Learning from the secondary: Rethinking architectural conservation through ‘barn architecture’

Abstract

This article explores material culture and peoples’ engagement with built environments from the perspective of vernacular architecture, adaptive reuse and more specifically barn-inspired architecture. Departing from actual cases of conversions that involve material reuse and initiate a correspondence between various more-than-human actors and temporal dimensions, we join the debate around sustainable architecture. We understand sustainability rather as transmission than as arresting change, and we have taken into consideration a broad scope of heritage, including masses of unlisted and abandoned buildings. Adaptive reuse and other comparable forms of using and caring for the outworn existing building stock are practices intended to prolong the lifespan of material resources through reinterpretation. Through barn architecture, we suggest alternative approaches and concepts, such as mending and care, to both fields of architecture and architectural conservation.