Design strategies for residential high rise buildings through open building principles

Abstract

Current high rise living trends view apartments as rigid inflexible structures. People are dynamic, progressive and adaptive. Our living spaces should be able to adapt to our changing needs, expanding families, tendency to migrate and fast-paced oriented lifestyles. We are constantly upgrading our building stock with new systems and technologies to meet current social, financial and technological demands. However, high-rise housing has been slow to adapt due to its rigid form. Not only does it directly affect the inhabitant, but it also poses greater problems in the future when these buildings become obsolete due to its inflexibility, despite being in good working order. This dissertation looks at approaches to increase flexibility and adaptability in residential high rise architecture. It determines the best design strategies for high-rise living using open building principles. Data collection and analysis was done through comprehensive literature reviews, analysing case studies and field research. Open building case studies were primarily used to compare and contrast various approaches and summarise the best design strategies for high rise living. There are many recommendations highlighted in this dissertation, listed according to system level, building level, unit level, room level and layout level. This study is essential because the implementation of these design strategies and the Open Building principles tackle issues on changing household composition and income; mass housing, loss of individuality and exclusion of the end user; inflexibility and obsolescence; preventable construction waste; entanglement and finance.