Renewed possibilities
Every building will eventually meet three possible fates: conservation, demolition, or repurposing. Recycling buildings is nothing new. But the last 20 years have seen some adaptive reuse creating great cultural spaces.
Repurposing in the 21st Century usually entails a green renovating plan that also considers judicious reuse of materials. Addressing issues of heating, ventilation, insulation and resource use, the building can become better than new.
From a hotel in an old jail, to a utility provider turned gallery – repurposing can be much more cost-effective than a new build. And the quirks of a building’s history and previous incarnation can prove extremely beguiling to architects, clients and the public – as the following examples show.
Museums and galleries are perfect candidates for repurposing rather than rebuilding as in the case of The Tate Modern, famously once a power station. About its reinvention, Pritzker Prize-winning team Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, stated: “This is a kind of Aikido strategy where you use your enemy’s energy for your own purposes. Instead of fighting it, you take all the energy and shape it in unexpected and new ways.”
The glorious fin de siècle curves of the Musée d’Orsay once housed a Parisian railway station. Repurposed during the 1970s, the building itself is now thought of as the first “work of art” in the gallery space, which also happens to display some of the world’s finest Impressionist and Expressionist art.
Hong Kong’s Central Police Station had been empty since it was decommissioned in 2006. But now the British colonial jail will become a non-profit art and culture space. With Herzog and De Meuron in collaboration with the Hong Kong arm of British conservation architects Purcell Miller Tritton, 16 existing buildings will be retained, flanked by two complementary structures, adding 1,500m2 of exhibition space. The makeover is due for completion in 2014, to coincide with the expansive West Kowloon Cultural District.
And from incarceration to accommodation: Boston’s once notorious Charles Street Jail now houses the ironically named Liberty Boston Hotel. The cruciform building’s transformation was the work of a team of designers and architects in collaboration with local body historians and conservationists, to maintain a careful balance between preservation and its luxurious new use.
Two former sewage treatment silos in Amsterdam are scheduled to become a multifunctional cultural centre, named for the Netherland’s famous children’s’ book author, Annie M.G. Schmidt. Arons and Gelauff Architects won the city’s adaptive reuse design competition to turn the structures into exhibition space, theatres and retail, with an open rooftop playground on one silo, and a restaurant on the other. The structure is expected to be completed in 2011.
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