Marc Koehler, architect and founder of Marc Koehler Architects and Superlofts, discusses how homes can become more responsive to inhabitants’ dynamic lifestyles, outlining the shifting relationships between the resident, the architect and the home.
Adaptability plays a crucial role in providing comfortable living environments that are resilient, sustainable and can evolve with changing user needs. FRAME’s latest white paper, co-created with Fragile, Knauf and Levi Hayes Studio, synthesizes the insight of 21 professionals from architecture and design to real estate development on the subject. Design for Life: Building the Adaptive Home examines why homes need to be rendered more flexible, presenting clear-cut action points.
In a conversation with FRAME founder and director Robert Thiemann and Fragile founder Lukas Kauer, Koehler emphasizes the value of resident input in domestic design and outlines how adaptable approaches can cultivate more meaningful relationships between people and their homes.
LUKAS KAUER: Many designers are thinking about how to adapt the home over time based on changing needs and life situations. What pressing issues can you identify regarding the future of the adaptable home?
MARC KOEHLER: Paper, glue, and rubber fixings on windows are materials that solidify everything and make the home inaccessible to change. We are all married to those materials. That’s the main challenge. We get quite far in open building systems, but when apartments are finished and subcontractors take over from individual homeowners, people often choose materials that fixate everything again.
ROBERT THIEMANN: What is your approach to changing that?
MK: Making just one wall in the home movable and demountable can already achieve 80 per cent of all flexibility desired in the future. This allows you to extend your living space if you want an open loft situation or maybe bring a wall back to make an extra bedroom if you have a child and remove it again when they move out. You might also want a healthy home-work balance and not want to work in a small, closed space, so a glass wall between the living area and the workspace can help.
Photo: Marcel van der Burg
House Like Village, designed by Marc Koehler Architects and located in an industrial Amsterdam building, provides fluid spaces that can be used in diverse ways.
RT: What was the idea behind starting a company separate from your architectural design company and calling it Superlofts?
MK: The main idea came from a loft I designed called House Like Village. I split an industrial building in Amsterdam into eight large spaces of 8 by 25 m, and 6 m tall, and built a village of cubes inside that. The simple idea was to make many of these stacked on top of one another. This way, everyone could design their dream house inside. I thought we should turn this idea into a brand, concept and organization model that we can repeat in other cities. The concept is mainly about offering freedom in the development phase for individual buyers to make their ideal home without it becoming costly. Community building plays a part here too.
It’s also about technology: which materials can you offer that are flexible and adaptable over time? What kind of circular economy models can we plug into this concept? My aim was to change the government’s view on this and make them aware that sustainability depends on reuse and not only on recycling. It is more sustainable to construct a timeless building that can exist for 200 years with small iterations and alterations and produces little waste than rebuilding the same structure four times in that same period with 100 per cent waste.
Photo: Simon Bosch
Taking advantage of a modular construction system, Superlofts Houthavens allows its residents to customize their homes and co-create shared community spaces.
RT: Would you say that the desire to build more flexibly stems from a need for more user autonomy and a more sustainable end-building?
MK: You could say that it’s about a sense of belonging. The value we’re looking for is a feeling of ownership and participation that results in stronger communities where people feel that they have put their sweat and creativity into their homes. They tend to live there longer and invest more in the neighbourhood. I think that’s an essential factor, and the other is to reduce waste and kickstart the circular economy.
We also shouldn’t underestimate people’s creativity. Architects have often done that, trying to fill all kinds of desires through design, but if you just give people a concrete box with just plants, artwork, carpets, and beautiful furniture, they can create incredibly curated spaces. Doing less as an architect on the level of the interior can allow for more creativity from the individual user of space and trigger creativity and inspiration.
LK: Can you build on this idea of residents having a stronger sense of belonging to their homes and neighbourhoods when they’re involved in design?
MK: It’s just more fun together. People are not ready to invest without really understanding, through and through, what a project is, so it’s crucial to have a key group of stakeholders, partners, and friends collaborate on difficult projects from the beginning. When you know your neighbours two years before your building is finished, you can already start to make friends and build professional and social relations. That sense of belonging gives much more pleasure to the whole process and generates economic value. People are willing to pay more for apartments if they’re taken seriously.
Photo: Jansje Klazinga
Designed by architect Johan Pragt in Superlofts Houthavens Plot 4, Mariska and Alex Visser's apartment fulfils their living needs, fostering a connection between the interior and the outdoors.
RT: And how do adaptable homes compare to the current housing stock when it comes to price and affordability?
MK: People always believe that it’s a more affordable way of building, which is partly true. It’s about 15 per cent cheaper to build unfinished homes. However, everyone always wants what’s best for themselves, and then they overspend, making the interior really fantastic. That’s the paradox we discovered.
LK: With components increasingly being prefabricated, what should the architect’s role be going forward?
MK: We have to look for a balance between inspiration and openness. It’s about finding the limits of where you should start and stop designing. At the same time, zooming out, I believe that algorithms will take over the architect’s role for many standardized buildings. It is much cheaper and faster and more directly related to consumer demands. What part do future architects play? I think it will still be providing real inspiration.
It is only by integrating levels of knowledge and experience with art that we can achieve something authentic. The architect can become a real estate developer not by doing everything alone but by forming coalitions with people financing real estate and finding long-term partnerships to codevelop on a horizontal and long-term basis. If we’re not careful, then we become render companies. We become these makeup artists of the city, just making beautiful façades.
We’ve forgotten that architecture is mostly about other things: construction, manufacturing, finance, functional issues and legal issues. It’s this integrated know-how that we should try to bring together in an architect’s firm. Otherwise, all those things are taken away from us.
LK: With times being so financially unstable, how has this impacted the way you work, and how do you ensure your projects remain accessible?
MK: Superlofts was created in the financial crisis because nobody developed anything, and plots were available. We took our opportunity to develop something innovative where there was a demand for it. I’m sure that this moment will force us to radically think about affordability in a new way. Maybe the ideal building of the future is not a housing building or an office building but something that can be both. I think that we will have then created sustainable architecture.
Download the white paper here.
