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Review by Julian Harrap of Julian Harrap Architects. BD Magazine, April 2010.

his is a richly illustrated guide to some 80 architectural schemes of conversion and adaptation of historic buildings, civic or industrial landscapes.

Professional photographs with a few plans accompany a brief descriptive text. The book runs to some 240 pages and is divided into three sections. The first claims to illustrate architecture added to existing buildings, while the second deals with interiors of existing buildings. The third looks at architectural interventions, which entirely change the character of the existing building structure.

On reading the book, it is difficult to sustain the argument that there are three separate categories of work. Many of the projects are similar in a deconstructive way to the point where the designers appeared antagonised by the restraint of the existing fabric. The reviews revealed that only 15 of the projects allowed the historic fabric to survive in any meaningful form.

Categories of building types covered included churches, civic buildings, ruins, houses, landscapes and townscapes, together with warehouses and depositories.

Nowhere in the book was there any account of the preparation of a conservation plan with its attendant levels of significance, which is essential for this calibre of architecture. Any willingness to intervene in the state of the ruin seemed to be entirely absent as a concept.

This book demonstrates how far distinguished and competent architectural practices are from understanding and engaging with the meaning and value of existing historic building.

Reviewed by John Hill, archidose

History for architects often presents a paradoxical situation: old buildings preserved are respected yet contrasted by new interventions. History has stopped becoming a model, in effect becoming canvases for anything-goes designs layered upon the existing. This is hardly a negative situation, though the variety of responses to different scenarios illustrate a gradient of respect between the past and present. That variety can be found throughout the pages of Build-On, a collection of primarily European projects where new buildings confront old ones in many creative ways. They range from barely apparent interventions like feld72's Million Donkey Hotel (this week's dose) to the strikingly oppositional, like Coop Himmelb(l)au's Akron Art Museum. The projects are collected into three categories (Add-On, Inside-Out, Change Clothes) that describe the different perceived stances on the new relating to the old. The two examples above fall into the second and first categories respectively, and the third includes a number of industrial reuse projects, like the High Line, where architecture and/or landscape puts a new look on an old structure, not just a new use.

In comparison to other collections of contemporary architecture, the focus on tactics of designing with existing buildings is refreshing. Many books of this ilk opt to use building types for definition. But strategies of reuse that cross over the boundaries of function can have a great impact on architecture, especially when demolition is the least sustainable option faced in areas with existing buildings. The quality of the projects in this collection should be commended, but I yearned for something to bind the projects together, something to look at them relative to each other. Diagrams describing how each project related to the existing would have been helpful; as is a building section here and there is all that is proffered beyond photographs. The drawings, when provided, are valuable, but my comment points to the importance of the extra effort, in this case going beyond even the strongest of themes to create a book that stands out from the myriad other collections of contemporary architecture. It's a relevant consideration as blogs and other online publications blanket the target audience with more and more eye candy and make books like this a dying breed.