Fashion-Based Adaptive Reuse and its Cultural (and Social) Meaning

The design experiences defined as adaptive reuse reflect today’s need to limit land and resources consumption, dealing instead with existing built spaces, even in the context of a widening concept of heritage valorisation. Over the last decades, this cultural and social attitude of architectural practice has been embraced by fashion houses, which – rooting themselves in historical urban scenarios and opening up to a different kind of engagement with the public – have invested in the creation of new brand spaces that recover, reuse and redevelop existing buildings. In this framework, the contribution focuses particularly on those operations that are able to activate processes of cultural transformation and enhancement, through the involvement not only of architecture, but also of art, design and craftsmanship. Acknowledging the role that these private initiatives, suspended between fashion and architectural design, have within cities means exploring their potential for the valorisation and reconversion of disused assets, encouraging the exchange of good practices and common reflection – as well as promoting an increasing awareness of the issue on the part of institutions and local administrations. To this end, the contribution investigates the expressions of this phenomenon from a threefold critical point of view: (1) architectural, analysing the design and symbolic modalities of contemporary adaptive reuse; (2) social, questioning the kinds of public engagement; (3) cultural, evaluating the consequences of these operations on a broader scale. Through the identification of some exemplary cases – from Fondazione Prada in Milan to La Caserne in Paris, passing through the projects of Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice and Fendi headquarter, hosted inside Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome – the paper aims to compose an articulated but systemic framework, in which each experience, recognised in its uniqueness and unrepeatability, can suggest parameters of the relationship between fashion and design, through the architectural project on the built heritage.