Development of objective methods for measuring flexibility of school buildings

This research investigates many problems related to the design for change and flexibility of school buildings. The problem of change proves to be highly complex due to the unpredictability and the difficulty of measuring change. Many deficiencies have been identified in the previous methods concerning lack of indicators for measuring flexibility, reliability and insufficiency of data for indicating change in buildings over use. In the light of the above problems, two main objectives have been established: (i) to propose operational measures of the extent of incorporation of design variables in school designs, and (ii) to propose operational measures of the extent of flexibility of school buildings in use. However, due to the limitations this paper is bound to, the investigation will focus on the second objective. It is anticipated that such operational measures might provide a framework for both architects and researchers, during the early design stage, to ensure that their conjectures about the potential of flexibility might be enhanced during use, hence, improving their prediction of buildings performance over use. This might assist in developing a more coherent objective body of knowledge, which could be fruitfully manipulated during the early design stage to enhance the effectiveness of flexibility in use