ADjustMEMBRANE : innovative lightweight adjustable partition wall system

This paper presents a conceptual system for an adjustable partition wall conceived within a research project. The permanent evolution and mutation of life styles have been conducting to the rethink of living spaces and to a growing need for more evolutionary and adaptable housing units. It can be verified that a major portion of houses don’t accomplish that premise. This happens because the technological and constructive solutions used on conventional interior partition walls, such as hollow brick or plasterboard with metallic frame systems, are static and difficult to readapt without a significant cost due to the specialized work required and material loss during the assembly process. The proposed conceptual system, called ADjustMEMBRANE constitute a modular building solution of a non-load bearing partition wall, tensioned between the pavement and ceiling slabs, that are used as anchoring elements. It allows several advantages, presented in this paper, related with the weight reduction to achieve a good sustainable performance, such as: reduce costs on energy, materials and construction; easy recycling, reusing and allow selfconstruction.FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia – Portugal) and COMPETE (Programa Operacional de Fatores de Competitividade - Portugal