PurposeThe adoption of building information modelling (BIM) in managing built heritage is an exciting prospect, but one that presents complexities additional to those of modern buildings. If challenges can be identified and overcome, the adoption of historic BIM (HBIM) could offer efficiencies in how heritage buildings are managed.Design/methodology/approachUsing Durham Cathedral as a case study, we present the workflows applied to create an asset information model to improve the way this unique UNESCO World Heritage Site is managed, and in doing so, set out the challenges and complexities in achieving an HBIM solution.FindingsThis study identifies the need for a better understanding of the distinct needs and context for managing historic assets, and the need for heritage information requirements (HIR) that reflect this.Originality/valueThis study presents first-hand findings based on a unique application of BIM at Durham Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The study provides a better understanding of the challenges and drivers of HBIM adoption across the heritage sector and underlines the need for information requirements that are unique to historical buildings/assets to deliver a coherent and relevant HBIM approach.

This article will propose new approaches to the representation of architectural design principles, in residential design guidance. The visual appearance of new development is key in its successful integration of new housing in historic environments, providing an important means of analysis for planning departments and client users and establishing key information for developers regarding local-authority expectations and the contextualisation of proposed schemes. An epistemological analysis of content in 98 currently accessible guides identified a need for a more concise and accessible approach to architectural analysis. This figure is representative of a majority of residential design guides in England. A greater understanding of the visual impact of architectural design decisions is key in ensuring the continuity of the built environment. This research is more widely significant in terms of consolidating architectural design approaches in design guidance, as many authorities and bodies have adopted similar approaches globally.

Obsolescence and vacancy are part of the traditional building life cycle, as tenants leave properties and move to new ones. Flux, a period of uncertainty before the establishment of new direction, can be considered part of building DNA. What is new, due to structural disruptions in the way we work, is the rate and regularity of flux, reflected in obsolescence, vacancy, and impermanent use. Covid-19 has instantly accelerated this disruption. Retail failure has increased with even more consumers moving online. While employees have been working from home, rendering the traditional office building in the central business district, at least temporarily, obsolete. This article reflects on the situation by reporting findings from an 18-month research project into the practice of planning adaptation in the English built environment. Original findings based on interviews with a national sample of local authority planners, combined with an institutional analysis of planning practice since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, suggest that the discipline of planning in England is struggling with the reality of flux. There is a demand for planning to act faster, due to the speed of change in the built environment, and liberal political concerns with planning regulation. This is reflected in relaxations to permitted development rules and building use categories. However, participants also indicate that there is a concurrent need for the planning system to operate in a more measured way, to plan the nuanced complexity of a built environment no longer striated by singular use categories at the local level. This notion of flux suggests a process of perpetual change, turbulence, and volatility. However, our findings suggest that within this process, there is a temporal dialectic between an accelerating rate of change in the built environment and a concomitant need to plan in a careful way to accommodate adaptation. We situate these findings in a novel reading of the complex adaptive systems literature, arguing that planning practice needs to embrace uncertainty, rather than eradicate it, in order to enable built environment adaptation. These findings are significant because they offer a framework for understanding how successful building adaptation can be enabled in England, moving beyond the negativity associated with the adaptation of buildings in recent years. This is achieved by recognizing the complex interactions involved in the adaptation process between respective stakeholders and offering an insight into how respective scales of planning governance can coexist successfully.

This paper engages with ideas of tacit and explicit knowledge, how it is created, transferred, and ultimately translated in contemporary discourses of the digital built environment. The aim is to open a more critical and original dialogue in the digital built environment by (a) interrogating digital innovation as it strives to utilise relatively distilled information to enhance the sustainable design, construction and operation of the built environment and wider urban areas, (b) representing the rights of those whose knowledge is created and transferred in the digital built environment and (c) by further understanding the context of knowledge creation, and thus maximising its potential for scaling up sustainability objectives. The paper considers the conceptual and methodological tools that may help to focus more novel analysis of knowledge production and transfer in the digital built environment. The paper considers three conceptual positions that have hitherto been considered either in isolation or only tangentially connected to each other: (1) Science and Technology Studies (STS), in order to understand how society and technology is intertwined and importantly to form a meaningful backdrop for engagement with knowledge; (2) Organisational Theory (OT) and the concept of “pipelines,” in order to understand how organisations—and more broadly cities—can meaningfully capture and utilise knowledge when transitioning to digitally enabled sustainable futures; (3) Aspects of Actor Network Theory (ANT), in order to understand how knowledge travels and gets translated and institutionalised in new domains. Furthermore, we also use the same conceptual positions to argue how following knowledge can help individuals and society navigate the digital built environment. Our findings suggest that smart technology is a “social prosthesis,” and only works because humans make up for its deficiencies.