Konsept Projeler – Jean François MILOU

This week the Turkish design journal, Konsept Projeler, published an article by Jean Francois Milou, on studioMilou’s approach to the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings. The article focuses on three projects:

• Le Carreau du Temple, 19th-century marketplace in Paris transformed into a culture and sports venue.
• La Comedie Saint Etienne, a former factory in an industrial estate in eastern France.
• The National Gallery Singapore, the former Supreme Court, and City Hall transformed into Southeast Asia’s largest visual arts institution.

Among the themes explored in the article is the complexity of transforming existing buildings with respect to their innate character and their contexts:

Adaptive reuse projects are occasions to say that, as architects, we welcome the complexity of our cities’ fabric, with its layers of history, and attachments, more complex needs in relation to transforming the past in ways that usher it into the future with ongoing relevance and carefully integrated innovations. When a decision is made to adapt an existing building, it’s an occasion to enter into the challenging process of defining elegant solutions to complex design problems.’ Jean Francois Milou, 2020