On Hickam Air Force Base, on the island of Oahu, there is a battle occurring between the Air Force administration and the Hawaiian Historical society over 33 historical houses. The houses were formally officer's barracks that were constructed over 90 years ago. The houses have gained Hawaiian Historical Protection status. For the last four years, these houses, that sit on the beach looking onto the channel that leads into Pearl Harbor, have sat empty. The Air Force has decommissioned them because they operate too inefficiently, and lay in an "accidental potential zone" for commercial aircraft. Three options have been proposed for the handling of the houses:1. An adaptive reuse project is carried out changing the function of the houses to commercial uses.
2. The houses are to be moved to an alternative location and renovated.
3. The houses are demolished.
In my thesis, I wish to investigate which option (definitely not the third option) would be most suitable for the units, and to carry that option through the design stage. Does a historical building lose its historical value when removed from its original context? Will an adaptive reuse strategy deteriorate from the building's historical significance? If relocation is the best option, how does one choose an alternative site? There are many questions that can be raised. I do not yet have an argument, or statement, to create a thesis with but I believe that there is potential in this debate that is taking place in Hawaii.
What a neat problem. Are you specifically interested in historical preservation? This project will open up some interesting questions as you've pointed out. This will also make you deal with a real-world issue that is being faced all across the country: what to do with historical buildings. In older countries there are layers of history beneath every surface but this is probably the first built work on this site in Hawaii. Does that make the debate harder or easier?
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a good problem to me. The question of adaptive reuse is an interesting one. I would suggest that historical preservation does not necessarily mean the keeping something exactly as it was. Too often in the US, I think, preservation movements are reactionary and limiting, using history as a ceiling rather than a springboard. It needn't be that way. Check out Columbia University's journal Future Anterior:
ReplyDeletehttp://beta.arch.columbia.edu/work/publications/futureanterior