REDEFINE THE EXISTING: research-based platform for regenerative built environment
REDEFINE THE EXISTING is a research based platform for regenerative built environment focused on (mentally and physically) neglected socialist legacy. The trend of renovation does not provide any sustainable benefits in the long-term perspective, nor does it see potential for circular-based reuse. Thinking within today’s global sustainability and circular design agenda, the platform acts locally aiming to critically rethink the space and its influence on people reusing socialist building stock.
National
Lithuania
Šilutė municipality district, Juknaičiai village, Trakai municipality district
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Edgar Last name: Vladimirenko Gender: Male Age: 25 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Lithuania Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Naujosios Sodybos g. 7-6 Town: Trakai Postal code: 21111 Country: Lithuania Direct Tel:+370 602 62771 E-mail:edgarasvladimirenko@gmail.com
REDEFINE THE EXISTING core approach and objective is embedded in its name. While defining the EXISTING as a physical socialist legacy such as standard architecture, unique buildings and rural territories developed during the second half of the 20th century, the platform also considers the mental legacy of socialist regime. REDEFINE refers to an approach of transforming attitude as well as the environment.
REDEFINE THE EXISTING aims to change the mindset of society, seeing socialist built environment as a material resource in the context of circular development. Also, the platform seeks to promote the idea that transformation rather than renovation brings about a positive and aesthetical change in the quality of living.
The platform has already addressed the socialist legacy in Lithuania and its future. Research of neglected socialist buildings in Trakai, a workshop with architecture students and a public exhibition were the first steps to unveil the significance of this topic.
Understanding the broader context (standard socialist architecture), together with the initiative “Rebuilding the wonderful”, the platform started research on positive cases of socialist architecture transformation throughout post-socialist Europe. In collaboration with international architects, the platform curates an open atlas, expected to be a tool to educate society about the possible transformations of socialist built legacy seeing it as a resource for sustainable reuse.
The next step for the platform is to combine existing knowledge towards a broader scale of rural territories, which were heavily modernised during socialist period. Reaching out to a broader set of experts and working with the particular case of Juknaičiai village, REDEFINE THE EXISTING aims to touch on overlooked rural areas.
All of these projects illustrate the platform's guiding principle, which is based on artistic research, common gatherings, workshops, discussions and communication for raising awareness.
socialist legacy
awareness raising
transformation
artistic research
circular approach
The name of the platform REDEFINE THE EXISTING already represents our approach towards a built environment which is based on circularity and regeneration.
Reuse
Socialist urban and architectural development in Lithuania and other post-socialist countries was built on promoting certain political and economic agenda, yet the transition to private capital driven society made this built legacy fall into the decay. We see this neglected urban and architectural legacy as a resource, which could be transformed within the city’s regenerative cycle. In this way the socialist-developed built environment is put in the concepts of consumption reduction, (embodied) energy saving and recycling, which is far from today's approach towards this issue with demolition and dull renovation being at the forefront. We seek to transform this legacy, meaning to rethink the space of the building or the territory, rather than only to improve the condition for a short-term.
Circularity
The development of the built environment happened not only in heavily urbanised cities, but also interventions were made in rural areas, which left not only structures, which are alien to the surroundings, but also negatively impacted landscape and ecology. Therefore this built environment is seen as a potential pattern of care for natural and unbuilt environments, thus creating the concept of circular territories, which goes beyond architecture and urban design. In the face of the decline of towns and demography, socialist built and extended villages comes at the forefront of the need for the new concepts that could change the mindset of society as being unfruitful and devalued.
Artistic approach
The platform’s REDEFINE THE EXISTING objective is to bring about a change through artistic-led approaches like artistic research, workshops, events and close attention to design language and aesthetics of communication. The platform believes that design-based process is both inclusive and has added cultural value.
Involving local people / community
The thrilling experience of conceptualising future scenarios of transformation of the built environment in an interactive way not only brings communities together but also makes one feel like a productive member of the society by being part of the change. A hands-on approach on being involved in the process also helps one to understand the built environment's potential to be transformed and learn more about sustainable and circular approaches towards development.
The quality of rethought spaces
Promoting transformation rather than renovation, means emphasising quality of the space by critically and artistically rethinking socialist built environment legacy. Freeing urban development and architecture from ideological preconceptions, the emphasis is placed on the sense of the space and how one feels in it. Throughout the past works of the platform it was understood that there is certain people's lack of awareness of the influence of the environment and more particularly in socialist countries how has shaping human thinking through standardised projects in different locations happened.
People involved in the process
The change, which REDEFINE THE EXISTING is so eager to bring about, is very much socially-oriented. Returning people to the centre of attention, while talking about socialist architecture and urban development, the transformation is simply unimaginable without the contribution of local communities and people utilising this legacy in question.
Rural and urban territories learning from each other
By not limiting the transformation merely to urbanised areas, the platform lays the ground for linkage between urban and rural areas, thus learning from each other and creating new bonds. The attention towards transformation of socialist apartment block estates sometimes overshadows smaller settlements, which were also hostages of brutal modernisation and industrialisation, therefore both territories have something to learn from each other.
Most of the civil society doesn’t see socialist built environment as a potential for sustainable or regenerative process, simply because of its ideological layer. The platform by no means is promoting the past ideas of socialist regimes or feels somehow inspired by them. On the contrary, the aim is to emphasise that these spaces were heavily shaped by socialist and modernist ideologies, which did not see the human as a value, therefore a simple renovation or short-term upgrade does not tackle the core problem. Thinking within today’s global sustainability and circular design agenda, REDEFINE THE EXISTING acts locally seeking to critically rethink the space and how it influences people while reusing existing building stock developed during the second half of the 20th century.
Equally, the socialist legacy is not only physical but also mental, so it is important to start by changing public attitudes towards the built environment of the second half of the 20th century. Awareness raising and the change of mindset are one of the key principles and ambitions promoted by the platform. This is envisioned to be achieved by including local communities, academia, local and foreign professionals as well as decision makers in research-led design-based processes in various places in Lithuania, Trakai being the latest example of such.
While questioning the built environment around us, the concept of this platform came naturally during the studies and evolved into a group of people eager to rethink the legacy of the built environment of the second half of the 20 th century.
Later on the platform sought to engage with the stakeholders of the environment and it was so eager to make a change. First local and international stakeholders from academia, civil society and decision makers were involved to create tools and frameworks by which the built environment could be transformed and the local community could be engaged. The inclusion of the local community, which deals with this particular built environment, highlighted social division towards the legacy in question. It also made us realise that the places convey certain emotions, memories which could only be addressed by creative and design-based processes while thinking about the transformation. Thus the inclusion of international academia enriched the process with artistic and state-of-the-art tools for researching the built environment and proposing aesthetical and sensitive future solutions.
Later on the international community of architects were involved in researching and highlighting positive cases of standard socialist architecture transformation. The engagement of architects from post-socialist countries highlighted the need to share a know-how of transformation process, create a case atlas for future redevelopments and pointed out that all these countries are faced with the same question - how to deal with this physical and mental socialist heritage within the planetary boundaries in a circular/sustainable way.
Apart from focusing on the fields of architecture and urbanism, the platform includes social and artistic disciplines for enriching the research process along the way. The disciplines and knowledge fields are deeply rooted in the interdisciplinary approach of the platform. The attention towards territorial scale and understanding living patterns outside administrative boundaries made us consult the fields of geography, sociology, history and environmental science. This reflects our understanding that in order to foster sustainable outcomes, well existing conditions and identity of the places have to be kept and protected.
The field of art and design is reflected by artistic approaches, which the platform tends to utilise in order to create sensitive, but visionary future scenarios for the socialist built legacy. Yet, the whole process is accompanied by architectural thinking by setting the goal of transforming architectural and urban spaces that are hostages of socialist and modernist ideologies.
Communication is another important field for the platform as it is seen as a mean to share the findings of research to a society, thus contributing to awareness raising of sustainable development and a circular approach. Communication opens a possibility for different aesthetical choices of how the information could be presented.
One of the most innovative and meaningful characters (also being one of the main objectives of the platform) of the concept is the way the transformation of socialist built legacy is approached. In particular by encouraging a rethinking of the space itself and its configuration of such a built environment, the platform is fostering long-term sustainable outcomes in social, environmental and economic aspects. Short-term upgrade (maintaining mainly the status quo) is the most popular strategy towards renovation of architecture of the second half of the 20th century, which does not improve living conditions of current society and generations to come, nor does this short-term upgrade have longevity, therefore it is destined to many more investments in the future. Including people in the process of transformation (regeneration) we seek not only to address the need of the initial user, but also unveil the cultural and memorial layer these buildings might have, so that the transition towards more human-oriented and sustainable spaces would be not only environmentally driven, but also culturally and contextually sensitive.
Research and science communication based on design and aesthetics is an innovative character of raising awareness towards architectural and urban reuse in Lithuanian context. As for now, there are no independent researchers and artists who speak to the general public about the transformation of the built environment while emphasising the means of how this information would be communicated. An independent platform of “redefine the existing” seeks to tell the story and push towards the idea of socialist built heritage to be seen as a potential resource of transformation emphasising sustainability and circularity.
Since the socialist built environment legacy is not foreign to other Eastern European Countries (EEC), the concept is relevant to at least 18 countries, which deals with similar problems of addressing such architecture and urban development in the context of sustainability and circular design. Therefore the findings of REDEFINE THE EXSINTING could be relevant and of great interest to other EEC countries and stakeholders involved in transforming socialist mental and physical legacy.
Refined methodologies from past and forthcoming projects will create a unique approach towards addressing post socialist legacy as a resource in terms of sustainability and circular design. While working with local Lithuanian communities, who share similar negative experiences as most EEC societies, we expect to find ways how to present and educate citizens on existing built environment of the second half of the 20 th century and unveil it as a resource, containing embodied energy and materials to be reused in future development. All these approaches may be beneficial and replicated not only nationally but also tested and adapted in other EEC countries.
The main global problem that the platform aims to address is climate change. By changing the mindset of society toward the built socialist, the platform is promoting reusing buildings and territories developed during that time. Equally, it promotes the idea of circular approach by presenting neglected socialist buildings as a resource in the context of circular design.
Another important problem is shrinking cities and communities. Internal migration and the deindustrialisation of rural settlements left buildings abandoned and in the danger to be completely demolished. Platforms' attention towards smaller rural towns and its socialist building stock brings the idea of reuse and making the communities more resilient towards massive population decline and self-sufficient by using what's already existing.
The platform also address the problem of social exclusion by proposing to involve people in and be responsible for the process of transformation of their built environment and socialist legacy that surrounds them. Also by transforming neglected building stock and the mindset towards it, new future strategies of services and income sources might arise.
