FlexiArch: A computational tool to assess the longevity of buildings through flexibility

Abstract

The term “Flexibility” in architecture refers to the capability of a building to continuously alter its spatial arrangement to accommodate evolving demands. Flexibility is a crucial aspect of sustainability as it reduces the need for costly structural renovations, relocations, and demolitions. Currently there are limited tools available to evaluate architectural Flexibility during the design process, and the available tools are unwieldy and/or limited in the range of parameters that they consider. The current project was conducted to help fill this gap, by (1) developing a new computational tool, “FlexiArch,” to consolidate and implement Flexibility factors from the prior research literature; and (2) conducting a practitioner survey (n = 237) to assess similarities or differences between working architects’ perceptions of floorplan Flexibility vs. the literature-based computational scoring. We found that the aggregated architects were unable to differentiate literature-based Flexibility features in the floorplans, rating all designs essentially the same. The computational approach, in contrast, demonstrated a much higher level of discrimination. We interpret this result to mean that there is not a strong agreement between current working architects and the academic literature on the topic of floorplan Flexibility. While additional research is needed to fully ascertain the reasons for this discrepancy, we feel it is likely that architectural designers may be, on average, insufficiently trained in understanding the importance of Flexibility and how to achieve it. Tools such as FlexiArch can potentially assist in filling this training/knowledge gap by providing robust quantitative feedback and encouraging designers to consider Flexibility issues in their work.