In the last century, the increased urban sprawl often dictated by speculative rather than demographic reasons, the concomitant decay of vast consolidated building (mainly but not only productive) due to the change of direction of the global market, and the growth of an ecological sensitivity increasingly energy and soil consumption have laid the foundations for the practice of “adaptive reuse”: a “radica”’ approach to renovation that consists in adapting an existing architectural asset to a use often completely different from the original one on the basis of new social and functional needs, without, however, compromising its and historical legacy.
Thus, obsolete and abandoned buildings (those “unburied architectural corpses” that Ernesto Nathan Rogers spoke of) come back to life thanks to interventions in which the ability to interpret and enhance the context has not compromised an effective and contemporary lexicon in redesigning spaces for their new use.
Domus has collected a few iconic examples of adaptive reuse: from interventions that transform a disused heritage into an epicentre of new creative (La Fábrica), cultural (Musée d'Orsay, 126 Tate Modern, Mattatoio Roma, Fondazione Prada, MOCAA) and social (Berghain, Highline New York) energies, to those that reinvent containers discarded by the production process in order to meet hospitality and housing needs, at reduced costs but without giving up the pleasure of experiencing them, again. (Cité ä Docks, Little River).