Contemporary Architecture in the Historic Environment

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Design Approaches and Philosophies
place in 2009 at the University of Florence. It further explores the integration of
heritage values and sustainable urban change. Chapters 2, 3, and 8 directly refer
to interventions in heritage areas. In chapter 2, “Industrial Wastelands:
Interventions and Responsibilities in Transforming Our Heritage,” Irene Curulli
uses examples from Italy and the Netherlands to demonstrate how intervention
projects can successfully enhance local characteristics. In chapter 3, “The
Industrial Heritage Values: Sustainable and Creative Change and Regeneration,”
Helen Maistrou discusses the limitations of sustainable change in projects
where the proposed new functions require changes incompatible with maintenance
of historic values. In chapter 8, “New Architectural Proposals for
Architecturally Significant Settlements,” Catherine Dimitsantou-Kremezi
focuses on issues that should be taken into consideration when designing in a
heritage area. She advocates for new buildings in the spirit of the place but
without imitation of traditional forms. (A.P.A.G.)
Babalis, Dimitra, ed. 2011. Chronocity: Sensitive Interventions in Historic
Environment. Cities, Design & Sustainability Series 7. Florence: Alinea
International.
This book was based on the third LLP/Erasmus Intensive Programme Research
Scholar Workshop on Chronocity. It focuses on how design can contribute to the
preservation of historic areas. In the introduction, “From Sensing the Context to
Making Sense of Architectural Interventions: A Working Theory,” Vassilis
Ganiatsas presents his theory on what constitutes a “sensitive” intervention in
the historic environment and proposes a methodology to achieve it. Ganiatsas
considers feature analysis of historical contexts an inappropriate tool to guide
new designs for these areas. He argues that scientific analysis is based on generalizations;
however, historic values often rely on the uniqueness of the site.
Ganiatsas proposes “sensing” as an alternative to analyzing, defining “sensing”
as “the quality of perceiving, conceiving and understanding a historic environment
in its values, as we interpret them today” (p. 9). This methodology, he
believes, does not prescribe a single design solution; rather, “sensing architectural
heritage values enables an equally sensitive response to them either by
perpetuating them in a mimetic mode or by creating a meaningful contrast
towards enhancing them” (p. 9). He describes the method for translating the act
of “sensing” the historical context into a “sensitive” design solution: “We sense
the context, we make sense of our intended intervention, we sense back the context,
as already containing our intervention and we make sense back of the new
reality. Thus, we constantly adjust and refine ourselves until we sense the context
in need of our intervention and our intervention as always being there” (p.
10). He defines “sensitive” intervention as “the expression of our making sense
of values, of our understanding and interpretation” (p. 10). Chapters 2, 8, 14,
and 16 present examples from different countries illustrating Ganiatsas’s theory.
(A.P.A.G.)
Contemporary Architecture in the Historic Environment: An Annotated Bibliography - Getty Conservation Institute - 2015