This article was originally published in Domus 965 / January 2012
Once again, halfway through writing an Op-Ed, a catastrophic
flood punishes the earth. The Fukushima tsunami washed
over Abstainability, a text I wrote for domusweb in 2011. Now
Sandy has purged some of my thoughts on adaptive reuse.
Originally intent on writing about how we, in the pursuit of a
"timely" architecture, contemplate sites saturated with extant
"stuff" — mostly parts that once aggregated to a near whole — I
had drifted towards pondering world heritage, Metabolism
and other grand themes. Then Sandy threw me back to more
quotidian contexts, the "stuff" we deal with on a daily basis but
never give the consideration it might deserve.
After the recent Frankenstorm hit New York, our screens were
once again filled with imagery of humanity's muck swept
away by the sea — decrepit roller coasters, rotten boardwalks,
corroded pergolas, dilapidated siding, shattered shutters — the
junk our current world produces and values. Much was lost,
but remarkably enough, the damage to commerce and wealth
caused by the storm will probably be balanced out by the
money that will go into reconstruction and recovery efforts.
And the material loss of this "stuff", already written off prior
to the storm, will not show up in economic data, whereas its
reproduction will. Undoubtedly some will note the irony that
destruction is a means of growth, a creative force.
In an accelerating world, creative destruction strips
increasingly more constructs of their cultural meaning,
and at an increasingly rapid pace — be it due to natural or
economically volatile conditions. These forces leave their
mark. One can argue that this is not a new condition. For
centuries architects working in cities have dealt with historic
settings. But now the remnants of previous occupants are not
the prized relics of past civilisations — part of the "12 per cent
preservation regime", as termed in Cronocaos by AMO. Instead,
the growing pile of leftovers amount to just plain stuff: walls,
pipes, struts, lintels and cornices. Moreover, sites come not only
with material residue but also emotional baggage: endearing
vistas, semi-successful symmetries, idiosyncratic portals, little
design adjustments, site conditions, aspirations gone awry.
This physical debris comprises our unedited legacy, history
and identity — the gunk that actually fills up cities is our real
heritage. How to engage with this filtrate of human intentions?
One can evaluate its reuse from an economic position, or as a
carrier of embodied energy — so as not to be wasteful. These
approaches seem commonplace, leading to well-articulated
ideas of "harvesting" or "mining"' cities and sites. This kind
of analysis might give us some clues, but I would rather set
aside the quantifiable here, and contemplate an imaginary
landscape with architectural qualities, enriched through its
negotiation with the "stuff" that is already there.
From this
perspective let us consider the competition for the renovation
and extension of Z33, an institute for contemporary art in
Hasselt, Belgium, as it illustrates the diverse approaches of five
contemporary practices when taking on found "stuff". Located
in the highly commercialised centre of this medieval Flemish
town, the Z33 site is particularly full of such stuff, including
the remnants of a bombed-out cathedral, deliberately left
in ruins as a lesson from the past; a reconstructed "historic"
beguinage convent; an architecturally weak but typologically
significant exhibition building dating from 1958 (the Vleugel
'58); and a retro-style brick-covered school built in the 1980s.
The competition consisted in rethinking and extending the
Vleugel '58 wing to house a revamped Z33.
The attitudes of the teams cover a wide range of positions.
XDGA is bold and unsentimental towards the historic, placing
a machine-like tower in the middle of the courtyard. Junya
Ishigami and MAKS unleash a "tsunami" of brick that plays
a subtle game between the contextual and the innovative.
The group consisting of Francesca Torzo, Aldo Bakker, Piet
Oudolf and ABT offers a morphological and poetic validation.
De Vylder Vinck Taillieu harvests the site in an irreverent
manner, reusing the faux-historic school. SO – IL's scheme,
titled Filter, uses the idiosyncratic relation between wall and
opening in the hyper-elemental existing building as an alibi
for the project, as well as the somewhat clumsy yet endearing
organisation of the rooms. The scheme transforms the existing
building, but then uses that transformation to situate and
frame the new building. Old and new are interdependent, but
neither reproduces the old or the nostalgic.
It is indicative of our times that the romantic prevailed in
the competition. We are at an impasse. Ours is a period of
sentimentality and nostalgia. Ideals are obsolete, classical
orders and form no longer hold meaning and we lack the
clarity of previous decades. Sensing that linear history is
over, we long for "authenticity" in a seemingly spiritless
life — an authenticity that once was, but now seems to have
evaporated. We re-enact heroic conceptual architectures from
the '70s, dabble in ruin porn, revive prewar building styles,
or literally reconstruct historic edifices such as the Berliner
Stadtschloss or Frankfurter Rathaus. Despite these trends,
there appears to be little discussion, or critical consideration,
on how to deal discursively with all that old and ageing stuff
that surrounds us. Interest in historical styles, sentimentality
and nostalgia is mostly representational. What appears to
have been left out of this conversation is architecture — space,
form, tectonics, etc.
Does our inability to find a coherent attitude for tackling the
past relate to our blank attitude regarding the future? Where
architecture used to be a search for the unknown, it is now
a passive acceptance of the seemingly appropriate. Where
architectural post-modernism evoked historicist symbols
with the intent of moving the profession forward, it seems
that now we are unwittingly fishing out of the historic pond,
be it modern or retro. Could the existing not be the instigator
or catalyst of the new? Can it trigger new relationships,
intensifying our subjective experience of space?
Tabula rasa is for cowards, but there are no coherent rules
for playing the game on a board filled with pieces. With this
in mind, I propose the first rule: challenge what is there,
reactivate it, make it part of the current, but allow it to cause
friction, to resist. The moment we let go of sentimental values,
but holistically assess what is there, and have it fight for its
place in the here and now, we can re-endow the old with
contemporary architectural agency. Florian Idenburg (@florianidenburg) is a New York-based
architect
engaged in
practice and
academia.
He is cofounder
of the
architectural
practice SO – IL and Adjunct
Assistant
Professor at
Harvard GSD.
It's about time all over again
Where architectural post-modernism evoked historicist symbols with the intent of moving the profession forward, it seems that now we are unwittingly fishing out of the historic pond, be it modern or retro. Could the existing not be the instigator or catalyst of the new? Can it trigger new relationships, intensifying our subjective experience of space?
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- Florian Idenburg
- 10 January 2013
- New York