Home // International Journal On Advances in Intelligent Systems, volume 10, numbers 3 and 4, 2017 // View article

The Modular Structure of Housing Utilities: Analyzing Architectural Integration Patterns

Authors:
Peter De Bruyn
Herwig Mannaert
Jeroen Faes
Tom Vermeire
Jasper Bosmans

Keywords: Modularity, Housing, Evolvability, Normalized Systems, Architectural Patterns

Abstract:
Modularity is considered a powerful concept within many domains. While modular artifacts are believed to have the potential to exhibit several beneficial characteristics such as evolvability, the actual realization of this evolvability or flexibility remains challenging. This paper considers houses as modular structures and employs the combinatorics underlying Normalized Systems Theory, as well as the integration patterns it proposes, to analyze design alternatives for the incorporation of electricity, heating, air conditioning and Internet access utilities within houses. The paper demonstrates that the integration patterns can be applied at several modular granularity levels. An analysis is presented regarding the currently most frequently used integration patterns (as well as their level of application), and those patterns that should deserve additional exploration. The adopted approach to analyze the modular design alternatives for housing utilities is believed to be applicable within other domains as well.

Pages: 280 to 289

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2017. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2017

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2679