International Conference on Adaptive Reuse. Volume 1
Beyond Taxonomy: Adaptive Reuse. Phenomenographies Design Driven Research
This research explores adaptive reuse within the contested terrain of post-communist industrial ruins in Romania, where heritage discourses have long neglected production and labor-related architecture.
Drawing on phenomenographic methodologies and situated design practices, the work proposes a critical and creative engagement with derelict industrial sites, reframing them not as static relics but as heterotopias—spaces of deviation imbued with complex social, political, and spatial entanglements.
In response to cultural amnesia and speculative real estate pressures, the study advocates for "protection through transformation," where adaptive reuse becomes a mode of cultural resistance and collective memory preservation. The approach diverges from conventional documentation or musealisation strategies by employing hybrid visual tools—hand drawings, video vignettes, and spatial interventions—that embrace the ambiguity and "dirty concepts" inherent in these fragile contexts.
Two main self-authored case studies, set in the Transylvanian cities of Hunedoara and Sibiu, serve as design laboratories, revealing how architectural acts of drawing, walking, and filming can produce epistemic artifacts and catalyze community re-engagement. Rather than seeking formal completion, these interventions operate within temporal and spatial voids, generating multi-scalar responses that resist reductive binaries such as old/new or use/disuse.
The paper contributes a methodology that positions adaptive reuse as an iterative, phenomenographic process—one that disrupts prevailing preservationist narratives while remaining deeply attentive to site specificity, historical trauma, and the evolving materialities of ruin. By merging design, history, and critical theory, this work expands the possibilities of architectural reuse, not as nostalgic reclamation, but as a form of spatial justice that enables sustainable transformation of existing sites and buildings endagered by predatory and invasive building practices.
Design as Intervention
Protection through Intervention
"Protection though Transformation: Feminist design theory between preservation and architectural Transformation"
Lena Beetz, Christian Dietz, Aaron Wunner und Miriam Zimmermann, Neuwerk #12 - Magazin für Designwissenschaften: "Intervention", Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle
Initiative Haus Marlene Poelzig
Abriss und Aufbruch
The publication is issued by the initiative Haus Marlene Poelzig, which was founded in 2020 to save the building from impending demolition. Despite numerous actions, events, and 5,000 collected signatures in support of its preservation, the unique structure — an outstanding testament to the work of female architects in the Weimar Republic — could not be saved. In November 2021, excavators cleared the property at Tannenbergallee 28.
What remains, however, are the diverse research and investigative findings about the house and its architect, compiled by members of the initiative and now being published for the first time. Also remaining — and especially important — are the many themes, thoughts, questions, and yes, even appeals to scholarship and heritage conservation, raised by Marlene Poelzig’s biography, the architecture of the house, and its history, right up to the circumstances of its demolition. These are issues that deserve ongoing awareness and advocacy, now and in the future.
The book traces these topics through a walk through the house. In doing so, the building comes to life again in images and text, while also being reimagined: each room viewed on this walk becomes a site for contemporary academic and societal questions. These include authorship within couples and collectives in architecture, equality and feminisms, care work and architecture, archival practices, and ultimately heritage conservation, preservation of substance, and protest culture.
Chapter "Genies und Gespenster"
Order it at URBANOPHIL VERLAG
Nordic journal for artistic research
ViS - Artistic Research in Architecture
Design Phenomenographies for Industrial Wastelands
The long-neglected industrial wastelands of Romania present themselves as heterotopias in need of help. Post-Communist industrial ruins form a link to a multi-layered and difficult past, and their systemic erasure has contributed to a collective amnesia that perpetuates historical trauma and denies the local population access to the landscapes, natural and artificial, that tie them to a shared past and a collective cultural identity. This contribution aims to illustrate one methodology of bridging the gap between preservation through museumification and invasive architectural intervention. In this context, artistic and design-driven research practices can enable the emergence of ephemeral creative spaces that foster engagement with industrial heritage and reach beyond commodification and capitalist exploitation.
View the Exposition @ResearchCatalogue 🖤
ca2re +
CA2RE +
As part of my doctoral research, I have contributed to the CA2RE+ book series. The publication identifies the long-term development goals and potentials of Design-Driven Doctoral Research and addresses research done within the proliferating research-by-design field and situates DDDr in an academic context of research.
Learn more here:
https://ca2re.eu/ca2replus/books/
https://ca2re.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/CA2RE_3.pdf
Download books here:
https://ca2re.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021_10_03_CA2RE_STRATEGIES_screen.pdf
kontextur
AI in Architecture: Awe and Autophagia
Opinion Piece for KNTXTR
«The algorithm is not only prone to corruption – it was never innocent to begin with..»
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Greenwashing in Design Education
Opinion Piece for KNTXTR
«It appears that architecture schools are buying into an erroneous dichotomy of beauty vs. sustainability and are struggling to marry didactic tradition with the architecture and construction practices the climate emergency requires.»
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Master Of None
Opinion Piece for KNTXTR
«The prevailing reality for most employed architects is the continuous confrontation with an anachronistic view of the occupation and a (perceived) inability to imagine another working model from within a dysfunctional system.»
Design history society
Hidden Histories: Gender in Design interview
Interview with The Design History Society on feminist spatial practices.
Constructive Disobedience
An Experimental Methodology in Architecture
Edited by: Matthias Ballestrem, Katharina Benjamin, Helga Blocksdorf
more to come...
I2DS - drawing across university borders