2.2 adaptation

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EDITOR IN CHIEF

Frank MateroUniversity of Pennsylvania

GUEST EDITOR

David G. De Long University of Pennsylvania

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Kecia L. Fong Institute for Culture and Society,

University of Western Sydney

Rosa Lowinger Rosa Lowinger & Associates,

Conservation of Art + Architecture, Inc.

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Meredith KellerUniversity of Pennsylvania

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Nur AkinIstanbul Kultur University, Turkey

Erica AvramiWorld Monuments Fund

Luigia BindaPolitecnico di Milano, Italy

Daniel BluestoneUniversity of Virginia

Christine BoyerPrinceton University School of

Architecture

John Dixon HuntUniversity of Pennsylvania

Jukka JokilehtoUniversity of Nova Gorica

David LowenthalUniversity College London

Randall Mason University of Pennsylvania

Robert MelnickUniversity of Oregon

Elizabeth MilroyWesleyan University

Steven SemesUniversity of Notre Dame

Jeanne Marie TeutonicoGetty Conservation Institute

Ron Van OersUNESCO

Fernando VegasUniversidad Politécnica de Valencia

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N U M B E R 2

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Artwork Deadline

2/28/13

8/30/13

ReservationDeadline

2/14/13

8/16/13

Publication Date

4/30/13

10/31/13

Season & Theme

Spring 2013Nostalgia

Fall 2013Interpretation

and Display

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ChangeOverTime

A N I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L

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CONTENTS

84 EditorialD AV I D G . D E L O N G

E S S A Y S

88 Adaptation as a Model for New Architecturein Historic Settings: Some Observations fromRomeS T E V E N W. S E M E S

106 Preservation by Adaptation: Is ItSustainable?G R E G O R Y D O N O F R I O

132 Tobacco Row: Heritage, Environment, andAdaptive Reuse in Richmond, VirginiaD A N I E L B L U E S T O N E

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88

106

132

156

172

156 Drawing Identity from Change: Planning forHaverford CollegeN A N C Y R O G O T R A I N E R

172 The Importance of Being At-Home: ADefense of Historic Preservation in AlgeriaD I A N A W Y L I E

188 A Note on Adaptation in GardensJ O H N D I X O N H U N T

R E V I E W

202 Literature ReviewN A T H A N I E L R O G E R S

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EDITORIAL

DAVID G. DE LONGUniversity of Pennsylvania

Figure 1. Repurposing. (� J.C. Duffy/The New Yorker Collection/www.car toonbank.com)

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The adaptation of preexisting structures to answer changing needs has enriched human

history throughout time. Such structures—whether natural or designed artifacts—provide

challenging topography for creative revitalization that can sustain and even enhance his-

toric continuity. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and others exam-

ine its effects from different perspectives. Designers, architects, landscape architects, and

planners working within the field of historic preservation deal with its manifestations at

scales ranging from buildings and their individual interiors to an urban and even regional

scale of cities and landscapes. Schools of architecture might do more to address this issue

rather than leaving emerging practitioners less prepared to address design issues of adap-

tation and the theoretical foundations that underlie them.

‘‘Adaptive use’’ and ‘‘adaptive reuse’’ (seemingly interchangeable in the manner of

‘‘flammable’’ and ‘‘inflammable’’) are terms most often used to describe such work, but of

late ‘‘repurposing’’ has gained in popularity. Perhaps it is an apt characterization of more

offhand examples, such as the growing numbers of shopping mall conversions recently

described in the New York Times.1

Predictably for this journal, submissions deal primarily with built artifacts and

designed landscapes, offering critical evaluations that sometimes challenge current prac-

tice. Steven W. Semes thus argues persuasively for integrating rather than differentiating

additions to historic fabric, using Rome to illustrate his points. The 1964 Venice Charter’s

recommended approach of differentiation that Semes cites has been widely incorporated

into more recent guidelines, and I agree that it has led to a misuse by those who seek too

energetically to register their own imprint.

Gregory Donofrio and Daniel Bluestone question adaptations of urban clusters that

emphasize material preservation at the expense of cultural values, voicing understandable

concerns over a change of character through adaptation that obscures original uses that

are themselves historic: Donofrio’s example, a local market in Boston; and Bluestone’s, the

tobacco industry in Richmond. Dealing with adaptations of building clusters more through

planning than design, and with clusters of a different sort—college campuses, in which

historic uses remain more or less intact—Nancy Rogo Trainer draws on approaches devel-

oped by her firm, VSBA, LLC (formerly Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates), and uses

Haverford College as her case study. Cultural adaptation of a more forgiving, and more

profound, sort than questioned by Donofrio and Bluestone is the focus of Diana Wylie’s

article on preservation in Oran, Algeria.

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8 6 C H A N G E O V E R T I M E

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Newer examples of adaptation suggest an approach more sympathetic to original use

than those earlier examples cited by Donofrio and Bluestone. Recent articles have illus-

trated works of adaptation through insertion, an approach leaving the historic shell of a

structure, and sometimes the sense of its original use, untouched. For example, a new

structure inserted within an historic pavilion in Mexico City, designed by Enrique Norten

of TEN Arquitectos, has been effectively adapted as the Chopo Museum, enriching the

history of a 1902 pavilion originally erected in Germany, then moved to Mexico, where it

became the national Museum of Natural History and underwent other changes before its

most recent conversion.2 In Paris, an even gentler insertion within Charles Garnier’s Opera

(1860–75), a new element reportedly fully removable from its historic setting, houses

L’Opera Restaurant, a use that complements the opera itself. Designed by Odile Decq

Benoit Cornette Architectes Urbanistes, it was completed in July 2011.3 Fully contained

within an historic shell that remains untouched, it contrasts with their work in Rome that

Semes describes.

Elsewhere, newer adaptations of commercial or industrial buildings suggest that con-

cerns of Donofrio and Bluestone are being addressed, with those buildings’ original func-

tions not only acknowledged, but even celebrated. In Basel, a former gas station and

automobile shop has been adapted as a gallery known as the Von Bartha Garage, its origi-

nal signage and gas pumps left as a record of its former use. Designed by Voellmy Schmid-

lin Architektur, it opened in 2011.4

Adaptations of industrial sites to public parks have commanded much recent atten-

tion, especially the celebrated High Line in New York City, designed by James Corner Field

Operations in collaboration with Diller Scofidio � Renfro and Piet Oudolf’s firm in the

Netherlands, Buro Happold. As Martin Filler has recently written, this intervention

‘‘agrees with the bold industrial character of the existing structure.’’5 Nearby, the Brooklyn

Bridge Park honors its industrial origins through an adaptive design by Michael Van Val-

kenburgh Associates. Valkenburgh is quoted as saying that ‘‘one big distinction between

‘landscape architecture’ of the nineteenth versus twenty-first centuries is how much we

accept the imprint of prior habitations.’’6

John Dixon Hunt touches on this aspect of landscape adaptation, but more impor-

tantly broadens the discussion not only of the adaptation of landscapes, but of adaptation

itself. He reminds us that adaptations cannot be narrowly confined—they are more univer-

sal in nature. He helps us to understand that even new construction on undeveloped sites

constitutes an act of adaptation of buildings (or gardens) to land. The iconic American

architect Frank Lloyd Wright well understood this, as Fallingwater (1934–37) dramatically

illustrates. There, as elsewhere, Wright adapted his design to the site not in a manner that

imitates the nature of its setting, but rather clarifies its underlying structure.7

Nathaniel Rogers, in his literature review that concludes this issue, focuses on addi-

tions as a critical aspect of adaptation. He thus links back to Semes’s article that begins

this issue, but expands the discussion by raising questions that challenge a single point of

view. Together these two accounts might help structure an architectural curriculum more

sensitive to historic values.

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References1. Stephanie Clifford, ‘‘How About Gardening at the Mall?,’’ New York Times (February 6, 2012), A1, A3.2. Beth Broome, ‘‘Restoration, Renovation & Adaptive Reuse: Chopo Museum,’’ Architectural Record 199

(February 2011): 70–75.3. Naomi R. Pollock, ‘‘A Feast for the Phantom,’’ Architectural Record 199 (October 2011): 70–77.4. Aric Chen, ‘‘Shifting Gears,’’ Interior Design 82 (August 2011): 164–71.5. Martin Filler, ‘‘Higher and Higher’’ (review of High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the

Sky by Joshua David and Robert Hammond), The New York Review of Books 68 (November 24, 2011):16–19.

6. Sarah Amelar, ‘‘Brooklyn Bridge Park: Designers Transform a Defunct Shipping Complex and Reconnecta City with its Waterfront,’’ Architectural Record 199 (January 2011): 82–89.

7. As I argue in ‘‘Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape, 1922–1932,’’ David G. De Long,editor, Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape, 1922–1932 (New York: Harry N. Abramsin association with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Library of Congress, and the Frank LloydWright Foundation: 1996), 15–133; especially 119–20.

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