Uncomfortable Conversions

Keetah Konstant and Esmond Sage

We will attempt to design the most resistant anti-conversion housing, and then try to convert it.

Mull Room, Augustine United Church

A current orthodoxy in architecture and urbanism is that one measure of a good building or street is its adaptability. We can’t imagine what the future holds, and how long the viability of a building’s initial purpose will last. A building that is no longer ‘fit for purpose’ is an architectural failure. Its demolition and redevelopment wastes resources and produces more pollution than the alternative, no matter what mitigations are employed. Therefore, the more receptive a building is to adaptation, conversion, subdivision, extension, the better. In this workshop, we invite participants to explore if this is always the case. We question how the planning system, developers, and private landlordism have converted defunct offices into flats with only one window, or ‘ingeniously’ subdivided family homes into ever smaller 1-bedroom units. In these cases, the buildings’ flexibility may preserve familiar facades or minimise environmental damage, but disturb the lives of the people living behind. Can we design spaces that resist this subversion for profit? What does an ‘anti-conversion’ home look like? Is it even possible or desirable? At this workshop we will attempt just that, playing architects before switching round and testing our concepts against the urge of landlords and developers to make every inch of floorspace count. No architectural or artistic experience or skill is necessary. All materials will be provided.

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Uncomfortable Conversions

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Uncomfortable Conversions

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