Active Design

Active design is a set of building and planning principles that promote physical activity. Active design in a building, landscape or city design integrates physical activity into the occupants’ everyday routines, such as walking to the store or making a photocopy. Active design involves urban planners, architects, transportation engineers, public health professionals, community leaders and other professionals in building places that encourage physical activity as an integral part of life. While not an inherent part of active design, most designers employing “active design” are also concerned with the productive life of their buildings and their building’s ecological footprint. Although areas such as life and the ecological footprint of buildings are not part of “active design”, the majority of designers do take them into account in their work.

In North America, Active design is also known as Healthy community design, this kind of design is planning and designing communities that make it easier for people to live healthy lives. Healthy community design offers important benefits: Decreases dependence on the automobile by building homes, businesses, schools, churches and parks closer to each other so that people can more easily walk or bike between them. Provides opportunities for people to be physically active and socially engaged as part of their daily routine, improving the physical and mental health of its citizens. Allows persons, if they choose, to age in place and remain all their lives in a community that reflects their changing lifestyles and changing physical capabilities.

Healthy places are those designed and built to improve the quality of life for all people who live, work, learn, and play within their borders—person is free to make choices amid a variety of healthy, available, accessible, and affordable options. To encourage mixed land use and greater land density to shorten distances between homes, workplaces, schools and recreation so people can walk or bike more easily to them. To provide good mass transit to reduce the dependence upon automobiles. Build good pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, including sidewalks and bike paths that are safely removed from automobile traffic as well as good right of way laws and clear, easy-to-follow signage. To ensure affordable housing is available for people of all income levels. *Create community centers where people can gather and mingle as part of their daily activities. And offer access to green space and parks.

In England
Sport England considers that the built environment has a vital role to play to encourage people to be physically active as part of their daily lives, enabling communities to lead more active and healthy lifestyles. In 2007 Sport England and David Lock Associates published Active Design, which provided a set of design guidelines to help promote opportunities for sport and physical activity in the design and layout of new development. The guidance was developed in two phases. Phase one (2005) developed the three key active design objects of improving accessibility, enhancing amenity and increasing awareness (“the 3 A’s”). Phase two included two stakeholder sessions (May and October 2006) which expanded “the 3 A’s” into a criterion-based approach. These criteria formed the guidance which was published in 2007. The guidance was supported by CABE, Department of Health and Department for Culture Media and Sport.

In 2014, Sport England held a stakeholder session made up of a range of bodies and individuals including urban planning and public health professionals to discuss whether active design was still relevant in the current planning and health context, and they concluded that it was. The guide was revised, retaining “the 3 A’s” and refining the criteria-based approach to the ten principles of active design. The revised Active Design was published in 2015, and was supported by Public Health England.

In 2016 Active Design: Planning for Health and Wellbeing through Sport and Physical Activity was shortlisted for an award at the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Awards for Planning Excellence. Active Design was shortlisted in the category of “Excellence in Planning for Community and Wellbeing”.

In 2017 Sport England prepared two animated films, Active Design by Sport England and The Ten Principles of Active Design, in addition to three further case studies.

The active design principles are becoming increasingly embedded into built environment practice and placemaking design, with a growing list of local authorities in England making reference to Sport England’s active design guidance in planning policy. In 2018 active design was embedded into the principles of the revised “Essex Design Guide” (prepared by Essex County Council and supported by Sport England).

In New York
Recognizing that physical inactivity was a significant factor in decreased life spans, notably because it promoted obesity, high blood pressure and high blood glucose, all precursors of early death, those responsible for planning in New York City developed a set of guidelines that, inter alia, they hoped would promote health by promoting physical activity. They released these guidelines in January 2010. The guidelines were also based on concerns about building longevity and ecological costs, which is generally known as “sustainable design”. Impetus for the guidelines began in 2006 with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) who then partnered with the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter to hold a series of conferences known as the “Fit City” conferences.

Four key concepts came out of this process: Buildings should encourages greater physical movement within them for users and visitors Cities should provide recreational spaces that are accessible and encourage physical activity for a variety of ages, interests, and abilities Transportation systems in cities should encourage physical activity and should protect non-motor vehicle use Cities, market areas and buildings should provide ready access to food and healthy eating environments From New York City the active design movement spread throughout the United States and the world.

Goals
Sickness can lead to not working efficiently and effectively. Ineffective workers in the work force cause harm to the company and the people in the community. Active design strives to impact public health not only physically but also mentally and socially. For example, active design in transportation supports a safe and vibrant environment for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders. It creates buildings that encourage greater physical movement within a building by both users and visitors. The active design of recreation sites shapes play and activity spaces for people of different ages, interests, and abilities. Also, improved food accessibility can improve nutrition in communities that need it the most.

Effects
There are few studies of the effects of implementing active design concepts, but they are in general agreement that the physical activity of occupants is increased. Moving to an active design building seemed to have physical health benefits for workers, but workers’ perceptions on productivity about the new work environment have varied. A study reported that staff moved into an active design building decreased the time spent sitting by 1.2 hours per day. There was no significant increase in self-rated quality of work or work related motivation but there was no negative feedback in these areas.

Implementation
Active design concepts may be applied in remodeling or repurposing existing buildings and landscapes. Some elements include widening sidewalks and crosswalks; installing traffic calming elements that slow driving speeds; making stairs that are accessible, visible, attractive, and well-lit; making recreation areas, such as parks, plazas, and playgrounds, more accessible by pedestrians and cyclists. People would be more likely to be active if places for recreation were within walking distance.

There are a number of concerns with the adoption of active design programmes. Developing communities are not always accepting of new forms of architecture and living. Integration of active design may come in conflict with making sure historical culture survives. Vernacular architecture may be abandoned due to it being considered insufficient or uncomfortable.

Active structure
An active structure (also known as a smart or adaptive structure) is a mechanical structure with the ability to alter its configuration, form or properties in response to changes in the environment. Active structure also refers to structures that, unlike traditional engineering structures (e.g., bridges, buildings), require constant motion and hence power input to remain stable. The advantage of active structures is that they can be far more massive than a traditional static structure: an example would be a space fountain, a building that reaches into space.

The result of the activity is a structure more suited for the type and magnitude of the load it is carrying. For example, an orientation change of a beam could reduce the maximum stress or strain level, while a shape change could render a structure less susceptible to dynamic vibrations. A good example of an adaptive structure is the human body where the skeleton carries a wide range of loads and the muscles change its configuration to do so. Consider carrying a backpack. If the upper body did not adjust the centre of mass of the whole system slightly by leaning forward, the person would fall on their back.

An active structure consists of three integral components besides the load carrying part. They are the sensors, the processor and the actuators. In the case of a human body, the sensory nerves are the sensors which gather information of the environment. The brain acts as the processor to evaluate the information and decide to act accordingly and therefore instructs the muscles, which act as actuators to respond. In heavy engineering, there is already an emerging trend to incorporate activation into bridges and domes to minimize vibrations under wind and earthquake loads.

Aviation engineering and aerospace engineering have been the main driving force in developing modern active structures. Aircraft (and spacecraft) require adaptation because they are exposed to many different environments, and therefore loadings, during their lifetime. Prior to launching they are subjected to gravity or dead loads, during takeoff they are subjected to extreme dynamic and inertial loads and in-flight they need to be in a configuration which minimizes drag but promotes lift. A lot of effort has been committed into adaptive aircraft wings to produce one that can control the separation of boundary layers and turbulence.

Many space structures utilize adaptivity to survive extreme environmental challenges in space or to achieve precise accuracies. For example, space antennas and mirrors can be activated to precise orientation. As space technology advances, some sensitive equipment (namely interferometric optical and infrared astronomical instruments) are required to be accurate in position as delicate as a few nanometres, while the supporting active structure is tens of metres in dimensions.

Design
Human-made actuators existing in the market, even the most sophisticated ones, are nearly all one-dimensional. This means they are only capable of extending and contracting along, or rotating about 1 axis. Actuators capable of movement in both forward and reverse directions are known as two-way actuators, as opposed to one-way actuators which can only move in one direction. The limiting capability of actuators has restricted active structures to two main types: active truss structures, based on linear actuators, and manipulator arms, based on rotary actuators.

A good active structure has a number of requirements. First, it needs to be easily actuated. The actuation should be energy-saving. A structure which is very stiff and strongly resists morphing is therefore not desirable. Second, the resulting structure must have structural integrity to carry the design loads. Therefore, the process of actuation should not jeopardize the structure’s strength. More precisely, we can say: We seek an active structure where actuation of some members will lead to a geometry change without substantially altering its stress state. In other words, a structure that has both statical determinacy and kinematic determinacy is optimal for actuation.

Applications
Active-control technology is applied in civil engineering, mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering. Although most civil engineering structures are static, active control is utilized in some civil structures for deployment against seismic loading, wind loading and environmental vibration. Also, active control is proposed to be used for damage tolerance purposes where human intervention is restricted. Korkmaz et al. demonstrated configuration of active control system for a damage tolerance and deployment of a bridge.