Difficult Memories | Reconciling Meaning

Design interventions for the reuse of existing structures must face the question of the past and the extent to which it should be included in a new design. This is the point of departure of Int | AR, a yearly publication on current issues in international adaptive reuse and interior architecture. Departing from a traditional limited understand of interior design as geared to decoration and finishing, Int | AR looks at interior architecture as one of the professions that shape our built environment. The question about the presence of the past is particularly acute in buildings with a difficult history that are to become memorial places. From the Museum of Genocide Crimes in Cambodia via jail conversions in the USA to the revival of a defunct industrial port in Spain involving retired oil tankers, the project portraits and reflective essays discuss dealing with trauma, narration and recollection in adaptive reuse projects. Together with the title Difficult Places in landscape design, also published by Birkhauser in 2013, this publication clearly demonstrates that memorial places are no longer an exclusive domain of architectural design.