Diversity and Connectedness as the Flexibility of Built Environments

DIVERSITY AND CONNECTEDNESS AS THE FLEXIBILITY OF BUILT ENVIRONMENTS Ilkka Törmä Aalto University Department of Architecture, Harris-Kjisik Architects. Finland

Abstract The paper re-examines the uncomplicated initial postulates of flexibility. Extending them diversifies the field of the application of flexibility. Fundamentally one can change one’s environment not only through modification but also by changing one’s location. Therefore, flexible environment is both adaptable as well as diverse, accessible and networked. This notion couples flexibility with ensembles larger than a flat or a building. Considering movement a source of flexibility opens new development possibilities especially in the scale of a city block. It can e.g. provide one solution to the contradictory aims of housing design to build economically efficient housing on one hand and roomy multipurpose flats on the other hand. This kind of flexibility could be particularly applicable in e.g. cooperative building and co-housing. Moreover, movement-related flexibility may be useful in the design of densely built mixed-use blocks and contemporary public facilities the use of which modern information and communication technologies have changed.

Keywords: Flexibility, housing, urban planning, system, type, pattern, diversity, accessibility INTORDUCTION Flexibility is the capability to adapt to a variety of circumstances. Regarding variety, there is a mathematically proven law called Ashby's law of requisite variety (Ashby, 1956). It states that a system can absorb variety from its environment only if it has variety in itself. Looking at a housing environment as a system, a dweller can seek variety fundamentally in two ways: either by modifying his or her surroundings or by moving to different surroundings.

Modifying presumes adaptability and toleration both in physical structures and legal codes.

Variety by moving presumes diverse environments from the immediate surroundings to farther distances and accessibility to those places.

21st century planning has explored both modification flexibility and movement flexibility although not necessarily realising that they can both be applied and combined in a balanced way. In modernist urban planning, movement flexibility and efficient transportation has been primary goals of while, simultaneously, cities have been zoned and plot sizes and development parcels have grown. This has led to a city structure with a larger grain that may be more difficult to adapt (Habraken & Teicher, 1998). In building design, flexibility has been predominantly viewed as modifiable spaces or structures. More recent is the rediscovery of combining spaces for housing, work, commerce, culture and leisure in a compact area or even in the same building. At best, a cocktail of different activities complement each others thus creating new kinds of well-serviced and lively environments where various amenities are easily available by moving around. Such an environment is flexible in the sense that it provides access to a variety of spaces and enables a variety of actions.

Flexibility is a pervasive concept and it should appear more or less in all qualities of the built environment. Five qualities characterizing residential environments, as categorized by Jos Smeets (2007) are listed in the first column of figure 1. Three interlinked qualities, the physical, the functional and the social, are in the core. Their symbolic features constitute the cultural quality of the environment. The normative institutional framework regulates all the others. Adding the two means, modification and moving around, by which a dweller can change his or her environment, to the above-mentioned qualities produces a matrix of different aspects of flexibility in the residential environment. This paper examines firstly some theoretical concepts by which those aspects can be tackled, and secondly some discourses from the 20th century that promote such concepts, accompanied by concrete examples.

Figure 1: Aspects of flexibility in the built environment Strategies to process variety All aspects of flexibility can be regarded in various ways. Let us think of the residential environment as a system that residents, builders and other actors and agents try to affect.

Their impacts may or may not change the system but in any event the attempts give feedback of the workings of the system to the actors and agents as they try to affect the system again.

Consequently, this feedback system forms a kind of an evolutionary process. Magoroh Maruyama (1963; Trappl, 1983) has identified three types of feedback systems: The stochastic process homogenizes the initial conditions through the conditional probability of trial-and-error.

The deviation-counteracting process balances dissimilar initial conditions to the equilibrium of similar end conditions.

In the deviation-amplifying process, a small kick in similar initial conditions sparks an evolution of differentiation.

Drawing rough analogies from these process types to planning of built environments, we can try formulating some general design-technical strategies. The stochastic process could be compared to standardization strategies (e.g. when certain dimensions of rooms or certain use patterns of these rooms turn out to be favourable or statistically optimal thus becoming standards). The deviation-counteracting paradigm could be compared to the modulation strategy (e.g. modularly dimensioned structural elements or room layouts that allow certain use alternatives). The deviation-amplifying paradigm could be compared to the customization strategies (e.g. houses that can be extended).

The three strategies have parallels to the three levels of architectural form suggested by Habraken & Teicher (1998) as well as the three conceptions of a user, a dweller in this case, suggested by Hill (2003). Standardization establishes patterns, i.e. fixed, recognizable and duplicable elements or ways of using. A standardized environment allows or constrains the user to remain passive in affecting his or her environment. Modulation allows variation in certain frame. In a modular environment, the user can react to an array of options.

Customization requires a set of parts and their interactions, a system. Customization possibilities enable the user to shape his or her own environment. Figure 2 synthesizes the above-mentioned tripartite categorizations.

Figure 2: Strategies, means and aims in the planning of flexibility Standardization reduces variety and uncertainty in the environment, customization increases it and modulation alternates between certain options. All three approaches play a role in producing efficiency and flexibility. The standardization process is able to produce a result out of randomness; customization is initially flexible but may persist to develop to certain direction. Through having a balance of all three approaches, or having them working simultaneously on different levels, we can have an environment that is both efficient and flexible. “It can search for all possibilities. It can try to amplify certain ideas in various directions. It can stay at a relevant idea (which may change from time to time during the invention) and bring back to it other ideas for synthesis. In fact, openness to strange hunches, ability to elaborate on them and to bring them back to a synthesis are what is found in the process of human creative minds.� (Maruyama, 1963, pp. 178, 179).

The reasoning above leads to a hypothesis that each cell in figure 1 could be elaborated further based on the three levels of figure 2. For instance, a standardization strategy applied on the structural modification aspect produces concepts such as utilization of standardized building elements and detailing, while modulation and customization strategies lead to the implementation of construction types such as the well-known support and infill solutions and smart exploitation of the whole production system of the building industry as Habraken (1972) envisaged. These concepts have been studied and continue to be experimented.

The whole field of flexibility based on modification seems quite well addressed when it comes to building technologies and design processes. However, a rigorous examination of movement-based flexibility, i.e. questions of diversity and accessibility with the frameworks

presented here can perhaps open new possibilities. Major part of urban life takes place outside the home and almost all the advantages of apartments in apartment blocks are anyhow on the outside: services, connections, views and urban ambiance. The boundary surfaces of a dwelling and its external usability are therefore key issues in the development of urban dwelling (Mäenpää, 2011, refers to Lehtonen and Mäenpää). We look at this field particularly in the subsequent chapters. The scope of this paper is focuses on the scale of an urban block and to its physical, functional and social issues; what ideas have been put forward, how and in which cases this field could be developed further.

FLOWS AND CONFIGURATIONS Movement is an elemental part of architecture and inseparable from the architectural experience and functionality. In pre-modern residential architecture, the introduction of corridor plans in the 17th century marks an important functional and mental change; before that one proceeded directly from room to room, palace-like hall plans excepted (Hill, 2003 cites Evans 1997). The corridor enables the independent use of rooms and parallel circulations such as those of masters and servants. Nonetheless, in the 19th century bourgeois apartments the emphasis is on the principle of reception: rooms are a sequence from the various social premises, vestibules, libraries and smoking rooms towards the masters’ private studies and boudoirs. Functionalism aimed to dissolve rigid sequencing, congested corridor plans and even rooms. Likewise, urban spaces were to be cleared and aired. New societal ideologies as well as the enormous housing demand of the working classes after the World Wars necessitated reforms that gave rise to new housing standards. Modernist planning culminates in compacted, functionally predetermined working class units and in free flowing limitless urban landscapes, where city streets are done away with and replaced by motorways. Consequently the public-private interface fades (Habraken & Teicher’s, 1998).

Variety, however, develops on interfaces and thus spatial and functional variety diminishes, too. Nevertheless, functionalists experimented on some new ways of implementing diversity, although strictly planner-controlled: Le Corbusier with his collaborators incorporated shops as well as sporting, medical and educational facilities to the Unité d’Habitation housing block in Marseille.

The structuralist architectural movement that emerged in the 1960s criticized rationalist functionalism and strove to revive urban diversity born of coincidences rather than preplanning. The structuralists saw space-configurational knowledge as a focal instrument in the planning of communities. They sought inspiration from archaic vernacular forms such as the dense Islamic town centres, the casbahs that formed labyrinthine organizations from few simple building types. From these influences the structuralists developed generic architectural language that could express individual ways of usage. The principle was to create a continuous, modulated space: an organized casbah. Such a space matrix would be able to produce complexity from clear initial order and liberate from the functional programming as well as empower the user (Oxman et al., 2002). Density would generate differentiation of places and a diverse urban community.

The structuralists’ approach became a formalistic tool for planning complex structures and master plans; the inherent idea of modulated spaces easily turns against its own original principles of avoiding monotonous large-scale environments. Nevertheless, the view on continuous urbanism and repetition patterns in different scales is noteworthy. It includes the idea that a house can be a city and a city can be a house (Oxman et al., 2002), an age-old idea found already in Alberti’s books on the art of building from the year 1450. Having studied urban environments meticulously, Jan Gehl too, in a similar way is of the opinion that a “private living room in the home can serve as a model for integration of activities on any other scale.” (Gehl, 2006, p.107). The idea suggests a kind of fractal organization of spaces: whether zooming in or zooming out, there are always familiar characteristics. The concept of fractality is useful in a sense that it combines features of both focality and distribution reciprocally.

A living room-like quality in the stair halls of apartment buildings could perhaps substitute the compactness of flats and thus provide an alternative approach to spatial efficiency to that of compressing room sizes according to functions and omitting circulatory spaces.

Distribution of common facilities to each floor or around stairwells would make clubrooms, laundries, storage rooms etc. more usable for the residents. Secondly, they would be controlled by smaller group of people and their use or use could be more easily agreed on thus decreasing the risk of desolation. Thirdly, they would become not only secondary service rooms, but also socio-functional spaces that would enrich the social environment of the housing block. Focality of some spaces and facilities would in turn increase their semipublic or public visibility and accessibility: a clubroom on the public street side could better work for instance as a distance work office for the residents, or it could be rented out.

Obviously the fractality concept brings a case-specific balancing of focality and distribution to the planners’ attention.

An implication of avoiding both strict functional programming and dull neutrality is to couple programming with use scenarios. Together they lead to a strategy instead of a plan (Brand, 1994). As Stewart Brand (1994, p. 178) put it “All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong.” When it comes to spatial diversity and accessibility issues, concepts of spatial control and territory are a useful tool in scenario-based planning. According to Habraken & Teicher (1998), people interpret and inhabit buildings through territorial behaviour. Control defines the central operational relationship to all matter around us.

Buildings enable spatial control and they are frameworks for territories. Nevertheless, territory does not strictly obey architectural limits. While control is a hierarchical system, territory is an area that may overlap levels of control just like a courtyard and an apartment can be one’s territory while only the apartment is in one’s possession. In fact, a building type, when it does not refer to prescribed functions, denotes characteristic possibilities of territorial formation and control levels in the building.

Key questions considering building types are therefore accesses and interfaces in the publicprivate gradation. They enable nested control zones and overarching territories. Halls, corridors, stairways, and other circulation spaces as well as various intermediating zones and buffers between public and private therefore have a highlighted strategic meaning. They relate not only to accessibility and diversity but also connectedness, the social dimension of movement-based flexibility (figure 1). Jan Gehl (2006) observes that outdoor life in urban environment represents mainly the passive low-intensity contacts that appear significant but are valuable per se as well as prequisites for more complex interactions. A private or semiprivate outdoor space margin between the building and a more public space works as a soft edge, an intermediating zone that allows physically and mentally easy access between the two realms. The balance of privacy and the wish for contact is made up of small, delicate details. A soft edge allows lingering between comings and goings; lingering, according to Gehl, is what counts for most of the outdoor activities (Gehl, 2006). If there is no space for it, life concentrates on indoors or on other more privatised environments.

Concepts of movement-based flexibility As a summary, three themes related to flexibility and movement arise: permeability of structures, fractal organization of spaces in the structures and interfaces between the spaces.

While the three themes are interlinked and overlapping, permeability is primarily a feature of a general system, organization a feature of typology and interfaces relate mostly to patterns.

Combining now the previous figures 1&2 produces the following figure 3 Permeability Permeability is about fine granulation of a city block structure and ample circulation spaces inside it. Fine granulation allows for both a maximal amount of interface surface between public and private, as well as the shortest distances between places thus creating a dense network of places. Good circulation allows different residents’ territories to overlap which increases social connectedness. All these qualities of permeability contribute to the development of diverse, accessible and connected, i.e. flexible neighbourhoods.

Fractal organization Fractal organization allows various territorial formations to develop, i.e. areas that a resident can identify with and that can be usable to him or her. Fractal organization means that a housing block has focal points and distributed facilities, characters of both a micro-town and a macro living room in regard to gradation of publicity, accessibility and visibility. This is to make the residents’ territories functionally and socially versatile and connected, i.e. flexible.

Interfaces An interface is a recognizable articulation between spaces and it demarcates the publicprivate gradation. Different interfaces enable social connectedness and its regulation: opening or closing of the private rooms to more public realms thus making the use options of the rooms more versatile. Multiple entries support the division of the premises to several control levels thus increasing the versatility of rooms. Adding depth to an interface makes it a soft edge; the interface becomes usable space itself, again contributing to diverse territories. Such soft edges can allow a public expression of the residents’ identity thus contributing to a socially diverse urban environment.

Figure 3: Concepts of movement-based flexibility FIELDS OF APPLICATION The above-mentioned concepts necessitate a certain trust in neighbours or passers-by, a little willingness to share facilities and a certain engagement to the home surroundings. That may be a utopia in typical housing developments, but there are cases in which those conditions exist or emerge. The following examples describe contexts where flexible environment based on one’s moving around could be an applicable strategy.

Cooperative development, co-housing and the case of Kraftwerk1 housing block in Zürich Cooperative building or group building are housing development models that are now being experimented and promoted in Helsinki, Finland, with hopes that they would diversify the housing markets dominated by a small number of developer companies (Norvasuo et al., 2008). While this is still rare in Finland, Switzerland, and especially Zürich has a long tradition of cooperative housing. Kraftwerk1 block in Zürich is a well-known example. It is a product of an initial group of community-minded people that yielded exceptional solutions.

While Kraftwerk1 is a special case, it is nonetheless considered to have contributed to more diverse housing planning and the breaking out of the rigid family flat model (Norvasuo et al., 2008).

Suitable residents were advertised for already in the planning phase and that way the cooperative was able to establish a participatory planning process. Interested members of the cooperative were organized in groups where they worked on various themes for the purpose of common discussion and decision-making. The themes were architecture, ecology, children, cultural and infrastructural services, social matters of housing, communication, outdoor spaces and commercial spaces. Some theme groups continued after the completion and some tasks were later outsourced. The participation complicated the project but also

identified the first residents. Initial aims of the space program that came to fruition were (Norvasuo et al., 2008): – Open and flexible space solutions for various households such as big communities, families, couples and singles. For this purpose, flats ranging between two and twelve rooms were realized. The majority of the flats are four to five rooms.

– A diverse facility and infrastructure supply the aim of which is to extend the private living space, ease the everyday and facilitate contacts and communal operations. The facilities include a laundry, a bar, a co-operative shop, a guest room, a cooking club, a kindergarten, a restaurant and a car pool, among other things.

– Workplaces in commercial and office premises.

– Low energy standard building (Minergiestandard), adjustable air-conditioning, the use of renewable energy sources and the reduction of electromagnetic radiation.

Additional aims that came to fruition were: – Affordable rent despite the architectural quality and sustainable solutions (20% under the average rent).

– The openness of expenses and an integrated decision-making process to avoid the discrimination of minorities.

Kraftwerk1 is example of a community of like-minded people gathered together and bonded by the building process and cooperative way of dwelling. Such a community has the willingness and the ability to agree on sharing facilities; therefore the concepts of flexibility presented here can be used in cooperative housing developments to create a spatially efficient yet satisfying neighbourhood. There are also other cases of co-housing, such as senior housing and health care environments where residents are confined to smaller spheres living and where all necessary amenities should be therefore available and carefully considered.

Ubiquitous information networks, public facilities and the case of State Library of Queensland in Brisbane Wireless networks cover public buildings and places more and more. To some extent they liberate people from predefined routes, functions and ways of behaving. They support spontaneous and individual occupation of spaces and furniture and activate spots that would otherwise be empty (Mackenzie, 2009, refers to Hill).

Dan Hill (Mackenzie, 2009, refers to Hill) analysed the wireless Internet provision of the newly finished State Library of Queensland and found that it was being used almost roundthe-clock every day. Even though there are designated places to access the Internet, the network pervades around the building and Hill noted that people would seek out nooks, crannies, floors, tables and other furniture to create spaces for themselves and their laptops.

They worked individually and in groups and used the wireless networks for business, study and networking. Nearly all of the people Hill surveyed told that the provision of free wireless network encouraged them to use the library.

Hill (Mackenzie, 2009, refers to Hill) argues that information and communication technology nowadays a strategic driver that is changing the culture and services. Because the technology is pervasive and leaks through the physical limit of buildings, Hill cautions against programming buildings too precisely. Hill’s remarks suggest that designing libraries should be perhaps designed as a network of diverse places and facilities, some of which are also protected from the wireless Internet access. Movement-based flexibility concepts can therefore be applicable in contemporary public infrastructure.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS There are two fundamental ways of affecting one’s immediate surroundings: modifying it or moving to another place. The first option is well covered in regard to building design e.g. in

many of the open building discourses. The latter option seems less addressed in the building design or in a neighbourhood scale although there are some iconic building concepts such as the Unité d’Habitation model by Le Corbusier, and considerable academic inputs particularly from the proponents of the structuralist planning ideology such as Habraken & Teicher’s (1998) formulations of form and control. Nonetheless, urban living is a more than just dwelling. A dwelling is an interface to the urban everyday and therefore the external usability of a dwelling should be studied more closely.

The categorization of the facets of flexibility presented here aims at crosschecking that flexibility is considered in various aspects of built environment, crystallizing the methods of its application and revealing concepts of its design. The paper focuses on studying the necessary features of an environment that can be used in flexible way by moving around. The point of view is limited to the scale of an urban block and its physical, functional and social qualities.

A flexible environment based on one’s moving around assumes that there is variety of places catering to different needs of the residents and that these places are accessible for the residents and connected to each other, thus creating a landscape of diverse conditions and use options.

There are three strategies to design accessibility, diversity and connectedness: 1. Creating a system of permeating circulation in a neighbourhood that networks its different places and allows individual residents to include those places in their own sphere of dwelling, their personal territory.

2. Developing a block type where various spaces and places are organized so that there are both publicly accessible focal points as well as facilities distributed conveniently adjacent to the private residential quarters; between the public and private areas there is a gradation of semi-public areas that can have a second order of focal points and common facilities. This results in a fractality of spatial organization, giving the focal places an air of a living room and the more private quarters a sense of community.

3. Introducing interface patterns that can be passed at ease by those whose have the right to enter and that can be passed in various ways so that different spatial configurations can develop: this can be realized by opening multiple entrances or by connecting the different places with intermediating zones that enhance circulation. Such intermediating zones can moreover work as auxiliary zones contributing to the structure of the building type. Softly demarcated interfaces meaning a delicate boundary between the private and the public realms, provide chances of seeing through and being seen, casual encounters and expressing one’s identity publicly.

The above-mentioned flexibility strategies could be applicable especially in cooperative building and co-housing where various shared uses can be better agreed on, or in some special cases of housing such as senior housing where residents are confined to smaller spheres a living where all necessary amenities should be available. Furthermore, the expanding coverage of wireless networks contributes to a more mobile style of living and more a spontaneous and individual use of public places. A network of diverse places and facilities, i.e. considerations of flexibility and people’s movement, can better enhance the functionality of such public places than rooms programmed wall-to-wall. Public services tend to be mixed with housing and business in densely built cities nowadays. The issues discussed here could be beneficial in the planning of such neighbourhoods so that the various activities would add value to each other and form an engaging environment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank professor Hennu Kjisik for commenting on the text.

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