The Bakery continues to attract attention and to fascinate. On 15 April, Katarzyna Sadowy and Maciej Czeredys presented the OpenHeritage project and the case of the Bakery at a monthly seminar of the Sustainable Architecture Group operating as part of OW SARP. As the circular economy (and circular building design) is an area of interest of several architects within the Group, the aspects of a possible re-use of the Bakery were the seminar’s main topic. Katarzyna and Maciej argued that adaptive heritage reuse provides a circular practice per se, when architects and site owners opt for an adaptation instead of demolishing and building anew. However, and it is an additional factor in the straightforward calculations of energy savings and material re-use, heritage values might be in conflict with environmental values.
Deep in discussion online
All these issues formed a basis for an informal but very fruitful discussion on the heritage and environmental values in architecture in general and on the challenge of measuring such values and evaluation of the adaptive re-use. The Bakery served as an illustrative example and posed a practical challenge for the participants of the seminar. The discussion will be continued during a bigger seminar to be held in autumn.