Creating from destruction: top restoration/renovation architecture
You don’t always need to destroy to build, sometimes you can rebuild, extend or renovate. The following buildings are examples of where the designers, owners or keepers have decided that the heritage of the site is more deserving than a a stark, new modern structure.
ROM, Toronto, Canada
Known as ‘The Crystal’ or the ‘Lee Chin Crystal’ (after its lead donor Michael Lee Chin) is the new entrance to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum). Designed my Daniel Libeskind, completed in 2007. The aluminum and glass facade sits on a steel frame and wraps itself around the existing heritage structure of the ROM without actually touching it. A great example of deconstructivist architecture, and how careful consideration for what came before, plus an awareness for change can lead to a lovely symbiosis. [ROM]
Saustall Schaustall, Zurich, Switzerland
This is the kind of architecture that its easy to fall in love with! Architects <fnp architekten of Stuttgart renovated with 18th Century pigsty, pulling it from the brink of crumbling into a fully habitable space. superb work! Shortlisted for the 2005 AR Award for Emerging Architecture. [fnp architekten].
Bunker 599, Amsterdam, Holland
This.is.simply.stunning. Not exactly what we would call comfortably habitable, but then it isn’t meant to be. Bunker 599 by dutch practises Atelier de Lyon and Rietveld Landscape is an incision more than a renovation, destruction more than restoration. Used as a military defence from 1815 until 1940, has quite literally been sliced in 2 as part of a visitor attraction to the NDW (New Dutch Waterline). This is as stark as it is beautiful, and a great example of how change can be good, and how adaptation can breathe new life into old buildings! via [DesignBoom].
