Conceptual housing design project, Helsinki, Finland, 2011
Planned gross floor area: 8 600 m2
The project explores the basic definitions of flexibility in order to extend the concept. The thesis suggests a low-fidelity approach to architecture. It includes concepts such as co-configuration of spaces, serviceability, structural robustness, legibility, spatial permeability and diversity. These were experimented in a case study of a townhouse quarter in Jätkäsaari, Helsinki. The ideas were presented in the international conference Architecture in the Fourth Dimension: Methods and Practices for a Sustainable Building Stock in Boston in 2011.
Many of the challenges in housing design and policies intersect in the concept of flexibility. It touches upon the personal lives of residents, the national economy as well as the sustainable society. The concept has been approached from several viewpoints and it has branched to a variety of applications. Fundamentally flexibility is anyhow simple: it describes the capability to absorb variety – e.g. the capability of a building to change into a home for different kinds of dwellers. Either the housing stock corresponds to the needs of a variety of residents or one has to try standardizing their ways living to fit into a standard dwelling. The latter approach is hardly appropriate in a liberal, diverse and multicultural society. Nevertheless, flexibility was applied in housing production with such a hidden supposition in the early 20th century when the concept begun to emerge. This design culture is still in evidence.