Housing Adaptability:
The underlying issues of why housing adaptability is important today are introduced, together with the drivers and barriers to uptake. This editorial explains the different kinds of adaptability (environmental, spatial, social, and multi-use(r)) and how they can be achieved. The themes and individual papers in this special issue are discussed, together with their individual, community, and societal importance. The global pandemic highlighted the realities of achieving incremental spatial adaptations, but also the attitudinal changes enabling temporary ‘choreographing’ of different social uses of spaces.
New methods for investigating housing adaptability are also highlighted to better understand occupants’ needs and to demonstrate how adaptability adds value to occupants. Residents have an active role in undertaking temporal adaptations. However, this depends on provisions made by clients, developers, designers, and managers involving the layout, design, and multifunctional uses of space. This includes making outdoor spaces more adaptable and developing scenarios that allow dwellings to accommodate changes over time (daily, seasonally, and over life-course cycles).
Adaptable approaches rely on careful planning and design of room layouts (and the services that support them) to enable connection between rooms and different uses of rooms without restriction of use by residents. Housing adaptability should be based on inclusivity and equity.
Climate change mitigation is well-researched in terms of retrofitting the existing housing stock. However, the questions surrounding the adaptation and flexibility of our homes have been less considered. It is this surprising gap in our collective knowledge across these different aspects that prompted the topic for this special issue.
The majority of people now live in urban areas, and this is expected to increase to two-thirds globally by 2050 (UN 2018). Many citizens live in urban apartment blocks they did not design themselves (Saarima & Pelsmakers 2020), and current housing is designed to tighter space standards (Park 2019; Tunstall 2015) and with specific room types that create ‘tight-fit’ spaces that cannot be used for much else than the function they were designed to fulfill (Rabeneck et al. 1973).
The need for housing adaptability (i.e. enabling different social uses; Groak 1992) and flexibility (i.e. enabling different physical changes; Groak 1992) became apparent during the pandemic when an increasing range of activities, such as working, studying, home-schooling, exercising, etc. occurred in homes that were never designed for this purpose and thus ill-suited (NHF 2020; Lehtinen et al. 2022).
However, the need for adaptability and flexibility is also necessary at other times during a building’s lifespan. For example, dwellings need to accommodate new working practices promoted by digitization, or a changing demographic (an aging population, migration, the diversification of household structures) (Pelsmakers et al. 2021; Lehtinen et al. 2022). This highlights questions about how to best adapt spaces to accommodate different and changing user needs and user generations (Femenias & Geromel 2019; Holliss 2017; Saarimaa & Pelsmakers 2020).
Limited adaptability can have negative social consequences. It can reduce the long-term diversity of inhabitants by forcing residents to move home instead of staying in the same community where they have social bonds (Lee & Park 2010; Femenias & Geromel 2019; Luoma-Halkola et al. 2019). Adaptable and flexible spaces are important for supporting aging in place.
This capability also enables residents to create the right-sized homes for working or schooling from home and supports changing family constellations (e.g. multi-generational and extended families, fluctuating family sizes, i.e. children who move between different homes) (Pelsmakers et al. 2021). Long-term residency supports community cohesion through established social networks, which in turn increases life satisfaction, well-being, and human health (Lee & Park 2010; Klinenberg 1999).
Adaptable and flexible spaces and buildings are an essential part of circular construction. This enables buildings to have longer lives and avoids premature building demolition (Huuhka & Vestergaard 2019). Demolition is costly not only economically but also socially and environmentally (Pelsmakers et al. 2020; Schneider & Till 2005).