What are the main criteria regarding the form of a building? What attributes shape performance and versatility? The crucial properties are obviously already determined in the building design as well as in later detail development.
A deficit of common building design is based on insufficient definitions of relevant planning fundamentals. While an industrial product is developed with key data in requirements specification, buildings are still more or less developed randomly. 

In technical design innovative products arise from ideas that take demands of the market, technology, production costs, formal quality, durability and production time into account. On the other hand the systematic development of building elements is nearly non-existent. Supporting structure, envelope, building services and interior fittings are usually defined without any foresight and after production- and logistic-structures are determined.

Longterm investments in building elements without the previous definition of performance aspects reminds us of the proverb: 'buy a big in a poke'. Thus the sum of elements composing a building must be understood as evaluable performance. 
This can help to avoid planning errors and think through various scenarios of change in production and resulting requirements for the building structure and services.