The ease with which a building can be adapted to changing requirements helps raise user satisfaction; it can prolong the building’s service life and lower costs incurred throughout its life cycle. Flexibility and adaptability reduce the risk of vacancy and can contribute to buildings long-term economic success.
Hence this criterion is aimed at making the building’s design as flexible as possible and creating the greatest possible potential for reuse.
Additional Explanation
Technical and social developments impact on the built environment for work, housing and leisure. This requires highly efficient, flexible and adaptable buildings. The need for adaptation may arise from changes within the building use, or by conversion to a different use (e.g. by a new tenant).
In economic terms, the evaluation of the building’s space efficiency is based on the proportion of usable and rentable space in relation to the total area of the building.
This criterion is closely related to TEC1.4, which is focussed on the adaptability of technical systems