Every time a historic building is re-designed and re-interpreted we learn a little more. Cultural sustainability and cultural production in buildings within buildings

Project description

It is somehow always something gratifying about working with sustainability in architecture and more exigencies have gradually come to the fore of the profession in the name of sustainability. It surfaces traits like understanding, caring, and abilities to connect with people, nature, or culture. Environmental sustainability and social sustainability have had their own glory period of making waves in architecture. As for cultural sustainability, these waves unfurl over broader debates about understanding architecture not of objects but of relations and about an anthropological conception of culture as something dynamic and in constant flux. This conceptual framework might shape and add to our understanding of both the agency and relevance of the profession. Accordingly, the architect and the building act as agents of cultural production and are active players in the process of creolization. It is a shared responsibility, by way of participating in shaping and transforming society. In the case of buildings within buildings, in which the historic material is transformed and re-purposed, it is the behaviour of the architect that may explain the result of a relational work. Typically, this kind of historic buildings fall under a grey area as for the regulation and institutional protection and more often than not become subject to political marketing or land speculation. Through the case study of the former Jewish elderly home in Bucharest, the essay proposes a discussion of an architecture that in between political gesture and commercial manipulation constitutes specific relations with history and culture. Likewise, it addresses timeless questions about the ontology of the objects, moral responsibility, and cultural awareness. Finally, it asks “what can we learn from this?”