Beyond buildings themselves: Rethinking contemporary architecture through the preservation of Modern architectural ideas

Intangible heritage, when discussed in an architectural context, is usually interpreted as being attached to a specific site or built environment. By sensibly following its historic tale, the technology and skills used for its construction, everyday life and memories connected to it, we try to illuminate its significant values and use them in the preservation, reuse or architectural additions. Even though this process is often led by architects, they tend to neglect one of their most powerful tools - architectural ideas. Modern architecture is often criticized for turning its back on local historic heritage, putting aside building traditions and ignoring the certain needs of local communities. Simultaneously, it is commonly appreciated for its radical theoretical ideas and aspirations to cure social wrongs. Dealing with modern architecture, while attending to contemporary needs, can we put aside, even just for a while, the physical building, and try to preserve its architectural ideas, not only its spaces or materiality? How can we benefit from such an approach? These questions will be discussed by three architectural proposals, developed by students in an experi mental final project stud io at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. The discussion in the studio was dedicated to rethinking Israeli modern architecture through the processes of preservation and urban design. The first project deals with the idea of flexible design through time, following prefabricated building methods developed by a group of architects in the early 1950s and implemented in a failing peripheral rural settlement; the second project tries to imagine a revitalized community in the agricultural settlement of Sarona, by creating a new reading for its formal centric master plan, drawn about seventy years ago; and the third proposal returns to the historic ideas of Megastructures, using a contemporary interpretation of these ideaste resolve the urban interruption caused by a brutalist megastructural building from the 1960s in the city of Haifa, Israel.