research

Requalification

/riːˈkwɒlɪfɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/

In a broad sense, requalification implies the emergence of a new quality. The term qualify is here related to the term quality, referring to a list of essential or acquired properties of a person, object or space. Requalification, therefore, refers to a process of change in which a new quality, which is different from the previously attributed one, is acquired. It also includes possible recognition and reinterpretation of latent, pre-existing values. In addition, it seeks ways to enhance the complex value system of objects (Baudrillard 1996), which not only consists of quantitative (functional, economic) values but also includes qualitative ones, such as symbolic and sign values. Requalification can be understood as an aesthetic process in itself, a novel recovery of the aesthetics that emerge through processes that involve artistic sensibility. Such aesthetics celebrate the embodied energies and memories of (urban) artefacts.

In general, when it comes to design practice, many terms with the prefix ‘re’ refer to a resource approach strategy, such as reuse, recovery, recuperation, restoration, renovation, refurbishment, repurposing, readjustment, reconfiguration, remodelling and reassembling (Wong 2016). These terms are about action, aimed at extending the life of objects, buildings and spaces by creating a new cycle. Requalification can emerge from diverse design strategies prefixed ‘re’; however, its achievement is a reaching new quality and new aesthetic value which came up from the very juxtaposition of new and old.

The essence of requalification is not about what and how to do with existing urban artefacts, but more about how new meanings are triggered. As meaning is always at the core of culture, requalification clearly refers to cultural sustainability because it helps ensure the continuity of artefacts and at the same time stimulate new creativity to reinterpret and transform them. Here, the challenge regards the scale of the intervention. Many requalification practices are realised from the scales of artefacts up, towards the scales of architecture; thus, it could be applied at the urban scale and territory, so that the meaningful places can be created.

extracted text from:

Davisi Boontharm, “Aesthetics of Requalification: What I See in the Museums of Innocence”, in The Aesthetics of Architecture – Beyond Form. International Yearbook of Aesthetics, Volume 20, eds. Miško Šuvaković and Vladimir Mako (Belgrade: University of Belgrade - Faculty of Architecture, International Association for Aesthetics, The Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia, 2020), 130-141.

Tokyo Requalified

an on going research project within the Tokyo Studies at I-AUD, Meiji University

We examine in Tokyo how architects and designers contribute to new meaning through requalification. We focus also on social ability that can rethink, care and reattribute the new life and lived experience to building. Here, only a selected list is presented from which we can examine their narratives of recovery and aesthetic achievements.

What I See in the Museums of Innocence” in The Aesthetics of Architecture – Beyond

International Yearbook of Aesthetics, Volume 20

By using the Museum of Innocence as a referential case of requalification, the paper discusses and theorises this concept and explore its quality of aesthetics.

Creative Milieux of Fashion and Reuse in Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore

Journal of Urban Design Volume 20, 2015 - Issue 1 : Creative Milieux: How Urban Design Nurtures Creative Clusters

This paper explores bottom-up urban regeneration in Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore. It looks at the contribution of specific local creativities which, in association with an increasingly popular practice of the reuse of existing urban artefacts, provides a critical contribution to local urban culture. These synergies between reuse and local creativities seem to be capable of generating alternatives to the dominant development trends. Those alternatives promote the local, the ordinary and the banal to the benefit of urban quality. A specific focus of the paper is on requalification of existing places by bottom-up fashion-related activities.

Tokyo Requalified

The narratives of recovery

forthcoming in a+u 2021

Urban Design for Super Mature Society

The Journal of Public Space

ISSN 2206-9658

2019 | Vol. 4 n. 4

With our main interest in the research on requalification, the design studio was seeking to explore this concept in urban design scale. This design-research studio tried to identify and later applied the keywords with prefix “RE-s” as statement and conceptual thinking in the production of space.