AHI Architectural Heritage Intervention

“Contributing to enhancing our heritage, as the way forward for 21 st Century architecture is our raison d’être; to emphasize a diverse, rich vision that necessarily complements the intervention is our mission, and achieving it with reflexive and purposeful efforts is the challenge”.

This project, founded in, and directed since, 2011 by Ramon Calonge, Oriol Cusidó, Marc Manzano and Jordi Portal, architects and members of the Group of Architects for the Defence and Intervention in Architectural Heritage (AADIPA), has, through the years become a platform that includes four actions that are both independent and transversal.
 
The European Award, a biennial event that brings together and showcases the multiple approaches of intervention in Europe.

The International Biennial, a framework that serves to compare and gain closer insight of quality interventions in architectural heritage in non-European countries.

The digital Archive, a live and open window that provides a panoramic view of interventions in the history of our surroundings.

The Forum, a meeting place where you can participate in on-going debates about the main preoccupations and lines of thought about interventions in architectural heritage in Europe.

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Wintercircus Mahy

Wintercircus Mahy

The Wintercircus project is a good example of how to use a consistent approach in restoring a historic monument. In a situationist design, the approach is mainly about modesty and sensitivity, about protecting the great spatial and tacit qualities of the existing building and putting them to a fitting new use. The result is not so much a “polished” project as a method of preservation, where factors such as time and decay are part of a romantic reading of a building produced in a complicated historic process. In that way, this curated decay approach adheres to John Ruskin’s ideas of restoring historic buildings. The Wintercircus’s rough nature dovetails with the rising contemporary taste for raw and unfinished places that’s especially popular in subcultures. This tendency may be seen as a subconscious desire to create an escape from ongoing domestication, the domination of the digital, and a flawlessly planned and tidy environment, and instead to resurrect and to celebrate the wild, the tactile, and the spontaneous.

Author

Atelier Kempe Thill
aNNo architects
Baro Architecture
SUM Project

Collaborators

Atelier Kempe Thill: André Kempe, Oliver Thill, Marc van Bemmel (project management conception), Charline Busson, Renzo Sgolacchia, Pauline Durand, Valérie Van de Velder, Andrius Raguotis.
aNNo architects: Stijn Cools, Sofie de Ridder, Elisabeth Lehouck.
Baro Architectuur Gent & SUM Project Brussels (execution phase).
Structural, Technical Engineering, Sustainability: VK Engineers
Acoustics: VK Engineers
Landscape: Omgeving
Lighting Consultant: NO4MAD

Edition

6
Finalist

Year

2022

City

Ghent

Country

Belgium

Surface area sqm

10.870

Cost €

21.000.000

Client

Private

Original Programme

Culture

Programme

Mixed Use

© Photographer

Ulrich Schwarz

Períod

Modernism

Type of intervention

Restoration

Level of intervention

Total / Integral