Adaptive re-use: retrofit architecture & the climate emergency

• ​a good work-life balance, and.

With just a single gateway, it’s possible to achieve five or ten kilometers of distance, picking up gate sensors and various pieces of important information.This might include things such as whether someone is walking in an area they shouldn’t be, or even checking to see whether a structure may have moved over a three- or six-month period.

Adaptive re-use: retrofit architecture & the climate emergency

This is the type of information that’s truly valuable onsite, and we should be interrogating it.However, it’s important to keep in mind the temporary nature of construction sites.Once they’ve gone, we’ve lost the opportunity to use construction technology to gather that simple, valuable information that can tell us what’s really happening.

Adaptive re-use: retrofit architecture & the climate emergency

It’s this data that enables us to do better designs, and better implement modules etc.Of course, much of what we need to do is perfectly achievable with existing technology, but we can also be confident that as tech continues its rapid advancement, what we’re using a year from now will be significantly better than what we’re using today..

Adaptive re-use: retrofit architecture & the climate emergency

The benefits of IoT in construction.

The temporary nature of construction sites also impacts the role of IoT technology onsite.Johnston recalls a bathroom pod project early in his own career, where the beautifully designed, millimetre-perfect pods had to be inserted into a traditionally built building.. Aiming for efficiency in such modular projects carries risk..

He says that far too much time was spent fixing the gaps between the manufactured and traditional parts.Whilst the insides of the pods were identical, the outside utility connections were different every single time.

Johnston warns of the knock-on effects of these types of scenarios, where a lack of advanced planning results in a total loss of the intended value.. Marks agrees and says the solution lies in bringing the construction site build portion of projects up to the same accuracy as the modules.. Modular construction.Bringing up the B2 Atlantic Yards project, Amy Marks explains that the problems caused by the module frames not being reset when needed is an easily fixable issue to learn from, not a reason to write off prefab altogether.. For example, lessons learned from the earlier Victoria Hall project in Wolverhampton (which saw tolerance issues between the modules and core structure of the building), did inspire a shift from concrete to structural steel frames on Atlantic Yards.. Further, while she believes it’s possible to achieve tolerances, she says that not every process (ie.