In an increasingly fast-paced society, constant adaptation has become one of the key survival strategies. Sustainability is tangible in approaches that revolve around flexibility and take into account an uncertain future.

Although architecture is a slow and not particularly flexible medium – due to cost, inertia, size and man-hours – it is a part of our daily environment in which this adaptability is particularly important. Buildings require considerable investment in financial, temporal and material terms and are therefore (hopefully) intended to last for some time and to be resistant to certain changes. What’s more, renovating an existing building and adapting it to new needs and contemporary standards is often more expensive than new construction. To be sustainable, architecture must therefore provide answers to these questions and incorporate the ability to adapt into its design. ‘Flexible design’ has therefore become a buzzword, a term used with no clear meaning in competition entries, project proposals, developer advertisements and promotions for certain buildings.