Article:

Refurbishments and adaptations to existing building structures can be achallenging problem: Keeping track of all building measures (e.g. what walls,doors and installations to add or remove) is equally demanding as trying to keepan eye on the constraints (e.g. natural lighting) and functions that the changedstructure will provide. It also demands a integrated view of the redesign (spatialaspect) and the refurbishment as a project (time aspect). To this end, we havebeen developing our planning tool ``Refurb!'', which lets a user planrefurbishments and adaptations to existing structures using a mixed metaphor of``CAD-tool + project plan'', including a variety of analysis tools to compare theoriginal state of a structure to the planned one (e.g. adjacency and circulationbefore and after adaptation). The tool is aimed at project planners and rangesfrom small scenarios (e.g. relocation/adaptation/refurbishment of a department)to big scenarios (e.g. relocation when bringing a hospital into service).