Tall concrete structures with cantilevered balconies have prevailed as the main type of multi-family housing construction in Canada since the 1950s. Within aging residential structures, balcony degradation is a prominent contributor to overall performance. This includes high levels of structural failures, low energy performance, and inefficient use. Some common strategies for improvements to balconies in residential towers include structural reconstruction, thermal insulation, enclosure of balconies, and reconstruction of guards. While these strategies can greatly improve existing conditions of residential towers, there is opportunity for anticipating the future needs of dense urban environments through adaptive reuse of residential balconies. This project analyses balcony adaptive reuse strategies focusing on structural and environmental refurbishment as well as spatial conversion in terms of various performance metrics. The goals of this project are to investigate methods for analysing existing buildings for their potential adaptive reuse at the scale of the balcony and optimize decision making through developing an index for adaptability.
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