Interior Architecture and Adaptive Reuse: Elective Affinities

Once confined to a secondary architectural domain, referred only and in a diminishing way as matter of energetic retrofitting, interior design and conservation strategies, adaptive reuse today is recognised as a design practice of key relevance within the contemporary scenario, for its crucial contribution to addressing many of today's economic, environmental, and cultural challenges that architecture is faced with. Drawing on an extensive and rigorous critical review of subject-specific scholarly literature within both the subject areas concerned, this chapter delves into the notable relationship between adaptive reuse and interior architecture. It will be argued that, whilst the relationship between interior architecture and adaptive reuse is indeed a fact, the existence of such a relationship does not equate to an equivalence between the two, nor can this relationship be taken as face value solely based on the seemingly similar scope of these two design practices – that is, alteration and/or creation of interior spaces. Instead, it is here suggested that the close affinity between interior architecture and adaptive reuse must be critically interrogated as part of a continuous and forward-looking exploration of interior architecture as a discipline, its specificities, and traditions, for this can help better understand interior architecture's relevance in the contemporary architectural scenario.