REVALUE. Het herwaarderen van bouwkundig erfgoed als een gesitueerde ontwerppraktijk van zorg en herstel. Via Canvas, Cartografie, Circuit en Experiment

This dissertation is titled REVALUE: Revaluing Architectural Heritage Preservation as a Situated Design Praxis of Care and Repair. Through Canvas, Cartography, Circuit, and Experimentation. The title reflects the central ambition of this research: to reposition Architectural Heritage Preservation (AHP) as a situated design praxis—rooted in awareness, responsiveness, and imagination that guide how we observe, interpret, and act within the built environment. In this context, care and repair are not only ethical orientations, but operational design values. Emerging from the urgent context of ecological crisis, the research departs from the premise that the era of architectural progress driven by unrestrained extraction and fossil fuels has ended. We now inhabit a Tabula Plena world—already saturated with material, social, and historical layers. In such a condition, the future of architecture lies not in expansion, but in engagement: building with what and who is already there. This shift is not only ecological—responding to planetary boundaries—but also cultural, prompting a revaluation of how we transform, interpret, and sustain the existing. It challenges the Curated Distance between architecture and conservation: a separation historically shaped by disciplinary boundaries, institutional frameworks, and the myth of the blank slate. Against this backdrop, Tabula Plena emerges as both critique and proposition—calling for a practice grounded in continuity, imagination and affective reuse, where care and repair become a responsive act and a future-oriented ethic. The research develops from the position of a practitioner-researcher embedded within the Belgian architectural heritage preservation studio aNNo architecten. The inquiry unfolds through situated practice, using the design process itself as a method of reflection, articulation, and transformation. Central to this process is a broadened understanding of care as stewardship—an attentiveness to what already exists—and repair as opportunity: a creative act of working with what is incomplete, layered, or in need of renewal. The central outcome of the research is the Heritage Circuit—a framework that connects care and repair to five guiding perspectives: Foundational (regulation), Critical (representation), Contextual (identity), Functional (use), and Artistic (creation). These perspectives are grounded in the embodied knowledge of architectural conservation, yet reinterpreted through the lens of situated design praxis—supporting a more imaginative, regenerative, and culturally responsive engagement with the existing built environment. The subtitle—Through Canvas, Cartography, Circuit, and Experimentation—encapsulates the methodological arc. It begins with Canvas, a reflective stage that situates the work within wider ecological and disciplinary concerns. Cartography maps the practice of aNNo architecten, identifying patterns, roles, and recurring design logics. Circuit introduces the Heritage Circuit, the five-perspective model that links critical heritage theory with design thinking. Finally, through Experimentation—most notably in the Kuip van Gent heritage masterplan—this framework is tested in real-world contexts. Together, these four phases constitute a recursive research structure that mirrors the ethos of care and repair it seeks to promote. In sum, the title expresses the project's core proposition: that architectural heritage preservation can be revalued—as a situated, iterative, and imaginative design praxis—when grounded in the intertwined principles of care and repair. This shift enables preservation to move beyond technical mastery and management toward a responsive, future-oriented architectural practice.