As the supply of housing reaches to a full saturation point these days, it seems evident that 25-year old apartment buildings which were built in late 1970's are clearly deteriorating, causing a number of problems such as degraded living environment, ...
As the supply of housing reaches to a full saturation point these days, it seems evident that 25-year old apartment buildings which were built in late 1970's are clearly deteriorating, causing a number of problems such as degraded living environment, insufficient' security, and more repairs. It has become especially problematic since the rebuilding and master planning effort of these apartment buildings has neither considered existing site conditions nor the coherency with adjacent neighborhoods. To come up with a solution to prevent such method that often tends to shorten the life of apartment buildings by being executed prematurely, the concept of "remodeling" was introduced to promote more environment-friendly and money-saving aspects of building renovation.
The government's recent shift on policy to limit the reconstruction of high-density apartment blocks, but instead promote the remodeling also reflects a collective effort to accommodate such trend in phases. Striving for more technical and systematic resolution for the remodeling method, several plans were suggested to enhance the longevity of apartment buildings. This seems to make more sense since the recently modified zoning law makes unattainable and impractical for the kinds of past conventional reconstruction to be performed for the most of high-density housing that were built in 1980's.
Unfortunately, the level of most remodeling strategies of these deteriorating high-density apartments, compared to previous reconstruction method, are quite scrappy and outdated even though they embody numerous possibilities and virtue in setting up new realistic and economical standards.
This research illustrates a comprehensive and comparative analysis on the economic efficiency of remodeling method that is one of major factors in setting more desirable standards, and proposes to utilize LCC calculation techniques in generating a required budget for more effective quantity-based analysis that is both objective and efficient.
Rather than comparing only the initial cost of two different methods, it seems more thorough to compare their entire life-cycle cost that includes any repairs and reconstruction/remodeling expenses, thus generate overall quantitative analysis in objective perspective. In order to explore such in depth, comprehensive set of surveys and studies of characteristics of each method were made in conjunction with typological case studies of LCC calculation techniques.
For the LCC model analysis, I assumed the total of 40 years for the life of apartment buildings, with 20-year intervals of reconstruction and remodeling. For the reconstruction budget, standard unit price of newly built apartment units set by the government and construction industry was used. The remodeling cost was interpolated from both case studies of apartment units currently in construction and forthcoming projects. This set of assumption allowed a fair level of comparison that could estimate the life-cycle cost of the building and the logic of introducing LCC techniques in which could direct towards to more objective SSL model.
The followings are general outlines of findings from the research:
1) There are three different types of remodeling scope of apartment units - type "A" of walk-up buildings that involves expansion of balcony; type "B" in corridor-type buildings which includes partial modification on number of households, and renovation of elevator, stairs and other supplementary rooms; type "C" in combination of walk-up/corridor buildings that involves new number of household, balcony expansion, elevator, stairs, and basement parking space.
2) In result, LCC-generated budget of the three different types of remodeling method, the initial cost of remodeling costs - 70% for the type "A", 76% for the type "B", 104% for the type "C" - compared to the reconstruction. Thus the remodeling of the type "C" costs 4% more than the reconstruction, and 34% more than the remodeling cost of the type "A"
At the completion of reconstruction (upto 22 years) and remodeling (21 years), outstanding retail cost of remodeling is 88% for the type "A", 90% for the type "B", and 102% for the type "C", as opposed to 93% for "A", 93% for "B", and 100% for "C" in net price, and at the completion of reconstruction (upto 40 years) and remodeling, outstanding retail cost of remodeling is 92% for the type "A", 93% for the type "B", and 104% for the type "C", as opposed to 94% for "A", 94% for "B", and 101% for "C" in net price.
3) I found that the intial cost for three different types of apartment buildings resulted in order of type "A", "B", "C", with the type "A" being at the lowest cost There is no dramatic difference in cost between the type "A" and "B" in terms of its unit pricing. However, the type "C" being the oldest structure, the increase in repair- cost resulted the cost that is more than the reconstruction method. It is about 50% as expensive than the type "A", and 37% as the type "B".
4) In overall, the use of LCC-generated budget in analyzing economic benefits of the two illustrates that the remodeling of types "A" and "B" are much more efficient than the reconstruction, while "C" being less efficient. Such findings demonstrate the LCC-method to be more than enough to function as a basis for further detailed research and objective observation.
In conclusion, comprehensive research basis as this case study could contribute further possibilities in unitlizing the remodeling method more effectively. By analyzing typological studies of remodeling methods with different cases for each, there would be more effective restrictions on reconstruction and consensus towards its technical and economic side effects, thus creating an opportunity for the remodeling to be practiced more rigorously. If there is more effort on collecting these kinds of documents and further research to go along, we can foresee an active and efficient use of the remodeling method that are also scientifically worthwhile.