Preserving, exposing, adapting : modernising historic structures with the respect of materiality and heritage
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2020
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Abstract
"Society is facing one of its biggest challenges of the century: The loss of identity of urban areas. With the world's population constantly growing, the need for new buildings are constantly increasing. About 8 billion people populate the planet in 2020. This number has more than doubled within the last 60 years. With this intense need for space, some are resorting to drastic measures. Old, historic structures (from before the industrialisation), that seem unusable are being torn down and replaced by new, modern structures. These actions cause towns to lose their identity by replacing traditional architecture with modern structures. The optical values might not be the only things that are lost when a structure is torn down. Its materiality might also be demolished in the process. Nevertheless, it seems as if the way people used to populate houses does not suit modern architectural needs. Rooms are too small, modern technology is missing and too few windows exist, are just a few of the issues that seem unsolvable within old structures. Is there no way to conserve existing structures while modernising them at the same time? This research analyses a proposed 3-step approach to find a solution on how to conserve historic structures while respecting the materiality and heritage, while at the same time modernising them to today's architectural needs. By combining three conservational philosophies: 'preservation', 'exposure' and 'adaptation', one might find a suitable solution to keep the heritage of a building while satisfying modern architectural needs. This approach has been applied to an apartment of a building from 1545 and gives insights to technical installations and conservational methods to verify the proposed solution."