Towards Adaptable Post War Housing

Abstract

Adaptability, in contemporary architecture, is defined as the capacity of a building to effectively accommodate the evolving demands of its context, thus maximizing its value through life. On the other hand, there is the concept of cultural significance, which addresses the attributes and values of cultural heritage buildings and justifies their designated status.
The negative reputation and/or lack of recognition received by these typologies of housing have an impact on the protection of these buildings today. Although parts of the urban design of Amsterdam Nieuw-West have received recognition of significance, unfortunately, this is not the case for all the architecture of the buildings, of which many have been demolished or transformed without consideration of their potential cultural significance. Potential obsolescence, changed demographics, and rapidly growing demands for energy efficiency, as well as new living standards, all threaten these buildings with demolition or modification before their historic or artistic attributes can even be recognized. Many of the issues stated above continue to be common today, showing a lack of advancement towards adaptable post-war housing.
This research report tries to integrate research methods on attributes with research methods on adaptability. This kind of approach could diversify concepts and reveal complementary characteristics regarding the significance of post-war housing blocks by linking them to adaptability.
The framework used in this research is divided into two distinct parts. Firstly, the classification of building layers and elements; subsequent internal and external connections and attributes; and secondly, the interpretation of all the aforementioned in a dependency structure matrix, revealing relationships, areas of synergy, and associated attributes.
By fusing these different methods, an integrated approach was developed to study post-war housing blocks and reveal the connections between significance and adaptability. To find areas of synergy between these two domains in order to contribute to the development of architecture that genuinely uses change for greater significance.