The Institutional Real Estate Inc Sponsorship brochure, Connected-Investor Focused, We connect people, data and insights, sponsorship, events, IREI Products
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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT MANAGERS 6 ADAPTABILITY PREVAILS. IN DESIGN. IN INVESTMENTS. IN LIFE. A fallacy of many of today's intelligent sustainable buildings is the inability of so-called intelligent buildings' capacities to adapt to changing societal trends and technologies. A school of thinking is emerging which posits that the best building designs for the long term are ones which allow for adaptation over time. Adaptability is the feature which allows a thing to change to fit a new use or requirement. An expectation of change and the need for an adaptation to that change should be the foundation of any design concept for a building which is planned to have a long lifespan—and be a profitable and wise investment. Buildings tend to be thought of as anchored in place and time. While buildings generally do not move, it is clear that if they are to exist well into the future, they must be thoughtful about the times, trends and the changing demands of the occupants. Though buildings of the past had perhaps a somewhat easy task in responding to the technological changes over time, the pace of change in the last few decades has really challenged our notion of adaption. It would be overconfident to think we can predict changes. But it holds true that buildings with "good bones" can continue to change and adapt, while those without will become the UN-sustainable content of landfills. ADAPTIVE DESIGN IS SUSTAINABLE DESIGN Sustainability is a topic that arises in real estate conversations frequently these days. No matter where you stand on the politics of climate change, the idea of using MORE energy and resources when better options are available is clearly outdated thinking. No matter how sustainable a project is, the construction of a structure takes a tremendous amount of resources, both physical and financial. The most sustainable new building is the one that does not have to be built. Buildings that are poorly designed with respect to adaptability and basic design principles are more likely to be replaced before they have reached the end of their expected useful life than structures that allow for change and evolution. Great examples are some of the buildings and homes in the 1970s-80s when tech really started to propel changes—it played out in limited-thinking at a time perhaps when things felt so new and grandiose, people really couldn't imagine what could come next. Nor did they even think about how to build for that. It was all about what we can show off today as the latest and greatest feature. That collective arrogance has become a hindrance to reinventing these assets. " It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." –Charles Darwin 6 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT MANAGERS NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT MANAGERS 6 Gary Cohn, Executive Vice President, Marx|Okubo