| Event Start Date: 19th January 2022 | Event End Date: 19th January 2022 | Event Venue: Virtual, Australia |
The utilisation of assemblage theory in the study of the repurposing of redundant city centre space
Pacific Rim Real Estate Society 2022, Virtual, Australia
Dr Victoria Lawson, Dr Cath Jackson and Dr Allison Orr
Abstract
Repurposing a building, rather than demolishing, means a new scheme tends to start from a very inefficient scenario. This paper seeks to better understand how city centre repurposing schemes are shaped by property-related factors, across five case study developments where former uses had contracted or ceased altogether. Faced with the subsequent empty space, the paper critically examines 1) the extent to which a building’s material content, and that of its surroundings, determines decisions at the feasibility stage of city centre repurposing schemes, and 2) which material aspects assisted or resisted the actual act of change, once repurposing works had commenced. In this vein, initial empirical results suggest the importance of innovation in overcoming the sheer space taken-up by infrastructure passing vertically through a building and in communicating externally what’s changing internally, and the importance of flexibility in planning policy to cater for uses in the ascendance, in these building ‘shells’.