CitySpeak on HeritageHERITAGE: HOW FAR DO WE DARE TO GO?Minimum intervention VERSUS adaptive re-use

19 June 2010 The Fringe Club

Provocator: Paul Zimmerman Moderator: Ho-Yin Lee

The issue: new design intervention is necessary for adaptive reuse.

A question: how much design intervention is too much?

A provocation: are we too timid to accept innovative intervention?

Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London, 1991 (Robert Venturi, American Architect)

The Louvre Pyramid, Paris, 1989 (I M Pei, American architect)

The Louvre Pyramid, Paris, 1989 (I M Pei, American architect)

a provocative proposition

architecture must burnWe are fed up with seeing Palladio and other historical mask, because we do not want to exclude everything in architecture that makes us uneasy. We want architecture that has more to offer. . . . If it is cold, then cold as a block of ice. If it is hot, then as hot as a tongue of flame. Architecture must burn.

Austrian architectural office Coop Himmelblau, 1980,reacting against the Post-modern historical approach to architecture

Rooftop Falkestrasse, Vienna, 1988 (Coop Himmelblau, Austrian architectural office)

Energy Roof (design), Perugia, 2010 (Coop Himmelblau, Austrian architectural office)

Energy Roof (design), Perugia, 2010 (Coop Himmelblau, Austrian architectural office)

Clark Quay, Singapore, 2006 (Will Alsop, British architect)

Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, 2004 (Will Alsop, British architect)

Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, 2004 (Will Alsop, British architect)

2009 Winning Competition Entry for the Port House of the Antwerp Port Authority, Antwerp (Zaha Hadid, British architect) – to be completed in 2015

2009 Winning Competition Entry for the Port House of the Antwerp Port Authority, Antwerp (Zaha Hadid, British architect) – to be completed in 2015

Royal Ontario Museum Extension, Toronto, 2007 (Daniel Libeskind, American architect)

Royal Ontario Museum Extension, Toronto, 2007 (Daniel Libeskind, American architect)

Military History Museum, Dresden, 2010 (Daniel Libeskind, American architect)

Central Police Station Compound (design), Hong Kong, 2007 (Herzog & de Muron, Swiss architects)

Prada Epicenter, Tokyo, 2003 (Herzog & de Muron, Swiss architects)

English Heritage’s

Conservation Principles, Policies and Guidancefor the Sustainable Management of the Historic Environment (2008)

138 New work or alteration to a significant place should normally be acceptable if . . . the proposals aspire to a quality of design and execution which may be valued now and in the future.

139 The recognition of the public interest in heritage values is not in conflict with innovation, which can help to create the heritage of the future.

Heritage 1881, Hong Kong, 2009 (Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd., Hong Kong developer)

Fringe Club FX, Hong Kong, 201X (Don’t worry; this is not a real project, but a Photoshop artwork by Hoyin to provoke you to think more about adaptive reuse possibilities)

A provocation: are we too timid to accept innovative intervention?

architecture must burn

CitySpeak on HeritageHERITAGE: HOW FAR DO WE DARE TO GO?Minimum intervention VERSUS adaptive re-use