I was perusing a sample of the book Architecture is Participation, that is coming out and I would like to get, and it spawned some thoughts and I'm gonna dump 'em here. Cuz it's my blog you know.
How do we appropriately design things, specifically housing, that is custom for our client, but general enough for the next resident? We seem to always be at either end of the spectrum, apartment floor plans that repeat indefinitely and can't be changed but at great expense - or custom housing that fits the specific needs (and whimsies) of a singular client.
We design for impermanence.
Are we all really so similar that we don't need to change our environments when our circumstances/family/economics/desires/eras change? It seems like such an obvious question, but I wonder how much we really think about it when designing. Even less when building. If you've ever seen someone putting a hundred nails into something to make it stay, you know they're not thinking about the person who's going to have to remove them (and it certainly hasn't crossed their mind that it might be themselves doing a renovation 5 years later). I think some work has been done around modular design but to no great avail. I think some folks have experimented with things like moveable walls with similar outcome. I guess we address this a bit better with some commercial work, core and shell construction with interior remodels all the time. Of course, we still don't seem to design/source materials/build/demo with the thought that this is likely to all happen again in 10 years (or 2) when a new tenant moves in.
It somehow seems more relevant to me at the residential scale. I guess the importance of design in our everyday life is why I gravitate to the residential. We still rarely design things thinking about the next generation, let alone the one after that. Yet, how many of us live in newly built construction? Not many.
Where does this lead? I don't know. We design for impermanence. But not consciously, not purposefully. Rather, accidentally because that's how contractors work, because studs and drywall are the industry standard, because labor is expensive nowadays, because that's how the economy works. We're designers. Can't we break the mold?