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This issue of Speech is dedicated to working with old buildings. It is difficult to find a single word that encompasses this topic, as there are so many different terms: reconstruction, renewal, renovation, revitalisation, regeneration… Usually they are used in conjunction with terms such as expansion, extension, transformation, conversion, change of function or re-adaptation.

It is for that very reason, that it was so difficult finding an appropriate title for this issue. All the terms quoted here only describe what happens to a functionally obsolete (and sometimes not particularly old) building, when the choice between demolition and preservation is made in favour of the latter. These are the operations which have to be carried out these days for the building to be able to continue its existence and be used to the full – so it can live again. Usually this opportunity presents itself to buildings that have fallen into decline, that are still standing upright, but life has ebbed away from them – one could probably describe them as being in a state of 'clinical death'. Yet they can be saved and returned to the living – they can be given a 'new life'. This is the reason why we chose that very expression as the title of this issue. It was also chosen because the other terms quoted above denote only ways and means, by which this worthy goal can be achieved, many of which may be very different.

Without pretending to be all-embracing (which in any case would be impossible), we wished to show the multitude of these opportunities – examples of the successful integration of old and new, demonstrating the validity of these different approaches – and also the depth and intricacy of the problems stemming from the very notion of a historic building and the preservation of its architectural heritage alike, including industrial structures, townscape and 20th century modernism.