DETAIL 11.2015

From the editorial DETAIL 11.2015

Refurbishment

There is increasing awareness of the need to make optimal use of our spatial resources. A wide variety of approaches are available to this end: they range from painstaking preservation with barely discernible interventions, via transformation and reinterpretation of the existing substance, to self-assured coexistence. Just a few adaptations were made to transform a barn in Saxony-Anhalt into a holiday home, while at the Prada Foundation in Milan the existing buildings overlap in different ways with the additions made to them. The conversions of a factory in Reggio Emilia into a research facility and of a warehouse in Berlin into an office building illustrate the potential the building stock holds; they also create an intriguing dialogue between old and new.