Buildings, Memory, and Mediation
- 13 hours ago
- 4 min read
Exploring peacebuilding as a lens for adaptive reuse
I have been thinking about the relationship between peacebuilding and adaptive reuse.
At first, the connection may not seem obvious. One operates in the aftermath of conflict, working with fractured societies, contested narratives, and fragile relationships. The other is often understood as a technical or architectural process, adapting existing buildings for new use.
But the more I work across both, the less separate they appear.
Peacebuilding is, at its core, about mediation. It is about working between positions that do not easily align. It is about listening carefully, not only to what is said, but to what is held back. It is about recognising that multiple truths can exist at the same time.
It requires patience, restraint, and an ability to identify moments where progress becomes possible.
Adaptive reuse, at its best, asks for the same qualities.
A building is not a neutral object.
It carries history. It carries use. It carries decisions made over time, some careful, some careless.
When we intervene, we are not starting from zero. We are entering into something that already exists. This is where the parallel begins.
A building speaks:
In exploring this connection, I have started to borrow a simple narrative device: I allow the building to speak.
This is not an attempt to anthropomorphise for effect. It is a way of shifting perspective, of asking what might emerge if we treated buildings not as passive objects, but as participants in their own transformation.
You arrive with a plan.
You always do.
You measure me.You draw me.You decide what I should become.
You call it clarity.
But I was here before your plan.
I have been altered before.
Some changes worked.Some did not.
All of them remain.
You look at me and see a problem.
Obsolete.Inefficient.Out of date.
You rarely ask how I came to be this way.
If you listened, I could tell you.
Where I was strong.Where I was forced.Where I adapted.Where I was ignored.
You try to simplify me.One use.One identity.
It makes your decisions easier.
But I hold more than one story.
Some of them sit well together.
Some do not.
If you move too quickly, you will miss this.
You will remove what you do not understand.
And then you will wonder why something feels lost.
I do not need to remain unchanged.
But I do need to be understood.
Why this matters
In peacebuilding, there is a recognition that conflict is rarely resolved by imposing a single narrative.
Attempts to simplify complex histories, to identify one “correct” version of events, tend to deepen division rather than resolve it.
Progress comes through a different approach.
Through acknowledging complexity. Through allowing multiple perspectives to coexist. Through creating conditions where differences can be negotiated rather than erased.
There is a useful parallel here with buildings. In practice, many structures become subject to a form of reduction. They are labelled.
Undervalued. Overlooked. Dismissed as inefficient or obsolete.
In some cases, they are treated as problems to be removed rather than assets to be understood.
This is not unlike the way people or communities can be “othered”, defined primarily by perceived limitations rather than potential.
Buildings can also carry the legacy of violence. This may be direct, physical damage, conflict, or destruction. Or it may be cultural or structural, neglect, displacement, erasure of meaning, or the imposition of new uses that disregard what came before. In peacebuilding, processes such as reintegration recognise that recovery is not immediate. It requires time, trust, and the careful rebuilding of relationships. There is an argument to be made that buildings require something similar. Not in a literal sense, but as a way of thinking. Adaptive reuse, seen through this lens, becomes a form of mediation.
Between past and present.
Between competing uses.
Between economic pressure and social value.
It asks not only what a building can become, but how that transition is negotiated. This is where skills developed in peacebuilding become relevant.
Listening. Facilitating dialogue. Recognising bias. Understanding competing claims of value.Identifying moments where alignment becomes possible.
These are not abstract qualities; they are practical tools and they help avoid premature decisions. They help reveal potential that might otherwise be overlooked, and they help ensure that intervention does not become erasure.
The use of a narrative voice, allowing the building to “speak”, is part of this exploration.
It is a way of slowing the process down.
Of creating space for reflection before action.
Of reminding us that what we are working with is not empty.
This is not about sentimentality.
It is about accuracy.
Buildings are not neutral containers.
They are layered, contested, and often misunderstood.
To work with them effectively requires more than technical resolution; it requires judgement, and at times, mediation.
If adaptive reuse is to respond meaningfully to the challenges we face, climate, social fragmentation, and the legacy of conflict, then expanding the way we approach buildings is not optional.
It is necessary.
This is one lens through which that expansion can begin.
Frazer
