There is an acknowledged need for buildings and communities to be more resilient in the face of unpredictable effects of climate change, economic crises and energy supplies. The notion and social practices involving redundancy (the ability to switch between numerous available choices beyond optimal design) are explored as an aspect of resilience theory. Practice and Social Learning theories are used as a lens through which to explore the available redundancy in housing and home environments to help prevent performance failure through unexpected circumstances or in response to varying user needs. Findings from an in depth UK housing case study show how redundancy is linked with the capacity to share resources and to learn both individually and collectively as a community. Such learning in relation to resilient low-carbon living is shown to be co-produced effectively through participatory action research. The benefits of introducing extra redundancy in housing design and community development to accommodate varied user preferences are discussed in relation to future proofing, value and scalar issues. Recommendations include better understanding of the design, time and monetary contribution needed to implement social or technical redundancy. These costs should be evaluated in context of savings made through greater resilience achieved.
Keywords:Resilience, housing, learning, occupant behaviour, technology systems, participatory action research, adaptive capacity, agency, cohousing, social interaction Report (I 2014) confirms the virtual certainty of increasing weather extremes over time.Anthropogenic climate change has made extreme rainfall and subsequent flooding around seven times more likely in the UK over any 10 consecutive days in winter, with record flooding levels in 2013 and 2015. There was also a record high in the average temperature across Europe in the summer of 2014 (Met Office, 2015). A further consequence of increasingly extreme weather is the pressure to provide resilient food and water supplies in the UK (Marsden & Robert, 2011;Watts et al, 2012). At the same time, the global economy is continuing to suffer from its worst crisis in 2008 s (Dorling, 2014). UK housing production fell drastically from 219,000 in 2006/7 to just 135, 000 in 2012 -13 (Beckett, 2014, creating enormous financial and space pressures for housing occupants, given a growing household population in the UK (Crisis, 2015). Finally, energy production is currently in short supply in the UK, with reduction of 2.2 GW in installed capacity modelled by the national grid between 2014 and 2015, an assumption of 1 GW net energy imports from Europe for 2015-16 with uncertainty for the future necessitating a constant adjustment of supply sources (National Grid, 2015, p.196). Buildings and communities therefore need to be more resilient in the face of the triple unknown and unpredictable effects of climate change, economic crisis and energy supply. Current plans for mitigation and adaptation need more development in terms of develop...