March 2017

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March 2017

Eman

Student: Adriana Magno

Supervisor: Dr. A. Marijke Martin

Adaptive Reuse of Redundant Religious Buildings

Comparative Study into an Integrated Approach:

Italy and the Netherlands

Adaptive Reuse of Redundant Religious Buildings

Comparative Study into an Integrated Approach: Italy and the Netherlands

Adriana Magno

Student number: S2955199

E-mail: adriana.magno66@gmail.com

Master thesis for the MA History of Architecture and Town Planning Faculty of Arts

University of Groningen

Groningen, the Netherlands, March 2017

Supervisor: Dr. A. M. Marijke Martin – University of Groningen Second reader: prof. Cor Wagenaar – University of Groningen

Image on cover: Woonkerk XL, Utrecht

(source: http://www.zecc.nl/nl/Projecten/project/23/Woonkerk-XL-Utrecht

Index

I Introduction 1

ii Methodology 6

iii Literature review and influential publications 9

o Aldo Rossi and a new concept of the city 9

o The basis of current adaptive reuse literature 14

o Recent academic writings 17

iv Contribution of the study 21

PART I

I. Adaptive Reuse 23

I.I Definitions of adaptive reuse 23

I.II Side phenomena: façadism and renovation 26

I.III Current status of adaptive reuse, increasingly implemented and increasingly

discussed. Issues concerning adaptive reuse today and relevant findings 31 I.IV Arguments for and against adaptive reuse of redundant buildings 38

PART II

I. Redundancy 42

I.I Redundancy of buildings 42

I.II Redundancy of religious buildings 43

I.III Secularization as a cause of redundancy of religious buildings: from a social

phenomenon to the architectural dimension 45

II. Reuse 51

II.I Idea and history of buildings’ reuse 51

II.II Reuse of religious buildings 57 II.III Current attitudes the reuse of redundant religious buildings 62 II.IV On the value of heritage and unlisted buildings: a key to understanding social and

community values of a religious building 66

II.V The integrated approach to reuse of buildings 70

III. Legal constraints and influencing figures: Europe, Italy, the Netherlands 73 III.I The legal framework for heritage conservation and reuse 73 III.II National vs local: guidelines, support and initiatives for the reuse of redundant religious

buildings in Italy and the Netherlands 87

III.III Conflicting interests of the different actors of the process vs Common goals 94

IV. Analysis of the interviews 98

PART III

I. Methods for the assessment of a new function to an old building: a review 107 II. A review of the main types of reuse of redundant churches and their technical implications 110 III. Appropriateness of the new use: different countries, different approaches? 119 IV. Keys for carrying out a successful implementation of an adaptive reuse designs 128

CONCLUSIONS 131

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX

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i INTRODUCTION

‘One can say that the city itself is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is associated with objects and places

.’

The city is what we live and experience every day. But many changes and processes that take place in the city go unnoticed to the citizen. Only stopping and looking at the city from the exterior one might notice, for example, how many places and buildings traditionally associated with specific functions and rituals have been absorbed by the city’s historical development and by some logics of transformation that have

changed familiar places forever, without their daily users being aware of it.

When this phenomenon interests former warehouses or decaying residential or office buildings – in the downtown as in the outskirts of the city – the general response of the citizens is positive, since the

transformation returns them new spaces that were previously unused by the community. When it comes to the reuse of special buildings instead, such as former religious buildings, the public’s response is more complex, as a result of different social, cultural and aesthetical issues.

That of the Adaptive Reuse is currently a spreading phenomenon, encompassing the realm of public buildings and relating to many different spheres of the urban life. Projects of adaptive reuse have

transformed and are transforming the function, meaning and public image of a substantial part of the built stock in many cities and non-urban areas, and each category of building presents specific characteristics and issues when it comes to its potential reuse. The focus on redundant religious buildings has arisen from the specific complexity of meaning that this kind of buildings presents and because the repercussions of the change of their function in society is representative of other important social phenomena, such as

secularization and cultural integration and mixing.

Adaptive reuse is more than an architectural practice: it is a complex and integrated approach, inasmuch as it involves different disciplines and different professional figures, besides being connected with the specific policies and politics regarding the building stock that vary from a city to another. What it basically

integrates are the aspects of sustainability, heritage protection and conservation, local economy, community life, architectural and engineering/technical challenges and a profound reflection about the history of the building and its relation to the city it is set in.

1 ROSSI A., p.130

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Adaptive reuse is currently trending in the architecture and design world, but the reuse of buildings involving a change in the their use is quite an ancient practice: the functions in a city have always been continuously evolving, especially in relation with the mutated economic conditions and the major changes in culture that happen at specific times in history. The difference between the historical examples of reuse – some of which will be analyzed in the following pages – and the current practice that goes under the name of Adaptive Reuse is in the way the reuse is thought of and implemented today. Of course the legal constraints coming from different documents regulating the interventions on historic buildings impose upon a project of reuse several limits and conditions, and the decisional process involves now not only the architect and his commissioner, but also a complex system of local administrations, safety departments, tributary dispositions and is dependent on the opinion of consultants working in the field of economics, history of architecture, urban planning and urban and regional development and real estate. Also very important, and relatively new, is the role of the community residing in the surrounding of the building to be converted and the public opinion, in the wave of the new approach to urban planning that considers the participation of the citizens to the decisional process of substantial significance and contribution to the project’s success.

As to the reuse of redundant religious buildings, the practice of conversion results in most cases in a more complex process if confronted with what happens for other categories of buildings, as their specific original function carries with it a value that is linked to the spiritual dimension and to the traditional use of the building and its premises. Resistance and opposition from the part of the population is expressed in various degrees, depending on how strong is the faith in the area considered or how strong is the attachment to the sacred place in the community it serves. In this thesis the focus will be on dismissed Christian religious buildings, since these constitute the majority of cult buildings in the two geographical areas analyzed, Italy and the Netherlands. These buildings are not limited to churches in their proper form, but also comprehend monasteries, convents and secondary spaces related to the former.

Given the relevance that adaptive reuse of redundant religious building has attained in the last two decades in densely populated European countries– as testified by the numerous projects published for an international audience – and considering the differences in culture and in the approach to religion in Italy and the Netherlands, the main question that ignited the writing of the following paper is: how are

redundant religious buildings being dealt with, and what influences the reuse of former cult buildings in the two countries the most?

If the reuse of redundant church buildings is apparently favored in the Netherlands by cultural and

historical reasons (and the Dutch pragmatic approach to the management of the built stock), what is

instead happening in Italy? Are the consolidated religious tradition and morals of Italian society really

contrasting the diffusion of this architectural practice, as one would be led to expect? Is it possible to

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identify the significant factors that encourage or, adversely, hinder the adaptive reuse of old churches and monasteries in both countries?

Although it proves quite hard to gather information or get to know adaptive reuse projects of redundant religious buildings in Italy, something is moving and changing in the country thanks to the spirit of a new generation of architects and a progressive change of the legislation, orienting itself towards sustainability and the reduction in the use of soil and resources and because of the economic crisis. Equally interesting is to explore the Dutch reality of former cult buildings now hosting a plethora of original and new functions and the way these transformations have been dealt with by the national government and the local communities.

To answer these questions and try to draw a constructive comparison of the two very different – if not completely dissonant – national realities, an integrated approach to the topic has been chosen, in order to keep into account at least some of the numerous aspects of economy, society, technology and culture that the reuse of religious buildings involves.

The literature specifically pertaining to this discipline has been reviewed by few scholars, who have

proposed their categorization of previous writers’ studies and grouping of reuse examples. To integrate the existing literature, and as a result of the search for theoretical origins of the contemporary approach to the built environment, its function and reuse, it has been here proposed a reading of the Italian architect and writer Aldo Rossi; he formulated an original concept of history and the city as a place where architectural archetypes suggest, allow or inhibit buildings’ change of function and permanences from the past to shape a sort of stage of people’s lives, thus a place that enshrines their collective memory. It is of interest for this present research to try and understand whether Rossi’s theories and principles have been reflected upon, transposed and used as guidelines by contemporary architects and other related professional figures in their projects for the reuse of redundant religious buildings. An attempt has been made to extrapolate this notion from the analysis of different reuse projects both in Italy and the Netherlands, although it has proven an ambitious objective, as often theoretical references are mixed and only unconsciously referred to in the minds of architects and designers.

Part I of this thesis is specifically dedicated to Adaptive Reuse in its general form, as an architectural practice. A review of the definitions given by a number of academics and researchers active in this field has been provided in order to help even uninformed readers to formulate an idea of what adaptive reuse is and which is the spectrum of concepts and subjects that it covers, its goals and also the different nuances in which contemporary architects, writers and other professionals see it.

To further help defining the concept of adaptive reuse, a brief description of ‘side phenomena’ will be

made to clarify the difference between adaptive reuse and other similar practices, since the systematic

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study of this subject is still uncomplete today, with the result that professionals and the large public often confuse different kinds of interventions on existent buildings. A broad look over the current state of adaptive reuse and the main issues concerning it follows, and will serve as an introduction to topics that will be discussed in a more structured manner further on in thesis. Some of these issues – such as the authenticity of a reused, modified architecture from the past – have not been given entire chapters but are just outlined in this section, though recurrent in the text and referred to in the case studies analysis, while others – such as the environmental aspects of reuse, appropriateness of the new function and legal

constraints - and have been extensively discussed on the basis of their primary importance in the context of the practice and to present and integrate existing researches on them. At the end of this first part, the reader can find a sketch of the main and most discussed assets and liabilities of adaptive reuse.

Part II deepens the view into the topics of redundancy and reuse of buildings.

Redundancy – the state of disuse of a given built asset - has been analyzed firstly in relation to buildings in general, then in relation to religious buildings specifically, as a phenomenon resulting largely from the marching secularization affecting both Italy and the Netherlands (though in different scales) and moving from the social to the architectural dimension.

In a similar way, an analysis of the reuse of buildings – and religious ones in particular- has been conducted through its history and the collection and comparison of approaches and cases from the past, and the current theoretical frame that is possible to draw for the two national realities considered in this work. The issue of unlisted buildings and their often overlooked heritage value is thus outlined and proposed as a key to the understanding of social and community values of religious buildings (later on referred to as ‘soft values’), presented through of a contemporary Dutch case.

Finally, the integrated approach to the reuse, interlacing together sustainability, social value, history and economic points of view is explained and depicted through an example of how adaptive management of the former cult buildings management is conducted in an interdisciplinary approach.

Chapter III provides the fundamentals of European, Italian and Dutch legislation that regulates the interventions on historic buildings; a selection of the most relevant articles form international charts and national and religious laws has been made to allow for the understanding of how adaptive reuse of former religious buildings is made possible, restrained or favored in the Netherlands and Italy, in combination with the existence and influence of different figures active in the urban and regional development, private sector, heritage conservation and local communities. This is functional to the definition of a broad frame that can tie together and help explaining the dynamics of implementation of adaptive reuse projects today, and also the reasons behind the origin and success(or, conversely, the scarce diffusion) of the practice in the two countries on which this thesis focuses.

Chapter IV presents an analysis of the interviews conducted among different professionals in both

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countries and the conclusion that is possible to draw from it, also in relation with the findings and concepts exposed previously in the text.

Part III deals with the more practical side of adaptive reuse, starting with a review of some of the recently developed methods for the assessment of new functions to existing buildings; afterwards, a schematic list of the main types of reuses for redundant religious buildings has been prepared and the specific technical implications for each of them added to give an idea of the practical convenience or inconvenience of a given adaptation program based on the success or the obstacles resulted from the implementation of completed reuse projects. In Chapter VI the delicate issue of the appropriateness of the new use to be assigned to a former cult building has been addressed with the aim of finding out whether and to which extent historical, pragmatic, cultural and religious differences between Italy and the Netherlands result in different approaches to the adaptive reuse. At the end of part III a number of suggestions and key factors for a successful implementation of an adaptive reuse project collected from the work of scholars and professionals is presented.

This work is completed by an appendix conceived as a showcase of study cases of adaptive reuse projects

of former cult buildings that have been implemented in Italy and the Netherlands during the last two

decades. The reader can find references to these sheets in the text, where each project is placed in a

specific paragraph and there mentioned in relation to the specific aspect characterizing its design and

implementation phases, the reasons for the choice of the new function or the practical measures adopted

by the architects in the physical intervention on the building.

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ii METHODOLOGY

The question to which this present research tries to answer revolves, as previously mentioned, around the different approaches that Italy and the Netherlands seem to adopt towards the issue of adaptively reusing redundant religious buildings. Aim of this study is to try and understand which factors in the culture, history, architectural practice and tradition in the management of religious assets, theoretical thinking and legal indications have been the most influencing for the establishment of the current situation in the two countries. To carry out this investigation, it has been necessary to integrate different sources of

information, considering that the topic presented here has been covered in a discontinue and fragmented manner. Above all, a substantial difference in the availability of data has been discovered between Italy and the Netherlands, with a significant lack of information detectable in relation to the former, both concerning the governmental guidelines and the practical and technical aspects of implemented projects and their authors. Filling this gap has proven an arduous task and has implied vast researches on different sorts of material, from printed books to online publications, field trips and first person conversations with professionals and academics.

The fundamental starting point for the whole research has been a thorough literature revision, from which the main and clearest result was the lack of a dedicated branch of written works focusing on redundant religious buildings as the object of adaptive reuse projects. It has been thus necessary to collect, confront and examine the existing literature on adaptive reuse in general and integrate it with more recent studies often conducted from subject-specific points of view. The section containing the literature review has been divided in three parts, in order to present the influential publication in a chronological order, from the 1960s to present, so that it might be possible for the reader to catch the development of the architectural discourse behind adaptive reuse and how the terms, influences and issues have evolved from a pure conservationist, urban and aesthetic standpoint to other, more comprehensive ones, that also take into account practical matters such as sustainability, economic feasibility and social involvement in the reuse projects.

A historiographical approach has been taken in the study and presentation of building reuse in general, and redundant religious buildings in particular

. To support the understanding of today’s approach to historical buildings and why some trends and legislations have evolved towards their current form, it seemed essential to reconstruct the development in the thought and theory behind this type of interventions and

2 This double-level structure has been chosen for chapters I and II in Part I of the thesis in order to show how the specific features and values of religious buildings have implied the necessity to treat these assets in a different way from other sorts of buildings, such as industrial, commercial and other public buildings

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the way built environment is conceived; therefore, a thread has been sought connecting the works of late 19

century architects and writers to the most recent debates about reuse.

Besides the historiographical intentions, historical research also aimed at finding out the causes determining the reuse of churches and monasteries as a necessity (and later on as a trend). Growing redundancy of these buildings points at a social phenomenon, secularization, that has been induced by several social conditions – the analysis of which goes beyond the scope and aim of this study – and has started, in its turn, to be reflected in the architectural dimension. A collection of data related to secularization was therefore necessary to understand its influence on the two national realities here considered; it has been conducted using mostly web resources, such as the WSJ analysis of European Social Survey data and the European Social Survey data.

Other researches have been made through the gathering of articles, both from architecture magazines and web platforms, academic papers and internet blogs to form an idea of the current situation of adaptive reuse, together with the comparison between legislative systems and data from the real estate, trends and countertrends.

Interviews have been chosen as a primary sources/data collection method, mainly due to the lack of a set of clear opinions from the different kind of actors involved in the process of adaptive reuse, especially on the Italian side. Interviews work indeed as an effective tool for learning about facts that is otherwise difficult to observe directly, as is the case with the ‘underground’ reality of reuse projects for empty churches in Italy. The interviews comprise questions dealing with several themes and aim at exploring the interviewees’ opinion on different aspects of adaptive reuse, from the factors they consider most

influential to the way they see the clients, administration and politics relating to this practice.

(effectiveness of adaptive reuse of redundant religious buildings as a strategy to achieve sustainability, attributes that make a redundant religious building suitable or unsuitable for adaptive reuse; impact of various factors on the decision to reuse redundant religious buildings; the barriers and opportunities surrounding adaptive reuse of such buildings)

The interviews have been tailored for the topic in this thesis on the model of similar interviews to be found in the most relevant academic works examining topic of adaptive reuse, such as the structural survey in the by Bullen and Love from 2011

.

Being the topic still controversial these days, a wide range of different answers, opinions and reactions was expected from the interviewees. Attention has been paid to the choice of the interviewees, in order to gather opinions from different interest groups and age groups; the interviewees comprise: young architects, academics, professors, researchers, established architects and real estate consultants.

3 BULLEN P.A., LOVE P.E.D., 2011, pp.411-421

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As it is often the case with this kind of research methods implying direct contact with people and their availability, however, the effective number of respondents turned out to be smaller than what was hoped.

Nonetheless, the data obtained provide interest elements for discussion and they are analyzed in the dedicated chapter (Part II, Chapter IV).

As to the appendix at the end of the thesis, the compiling of the sheets is the result of researches on the

architects’ websites (as the main source of detailed information), architecture and heritage-related blogs,

websites and magazines and technical dossiers. Articles and web articles have been also searched to

retrieve information about the resonance of the selected projects and the reception these reuse

interventions have had by the critic as well as the public.

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iii LITERATURE REVIEW AND INFLUENTIAL PUBLICATIONS

As previously stated in this study, adaptive reuse is not a new phenomenon. The systematical research work and publication on the subject, though, refers to a relatively recent past, as the novelty of adaptive reuse lays in its critical approach to it, which needed a long time to emerge before the people in charge of the protection of built heritage developed a different and more sensitive approach to it. From the 1970s onward, adaptive reuse has become a key subject for conferences on architecture and conservation and that is reflected in a large number of scholarly literature.

Aldo Rossi and a new concept of the city

Some previous publications are, nonetheless, worth of consideration as a sort of early influential texts.

Among these, one of the most popular work of the Italian architect and theorist Aldo Rossi, who wrote, in 1966, a book called ‘The Architecture of the City’, a fundamental publication in the field of history of architecture and a significant contribution to the development of a new way of thinking among architects and urban planners. Rossi’s book goes deeply into the meaning of and the relations between buildings as fundamental elements of the city , the urban entity and the buildings’ function, besides the connections between function and typology. Moreover, Rossi’s discourse is entangled with the question of time, and as such it gives a number of valuable suggestions to the understanding of an urban space, from the general unity down to its parts in terms of elements of the time and as material reflection of the action of time on the anthropized space that is the city. All this ensemble of reflections can surely be of help to whoever is approaching the process of building reuse, and especially to those aiming at adapting buildings’ material structure to a new function, an action that strongly requires the knowledge of the buildings’ history and their vital relationship with the city in which it lays.

In the practice, Rossi translated his results of the studies conducted on architecture, city and time into the

concept of archetypes, in order to inform his own architecture with the principles he had deduced. Aldo

Rossi’s conception of the city has taken a significant distance from the one Lecorbusier helped to spread in

the first half of the 20

century; his view depicts in fact the city as a sum of the different epochs and

architectonic styles that have followed one another in history. The importance of this author, in relation to

the topic of adaptive reuse, lays in the fact that he has been a key figure in that delicate moment of

passage from the positivism of modern architecture to the atmosphere devoid of expectations that

followed. This passage saw the collapse of historical time – as Peter Eisenmann wrote – and a drift into an

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uncertain present. As a consequence, also the way history was perceived by architects changed, influencing their approach to the built city. Modernists in the beginning of the 20

century attempted to fight against the old and ‘evil’ fortress represented by the city of the 19

century, which they despised vehemently.

Rather than heritage, the architecture of the past was seen as a dirty and non-functional burden. As for the architects who developed their career in the early 1660s, Rossi was confronted with a condition of distrust an disillusionment generated by the perceived failure of modern architecture to supersede the 19

century city or even to mitigate its destruction after the Second World War. As a reaction to this state of things, he proposed a new approach towards the built, historical city. Rossi’s new position on the matter was based on an idea of the city that was seen as both an archaeological artefact and as an autonomous structure, a city characterized as an object and that, in turn, characterized the architect in a different way from what happened in the past. The link with the contemporary figure of the architect working with historic buildings is here very clear: while the conservationists, restorers and architects of the Romantic period had very few concerns about the objects they were working upon and altering, today we are far more aware of the uniqueness of certain buildings and our actions on them are – or it is recognized and accepted they should be – respectful and influenced by the building itself in a considerably greater measure than in the past.

In his discourse on history and architectural typologies , Rossi intended ‘history’ as a useful measure of time and as a witness of what has taken place in the city itself. More precisely, Rossi intended history as an historiographical act, without the historicism implied by the modernist concept of architecture (which bore with it a constraint to determine the future and an impediment to invention in architecture). As for the city in its complex, Rossi conceived every historic building or monument as the result of the work of man and the action of time, which partially transforms the work made by man and eventually produces a slightly autonomous result. The work of time on urban artefacts is related to Rossi’s concept of permanence, which characterizes the elements of a city, especially its monuments, which are defined by the author as primary and characterizing urban artefacts, distinguished from other elements by their nature as places of symbolic function. This is of course mostly true for historic religious buildings, that count in Rossi’s writings as monuments; indeed, as other kinds of monuments, religious buildings also qualify as fixed elements of the urban structure and because they have a true aesthetic intentionality. Monuments that survive their epoch of construction can be seen as ‘invariants’ of the city. It is fallacious – says Rossi – to think of a persistent urban artefact as something tied to a simple period in history.

The theory of permanence was posited by the French writers Poète and Lavedan at the end of the 19

century; from it Rossi takes the moves to affirm that ‘past and future differ in the fact that the past is

partially still experienced now’. This happens also through the survival of monuments, as touchable cultural

heritage. Sometimes architectural artefacts persist virtually unchanged and endowed with a continuous

vitality, while other times they exhaust themselves; in these latter cases what remains is only the

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permanence of their form, their locus. Only permanences can show what a city once was by indicating the way its past differs from its present. In surviving and changing function, monuments often condition the urban area in which they stand, and they continue to constitute an important urban focus.

Rossi’s opinion about place and function is that, given a symbolic function, monuments and churches have a function related to time and not to use; moreover, monuments are dialectically related to the city’s growth, and as primary urban elements, they can either retard or accelerate the city’s development. When a monument or a symbolical building gets to the point of working merely as a museum piece, it can be considered an embalmed body, which is only apparently alive, and can retard the urban development;

Rossi calls these exhausted bodies pathological permanences. Adaptive reuse could then be interpreted as a ‘cure’ to pathological persistences, inasmuch it can promote them to a better state from their current state of artefacts that stand outside of technological and social evolution.

In other cases, permanences can be of a positive kind, in which cases they are propelling permanences, inasmuch as they can ‘synchronize’ with the process of urbanization in a city because they are not defined only by an original or previous function, but because of their form, that allowed them to survive to

accommodate different functions over time. Such a discourse is totally consistent with the idea at the basis of the adaptive reuse of historic buildings, and its core meaning has been expressed in other occasions in different moments of history, starting with Viollet-Le-Duc and down to the most recent congresses that have focused on heritage conservation: excluding the touristic exploitation of some important historic sites, the most logical and likely efficient strategy to keep an object – also an architectural object - among us is to use it. As for a law of natural survival, a law of historical survival determines that only those buildings that are enough flexible to adapt to different functions – or to keep up with the evolution in the function they originally served - will be passed to next generations. A certain degree of fortuity is anyway also involved in the lives of buildings and monuments, and it can happen that a less flexible structure survives because of a particularly favourable position or urban dynamics, while a fully functional old building might at the same time end up cut out of the city life or destroyed by natural calamities or a conflict. But for the biggest part, historic buildings are elements in a urban context, and as such they have to continuously face the harsh market and economic changes and the needs of a population that is sometimes significantly different from the one that once conceived, needed and used them.

Propelling permanences have also something more to them than sturdy and flexible buildings that have

survived until our days; first of all, they bring the past into the present, ‘providing a past that can still be

experienced’, as Rossi would say. In addition, points out the author, they have the potential of becoming

centres of irradiation from new, contemporary and unexpected development of some urban sites: they can

be precious resources to revitalize historic centres or even entire regions suffering from depopulation, a

lack of investments or a poor economy or social decay.

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Rossi’s book, despite being mainly focused on the history of the whole urban system and its architecture, is rich in significant reflections about several aspects that are related to the reuse of historic buildings. One of these is the concept of locus, as conceived and described by the Italian architect in the 1960s: a locus is a specific place in the sense that the historical events occurred prior and during the existence of that place have over time made it singular, specific (a locus unicus). This is often the case with religious buildings, acknowledged to be focal points for communities all over the world and in every past epoch. Furthermore, often times churches and other religious buildings have been the material focal points of urban planning or, in general, connected with other primary or secondary urban spaces, like market places, monumental squares or even small and intimate meeting points in large cities as well as in tiny villages.

In broader terms, a locus is a ‘component of an individual artefact which, like permanence, is determined not just by space, but also by time, topography and form and, most importantly, by its having been the site of a succession of both ancient and more recent events’. The city for Rossi is in fact a theatre of human events, where all that happens is ‘registered’ through time by the changing configuration of the urban space. The interesting aspect of this for the subject of adaptive reuse is that, Rossi maintains, the locus persists in this specific form through changes, especially changes in function, since the reused building will retain its own history and the signs of its history. It is then up to the architect or planner or designer that implements the adaptive reuse project to understand, know and help conserving this property of the building in different degrees. In most cases, the spirit of the locus could serve as a major source of inspiration for the design as well, and suggest the materials to choose, the light work to install and the atmosphere that can be created for the reused space. The concept of locus finally implies a different conception of history, that comes to be the process by which the city acquires its form. The succession of events, instead, constitutes memory, and through Rossi’s theory the time of architecture passes from being the time of history to being the time of memory and for the first time the individual artefact/monument is understood ‘within the psychological construct of collective memory’.

Going further on in the in Rossi’s philosophy and its relation to the subject of adaptive reuse, it is interesting to point out the importance assigned by the author to building typologies. While in the past architects did not recognize to typology the potential to be ’the animating force of a design process’, Rossi maintains that typology detains in fact a power of invention when considered both a process and an object (the process of creating, building architecture, giving shape to matter and the object of design, of

contemplation, of study and the container of the function). Memory – Rossi states – can combine with history to create, sometimes, a type-form with a renovate significance beyond that of the original function.

While time passes, matter stays, and so do certain artefacts that are able, because of their intrinsic nature,

of hosting different functions. The ‘intrinsic nature’ corresponds to the artefact’s typology; variations of

typology can occur whenever history fuses with memory. In this lays typology’s inventive potential.

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In the introduction to his book, Rossi affirms that it is possible to think that it is legitimate to conserve some architectural artefacts as a natural feature of the process of the city’s evolution for aesthetic intentions, and in fact the author affirms that aesthetic intentions (together with the creation of better surroundings for human life) are permanent characteristics of architecture. This process of ‘architectural accumulation’ is common to all cities, that, in time, grow upon themselves, acquiring a (collective) consciousness and memory, as every artefact constructed to perform a specific function interacts with the community which it serves and enters its everyday life and its memory. For Rossi it is possible to make decisions about

architectural interventions in the city, though he admits it is impossible to make such decisions in any rational manner solely on the basis of local situations; nonetheless, each artefact’s singularity must be understood, because it is what characterizes them, and this should be done ahead of any intervention on the urban environment.

To stress the tight and necessary connection between any artefact and its abstract values, Rossi uses the term fatto urbano, an Italia expression derived from the French faite urbain and expressing both sides of a reality, the physical object and its history, geography and connection with the general life of the city. For Rossi the architecture of a city is a ‘fixed stage’ for human events, but as a stage it adapts to different shows, it is a fixed place where different things happen, and then where different functions can be hosted.

In Rossi’s vision, it is quite normal in the natural and common development of the architecture in a city.

When it comes to the topic of reuse of artefacts in the city, Rossi’s opinion, what makes the urban dynamics is the ensemble of destructions and demolitions, expropriations and rapid changes in use that follow speculation and obsolescence. In this dynamics there are of course to be found fixed points, in the city, such as the monuments, primary elements described as ‘signs of collective will as expressed through the principles of architecture’.

By referring to Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, Rossi admits that some artefacts can contain many different functions over time and that these functions can be entirely independent of the artefact’s form; in most cases it is precisely the form of the artefact that impresses us. This may be one of the reasons why we keep monuments or special architecture, such as a large number of religious buildings: because we are

impressed by their image, and more impressed if we know their historical and social value. In affirming this, Rossi is awarding a certain degree of importance to the aesthetic of some buildings that allows them to be chosen for preservation and reuse. He then goes further asserting that the value and essence of historic architectural artefact is also in people’s experiences with it as a urban constituent. This is even truer for buildings which were conceived to host a specific function tied to myths and rituals – such as religious buildings: it was the quality of the space, when and where these buildings were consecrated, that people used to value or conceive a place or an artefact in the past.

When dealing with historic religious buildings, a wide set of qualities should be detected and enhanced in a

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reuse project; some of them are purely functional, other purely material, others relate to the economic or social sphere. But there are also more subtle values that belong to such architectural objects and that render them very similar – in Rossi’s view – to works of art. These volatile values have more recently been addressed to as ‘soft values’ and relate to their uniqueness and because they can condition who experience them. The value of such urban artefacts often differs indeed from person to person, and collective artefacts (read: public buildings) are particularly akin to work of arts , because they both involve the public and their reaction. In this sense, reuse projects of historic churches and complexes can have a significant impact on the public’s (the citizens’) reaction, as often times the ones who are used to see these buildings as part of their everyday life’s environment appreciate its artistic value and therefore can show reluctance at the idea of seeing it altered or taken away from public fruition. The philosophy and the architects’ motivation behind the idea of reusing a historic building, though, can be the expression of a change taking place in the society, an answer to the mutation of needs of a part of the population that is perhaps not yet perceived by another group of people. Speaking about revolutionary periods, Rossi explains that artefacts themselves can be indeed a gesture of revolution, inasmuch they can correspond historically to reformist or

revolutionary movements as a result of the fact that other, previous artefacts or architectures have become at a certain point not responsive to the actual situation of the city, both in function and on the level of aesthetics.

In general, however, there are multiple forces governing the changes in a city; they can be of economic, political, social, cultural nature or linked to specific events, such as wars. In Rossi’s opinion, for each case and each city, the dominant force that promotes the change can be isolated. What gives a lot of

information about the history and changes in a city (or one of its parts) is the study of deed registries, from which it is possible to light the sequence of landholding and trace certain economic tendencies. This

reasoning can be applied to the case of religious buildings to explain, in part, some significant differences in their use, be it a difference between two confining regions or between two different countries. In Italy, the quasi totality of religious buildings is property of the Church, that explicates its ownership through the administration of local entities, the Dioceses. This aspect poses great limitations to the possibility of undertaking actions of reuse of redundant religious buildings, and these limitations are supported in their obstructionism by the opinion and conservatism of some groups of citizens. In the Netherlands, on the contrary, the property of redundant religious buildings is sometimes of a private nature, or anyway it is more easily acquirable by privates and companies, thus making the projects of adaptive reuse more easily doable (and maybe also modifying less the original architect’s reuse project or inhibit him in the phase of design).

The basis of current adaptive reuse literature

Wide researches on adaptive reuse today mainly lead to a handful of authors, often referred to in more

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recent academic papers or researches. Among these, four will be presented in this literature review as they have somehow shaped the theories and studies around this practice, especially in its multidisciplinary, integrated nature, publishing findings and speculations that seemingly form the pillars of current adaptive reuse literature. These authors’ contributions to this field of study has been selected in this paper also on the basis of their international distribution or acclamation, in order to present some works that have influenced today’s concept and image of adaptive reuse of existing buildings, if only as references for further exploration of the matter.

About forty years after Rossi’s publication of The Architecture of the City, Derek Latham wrote an intriguing book titled Creative Reuse of Buildings, presented to the public in 2000. The fact that the author included the term ‘creative’ certainly was part of the book’s intriguing feature, as it led the reader to think that reusing a building could, employing creativity, unfold a wide range of possibilities. The architect or designer – or even the owner of an old building interested in taking advantage of his property – might, in front of this statement, feel more participative in the process of intervention and maybe overcome the thought that reusing a structure must be connected with only laws, constraints or technical difficulties. Latham’s publication offered with no doubt a first attempt to draw a frame including a huge variety of aspects related to adaptive reuse of buildings. Up to date, it is still difficult to find a guide to the practice that encompasses so many of its facets and structured in such a clear manner. Creative Reuse of Buildings is made up of two tomes, the first exposing the theory behind reuse interventions and the second providing a number of significant study cases. A pioneer in the field, Latham condensed in this work his varied and dense experience as an architect, urban planner and landscape architect. He also held the office of chancellor in the Design and Conservation Office in Derbyshire in the 1970s and other institutional positions, collaborating with and offering counseling to organizations such as the British SPAB(Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings). Besides, he founded a private practice focused on conservation, education, creative renewal and regeneration of buildings, land and communities. His book constitutes therefore an unmissable reference for a research into the integrated approach to the reuse of redundant buildings, albeit the case studies presented in it are not drawn from Italy or the Netherlands.

The theoretical tome, divided in three parts, treats the topic of reuse both on synthetic plan, with considerations spacing in the historical, philosophical, bureaucratic, social and psychological dimensions, and on a more detailed plan, offering suggestions of more practical and technical relevance.

The first part begins explaining the appeal of old buildings, through an analysis of how adaptive reuse can

have archaeological motives, spring from an aesthetic appreciation of the old, have economic benefits or a

functional use or satisfy psychological needs of people accostumed to certain elements in their daily built

scenario. A brief presentation follows with a distinction between the possible approaches to reuse: people-

led, building-led or policy-led, depending on the main aspect considered in the process. The ‘challenge of

creative reuse’ is then explained through the complex attempt of changing attitudes towards existing

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buildings via legislation, an attempt that can be interpreted as the expression of a need (and the author’s wish) to try and educate the public to a more sensitive valorization of the historical built stock.

A second part in the theory book has a definitely more managerial and analytical cut, illustrating the need and the ways to understand an existing building through its history and its possible emotional values for the communities that used it in the past. Important considerations are made on the meaning and implications of reuse through time, for it is fundamental to both know the building’s past reuses, if there were any, and plan the intervention so that it will allow for possible future changes.

Latham did not forget to mention the importance of understanding the new users’ requirements and expectation and the criticality of choosing a new appropriate function. All these topics are corroborated by examples of reuse interventions in the UK and conclusions are drawn from each of them. Furthermore, specific chapters are dedicated to the designer’s job in transforming the building, complete with suggestions to create a plan of action and presentations of the projects (an often neglected but fundamental aspect when working with buildings that need their potential to be imagined and communicated to developers and clients). Latham’s awareness of the multidisciplinarity of the reuse practice is suggested by a paragraph explaining the importance and convenience of taking a ‘team approach’ the decision making phase of the process. The text then goes as far as treating the techniques required for an intervention on existing buildings, where both craftsmanship and the use of ‘modern technology’ are equally top-flight and have to be integrated.

The third and final part displays an aspect very often underrated both in new construction and in conservation and adaptation building, the post completion management of the building.

Visibly attentive to the immaterial values of existing buildings as well as the economic and artistic ones, the author warns the reader of the essential condition of respecting the building’s history again and again through the text, clearly expressing the increased awareness of the heritage’s role in society that started to appear in Europe from the 1970s.

More recently, two Australian academics have seen their international importance as reference figures in

the field of adaptive reuse consolidated. Frequently cited in European colleagues’ papers, Peter A. Bullen

and Peter E. D. Love have both conducted personal and joint researches on different topics related to the

discipline. Bullen, currently a sessioned academic at Bentley University in the Department of Construction

Management, has been researching and writing about sustainable development since 2002, and exploring

and teaching other subjects such as assessment of sustainable adaptation of existing buildings for climate

change, adaptation of commercial, residential and heritage buildings and factors influencing the choice of

adaptive reuse by the different actors of the process. He is also an expert in sustainable strategies for built

stock management. Similarly Love, professor of Construction Engineering and Management at the same

university, has been studying adaptive reuse focusing on process and productivity improvement,

management and sustainability of the construction process and feasibility of life-cycle performances,

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expanding recently his area of competence in digital reproduction of historic buildings. Through their numerous publications, the two scholars have significantly increased the notions available today about the architectural practice of the reuse of heritage buildings, allowing many others to further deepen the analysis and theorization with the data they have collected and presented in the last fifteen years. Their approach to the subject is distinctly scientific and technical if compared to that of authors such as Latham or the researchers that will be presented next in this chapter, and this provides a whole different set of data and consideration which are however of great importance when adopting an integrated view over adaptive reuse, because – it is almost obvious to remark – an integration of knowledge from different fields is substantial for a deeper and more meaningful understanding of this phenomenon. Scientific and

technical considerations have been explored in this thesis in order to draw a bigger picture of the practice of adaptive reuse, the interrelation with other more abstract aspects involved and to make educated projections of the practical implication of reuse projects of existing buildings. This is although possible and correct to certain extent for the scope of this paper, since the research subject of Bullen and Love were case studies in Australia. From the result they obtained it is nevertheless draw some helpful conclusions that have to be contextualize in the European scenario and, in particular, in the Dutch and Italian realities.

Recent academic writings

Most recent information on adaptive reuse practice and discourse is to be found online, in web articles, forums, architecture and design platforms and in the form of informative material on institutional websites and brochures produced by organizations set up by the government, while it is still hardly retrievable on text books under the explicitly and conscious denomination of ‘adaptive reuse’. This is true for both the country considered in this thesis. Some few universities and departments though, seem to be specializing in the topic of adaptive reuse, and they support researches which are currently issuing publications on the different aspects of adaptive reuse, from the economic to the managerial to the technical.

In a recent, thorough analysis researchers Bie Plevoets and Koenraad van Cleempoel of PHL University College and Hasselt University have studied the current state of adaptive reuse, and they have outlined four main approaches to the classification of reuse case studies in the written jobs of their colleagues all over the world:

 typological approach – through a typological approach, several authors have tried to classify and study a number of reuse interventions. During the 70’s, for instance, Sherban Cantacuzino – Romanian architect of international relevance and founder of the Pro Patrimonio foundation - discussed eleven different building typologies for each of which he formulated new possible uses.

Among these, he separated into two different categories churches and chapels by monastic and

religious establishments. This subdivision in two groups seems legitimate, as a category as generic

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as ‘religious buildings’ would actually comprehend a number of spaces with very different spatial characteristics and functional possibilities. A small chapel or a church with a classic layout could certainly provide a space for a number of private and public activities, but a monastery or a

convent would definitely be more indicated when the idea for the reuse is, for example, a school or a tourist accommodation. In a second version of his publication

, Cantacuzino later reorganized the building typologies into six categories, where the above mentioned structures were regrouped under the name ‘ecclesiastical buildings’ (the others being public buildings, private buildings, commercial buildings, industrial buildings and rural buildings). Ten years later, in 2000, Derek Latham proposed his own typological classification sorting a number of case studies, while another author, James Douglas, added to the typological classification of adaptive reuse interventions a proposal of different new uses, also focusing on the reason for the redundancy of the specific building to reuse. In this line other classifications have flourished in the last years.

 technical approach – authors such as Highfield and Douglas approached the adaptation of existing buildings from a completely different point of view and addressing it mostly as a technical question.

In their publications, respectively Refurbishment and Upgrading

of Existing Buildings and Building Adaptation

, adaptation of buildings for reuse is dealt with is treated clearly as if the building itself is not worth much more than a shell whose interior can be freely modified or a simple container whose features are indifferent to the new function to be assigned. Among the most important goals this approach tries to satisfy are the economical convenience of the intervention, its functionality once implemented and the technical viability of some solutions or installations. In striking contrast with Rossi’s idea on the reuse of an existing artefact and the relation of integrity, dialogue and mutual influence between the building and its surroundings, this kind of technical approach seems to take in scarce consideration the ‘genius loci’ of the hosting building.

 programmatic approach – more detached from the physical aspects of the reuse than the previous two, this approach puts more emphasis on the social and less tangible values and features of a redundant building. However, the ‘poetic potential of adaptive reuse’

is still not addressed choosing a programmatic approach. It consists in choosing a specific function or programme to install in the existing building and then, in a second subordinated phase, to work on the building adapting it to accommodate this function or programme at best. Also in this case, a limited or no space is left to the inspiring role of the existing building and its surrounding conditions in the

4 CANTACUZINO S., New uses for old buildings, Architectural Press, London, 1975

5 HIGHFIELD D., Rehabilitation and Re-use of Old Buildings, 1987, E & F. N. Span Ltd

6 DOUGLAS J., Building Adaptation, Elsevier, Oxford, 2006

7 PLEVOETS B., VAN CLEEMPOEL K., p. 23

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creative part of the design. The risk possibly hidden in this function assessment method is to adapt the building to the function more than selecting a new use that can fit the building’s characteristics and requirements.

 strategic approach – out of the four approaches categorized by Plevoets and Cleempoel, this last one is the most attentive to the previously mentioned ‘soft values’ that a historical or simply existing building present, in terms of materiality, general atmosphere and evocative power.

Authors and architects advocating this way of dealing with buildings’ adaptation – that focuses on the strategies applied in the intervention - have defined different strategies or set of strategies to implement reuse projects. Examples are:

 building within, building over, building around, building alongside, recycling materials or vestiges, adapting to a new function, building in the style of (Robert, seven ‘concepts of conversion’, drawn from a number of historical a contemporary cases of building reuse)

 intervention, insertion, installation (Brooker and Stone, depending on whether the meaning of the building is accepted, transformed or suppressed by the architect, designer or developer)

 additions, transformations, conversion (Jäger)

All these authors share a common interest in the original building above all the other aspects in a reuse project , acknowledging said poetic dimension of existing buildings besides presenting a discrete level of practicality in the formulation of their categories. In this they recall the position of Machado, to which the origin of the strategic approached is attributed.

Architect and critic working in the international scenario since the mid-1980s, Rodolfo Machado deemed essential the meaning of the past incorporated in the existing building and the way the designers approach it, rather than the sole physical or functional remodeling in a reuse project. In his own words: ‘[…]the past[…] itself is the material to be altered and reshaped’

. Machado introduced as well the interesting concept of old buildings as palimpsests in his 1972 publication Architecture as a Palimpsest, one of the very first dealing with the specific topic of building reuse. Through this metaphor, he explained how some architectural drawings and the resulting buildings are similar to writing spaces where the texts have been integrated with newer texts or erased to make space for new texts; remodeling an existing architecture thus can be seen as creating juxtapositions and co-presence of elements testifying the different epochs in which they have been used and transformed, as it is the case with the juxtapositions and complementarity of texts on a palimpsest.

8 MACHADO R., p. 46

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From Plevoets and van Clempoel’s analysis one can deduce that although adaptive reuse is seen by many authors as an interdisciplinary practice, most of the existing studies have been drawn from specific fields (conservation, architecture, interior architecture, engineering, sustainability) and ‘do often not aim to reach an interdisciplinary public’

– which is still true today and by some measure even understandable, given that the trend in high education around the globe is pushing towards a more and more sharp diversification and specialization in the knowledge and competences of professionals.

9 PLEVOETS B., VAN CLEEMPOEL K., Adaptive reuse as an emerging discipline: an historic survey in CAIRNS G.,

Reinventing architecture and interiors: a socio-political view on building adaptation, p.8, Libri Publisher, London, 2013 (web article without page numbers)

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iv CONTRIBUTION OF THE STUDY

Although the reuse of redundant buildings in its broader meaning is a topic that started to appear in bookshelves and among academic titles already some fifty years ago, the number of the studies carried out focusing on the specific subject of the adaptive reuse of redundant religious buildings is extremely limited.

It is even harder, if possible at all, to encounter a thorough studies that treats the topic from the point of view of the cultural differences between Italy and the Netherlands and of how these differences influence the effective implementation of adaptive reuse interventions.

Moreover, the number of Italian publications on this subject is quite scarce, albeit the phenomenon of the reuse of dismissed religious buildings is a growing one. This is being investigated by few scholars but has caught the attention of numerous students, conducting master thesis on the adaptive reuse, although mostly of industrial buildings. The common and perceived feeling is that Italy is still too attached to its religious traditions and that churches are, as a consequence, still untouchable, while in reality the number of realized adaptations of redundant religious buildings attest to a different reality.

Regarding the Dutch situation, most of the information on the topic are to be found on the internet, on web articles, urban and architecture forums and platforms or are provided by institutional websites or websites of organizations set up ad hoc by the government. However, some scholars and researchers from different fields of study are showing a growing interest in the topic of adaptive reuse, and issuing

publications about specific aspects of it, such as the economic, technical or sociological ones.

This study aims at casting some light on the current state of the practice of adaptive reuse (with reference to projects completed in the last two decades) and to compare its specific situation and characteristics in Italy and the Netherlands. This comparison is made interesting by the solid architectural tradition of both countries and, at the same time, by the existence of particular historic, religious and cultural diversities that have resulted in a significantly divergent consideration of former cult buildings and, consequently, in the approach to their reuse.

The research is focused on one particular typology – the redundant religious buildings: such buildings, and

churches especially, hold a very intense and wide cultural significance and their use or reuse or the

approach to their ‘disposal’ reveals much of the societies and communities to which they belong and the

way they are currently changing. In this, the paper might also provide an insight into some social and

geographical issues, for it mentions phenomena such as secularization and cultural mixing in the two

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European countries, and hints at the changing mentality of planners, technicians and legislators under the pressure of changing economic, cultural and urban conditions.

As the title reports, the study is conceived as a comparative analysis into an integrated approach; the intention is thus to compare Italy and the Netherlands as related to the reuse of former cult buildings taking into consideration the various and diverse aspects within the realm of society, economy and architecture, trying to show how these aspects are interrelated and what is their relative influence on the reuse outcomes, as a specific combination of multiple factors can imply the success or the forfeit of a project. A comparison such as the one attempted in this study can be of value for both architects and other professionals interested in the topic, as it can indicate the major faults encountered in a number of realized projects or give some ideas or contamination for new ones.

On a more practical level, this work also provides specific data about how different technical solutions are applied in contemporary reuse of religious buildings, pointing out the major critical situation that this kind of interventions can implicate.

On the whole, this thesis wants to be a little contribution or a starting point for future researchers interested in this topic and in the aspects that can determine the difference in the spreading of this

architectural practice, where the choice of two highly different geographical, political, cultural and religious

realities such as Italy and the Netherlands might help to understand which factors can influence the most

the conceiving and implementing of these kind of projects.

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PART I

I ADAPTIVE REUSE

I.I DEFINITIONS OF ADAPTIVE REUSE

In order to clarify the concept of Adaptive Reuse, it might be helpful for the reader to first go through the definitions of this practice available from the literature. Below are reported some of the most significative definitions in chronological order of publication.

However, some scholars, like Plevoets and van Cleempoel have remarked that the term ‘adaptive reuse’, besides not having a sole definition yet, is still not fully established in the minds of people involved in the design and construction industries either. For this reason, a number of projects are not currently labelled under this denomination, which results in a lack of classification and consequently in a possible exclusion of some interesting adaptive reuse cases in typological studies of the practice.

A concise, but interesting definition comes from the Dutch author and spokesman of the Cultural Heritage Agency in the Netherlands, Ben de Vries, as an answer to the question ‘what is adaptive reuse and has it changed over time?’, to which the answer was: ‘It is an increasing ideological solution’, further explaining that ‘adaptive reuse may be more about safeguarding the values that people attach to the building than it is about saving the building for its own sake or for other practical reasons’

.

From a more sustainability-oriented point of view, an exhaustive definition can be found in an academic work by Yung and Chan: ‘Adaptive reuse of buildings is a form of sustainable urban regeneration, as it extends the building’s life and avoids demolition waste, encourages reuses of the embodied energy and also

10 DE VRIES B., p. 51