Towards green design and engineering of transformable building structure for adaptable housing: case study of Kyoto House

Abstract

Adaptability of buildings has become an important issue in building life relying on the flexibility in the future use of space to extend the functional lifespan of systems. The main findings for this work are based on a case study analysis of the Kyoto House designed and built in Barcelona by Pich-Aguilera Architects. Three core aspects for this research are: 1) energy efficiency and economy; 2) flexibility-adaptability-transformation-customization aspects of building structure; 3) industrialization and industrialized systems. Kyoto house is the first industrialize concrete house that combines the concrete load-bearing structure with sustainable systems for energy efficiency. The building structure is designed and built as an open systems’ configuration model. All systems and components are parts of one integrated configuration model arranged according to the main building functions (load-bearing, enclosing, partitioning and servicing). The systematic approach is introduced for an assembly of different structural elements according to independent technical and functional levels. Systematization of industrialized components into independent levels takes into account that different parts of the building have different life span and functional expectances, as well as different assembly procedures. The key aspects of sustainable construction are in the house ability to be dismantled where the systematization and the hierarchy of components and subsystems support total configuration disassembly. Finally the aim of this paper is: a) to identify, analyze and map the phenomenon of open systems’ configurations model; b) to describe the main characteristics of Kyoto House building structure; c) to improve the house capacity to adapt to spatial and technical changing requirements and consequently extend the service life of the building in the future.