Making Custodians: A design anthropology approach to designing emotionally enduring built environment artefacts

My doctoral research through creative production takes a Design Anthropology approach to examine the person-object relationship typical of artefacts with long-term attachment and significance. I then speculate on the implications of these findings with the goal of designing enduring new built environment artefacts, surfaces, and furniture. The exegesis explores the context of this enquiry within design theory and practice and its significance, given the environmental impact of high levels of premature disposal and ‘fast’ consumption

Adaptability of buildings: a critical review on the concept evolution

Our ever-evolving built environment is continuously facing emerging needs for housing, work, health, and mobility, among others. Yet, buildings are usually designed and set up as finished permanent objects, reflecting the one constant scenario in mind of defined form, function, and performance. Since change is increasingly inevitable in our life, enlarging buildings’ adaptive capacities in response to arising variables and changing conditions over their lifecycle becomes a necessity in seeking global sustainability demands. The concept of building adaptability has been a notable subject in this respect, increasingly stimulating and proposing regenerative alternatives to today’s often obsolete buildings. This paper critically reviews the existing body of knowledge on the concept of adaptability in building research. The main focus is made on the evolution of the concept interpretations and related paradigms, and on the development of its applications and strategies in the light of promoting models and trends. Drawing on the literature as a source of evidence, the paper analyzes and classifies the content of existing studies published in scientific journals and gray literature, focusing on a timeframe from 2015 up-to-date. Moreover, the paper aims to build a constructive discussion to identify potential gaps between the actual state of the art and emerging needs, which should be addressed by further research.This research was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, grant number PD/BD/150400/201

Reversibility and Durability as Potential Indicators for Circular Building Technologies

According to the Circularity Gap Report 2020, a mere 8.6% of the global economy was circular in 2019. The Global Status Report 2018 declares that building construction and operations accounted for 36% of global final energy use and 39% of energy–related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The Paris Agreement demands that the building and construction sector decarbonizes globally by 2050. This requires strategies that minimize the environmental impact of buildings and practices extending the lifecycle of their constituents within a circular resource flow. To ensure that effective measures are applied, a suitable method is needed to assess compliance in materials, processes, and design strategies within circular economy principles. The study’s assumption is that synthetic and reliable indicators for that purpose could be based on reversibility and durability features. The paper provides an overview of building design issues within the circular economy perspective, highlighting the difficulty in finding circular technologies which are suitable to enhance buildings’ service life while closing material loops. The results identify reversibility and durability as potential indicators for assessing circular building technologies. The next research stage aims to further develop the rating of circularity requirements for both building technologies and entire buildings

Between sustainability commitments and anticipated market requirements: Exploring the resilience of the techno-economic innovation paradigm in the midstream of construction research

This article studies ways of dealing with the tension between a commitment to sustainable and responsible research and anticipated market requirements in the midstream of a research process in architecture and construction. Using a slightly modified version of Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR), we explored the chances of questioning the primacy of the techno-economic innovation paradigm by deliberately provoking reflections through STIR interactions. Our research underlines the difficulties and limitations of challenging an orientation towards values of efficiency and productivity in favour of social and environmental values in the midstream of the research process and examines how the techno-economic innovation paradigm is able to insulate itself against critical questioning. It sheds light at the critical role of the underlying assumption that marketability of prospective outcomes is not one objective amongst others but the precondition for all others and at two argumentative patterns we termed the "lack-of-agency" and the "reconciliation-after-all" pattern

'Do it yourself future construction': the deregulated self

This thesis explores the convergence of four different ‘bios’ (biology, biopolicy, biotechnology and the biosphere) and the way their imminent and accelerating interaction results in a closed system model of biospheric entropy generation par excellence. By highlighting the nature of these convergences I seek to explore ways of negating and/or reversing this oxymoronic, ‘end driven’ terminal logic, using generative approaches to “futuring” (Fry, 2009a) from contemporary art and design. I build on these approaches by targeting, as contemporary biopolitical interventions do, the individual ‘self’ as the most salient agent capable of making transformative change. In this capacity I suggest that the soundest means to ‘construct’ the future (“where it can no longer be assumed that we, en masse, have a future” (Fry, 2009a: 1)) is via the ‘deregulation’ of the self. Institutional and ideological deregulation will enable the species to spontaneously self-organise and (re) ‘construct’, albeit differently, the emergent conditions for life. By facilitating the exploration of idiosyncrasy and creativity to the nth degree, deregulation cultivates difference, diversity and unpredictability, qualities herein identified as key antidotes to biospheric entropy. The rise of ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) cultures – in particular the advent of DIY synthetic biology – are the driving inspirations behind this hypothesis, with the core claim being that the individual artist (the deregulated self) is the best equipped to exploit such DIY cultures to the collective advantage of the species; that is, toward the construction of a “futuring” condition

Early sustainable architecture in hanging skyscrapers – A comparison of two financial office buildings

Reuse, or the ability to continue using an item or building beyond the initial function, is a key concept in the literature on sustainability. This implies that a building should be designed in a way that will allow it to be repurposed when changing circumstances require changes in its layout or function; being energy efficient and environmentally sensitive is not enough. The building also needs to be financially viable and the people whose lives are impacted by it should wish to have it retained. As far as flexibility of high-rise or skyscraper buildings is concerned, the structural system and layout are some, but not the only aspects that are of particular importance in this regard. Upside-down or ‘hanging’ buildings, because of the reduced use of columns, can potentially provide advantages when viewed from such a widened understanding of sustainability. Two such buildings are the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) headquarters building in Hong Kong and the Standard Bank Centre (SBC) in Johannes-burg. The SBC stands virtually unused and in disrepair, while the HSBC remains fully operational and revered by the population of Hong Kong. This article compares the design and construction processes of the two buildings to determine why these two buildings ended up in such divergent situations. The aim is to make recommendations regarding structural systems and other factors that could assist in ensuring that future skyscrapers will be more sustainable, in addition to being energy and resource conserving. Furthermore, this comparison sheds some light on the historical development of the understanding of sustainability and the difference between green design and sustainable design