DETAIL 1-2.2017

Refurbishment, Conversion

Many buildings are used in different ways over the course of their lives. The British artist Damien Hirst, for example, shows his art collection in listed rooms that were built 100 years ago as a theater workshop and have recently been masterfully converted and extended by Caruso St John Architects (page 56ff.). The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, on the other hand, uses the Hanseatic city's former Kaispeicher warehouse as its base and clearly sets itself apart from its historic substructure. On January 11, the controversial project by Herzog & de Meuron will finally open; our editor Frank Kaltenbach has already been on site and gives us an insight in this issue (page 4ff.).

With the January&February issue, we focus on refurbishments, conversions and extensions. These are not always associated with conversions; many interventions also improve existing concepts. The museum in the Dutch nature park De Biesbosch blends seamlessly into the surrounding polder landscape after Studio Marco Vermeulen's conversion. And the historic palace of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi on the Grand Canal in Venice has always been a commercial platform, which OMA has now converted into a luxury department store. You can read about the philosophy behind Office for Metropolitan Architecture's redevelopment projects in the interview with Reinier de Graaf (page 14ff.).