Adaptive Reuse

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Adaptive Reuse

Duranovich, Sean

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10429/2321

Date: 2022-05-16

Abstract:

The practice of adaptive reuse can shape views of the past and inspire visions of the future through expressions of memory and place as being transmitted through the users lived experience. Collective memory, sense of place and lived experience as prescribed by Maurice Halbwachs, Christian Norbert-Schulz and Juhani Pallasmaa are established concepts that view memory as being fluid, place as containing a quality and lived experience as being multi-sensory. How might these concepts be configured and consolidated into a singular idea that drives creative production, assuming the position of author? How can adaptive reuse democratize the user experience? What narratives and experiences can be enabled by specific adaptive reuse strategies? Methods of discovery include a mix of memory documentation, the unearthing of alternative narratives and the recontextualization objects. Studies of inquiry include video interviews, memory inspired collage making and material extraction. New understandings can peel back presumptions of both narrative and program opening up space for alternative futures. For example, knowing a civic monument for one person may be a piece of infrastructure for another, can alter both program objectives and adaptive reuse strategies employed. Interrogating how memory and place can be linked to adaptive reuse design strategies can reveal how they could be transmitted through a user experience. It is only through our experience that we begin to understand and then articulate of the world around us.

Description:

The focus of this thesis considers social attitudes about of the past and future and how the practice of adaptive reuse can play a role in shaping our perceptions of them when transmitted through the phenomena of collective memory and sense of place by way of a lived experience to create a more participatory user experiences in the present. More specifically how can this conceptual framework can arrive at a singular over arching idea that drives creative production for adaptive reuse? The first concept of “collective memory”, coined by Maurice Halbwachs, is fluid and changing and recognized as a kind of social barometer. It gives form to what is associative, a construct in the spacial framework of memory and information outside the typical knowledge base architects or consultants. It informs what can be visualized, materialized, linked to place and the lived experience. The second concept is “sense of place” or what Christian Norbert-Schulz would refer to as the Genius Loci. The quality of place, inclusive of the material palimpsest, identity, evocation of past, historical relevance, culture, and intangible aspects such as language and values. Place can be preserved and revived with objects of heritage. Place can be physically updated by changed attitudes. Place can be experienced by connecting the intangibles of a host space place to the present and past though association. The third concept is “lived experience” or what architect and theorist Juhani Pallasmaa would call an embodied process and reaction. We think with our body first and the verbal only articulates the embodied and neural energies and processes. In the words of Cornelius Castoriadis “The body creates its sensations; therefore there is a corporeal imagination” When we enter a space and then the space enters us through an internal sensory experience that unites with the external. Western attitudes view language and thinking is a disembodied which is limiting, making this concept important. The purpose of this study is to determine the following. What human need can adaptive reuse address. What narratives are enabled by various adaptive reuse strategies. How do collective memory, sense of place and lived experience configure into a technique for driving creative production. What does the impact an open ended adaptive reuse design have. Lastly, what ways can collective memory and sense of place can be manifest in the lived experience. The position of this thesis is that collective memory, sense of place and lived experience are three viable concepts that can be used to arrive at the singular idea to drive creative production towards an open ended adaptive reuse design solution. This enables interpretive design that is embodied by the user and therefore remains relevant. Evidence through methodology was gained through video style interviews and documenting individual memories which informed new programming possibilities, along with inspired drawing and collage production that pointed towards driving concepts for design production. Also included was the physical extraction and the staging of an object of ruin. This strategy revealed the quality, investment and value associated with material when first constructed allowing the viewer to compare with current conditions and future desires. The thesis approach could be critiqued for being overly qualitative and not quantitative enough and therefore lacking the kind of proof based on traditional Western scientific rational. The use of collective memory, lived experience could be seen as being already well established existing literary sources and therefore obvious it its application. The richness of experience may be an overwhelming source of anxiety and criticized for not representing buildings at a sort of mid-scale, from across the street, at an angle, in a perspective view, based on conventions taught in schools of architecture. The lack of quantitative research is acceptable criticism to a degree. Given the thesis discusses phenomena which has limitations in this regard. The criticism utilizing existing well establish literary sources is acceptable to a degree although the nature of the each source is limited to making connections the same connections. Limitations are also placed on available historical information in terms of offering clarity. The thesis study is valuable because it asks practitioners to link a compendium of strategies to the well established concepts of collective memory, sense of place and lived experience and to consider what is enabled. Strategies alone ring hollow for users, offering a narrow and literal expressions of these concepts unless they are tied to a the lived experience which is required to make them relevant in real time in the real world. When they are relevant to users it democratizes the experience. Using design to expand the social spheres is important.

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