ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces an infrastructure model of the building stock. Like well-understood infrastructures such as transport and utility systems, a sustainable building stock is usefully described as operating on infrastructural principles: levels of intervention in which changes to a lower level are possible without disturbing the higher level. In buildings, these levels are given various names, including “Base Building, Fit-Out, and FF&E” or “Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary systems.” This hierarchical organization enables improved management of distributed control, both between and “on” levels. While the use of levels has been implicit and widespread in much commercial real estate, it is only recently being adopted in residential, educational and healthcare architecture. The opportunities for a new architecture and urbanism remain to be explored and studied.