This handbook provides a timely theoretical and historical examination of conversion architecture.
Conversion ranks first among the issues currently facing construction policymakers, architects, and the real estate industry. The debate around climate change, discussions about shortages of raw materials, and the resulting proposals for moratoriums on demolition and new construction, in particular, make refurbishing and converting existing buildings and sites an absolutely indispensable alternative. The subject is timely given the current conditions of architectural production.
Before the twentieth century, the practice of conversion was typically a slow-moving process and a simple economic, technical, and social necessity. However, in the early- to mid-twentieth century, this continuity of architectural transformation processes had been severed by the rise of the consumer society. In light of this singular disruption in architectural history, which was marked by the imperative of new construction, the systematic perspective laid out here through the concept of transformation encourages discussion of strategies that can evolve into approaches to solving current and future challenges.
The handbook Architektur in Transformationsgesellschaften presents a pioneering, comprehensive, theoretical, and historical examination of the subject. It brings together twenty essays by authors specializing in architectural history, architectural theory, historic preservation, and history of technology, as well as practicing architects and landscape architects.