Design for Structural Adaptation in timber buildings: Industry perspectives and implementation roadmap for Sweden and Australia

Journal article, 2024

Extending the service life of timber structures can be connected to several circular economy (CE) values such as prolonged carbon storage, resource efficiency, and waste reduction. While the emerging CE strategy Design for Adaptation (DfA) is concerned with prolonging the service life of buildings, it is commonly focused on non-structural adaptability. This paper defines the concept Design for Structural Adaptation (DfSA) and investigates it from the perspective of the construction industries in Sweden and Australia. Existing knowledge on the topic was synthesized together with perspectives from stakeholders by combining a literature review with semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis of the interviews was performed to analyze the perceived barriers, risks, and benefits of implementing DfSA for timber structures. Among the results are seven proposed characteristics of DfSA for timber, derived from a critical analysis of previous research works on adaptability and circularity strategies for timber. The thematic analysis of stakeholder interviews showed that the practitioners from both countries were unanimous in perceiving DfSA to be in line with national and global sustainability goals. The barriers to implementation, both found in literature and according to stakeholders, primarily concerned cost and technical solutions, followed by regulation and traceability. The study concludes that while the technical issues of DfSA for timber need to be studied further, research efforts are also needed to quantify the possible benefits of DfSA from a life cycle perspective. Lastly, the authors recommend investigations of common causes of demolition for different building types, to promote optimized and cost-efficient structural adaptability.