Aemulatio and the Interior Approach of Adaptive Reuse

Abstract

This paper describes an approach for the adaptive reuse of historic buildings that has not thus far received much attention. We have named this the “interior approach,” and it seems to be more “poetic,” drawing on the memory of the building, often represented in and through its interior features. The interior approach is not strictly restorative (although it sometimes includes restoration of certain fragments); neither is it an intervention in the modern sense of the word, showing a clear contrast between old and new. Instead, it promotes copying as a valuable methodology for intervention. In order to describe, clarify, and understand the interior approach towards adaptive reuse we have compared contemporary practice with the Renaissance concepts of translatio, imitatio, and aemulatio. By doing so we point to the different notions, nuances, and intentions that a copy might hold, in order to present copying as a valid strategy for adaptive reuse that holds it own next to other existing strategies.