As Found: Contemporary Architecture from Flanders

Adaptive Reuse in Practice and Education

After being considered less crucial than new construction for generations, the transformation of existing buildings and adaptive reuse entered mainstream architecture discourse and is now a central part of European policy through the New European Bauhaus initiative.

Realigning architectural practices towards working with the as found requires an intense debate and exchange of ideas. As we are dealing with a paradigm shift, future architects’ education also demands an urgent renewal. We must adapt the curriculum in architecture schools towards acquiring competencies tuned to working with existing structures.

Vienna and Flanders: Two Approaches

Until a generation ago, Vienna could point to an active local tradition of working with existing structures in urban situations. After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the socioeconomic upturn that followed, this local strand of architecture gave way to faster and brasher building practices. In turn, within the last two decades, Flanders, driven by entirely different socioeconomic premises, has established itself as an architectural hotbed for adaptive reuse and transformation of existing buildings. This event at the TU Wien will bring into dialogue local European approaches concerning adaptive reuse and showcase current examples from Flanders on addressing this urgent topic in practice and education.

Programme

• 18:00-18:30 Admission
• 18:30-18:40 Welcome speech by Koenraad Van de Borne, General Representative of Flanders in Austria
• 18:40-18:50 Introduction by Sofie De Caigny, director of Flanders Architecture Institute
• 18:50-19:00 Introduction by the moderator Lorenzo De Chiffre, senior scientist at TU Wien
• 19:00-19:30 Presentations by Philippe Viérin, Bart Hollanders and Els Van Meerbeek
• 19:30- 20:20 Roundtable discussion
• 20:20- 20:30 Q&A
• 20:30-21:30 Reception