Since 2016, I have researched adaptive-reuse as a critical, interpretive practice.  I earned a fellowship to travel throughout the United Kingdom to continue this research, visiting over forty adaptive-reuse sites in England, Wales, and Scotland during summer 2018.  These site visits afforded the chance to assess the projects in person; interview designers and users; and photograph the buildings’ interiors, exteriors, and details.  This documentation was shared as a series of lectures in New Haven, CT and Washington, DC. Along with a series of essays, diagrams, archival matter, and other ephemera it will be formatted as a book, forthcoming in 2020.

 

I am interested in adaptive-reuse as an interpretive project that derives meaning from the remains of buildings that were built for a different use at a different time. From a close reading of key adaptive-reuse projects, I am developing a set of models that describe how the source material relates to new work on these sites.  The registry outlines lessons learned from projects that successfully interpret cultural and historical matter and treat adaptive-reuse as not merely a practical matter of conversion, but a rich project of endowing meaning in the new building.  How do architects enhance, stabilize, erase, critique, or overwrite the inherited values of these buildings? How do we treat their sometimes troubled or contested histories or sites? What stories do these buildings tell through architectural expression? 

VARIOUS | 2016-present

supported in part by David M. Schwarz Travel Fellowship

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