversity of forms among contemporary commercial buildings and their
remarkable ability to physically adapt to sometimes peculiar urban
property boundaries. This offers unexplored potential in the context of
community design based on the concept of functionally generic communal
structures of large size -in effect, taking that notion of the communal
pavilion to the level of multi-story complexes that could comprise not
just an entire community but an entire city. This is much the same
concept as Paulo Soleri's arcology, which is exactly this kind of
functionally generic structure taken to extreme scales.

This brings us to the concept of tectonic architecture; macrostructural
systems that mimic and integrate into natural landscape. The term
'tectonic architecture' has been used in a variety of ways but this
author chooses to use it to refer to architecture that mimics natural
landscape through the use of large conjoined terraced superstructures
where the individual terraces are sculpted into organic profiles akin
to the lines on a topographical map or terraced farming as seen in Asia
and topped with gardens to create a naturalistic appearance. Based on
the usual 'wedding cake' structures of large commercial buildings,
terrace edges become the primary basis of habitation, serving as loft
space for any variety of uses. Such structures can blend easily into
pre-existing landscapes and can employ a variety of facade treatments
and smaller scale convex or concave articulation in order to highlight
or conceal different areas and accommodate variations in unit dwelling
configuration -creating, for instance, more private atriums or more
free-standing protrusions. With structures such as this, based on
conventional commercial construction methods using predominately
reinforces concrete, it would become possible to explore collaborative
community design on a truly vast scale -essentially, as the basis of a
form of arcology.

Living Structures: the term 'Living Structures' was coined by designer
Ken Isaacs in the the 1960s for the series of freely adaptive indoor
structures he developed bridging furniture and architecture and based
on his simply DIY Matrix construction system, later to become Box Beam
and today known as Grid Beam. Here we use the term in a bit more
general sense to denote a now large variety of indoor and occasionally
small outdoor structures similarly bridging furniture to architecture
and often based on a large variety modular and other building methods.
Examples include such 'furnitecture' as the many forms of canopy or
enclosed beds employed in pre-industrial times and recently seeing a
revival in modern times as 'pod' beds. The many forms of 'pod
furniture' experimented with by designers in the 1960s. Andrea Zittel's
'Raugh' Furniture, Comfort Units and Living Units, Cellular Compartment
Units, indoor Escape Vehicles, and outdoor Wagon Stations. (http://www.zittel.org/) N55's various space frame based structures. (http://n55.dk/) The Z-Box designed by Dan Hisel. (http://www.danhiseldesign.com/) The similar but more elaborate Pod Living system devised by Jade Jagger. (http://www.jadenyc.com/)
And, of course, the many forms of Capsule Hotel units employed in
Japan. Though many of these examples are fixed structure objects whose
adaptability is based on their collective arrangement in a living
space, the term is more appropriate in terms of structures whose forms
are user-adaptive by virtue of some modular building system and can
potentially be combined or conjoined on demand, thus representing a
kind of indoor building system.

Issacs first devised Living Structures as a simple means of maximizing
the utility of limited space with structures one could build with
little carpentry skill. A way one could better use the volume of the
space through a volumetric furniture structure rather than relying on
the 2D area alone and a way of circumventing the hegemony of
factory-produced furnishings by eliminating the barrier of skill
overhead associated with traditional carpentry. Many of his designs
were based on creating multiple levels of space within the usual single
floor space. But what intrigued people most about this designs was the
way they were built, and its potential s a DIY building system. This
inspired a brief wave of creativity and ingenuity among some designers
who not only experimented with Matrix but also many other simple
modular building systems. Isaacs himself did likewise, particularly
exploring the possibilities of stressed skin box structures and the use
of the pre-cursors to today's pipe-fitting building systems like
Kee-Klamp. Because these were designed to be indoor structures, relying
on other buildings for their full climate shelter, the limitations in
weatherproofing common to simpler modular building systems was no
particular problem.

A Living Structure is generally any adaptable furniture object
elaborated to where it can integrate many functions of a room or
several rooms and potentially provide independent enclosure like a room
without being connected physically to the rest of an overall structure.
The classic example is the cabinet-like enclosed bed, which developed
in ancient Asia and medieval europe as a means to provide both greater
privacy in homes housing extended families and greater insulation given
limited climate control performance of early dwellings. This later
evolved into the curtain-enclosed canopy bed intended to provide
greater privacy for the nobility who often kept attendants in their
bedrooms almost continually. Across the 20th century many designers
experimented with the concept of evolving major pieces of
room-function-defining furniture into appliances; turning sofas into
lounge units complete with built-in TVs, kitchen or dining room tables
into dining machines, shower stalls into all-in-one 'ensuite' bathroom
modules, and so on. The notion persists to this day with various kinds
of all-in-one lounges and meeting pods, personal computer workstation
pods, serenity pods intended as personal relaxation escape capsules,
and the most sophisticated of all, the CAVE or CAVE Automated Virtual
Environment; a room using displays as an enclosure projecting a
computer-generated virtual environment.

Employing modular building systems, Living Structures are capable of
being integrated into large freely adaptable interconnected complexes
that can be perpetually customized and rearranged to suit personal
tastes and varying needs. This allows simple large span structures to
be organized into freely adaptive functional and personal space without
physically modifying that larger structure. Thus this is an effective
strategy for the use of pavilion and skybreak architecture and the
adaptive reuse of large structures. In the future we may see this
tactic employed in space, with orbital habitats based on larger generic
pressure enclosures outfit by smaller retrofit structures and large
sealed excavated spaces below the surface of the Moon or Mars made
habitable by similar modular retrofit structures. This author has
previously proposed that very realistic mock-ups of such habitats are
quite feasible today using such facilities as the Kansas City
Subtopolis complex as a host for a large Living Structure habitat.

Today, a huge variety of light modular buildings system are available
for repurposing to Living Structure use in addition to Grid Beam,
T-slot, and Kee-Klamp -far more than exist in general construction
because it is so much easier to manufacture and market such light and
often application-specific systems. There are now various scaffolding
systems, modular electronic enclosure systems, many kinds of aluminum
profile extrusions, light space frame systems used for store and trade
show displays, DIY space frames such as N55's. modular theatrical truss
systems, modular industrial shelving and mezzanine systems, tension or
tensegrity truss systems, pultruded fiber reinforced plastic profiles,
increasingly sophisticated office partition, access flooring, and
suspended ceiling systems all of which have Living Structure potential.
There are also many interesting new materials and new ways to use very
traditional and simple materials. New means of attaching textiles to
structures such as the famous Grip Clip (http://www.shelter-systems.com/gripclips).
New textiles made of bamboo, hemp, and other more renewable fibers.
High-tech textiles made of alloy, glass, and carbon fibers. Extruded
interlocking clay, gypsum, and cast stone panels and planking.
Weatboard and strawboard made of compressed wheat straw. Aluminum foam
panel, cast stone panel, various kinds of structural insulated panels,
fiber-cement panels. Elastomeric membranes more transparent than glass
and far stronger. New kinds of insulation made of mineral and glass
foams, cotton, and wool. Paints with microencapsulates offering
insulating or phase-change properties. Many kinds of industrial and
shipping containers, from marine and air shipping containers to various
forms of roto-molded polyethylene tanks, offer adaptive reuse
prospects. There are also many new kinds of prefabricated products that
can suit Living Structure use schemes such as the small wood pavilions
made by Tony's T-Houses (http://www.tonysthouse.com/), new sophisticated tent and geodesic dome structures such as those by Shelter Systems (http://www.shelter-systems.com/) and Pacific Domes (http://www.pacificdomes.com/)
,
and various pod-like kitchen systems and the various pieces of current
pod furniture. Still, the simple systems, like Grid Beam and T-slot,
offer the best and cheapest prospects of diverse experimentation with
the concept.

Living Structures present a very convenient and low cost way to explore
the possibilities of adaptive architecture and still remains
little-explored by contemporary designers, presenting a wide-open field
for innovation and product development. Though the concept is old,
we've hardly scratched the surface of its potential. Ken Isaacs' work
with this provided a bridge to the pursuit of adaptive architecture
systems that were fully capable of independent weatherproof building on
their own, without another larger shelter structure. The experimenters
of Suntools did likewise with Box Beam. Though these earlier building
systems proved less capable for this, T-slot has now made the move to a
full architectural building system.

Unit Module Systems:

As was noted earlier, unit module systems are one of the major forms of
modular construction and were very popular among Modernist designers of
the past. However, none of these systems have survived to the present
day and, though reemerging among the designers riding the current
Modernist prefab craze of the present, no systems of the type are
currently in production. Their chief problem is scale.

Unit module systems are based on the use of modules containing an
entire room, often with most of their appliances and furniture included
as built-in fixtures. They interface through portals which
plug-together as a direct rigid connection between modules or by use of
modular corridor units. This is largely an elaboration of the idea of
pod furniture, where a pod unit is expanded to a size and made of such
materials that it can withstand the elements alone, standing on its own
foundation system. However, they need not necessarily be designed to
withstand the full environment and can be employed as a variation of
Living Structure. They also don't necessarily need to be
interconnected, being used in the manner of 'compound' architecture
where a series of small self-contained buildings house separate parts
of a complete home linked by walkways, a courtyard, or partial
free-standing roof structure. Not an uncommon approach in milder
climate areas and once characteristic of traditional Mission Style
architecture.

Because these modules comprise at least one entire room in a
more-or-less monolithic self-contained structure, they tend to be
rather large units to fabricate and move around whole, which has
severely limited their ease of prototyping and limited the number of
designers able to explore the concept. And their aesthetics is entirely
dictated by the module design standard, which for this sort of
structure typically results in something akin to the NASA design for a
lunar habitat, radically removed from anything people are normally
familiar with in dwellings. Thus their mass production prospects are
very poor despite their appliance-like characteristics. However, today
we can work with materials like fiber reinforced composites, steel
frame systems, and polyurethane structural foams with far greater ease
than in the past which should result in far more experimentation with
this concept in the future, particularly where designs keep individual
modules to a smaller size.

A typical system of the type can be visualized by imagining a Japanese
Capsule Hotel unit elaborated into a small self-contained weatherproof
cabin of rigid composite outer shell construction, a fireproof mineral
foam core, and semi-rigid soft interior foams with a combination of
rigid, soft plastic, and textile-covered surfaces inside with
marine-style windows, perhaps its own miniature heating and cooling
system, some entertainment electronics, and possibly even solar power
and wireless communications all standing on the ground on simple legs.
This is a notion this author explored himself for the design of
long-duration vacation cabins suited to winter climates that could be
towed by small ATV or by hand. Now imagine units like this fashioned
for each of the different functions of a dwelling; an all-in-one
bathroom akin to Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Bathroom, a lounge
composed of a built-in circular conversation pit with built-in TV and
alcohol mini-fireplace, a dining room composed of a circular booth and
table, a kitchen fashioned like a single multi-functional appliance, an
office/workstation composed of integrated desks and cabinets with
built-in computer fixtures, and any number of other specialized room
modules functional or fanciful, from walk-in closets or greenhouses to
playrooms and hot tubs. Each of these modules would have at least one
standardized 'portal' interface that plugs into those of other modules
and connects with a tool-less quick-connection, such as built-in screws
or key locks. These portals would also include utilities interfaces
with the utilities 'bus' designed for external maintenance access. The
overall structure might be mounted on concrete pilings, pre-cast piers,
or steel screw pilings that lock to their support legs. These legs
would also allow for the attachment of large wheel casters, somewhat
aiding the movement and positioning of these units. And external frame
structure might also be included to allow for multiple storey
combinations. Though the size and shape of the individual modules would
vary along with the number and position of their portals, they would
freely allow any combination of modules to be linked together,
sprawling in either 2D or 3D complexes. These individual room modules
would be swapped-out whole when worn out, severely damaged, or made
obsolete in design or resident's needs just like an appliance, their
quick-connect design making this easy, though sometimes requiring
multiple modules to be dismantled. Likewise, the dwelling could freely
expand or reconfigure its shape and at any time be disassembled and
transported whole to other locations. A very good model for adaptive
architecture, albeit that one is dealing with individual 'parts' that
may be at least 3 meters cubed and weigh as much as a compact car.

Container Module:

Container modules systems are a particular variant of the concept of a
unit module system that is based on the repurposing of ISO marine
shipping containers to create the unit modules. As we noted, no unit
module systems are currently in production. However, repurposed
container architecture has become a particular obsession for many
contemporary designers, owing to its recycling aspect and the very low
cost of containers as an extremely durable raw material. Many
commercial developers have also seen the potential in the container and
a number of companies now purposefully manufacture containers for
modular building construction, such as the German Erge Corp. (http://www.erge.de/)

Container module systems are typically less specialized in their module
design, since the same basic structure is being repurposed for every
type of room. Combination modules are common, where two or more
containers are used in sectional series to form a single larger room.
Owing to the often inordinately high costs of container mod
metalworking in places like the US, it is best to employ the simplest
approaches to modification as possible -though in general few
architects working with these prescribe to that rule. Interfacing
containers together is more complex than one would have with a
dedicated quick-connect portal system and so container combinations
often rely on less demountable forms of interface. Using containers as
the basis of compound architecture -where each container is a
self-contained free-standing room/building that needs no direct
interface to others- is the easiest, cheapest, and most freely adaptive
of approaches but limited in where in can be employed.

Ironically, despite their huge popularity among designers today, little
progress has actually been made in developing tools and devices to
facilitate easier handling of the containers by fewer numbers of
people. In most cases heavy fork lifts, cranes, and large trucks are
employed at great expense even though the militaries of the world have
advanced to the use of more sophisticated container handling devices
such as the Container Lift-Transport; a modular wheeled hydraulic
driven unit that attaches directly to containers turning them into
trailers or letting them be self-propelled at low speed -all installed
and controlled by a solitary operator.

Modular Post-And-Beam Systems:

This is the most traditional class of modular component building
systems -perhaps the first form of modular construction ever developed.
Though often regarded as obsolesced by contemporary stick frame wood
composite construction, it remains the much more sophisticated
technology and today has seen great advance with the introduction of
concealed steel plate joinery systems such as the Kure-tec system
featured in the Volkshaus housing concept (http://www.tatsumi-web.com/new-site/eng-manufact.html) and sophisticated modular kit products such as the Bali-T manufactured in Bali.  (http://www.balithouse.com/)
With such technology free demountability, and hence adaptability, of
structures become possible, though with some limitations compared to
more high-tech materials. The chief limitations of post and beam
construction is the weight of wood, larger span structures demanding
progressively heavier and larger individual components that quickly
become too much for the solitary individual to handle. Thus the most
flexible deliberately adaptable systems model themselves after
traditional Japanese framing using beams of about 15-20 centimeters
with room spans of no more than 3-4 meters and structures no more than
two storeys high. They may also employ many other elements similar to
traditional Japanese architecture such as sliding screens/windows,
suspended ceiling systems, and modular mat flooring -if not tatami mat-
which aid in quick assembly and demountability.

As modular as post and beam construction is itself, very rarely is it
used today in modular architecture owing to the complication of roofing
systems, which remains the single-most problematic area in the design
and engineering of modular component building systems for true
full-scale building use. Truly weatherproof and demountable roofing
technology remains a difficult engineering problem. Though much
alleviated by the advent of modular alloy panel roofing systems, these
remain incapable of free planar expansion, leaving the roof of a
modular building the least adaptable part of the structure. Usually one
can freely expand in one planar axis but then remain incapable of
expansion in the opposing axis without replacing a whole roof or
employing some complex layering or terracing contrivance. This is a
problem faced for many centuries by builders using post and beam
construction and which has never been definitively solved.

T-Slot Building Systems:

Technically a derivative of post and beam building systems. T-Slot
building systems are based on the use of large scale versions of the
same aluminum profiles commonly used in industrial automation and
laboratory structures and relies on repurposing many of the accessory
components originally developed for uses in those areas. Three
companies currently pursue development of housing products based on
this; Tomahouse in Bali (http://www.tomahouse.com/), TK Architecture in California with the iT House (http://www.tkithouse.com/), and the Jeriko House company in Louisiana. (http://www.jerikohouse.com/)
These companies products represent the current state of the art for
this technology and modular component building systems for housing in
general. Other aluminum profile building systems have also been
developed, but using proprietary profile and interface designs that
have drastically limited their potential production and doomed most to
the same demise as modular building systems of the past.

Originally developed as a solution to the problem of rapid obsolescence
of industrial automation technology, resulting in frequent and large
capital investment losses when adopting automation, T-Slot framing's
virtues over other modular building systems have made it a good
solution for modular architecture -though this potential has only just
recently been recognized. (T-slot component manufacturers, for cultural
reasons, generally remain oblivious to the full and remarkable range of
applications their customers put the technology to...) T-slot profiles
feature one or more T-shaped slots on the sides of their profiles which
allow for an assortment of quick-connect joint fittings and gusset
plates usually installed with a simple hex-key. A huge assortment of
accessories also attach to these slots. channels within the hollow
profiles serving as cable runs and also designed to be used as
pressurized distribution lines for pneumatics and hydraulics, making
T-slot useful as the basis of robot and machine tool construction. It
is commonly used for prototyping most new machine tools today. Housing
scale profiles, usually in the 160-200mm profile width range, offer
tremendous strength to weight performance compared to wood and can
readily integrate housing utilities infrastructure inside their
channels and unused slot spaces as well as along their faces, thus
allowing the primary structure of a home to function as its 'backplane'
like that of a personal computer. Using a typical module span of about
4 meters (much more when profiles are combined with truss web plates
that fit into the slots) in simple post and beam structures with
flush-in-line floor deck grids of cross beam joists, enclosure is
provided by systems of standard panels which can attach to the
structure in a variety of ways such as; surface mounting to the outer
profile face, flush mounting to attachments on the inner profile face,
and simple press-fit or spring-clip mounting using slots alone, without
screws or locking mechanisms, to hold a panel in place. Virtually any
materials can be employed in these panels, allowing for a huge
diversity of pre-finished components that take no particular skill to
install. Integration of appliances into panels is also possible and
particularly well suited to heating and cooling, home entertainment,
computing and lighting. Though current designers often employ the
exposed aluminum post and beams as an architectural feature,
innumerable surrounds and concealment panels are possible to hide or
disguise the aluminum framing. Tomahouse commonly employs this to make
their structures appear indistinguishable from wooden post and beam.
Anodized and backed enamel finishes can also be applied to the
aluminum, making it appear like other metals such as brass or gold or
giving it any desired color. And since these same components are
commonly employed for automation, it becomes possible to literally
design an entire house or building that functions as a robot with any
number of integral active mechanisms and electronics! This could be
employed in medical and workshop applications as well as for disability
and elder assistance. And, of course, it all comes apart and can be
reconfigured on demand.

Like traditional post and beam structures, the chief limitation on
adaptability is roofing which, as we noted, remains limited in its
adaptability with current materials and technology. T-Slot buildings
can employ any style of roof desired, from thatched and tension roofs
to traditional shingle or flat composite roofs, but maintaining
demountability tends to limit one to the use of alloy panel products in
long fixed lengths. Some T-Slot housing designs employ a variation on
the skybreak concept by using a pitched and easily swapped-out fabric
or membrane tension roof over flat modular insulated panels, retaining
more adaptability but requiting whole replacement of the membrane or
some kind of 'fish scale' layering of tension roof sections. Though
less durable and problematic in its tendency to create nesting spaces
for unwanted animals, this remains the most freely demountable and
adaptable form of roofing in existence today.

Even with three companies currently pursuing this technology, only the
surface has been scratched in the potential of this building system and
though not capable of truly massive community structures, it is far
superior to wooden post and beam with potential for structures up to
ten storeys -more than enough for any village scale projects. There is
also great potential in this technology for the cultivation of an
industrial ecology, where many small to large businesses are producing
standardized components for these structures. The entrepreneurial
potential is vast and since this standards for T-slot components are
basically public domain, this is well suited to an open source design
and development program.

Plug-In Building Systems:

True plug-in building systems represent the most advanced form of
modular component building systems and perhaps the most advanced form
of modular architecture in general. They differ from other modular
component building systems in that the components are designed as more
sophisticated units that quick interface to each other without any
tools through integrated mechanisms and which will also link-up
pre-installed utilities busses. They may also be designed for assembly
by robots using special robot handling points and active communication
of their identity and status with electronic assembly management
systems. Integration of appliances and fixtures into major components
is another common characteristic. Sadly, though long speculated, no
true plug-in building systems currently exist, though they are more
possible to develop today than ever and they are very likely to evolve
from T-Slot building systems.

Typical speculative plug-in building system concepts are based on three
basic elements; a deck system that serves as floor, ceiling, and
roofing and serves as the primary backplane for all other components
and utilities, plug-ins which plug into both ceiling and floor, may or
may not be load bearing, and take the forms of panels, columns, and
other forms like cabinets and pods, and fixtures which surface-attach
freely to the other two types of parts where they have plug-in space.
Plug-ins can freely integrate furnishings and appliances or be whole
pieces of furniture or appliances and rely entirely on their plug-in
interface for utilities connection. Often, concepts call for all
components in the system to have a kind of distributed intelligence
such that the house as a whole represents a simple computer that is
aware of the status of all its parts the way a personal computer is
aware of all it's peripherals and can track structural integrity so
that it can tell you when parts are failing or if you try to unplug
something that is critical to holding the roof up, for instance, it
will automatically warn you that you can't do that unless you put up
temporary column jacks or the like first to take the load.

Though still speculative in design, there really are no technical or
engineering obstacles to the development of these systems save that
same problem of roofing which effects all modular component building
systems and which can at least be circumvented in the near term in the
same manners. There is simply no interest in the concept in the
mainstream building industry itself -which, left to its own devices,
would continue using current centuries old technology forever- and,
aside from very occasional experiments by places like MIT, no current
designers have proven technically sophisticated enough to pursue it.
However, there have been some very interesting designs that approach
this concept, albeit indirectly. One of the best examples are the
'furniture house' designs of architect Shigeru Ban. (http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/)
Observing the marked difference in quality and robustness between
contemporary Japanese furniture manufacture and housing construction
(like most places in the westernized world where costs tend to be keyed
to labor, mainstream housing construction often tends toward the quick
and shoddy), Shigeru Ban developed a series of houses based on simple
pavilion designs where a strong modular cabinet system served as the
basic load bearing structures. (http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/SBA_WORKS/SBA_HOUSES/SBA_HOUSES_14/SBA_Houses_14.html)(http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/SBA_WORKS/SBA_HOUSES/SBA_HOUSES_17/SBA_Houses_17.html)(http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/SBA_WORKS/SBA_HOUSES/SBA_HOUSES_34/SBA_Houses_34.html)
Though this system was not designed to allow for spontaneous
adaptability, here we see the basic principles of a plug-in
architecture system well demonstrated even though it is not employing
the kind of sophisticated demountable component interfacing such a
system would ideally employ. We can also see how various kinds of
Living Structures can potentially evolve into this concept as well
though pavilion architecture by the shifting of an infrastructure
backplane to ceiling and floor and the assumption of a load-bearing
structural role.

Intelligent Block Systems:

Another variation of the plug-in architecture concept that has seen a
little more experimentation in recent times, this concept is inspired
largely by the famous Lego building toy and is based on the notion of
very small modular elements of uniform shape that feature some kind of
built-in locking multi-axis interface that is also mortarless and may
be waterproof/air-tight. Obviously, the technology for making a
hermetic seal between so many discrete interfaces over a large area
does not exist and may remain an insurmountable problem until solved by
some nanotechnology means well into the Diamond Age, but this has not
hampered the modest interest in this concept. The concept also calls
for distributed intelligence in blocks and the use of more specialized
blocks for utilities integration and to accommodate various
architectural features. These too have proven a bit beyond any current
technology and so most experiments remain concerned with the issue of
the mechanical interface and the design of robotic systems to
manipulate these modules.

The more speculative technology aside, the basic idea of small
mechanically interfaced bricks or blocks as a tool-less building system
has potential. It has a definite advantage over other plug-in
architecture systems where individual components may still end up being
several meters in width and weigh hundreds of pounds, making them very
difficult for the solitary person to handle. And, of course, the
smaller the components the easier and more efficiently they pack for
shipping. But the concept faces the problem that such numerous small
components are difficult to mass produce economically if they are
mechanically intricate and they present a vast number of potential
failure points for a structure.

Intelligent Foam Systems:

Though we commonly envision such things today in the context of
nanotechnology, the idea of 'intelligent foam' goes back at least as
far as the early 1960s where speculative designers such as Rudolph
Doernach envisioned future polymer chemistry producing a plastic foam
capable of behaving like a simple organism and growing, through
molecular self-assembly, into any form desired when directed by some
electronic or computer-based means. Doernach envisioned entire large
scale buildings, cities, and artificial islands cultured whole with
such foam, their inhabitants directing the material to form internal
caves and caverns for their homes much as envisioned by later free-form
organic designers. This would represent the ultimate in modular
component building systems -a system where the modular components are
molecular in scale. It may be quite a long time yet before even
nanotechnology affords us a material with that remarkable capability,
but currently we do have the potential to realize a kind of
'intelligent foam' based on foamed masonry materials that can exhibit
the much simpler and more attainable properties of variable density,
direct recycling, and free bonding. This combination of properties
would result in a material with which one can construct whole
monolithic structures by mounding up or form-casting large rough
volumes of foam material then milling out their final shapes and
surface, perhaps with the aid of simple robotic milling systems, the
waste material collected and immediately recycled on-site for the
production of more foam. The process could be performed in layers,
allowing for foam of different density to be employed internally for
different physical and thermal characteristics and to allow for the
creation of concealed inclusions for utilities. Later, when the
structure required adaptation, the same process would be employed, some
older features milled-away as new foam is added to accommodate new
features. A computer model might be maintained for the structure at all
times, allowing its structural integrity to be continually analyzed and
to allow the whole structure to be demolished and recreated on demand
in new places. Such a material would be the ideal structural material
for the use of free-form organic design and would afford this field of
design the potential for structural evolution it's more common
ferro-cement materials are not capable of.

Though no such material currently exists on the market, it is
technically feasible with known chemistry and many forms of geopolymers
or ceramics may be suited to this. It remains, however, a largely
unexplored concept.

Robotic Self-Assembly Systems:

This concept is based on the notion of modular components that
incorporate not only built-in tool-less interface mechanisms but also
active powered mechanisms which allow the components in the system to
traverse their own structural surface in some way, allowing them to
collectively self-assemble themselves into a whole structure. The point
to this is to eliminate the human labor involved in construction (and
allow construction in places where human beings cannot readily go), to
afford a structure the means to self-evolve in form in response to
different needs and environmental conditions, and allow it to perform
self-repair. Again, though no actual off-the-shelf products exist for
such systems, the concept has seen extensive experimentation and
speculation. One of the most promising concepts is the Trigon
Self-Assembly concept developed by industrial designer, teacher, and
aerospace industry consultant Scott Howe (http://www.plugin-creations.com/us/ash/)
who has focused especially on automated assembly technology. The Trigon
system is a plate space frame system -a space frame where, instead of
struts connecting at nodal joints, one uses plates connecting along
their sides- where the individual plate modules incorporate motorized
locking hinge mechanisms that allow the plates to climb end-over-end
over the surface of one another to find their positions and then lock
into place edge-to-edge. Intended primarily for space applications,
this scheme allows for a frame structures components to be tightly
stacked and self-interlocked for shipments and then can deploy itself
for form any shape within its geometry, both triangular and box space
frames having been explored. With all the necessary mechanisms and
structural elements of the frame concentrated at the perimeter of the
plates, their interstitial space is left open like other space frames
or can host other active components of a structure like sensor and
antenna arrays, solar panels, fans, radiators, lights and display,
electronic and computer systems and their control panels, and so on.
Ideally, one would design these as a plug-in backplane for other types
of components mounting to their faces. Already prototyped in simple
demonstration forms, this is something very well suited to fabrication
with Fab Lab tools and so is open for further experimentation.

With such a system, one could simply place stacks of these mass
produced components on the ground and, with a personal computer
modeling their ultimate structural shape, direct them to self-assemble
into any desired form within the limits of their geometry. Likewise,
one could direct them to change shape at any time later. However, they
have the same limitation as most space frame systems that they have no
means of their own to provide a weather-tight enclosure and it remains
an open question how practical and cost-effective incorporating such
active systems into parts that are otherwise stationary once deployed
would actually be. For applications in space, where the costs of
sending humans there outweighs the cost of robotics, this makes sense.
Also in the case of structures based on very large and heavy components
where this would eliminate both large amounts of human labor and the
use of heavy construction equipment. And also nomadic structures which
must rapidly deploy and disassemble quickly and which are moved and
changed very frequently. Clearly, this is probably not practical for
general building or housing applications today as the costs of these
active components is simply too high. But its a concept with much
promise and a novelty that compels further experimentation. Even if not
practical for housing any time soon, one can readily imagine many other
practical uses for it and even deliberately impractical one -such as
toys.

Conclusions:

There is clearly great potential in adaptive architecture, not only in
terms of collaborative community development but also in terms of
discrete architecture and housing. Though most of the cultural
knowledge associated with traditional community development has been
lost across the Industrial Age, we see that some of the adaptive
characteristics of past vernacular building technologies has been
retained or rediscovered in some contemporary building systems, thanks
largely to Modernists obsessions with modularity and -ironically- the
dream of industrialized housing. There are definitely very important
functional limitations in the contemporary technology of adaptive
architecture but in many ways they far surpass older vernaculars in the
ease and speed of potential evolution. Though many of the possible
technologies still remain too underdeveloped for practical use, what we
have at-hand today does seem suited to potentially supporting three
different scales of experimentation and exploration of peer-to-peer
community development. With Pavilion Architecture and Living Structures
we have the possibility for very low cost community experiments at a
co-habitation scale based on communal pavilion structures or
repurposing a variety of commercial and industrial buildings. With
Container Module systems and perhaps rudimentary purpose-built Modular
Unit Architecture as well as contemporary wood Post and Beam and T-Slot
structures we can explore this at a co-housing or village scale. And
with purpose built Functionally Generic Architecture based on
conventional commercial construction, we can, in combination again with
the Living Structure approach, take this to a truly urban scale with
'microcities' or prototype arcologies. It would seem the only practical
obstacle to such experiments is people, given that the true start of
any such project is accumulating enough people with the necessary
skills and freedom of mobility to attempt such projects.

Of course, one could argue that many such experiments are already
underway around the world, being imposed by situation onto the various
communities of refugees and destitute of the world compelled into
creating communities ad-hoc without the benefit of any of these more
sophisticated technologies. It would seem, then, that there is great
value in such purposeful experiments not only as a means of exploring
the social science of collaborative community development but also in
the cultivation of methods and technologies that can be be shared with
these new accidental communities, giving them means of improving the
odds of survival and quality of life for those forced into such
experiments by fate and social indifference/injustice.

We have the means, even with so much knowledge lost and with such
nascent recent technology, to recapture much of the cultural skill set
of community we once sacrificed for the transient benefits of the
Industrial Age. The real technology for is the software we carry with
us in our minds and cultures. It has only been waiting to be
re-expressed in new physical mediums. The Modernists may have never
dreamed of such things as they explored what they thought was a future
of modular technological building efficiency but which was, in reality,
a rediscovery of a mode of living most ancient and very, fundamentally,
human.

Eric Hunting
erichunting at gmail.com

 The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer alternatives.


Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p 


Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at  http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html; video interview, at http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/09/29/network_collaboration_peer_to_peer.htm