Abstract
Housing must be flexible to the circumstances growing families face as their needs change during the family lifecycle. The purpose of this paper is to gather a preliminary understanding of growing families' needs and evaluate how modular off-site manufactured construction could effectively answer those needs. Despite the large amount of research that has gone into off-site manufactured buildings, there is little research that has explored its suitability as a flexible housing typology for growing families. The pilot presented in this paper investigates the specific context of Brisbane, Australia; qualitative data have been gathered from growing families in this city and combined with established theory on flexible building to develop a preliminary understanding of how modular off-site manufactured construction could perform in meeting flexibility requirements in comparison to a traditional lightweight timber framed construction. Findings highlight how the ability to modify a dwelling is a fundamental feature for growing families; a number of other advantages in flexibility were found in modular off-site manufacture and recommendations made to improve this construction typology.
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