Week 7 - Reading by Lynch

Environmental Adaptability

Why should we be worried about having to change buildings later. Maybe just use better or more easily recycled/movable internal materials so walls can be knocked down and rearranged easier?

Obviously with hospitals and laboratories there is a constant need for change so those buildings should be updated constantly as they are. But when does this stop? Will we stop building new ones when the perfect layout is found? or is it a hygiene thing?

Adaptability makes the opportunities level throughout all stages but it doesn't allow for good design or use now or later. So rather than it functioning really well now and not so well later, reduce it now so they even out or vise-versa.

Being too narrowly specialized is bad because whilst it allows more uses, when something needs to change it effects all those uses rather than just the one specialized one. 

I think I would like to have a project that works on adaptability at some scale. I am planning on using the old car parks and underground structures for possible housing and use while creating centers above to recycle old cars. What if something big happens and the spaces need to be changed? Maybe these people will have to move out so these structures can be used for something else in emergency. Then they would need to be able to be changed quite quickly. I think I would like to have this as an underlying idea within my project. Perhaps I look at public transport instead? Or mix the two... Housing and Transport.

"If it were not desirable that a rolling center move too far from its original location, it might be arranged to roll on a circular track, eventually returning on its traces. In theory, too, an activity zone might be arranged in a ring shape, which could renew itself by perpetual outward movement, like the growth of certain molds. The ring shape would be retained,but the increasing length of the circumference might in the end 'prove

dis-functional"

-     You could have a number of city centers that you can change throughout over a cycle. So maybe one center is in action for five years before the center moves elsewhere for five years and so on. Then people have an option of moving with the city center or living in one of the other centers that aren't currently in use. When one is moved on from, that center undergoes a redesign and change so that when it is in use next, it suits the need.

"There seems to be a continuous conflict between future adaptability and present efficiency"

-     This is exactly what it was talking about before. You can't win either way. Either its good  now and bad later, bad now and good later, or consistently average the whole way through. I think if you make buildings with a movable element within, you could definitely improve the use now and later.