Change of Use

Definition

Change of use is Michael Guggenheim's term ("Formless Discourse: The Impossible Knowledge of Change of Use," Candide 4, 2011) for the process by which a building's use is altered — "which can happen without any material change to the building" — and it is the process-concept behind interior architecture's engagement with the existing stock. Its theoretical peculiarity is twofold. First, it is dominated by the sociological register: "A building is erected and in our perception, its technological and semiotic properties are more or less intact, stable, and guide users. By changing use, which can happen without any material change to the building, the sociological properties take command: the building is now largely defined by its uses" — "the material properties become relatively less important to the sociological ones." Second, it is unclassifiable: "Change of use itself simply does not fit the established classificatory order of architecture. It cannot be classified into categories such as building type, style, structural method, regional origin, name of architect, or materials used." The literature on the subject is therefore "formless": "the architectural discourse on change of use is a result of this inability to see, recognize, and talk about the processes of change, even when looking at changed buildings"; "Besides failing to establish a set of terms, the literature on change of use fails to classify its object."

In Brooker's chapter, change of use is installed as interior architecture's central process: "Throughout the change of use processes, or the building's reuse and appropriation, Guggenheim suggested that the sociological or interactive properties were dominant. The building was to be defined by its new use." The category that replaces type is occupation: "In the processes of creating interior architecture, forms of occupation are inevitable, as opposed to types of 'function.'" See adaptive-reuse, appropriation, typology.

The Three Approaches (Latour, via Guggenheim)

Working from Latour's We Have Never Been Modern, Guggenheim identifies three methods of understanding existing architecture, which he develops as:

Technological — "the understanding of the building through function, and how a particular use affected the user. In other words technologically oriented thinking positions the building through type or use."
Semiotic — "focuses on the sign or symbol of the building, rather than its material aspects. The semiotic properties of a building are described as signs that prompt the user to assume a particular response. Guggenheim used the example of a church spire as a symbol of the use of the building. Its appearance instructs the user to congregate and worship beneath it."
Sociological (interactive) — "reversed the technological and semiotic determination of use, and instead informed the user to act on the building regardless of its technological or semiotic implications." During change of use, this approach dominates: "the building was to be defined by its new use."

Key Thinkers

Michael Guggenheim (named in the source, not yet paged — see log) — "Formless Discourse: The Impossible Knowledge of Change of Use" (Candide: Journal for Architectural Knowledge 4, 2011, pp. 9–36): the concept's theorist — the three approaches, the sociological dominance, the typological blindness of the literature ("They see only typological change in the buildings and are unable to grasp the process related changes"), and the classificatory failure.
Bruno Latour — the framework: We Have Never Been Modern's three methods of understanding existing architecture (buildings as technologies, signs, and interactions), which Guggenheim develops into the technological/semiotic/sociological triad.
Graeme Brooker — the disciplinary installer (2018): change of use as the process interior architecture theorizes; the conversion of Guggenheim's "formless discourse" complaint into the uncodifiability thesis ("If reuse is uncodifiable, then the processes of making architectured interiors are invaluable"); occupation against function.

Adaptive Reuse — the practice-side concept: change of use is the process adaptive reuse design enacts; reuse as "the basis of all aspects of the subject of interior architecture" (Brooker).
Typology — the classificatory order that change of use defeats: the converted courthouse "is unable to adequately express its change of use"; the literature "see[s] only typological change… unable to grasp the process related changes."
Appropriation — the wider process family: reuse and appropriation as the deliberate repositioning of elements into new contexts.
Occupant as Designer — the user-side consequence: the sociological approach "informed the user to act on the building"; the interior discipline's concern is "human occupation," while architecture until the 1970s used occupants "merely… for the purposes of scale."
Interior Architecture — the discipline whose object is the changed building: Guggenheim's "absence of the user in architectural thinking" is the reason "the interior has not been suitably represented in earlier twentieth-century spatial discourses – in particular Modernism."
Obsolescence — the cycle partner: "changes in use as well as the processes of decay, obsoletion, and reoccupation, and then the same again" (Brooker).
Function of Inhabiting — the occupation/function contrast: "forms of occupation are inevitable, as opposed to types of 'function'" — with Fred Scott's corollary that in "a functionalist model, all works of architecture stand in danger of being considered… as a waste of space."
Modernism — the discourse whose functionalist approach is "effectively rendered useless where the construction of a building is transformed via reuse or appropriation."
Metropolitan Hybrids — the intent test (Luna): occupancy change as real-estate commercialism vs. program appropriation as conceptual programming — the same process split by programmatic intent.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

The dialectics of appropriation (Brooker 2018) — the concept's disciplinary installation: Guggenheim's deficit diagnosis (the theoretical shortcoming related "to the absence of the user in architectural thinking"; occupants as scale figures up to the 1970s; "a central concern of any interior discipline is human occupation"); the Latour-derived three approaches (technological, semiotic, sociological); the sociological dominance ("By changing use… the sociological properties take command: the building is now largely defined by its uses," p. 17); the unclassifiability ("Change of use itself simply does not fit the established classificatory order of architecture," p. 19); the formless-discourse quotes (pp. 33, 19); Scott's functionalist corollary ("a waste of space," p. 5); and Brooker's inversion — the failure to classify as "an opportunity for the development of language in interior architecture."
Metropolitan hybrids: Programming for a thriving urbanity (Luna 2018) — the concept's economic register: "A direct appropriation of single-use and mixed-use buildings would require adapting an existing structure with an existing occupancy. Change in occupancy often becomes a factor of real estate commercialism" — change of use as the commercial operator (the retail appropriation of Jacobsian "good intentions": Quincy Market, Covent Garden's monoculture) versus its conceptual counterpart, program appropriation: "an existing building shell and inject a new program unrelated to the shell to create a new typology" (the jail-hotel), theorized via Tschumi's "distanciation between the architecture and the program." Where Brooker's change of use is the unclassifiable process and the sociological dominance is its law, Luna adds the intent test: the same process (occupancy change) divides into real-estate commercialism and conceptual programming by its programmatic intent — and the conceptual version generates "unimaginable spaces that could not have been achieved otherwise." See metropolitan-hybrids, adaptive-reuse.
source-notes/solomon-2018-public-spheres-hong-kong

Open Questions

Guggenheim calls for "inventing a language that is based around process"; Brooker answers that the failure to classify is an opportunity. Is a process-based classificatory language for change of use possible at all — or does any vocabulary (including "change of use") immediately re-type the building it describes?
The sociological dominance thesis says the converted building "is now largely defined by its uses" — but whose use? The converted courthouse-to-apartment block carries old users' traces and new users' routines; does the building hold plural uses, and does "change of use" capture the coexistence or only the succession?
If change of use can happen "without any material change to the building," is it a spatial concept at all — or is it the disciplinary bridge by which interior architecture claims buildings whose interiors never changed (the sociological conversion as interior architecture's minimal case)?
Guggenheim dates the user's representational absence to the 1970s — is the user's appearance in the literature (turnover studies, occupation research) a twentieth-century recovery, or has the user always been present as the untheorized remainder of every typology?