The adaptive reuse design paradox. Reflections on the moral significance of storytelling through design.

Abstract

It seems widely acknowledged that adaptive reuse is a reappropriation and resignification deed of a materialised past being a repository of meanings or ‘a package of sense’ and ‘traces’ that asks to be interpreted, reformed or rejected. The ethical underpinnings of this deed, however, have not yet been thoroughly scrutinised. While most architectural ethical writings seem to rely on an applied ethical outlook, we argue that a reflective understanding – which relies on accurate descriptions of moral experience and subsequent reflections that try to grasp what is characteristic about a phenomenon – that searches to explain the immanent meaning of architectural interventions and in particular within the field of adaptive reuse and built heritage can substantially contribute to our understanding of the ethical challenges within adaptive reuse and, more generally, architectural design. While we have recently suggested the value of this reflective understanding in the context of memorial architecture, prison design, and built heritage this paper clarifies the difficulties that the moral dimension in adaptive reuse design sprouts. The adaptive reuse design paradox holds that a reuse-design very often has to acknowledge the meanings and values of the past and present while allowing sufficient space for new meanings (and uses) to develop. This requires designers (and commissioners) to reach a very precarious balance between that which has to be acknowledged – eliciting moral (dis)approbation when (not) acted upon – and that which deserves to be unfolded – meanings and values that earn to be given space to foster and thus necessitate designers to envision potential ways of unfolding values, meanings and the good life through design. In summation, this paper defines the adaptive reuse design paradox, suggests how to understand the inherently ethical nature of adaptive reuse, clarifies the designer's responsibilities, and elucidates the importance of adaptive reuse as a materialised and purposefully designed way of storytelling to morally and symbolically engage, dialogue, communicate with that which is both immaterially and materially present but at the same time is asking for some kind of material representation, and thus, acknowledgement of its significance through design while being in tension with stories that have yet to unfold and rely on the adaptive reuse design for their enablement.