Old Buildings Looking for New Use
61 examples of regional architecture between tradition and modernity
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The regions of Europe have an architectural heritage that is a thousandyears old; today's challenge is to integrate this heritage intocontemporary life in a sustainable way.From the first, architecture has always aimed to adapt to theway of life of the society it serves, but few buildings have comedown to us intact and as they were originally designed. Since thesecond half of the 19th century the speeding-up of history hasincreased the rhythm of change and has led to continual restructuring,extension and conversion.These changes have brought about the use of more and moreinnovative techniques,...
The regions of Europe have an architectural heritage that is a thousandyears old; today's challenge is to integrate this heritage intocontemporary life in a sustainable way.From the first, architecture has always aimed to adapt to theway of life of the society it serves, but few buildings have comedown to us intact and as they were originally designed. Since thesecond half of the 19th century the speeding-up of history hasincreased the rhythm of change and has led to continual restructuring,extension and conversion.These changes have brought about the use of more and moreinnovative techniques, based on flexibility and reversibility, but theweight of materials, the time needed to implement these programmes,financial constraints and cultural compartmentalisationhave deferred many of these projects and left us with a museumheritage frozen in time and quite unrelated to the original purposeof the buildings.What can be done with buildings looking for new use - a fortresswithout an army, a château without a lord, a workshop withoutan artisan, a factory without workers, or even an abbey withoutmonks or a church without a congregation?The rise of a new national or international style or the creationof innovative techniques does not necessarily damage the integrityof a place. Modern techniques and materials, such as glass andsteel, have a transparency, lightness, flexibility and reversibility thatmake them highly suitable for integrative undertakings.The examples presented in this book all demonstrate a desireto be considered as 'local' projects and to take their place in anevolutionary interpretation of history. After more than a century ofconflicting debate on the subject of rehabilitation, it seems that theaims expressed in the Charter of Venice have borne fruit by givingrise to quality and personalised buildings that themselves are acontribution to this debate.Pierre Thiébaut studied architecture in France and in the USA(where Louis Kahn was one of his professors), and is also a graduatein planning of the Institut d'Urbanisme de Paris and the EcoleNationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris. Prior to his presentactivity as a writer of articles and books on architectural rehabilitationand teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecturede Paris La Villette, he was an Architecte des Bâtiments de Franceheading the Service Départemental du Patrimoine du Conseil Généralde Seine et Marne.