PhD student Meaning & Translation. Towards a conceptual toolbox for reuse

Hasselt University, Belgium

Updated: over 2 years ago
Job Type: FullTime
Deadline: 15 Oct 2021

Background

Creativity, communication and research are central to the academic educational programme in Architecture and Interior Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture and Arts. Through realistic projects and intensive guidance, students learn to come up with original solutions to questions within a certain societal and spatial context. Through practice and multidisciplinary guidance, our students develop a personal style and vision. The educational programmes of Architecture and Interior Architecture educate versatile students and excellent designers.

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Meaning & Translation. Towards a conceptual toolbox for reuse

In the built environment, reuse is increasingly seen as a common and sustainable counteracting tactic against financial and material obsolescence. Although there is a consensus on the importance of reuse in design and education practice, the focus is more on material and technical challenges. But what happens in the translation between old and new? What meanings are formed or erased in new architectural interventions at heritage sites?

This research project aims to develop a conceptual toolkit that can be used in practice and education. The research specifically focuses on the question of how textual and non-textual sources can contribute to the emerging theory of re-use and its relationship with new architectural interventions on the one hand and conservation/restoration discourses on the other.

The knowledge building will take place on three levels:

  • A critical discourse analysis based on the existing canon of 20th century architectural theory in order to develop a broader conceptual framework for reuse processes (e.g. texts by Robert Venturi, Colin Rowe, Giancarlo De Carlo,...);
  • Introducing new texts from other disciplines (mainly literary studies and art history) that can add new, unexpected insights to the existing discourse and practice (e.g. texts by Georges Steiner, Kenneth Rexroth, Jeff Malpas , Umberto Eco, Erwin Panofsky, Paul Ricœur, TS Eliott, Vernon Lee, Walter Benjamin);
  • Reading some exemplary historical and contemporary re-use projects in which notions of meaning, translation and transition interact. The analysis here can be done both through the study of the physical building itself and through the analysis of design drawings and sketches.

    • This research aims to make a fundamental contribution on two levels: 1. substantiating the discourse of adaptive reuse through a critical rereading of 20th century theoretical texts from different disciplines and 2. To further develop the conceptual framework for adaptive reuse from non-textual sources.

    The research is grafted onto four ongoing lines of enquiry within the Trace research group: 1. Reusing the Ruin. Building on the fragmented fabric; 2. Traces from within. repurposing and 'contaminated heritage'; 3: Iconography & Iconology in Reuse; 4. Pedagogical Tools and Design Strategies for Urban Reuse: ILAUD, 1976-2015[MOU3] .

    For more information on the research group, see this link .


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