6. November 2024
Photo: René Dürr, courtesy of Caruso St John Architects
The Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture in London has announced that, in response to climate change and the urgent need to “cultivate careful use and reuse of materials and space,” next year it will start offering a new post-professional program in Conservation and Reuse.
Although the AA is far from the first school to offer a degree program focused on conservation and adaptive reuse, the new Conservation and Reuse program is notably the first new program at the AA in ten years. It is indicative of the need for architects to address climate change and adaptive reuse being one of the most important ways of doing so. As such, numerous universities are now offering master's programs in conservation and adaptive reuse and/or pivoting their historic preservation programs to also embrace concerns of sustainability and climate change.*
This is how the AA frames its program: “The program’s scope reaches beyond buildings to incorporate landscapes, environments and wider material culture, both tangible and intangible. Its curriculum explores historical and theoretical frameworks of conservation, encouraging participants to engage with questions of value and heritage from a critical standpoint and to examine the spheres of implication in which objects and buildings are embedded. This enquiry takes place alongside the testing of new and established construction techniques for making and remaking, and a focus on developing practical skills. The program will foster future-orientated practice by emphasizing how regulatory frameworks, commercial attitudes and practical actions could be transformed by a better understanding of the factors that influence what we choose to conserve, and how we do so.”
When it launches in September 2025, the Conservation and Reuse program will offer Master of Arts (MA) and Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) pathways. More details are on the AA website.
Herzog & de Meuron transformed an old power plant in Brooklyn into Powerhouse Arts (Photo: John Hill/World-Architects)
*Just a few of the other schools with conservation and reuse programs in architecture:- Carlton University, Architectural Conservation and Sustainability Engineering
- Griffith College, Diploma in Conservation, Sustainability & Adaptive Reuse
- Manchester School of Architecture, MA in Architecture and Adaptive Reuse
- New York University, MA in Historical and Sustainable Architecture
- Rhode Island School of Design, MA in Interior Studies: Adaptive Reuse
- University of Miami, MSA in Historic Preservation and Adaptive Reuse