Analysis of the structural design process of the adaptive reuse of building structures

Analysis of the structural design process of the adaptive reuse of building structures

Pasterkamp, S.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Structural Engineering

2014-12-31

In the field of structural building engineering there is a market shift taking place as a result of the growing number of buildings that are listed as cultural heritage, secularization, the economic situation and the increasing office vacancy rate in Europe and the US. More and more structural engineering firms that were designing and constructing new buildings now move to maintenance and adaptive reuse of existing building structures. But how does this shift influence the way in which engineering firms work? What is the influence of adaptive reuse of existing building structures on the structural design process? Unlike fields like architecture and especially industrial design that have a strong design tradition, in structural engineering until now engineering design has been regarded more as a craft that has to be learned in practice than as science. As a result of this, arguments to answer those questions are hard to find in literature (with a few notable but little cited exceptions such as the paper How designs develop by S.J. Macpherson c.s.[2]). To fill this gap an analysis has been made of the way in which the design process of adaptive reuse projects is supposed to work according to literature and professional associations, and of the way it really works in practice. Grounded theory method is used to generate concepts to explain the way structural designers work in such projects. Preliminary results show that standard descriptions of the engineering design process (generally from abstract to detail as for instance suggested in The Architect’s Handbook by J.A. Demkin c.s.[3]) do not correctly describe the way in which this design process really works. Not only did the redesign process of existing building structures not work as expected by both clients and practitioners; even the structural design process of new building projects can be seen in a different light. It is expected that the results of this research eventually might lead to different contracts between clients and engineering firms in the future.

adaptive reuse
buildings
engineering design
grounded theory

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d94c540e-cf9b-410d-9286-3895f461842d

Instituto de Ingenieria UNAM

SAHC2014; 9th International Conference on Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions, Mexico City (Mexico), 14-17 Oct. 2014; Authors version

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2014 Pasterkamp, S.