Making Built Heritage. Riegl’s Present Values in Adaptive Reuse

In response to the recent shift towards seeing the existing fabric as a resource, adaptive reuse is increasingly recognized as a valid strategy in heritage conservation. The built heritage is seen as crucial for the renewal and development of the built environment in an ecologically, economically and socio-culturally sustainable way. Ruins, however, are caught in a dichotomy between archaeological requirements and their invitation to our imagination, and thus pose a challenge to our decision-making process on both a scientific and emotional level.
This paper aims to investigate the reuse of ruins from a designerly / architectural perspective and more specifically how the intervention changes the values that can be attributed to the building. The methodology is a case study analysis of the Moritzburg in Halle/Saale, Germany, a Gothic castle ensemble with a long history of adaptations and reuses. This qualitative and practical study compares Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 1829 proposal and Nieto Sobejano Architects’ recent 2009 extension. Hence, the two proposals represent the evolving meaning of cultural heritage and reuse in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. As a framework for comparison, we use Alois Riegl’s (1858-1905) considerations of present values. While aspects such as the completeness of a work of art, preservation of architectural characteristics and a distinct contemporary signature have remained the same, the recent adaptation also recognized the existing spatial quality.