Creative design in the reuse of historic buildings and urban areas

Описание: UCL ISH Open Heritage Guest Lecture

Professor Murray Fraser, Professor of Architecture and Global Culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Vice-Dean of Research for UCL’s Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment


Abstract

Widely accepted today as socially desirable, the reuse of existing buildings is rightly justified on cultural and environmental grounds. This talk will however emphasise another aspect, which is its contribution to innovative architectural design. Hitherto portrayed as placing a restriction on architectural autonomy and creativity, the argument in this lecture is that the reuse of historic buildings offers in fact the most creative condition for cutting-edge design. As a development of the idea of the palimpsest, whereby the traces of previous forms can be traced within a later object, this talk will examine this conceptual sea-change by looking back at Arts and Crafts architects such as Charles Robert Ashbee and through to twentieth-century designers like Jože Plečnik, Louis Kahn and Carlo Scarpo – while also discussing the contemporary projects of alternatively orientated architects such as Assemble and also ‘starchitects’ like Herzog and de Meuron, whose recently opened Elbe Philharmonie in Hamburg exemplifies the new condition. It will also be observed that even in a rapidly developing country such as China, the reuse of historic structures has now become a significant feature within the work of Atelier Deshaus and other up-and-coming practices.



Biography

Murray Fraser is Professor of Architecture and Global Culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, as well as Vice-Dean of Research for UCL’s Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. He has published extensively on design research, architectural history & theory, urbanism, post-colonialism and cultural studies. In 2008, his book on Architecture and the 'Special Relationship' was given the RIBA President’s Research Award and the CICA’s Bruno Zevi Book Prize. Edited books include Design Research in Architecture (2013), and he also co-created the online Archigram Archival Project. Currently he is General Editor for the 21st edition of Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture (forthcoming in early-2019 and also being published online). With 88 expert authors writing 102 chapters that amount to 1 million words, it will present the most comprehensive account as yet of the architectural history of all regions of the world.