Living with Historic Architecture

In recent decades, the awareness of history and heritage has permeated the state of our built-environment. In this line of thought, preserving, conserving, and restoring historic buildings have become a major approach in architecture. Further, with growing interests of a sustainable future, preservation, conservation, restoration, and adaptive reuse gives possible avenues for sustainable designs. Preservation is to create an environment to protect and prolong the buildings’ life, while Restoration is to preserve and reveal the aesthetic and historic value, the aura, of the space. Conservation is the combination of both preservation and restoration. Overall, they relate to interests in experiencing authenticity. According to Aldo Rossi, Anthony Vidler, Leon Krier, and Walter Benjamin, authenticity can be dened as the experiences and the aura, the ability to reproduce it, and the quality of the techniques and methods used to be in the space. In practice, there are varieties of techniques and approaches in preserving, conserving, and restoring historic buildings, contingent to contexts of each case. This research is interested in exploring the relationship between preserving, conserving, and restoring historic buildings with the community that has lived in and around these buildings for a long time. It explores ways to preserve the historic buildings in their authenticity, making a living building, while stimulating the existing inhabitants or local community and activities. The research reviews literature on authenticity, preservation, conservation, and restoration, as well as on community design. It looks for architectural strategies to both bring function to the space and retain the authenticity of the building, and in which ways historic buildings could be used in the future. It analyzes successful precedents to understand design methods and techniques. It will also review the social and historical components of the buildings and what they do for the local communities. The findings will serve as a basis for design explorations for an existing historical building that has been a part of an urban community