Renewing Design
Regeneration of Historical Building Sites: Innovative Architectural and Design Practices Used in the Adaptive Reuse Transformation of the World War II Aircraft Museum in Edmonton, Canada
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tim Antoniuk
Globally, the modern transformation of historical buildings and architectural sites is not only a trend in urban renewal, it is an opportunity to preserve and celebrate cultural heritage. This paper will explore how historical sites can be protected and transformed into vibrant multifunctional and cultural spaces that can better connect people and heighten human trust and tolerance, and increased safety for all community members. Focused on disseminating the goals and evolving outcomes of an active 13,000m2 adaptive reuse project of a World War II aircraft museum in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the project founder, lead designer and author of this paper and project will provide detailed insights about the challenges, opportunities and design methods that have been used. Given the 4,900m2 site size, 160 residential units, biophilic interior environments, and large 3,700m2 eat/drink social hall that is integrated into the historical building and site, it is believed that the conclusions of this paper offer significant theoretical and practical implications for guiding future historical site preservation, urban renewal, and for profitable large-scale adaptive reuse projects.
Temporal Interventions and Layered Memories: Exploring Alternative Futures in Architecture through Spatial Cuts View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Irem Naz Kaya Alkan
Every encounter reshapes our perception of the constructed environment, much like the way memories are altered with each recollection. Each time a memory is reframed, it transforms visions of the past, present and future. Thus, this research analyzes various spatial cuts that could reframe urban narratives, acting as memory rifts unfolding in time. These spatial cuts expose, wrap, conceal, fragment inside-out relations, revealing other ways of repairing and remaking in-between remembering and forgetting, preserving and destructing, monument and ruin. In this context, five examples are selected for examination, spanning different disciplines and scales: SuperStudio's Restoration of Historical Centers (cut1), Rachel Whiteread’s House (cut2), Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting (cut3), Christo Jeanne-Claude’s Arc de Triomphe (cut4), Yeesookyung’s Translated Vase (cut5). Although these practices have tactical and operational differences, they create critical alternative approaches to ongoing demolitions and renewals, revealing creative, critical, affirmative possibilities in the act of remembering. Examining examples from various disciplines, it can be said that spatial cuts afford diverse temporal and action-oriented possibilities in architecture, potentially transforming meta-narratives into everyday stories. The intervention of spatial cuts as memory rifts in urban space can contribute to a temporal and layered understanding, holding the potential to fill in missing information and reframe the future by attaching differences.
