Strategic Assessment of Building Design Adaptive Reuse Opportunities

ARC Linkage Project- Professor Craig Langston 

Bond University is leading an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project into the Strategic Assessment of Building Adaptive Reuse Opportunities. The partners are Deakin University, Williams Boag Architects and The Uniting Church in Australia. The research comprises $210,000 of funding from the ARC and about $90,000 of funding from the industry partners (plus in-kind support) over three years, concluding in 2010. The chief investigator of the project is Dr Craig Langston, Professor of Construction and Facilities Management in the Mirvac School of Sustainable Development at Bond University.

The aim of the research is to develop and test a model for the early identification of properties that have a high potential for adaptive reuse so that timely decisions can be taken concerning how best to maximize the remaining value of our aging building stock. The research is also expected to provide insight into how buildings can be better designed for adaptive reuse in the first instance and so help to improve the sustainability performance of our urban environment in the long run. This research has particular relevant to the current climate change adaptation agenda, particularly given our built environment impacts significantly on both resource demand and waste generation.

Adaptive reuse essentially refers to a change in building function or purpose from that of its current usage. Buildings, like other assets, can become obsolete over time. Buildings in fact both deteriorate and become obsolete as they age. A building’s physical life, which may be interpreted as its structural adequacy, is effectively reduced by obsolescence, resulting in a useful life somewhat less than its expected physical life. While recycling, perhaps through deconstruction, is one strategy for salvaging value from obsolete buildings, keeping the materials largely in-place and finding an alternative use for the facility can provide even more value-add. Not only can the embodied energy and cost of new work be minimized, but cultural and heritage values can also be preserved for future generations. Many of our older buildings are often better suited to our climate than newer designs and can provide very pleasant spaces in which to work, live and play.

Obsolescence is a phenomenon that is widely discussed in the literature, although rarely in relation to buildings. Parallels are drawn in this research between obsolescence, depreciation and discounting in order to develop a new method for predicting building obsolescence based on measurable context factors. These factors have physical, economic, functional, technological, social, legal and political characteristics. Useful life is described as discounted physical life, where the rate of discount is determined from predicted future obsolescence. Buildings with substantial embedded physical life after their useful life has been reached have good potential for adaptive reuse. This transformation to some extent resets their age, and the cycle of predicting further obsolescence continues.

The conceptual framework of an approach to identify and rank adaptive reuse potential (ARP) for existing buildings has now been achieved and reported internationally. The model requires an estimate of the expected physical life of the building and the current age of the building, both reported in years. It also requires an assessment of physical, economic, functional, technological, social, legal and political obsolescence. Obsolescence is advanced as a suitable method to reduce expected physical life in order to calculate objectively the useful life of the building. An algorithm converts this information and produces an index of reuse potential expressed as a percentage. Existing buildings in an organization’s portfolio, or existing buildings across a city or territory, can therefore be ranked according to the potential they offer for adaptive reuse. Where the current building age is close to and less than the useful life, the model identifies that planning should commence.

The research to date has also developed a ‘physical life calculator’. Similar in concept to the Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator for humans, our calculator begins with an idealistic prediction of building service life and modifies it positively and negatively for its lifestyle context (akin to ‘healthy living’). In the case of buildings, environmental context, occupational profile and structural integrity are the main areas of focus. Each has ten measurable factors that are weighted and computed into a prediction of physical life. It is from this starting point that useful life is able to be forecast.

Obsolescence is shown to be measurable. Through the application of surrogates that can suitably reflect the impact of physical, economic, functional, technological, social, legal and political obsolescence, physical life can be “discounted” to determine a building’s useful life. Such an approach offers advantage in being able to better predict possible adaptive reuse potential, or indeed just to make informed decisions about the timing of building decommission. The individual hypotheses for measuring obsolescence need to be further tested in the field. This work is underway. The results of this research will likely lead to fine-tuning of the model parameters so that forecasts of useful life can become more reliable.

The ARP model has been validated against a large number of successful adaptive reuse projects from around the world to show that predicted useful life closely resembles actual useful life. Furthermore, twelve existing properties have had their ARP scores calculated and compared with their overall performance as determined by a multi-criteria decision tool developed in a concurrent ARC Linkage Project. Using this approach it was evidenced that properties with high ARP scores were also aligned to adaptive reuse decisions, depicted as having high condition, low utilization and high reward. The researchers are working closely with other experts from around the world to ensure that their findings are applicable to other countries and contexts.

Building adaptive reuse is an important global topic. In the context of sustainable development and the effects of climate change caused by previous disregard for our environment, adaptive reuse has significant implications. This research will help to examine how the construction industry can reposition itself to increase focus on the revitalization of existing buildings as an alternative to demolition and replacement, and looks at the social advantage from making better use of what we already have. In the future adaptive reuse will need to be planned at the outset, and if this is done wisely and routinely, it will provide a means of realizing sustainability objectives without reducing investment levels or economic viability for the industry. In fact, adaptive reuse is the future of the construction industry.

Bond University is privileged to be leading this research. New knowledge from this and other ARC projects is being integrated back into the curriculum for undergraduate and postgraduate study. Through this process it is hoped that Bond University graduates are able to take their place in the construction, facilities management, property and urban development industries to help achieve better and more sustainable outcomes for our world.

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