Designing flexible architecture to hinder the functional and technological obsolescence

Time, uncertainty, flexibility and resilience are the four sides of the same coin around which this paper revolves. Hallmark of all complex systems is uncertainty, seen as the lack of full knowledge of current or future evolution of a system. There are various types and sources of uncertainty, but notably the incorrect knowledge of the environment which operates it determines obsolescence technological and functional of the system. Systems that have the longest life span, are able to cope with the unpredictability of their contexts, rigid and unchanging systems have a shorter lifespan. Uncertainty, traditionally seen as a negative aspect of the system, must therefore be regarded as an opportunity, an incentive to design flexible systems able to absorb changes in the environment in which they operate, in order to create added value for users. The development of "Advanced" systems able to prevent that uncertainty generates diseases, commonly referred to as "risks," this is not new, the selection process of species of Darwin or the reflections on the life of capital goods of Terborgh, have shown that there are living organisms, human artifacts or, resilient complex systems, better equipped to adapt to changing environments compared to rigid systems incapable of reacting to the change. In other words flexibility reduces the exposure of a project uncertainty, provides a solution to mitigate the market risks and also the risks associated with technological obsolescence, then it's that property that makes the system resilient able to absorb the shock and/or disturbance without undergoing major alterations in its functional organization, in its structure and in its identity characteristics. In the paper, the flexibility is therefore seen as a fundamental property for designing a generally complex system, and particularly in architectural design, through the identification of design criteria for the implementation of this requirement, that influence on architecture (form more technology) of the system.