The adaptive reuse design strategies– focused on the case of the Tate Modern architectural competition

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the existing design strategies of adaptive reuse and compare the strategies with the significant case, Tate Modern, which was converted from a power plant into a museum through competition. It analyses the winning architect’s strategies compared to other participating architects’ and how they made the conversion successful. This paper uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to analyze the strategies by comparing the competition brief, the minutes of the assessors, the drawings of design proposals, and interviews. The research reveals that the winning architect better understood the potential of the original building and employed a strategy of amplifying it by adding the least architectural components and giving overall uniformity to the old and new elements instead of contrasting them. They made the space integrating and multi-layered, not a dry background nor a distracting space but a challenging space for new art. This result indicates that adaptive reuse has to begin with an in-depth analysis of the existing building, its potential, and stakeholder needs, unlike constructing a new one. In addition, the participating architects’ strategies went beyond the scope of the existing theories’ classification, which shows that existing theories should be supplemented with future research and revised.