(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
Cultural significance in many cases goes beyond it notions of material realty within heritage buildings, this paper sets out a speculative, design-oriented approach and methodology to mediating the relationship between intangible heritage qualities possessed by existing buildings and their agency towards the creation of new form for adaptive reuse. It describes the creation of mnemonic and metaphoric devices to mobilise and tease out these qualities via acts of oblique questioning and imaginative interpretation digital and analogue modalities. The propositions described in this paper aim to promote new conceptual tolerances for creating architecture from existing buildings via a design research modality. The project takes the Union House building at the University of Adelaide, designed in 1969-1975 by Dickson & Platten, as the setting for this investigation. Here the re-reading and focus on a single building provide a consistent base as a starting point, allowing a clear mapping of a range of different design strategies, akin to a “theme and variations” approach found in musical composition. New form is realised on site through and new volume and selective demolitions of the Union House. The aim of this paper which is based on work from the authors PhD is to open possibilities for consideration/acceptance of a much broader and richer assessment of potential material for (re)interpretations, finding multiple inherent possibilities within heritage artefacts. Expanding the conceptual field of an existing building to include intangible heritage contributes new methods to discourse around fidelity of new form within heritage practice. The designs put forward new conceptual tolerances of creating architecture from existing buildings within a community of Practice of experimental preservation.
Meherzad Shroff has been undertaking a PhD By Design in generative architecture, creating methods for the interpretation of existing heritage buildings. He has presented his work at the recent ADR-Conference in Monash University, The DAP_r PRS at RMIT, the bi-annual Design Research Colloquiums at the University of Adelaide and at the 2020 SAHANZ conference. He was the Exhibition designer for ‘Fusions of Horizon’ at the Tin Shed gallery, University of Sydney in 2019 as part of the SAHANZ conference. Meherzad is interested and committed in moving between praxis and theory, has he tutors in architectural design, history and theory at SABE.
Julian Worrall is Professor of Architecture and Head of the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Tasmania, Australia. A prominent interpreter of Japanese architecture and urbanism with a PhD from the University of Tokyo (2005), he has worked as an architect with the Office of Metropolitan Architecture and has taught architecture and urbanism at Waseda University, Sophia University, and the University of Adelaide. His research explores themes of publicness, displacement, neutrality, and temporality, and has contributed to numerous publications and exhibitions, including Eastern Promises (MAK Vienna, 2013); A Japanese Constellation (MoMA New York, 2016); and The Far Game (Korean Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2016). His most recent book, a collaboration with the Brussels-based artist Aglaia Konrad, is Japan Works (Roma Publications, 2021).