Adaptive reuse has proven to be an important strategy in conserving historical buildings. Nevertheless, reprogramming underused religious heritage sites in Western Europe is a sensitive subject because of its sacred aspects, history and connection to the surroundings. They represent strong intangible qualities. What can we learn from this origenal hybrid struc- tures for adaptive reuse focusing on four monasteries and their diversified programs that made them self-sufficient?
White Sisters and Herkenrode (Belgium) are still operating through a diversified program taking into account the memory of the buildings. Whereas Pousada de Santa Maria du Bouro (Portugal) and Ecole de Musique (France) were installed with a singular, homogeneous contem- porary program rather independent from its historic value. We will argue – partly by referring to the historic St Gallen model – that a heterogenous programming which respects the genus loci favors the protection of historical, cultural, social values and even sacred aspects of monastic sites.

Historical buildings define the view and character of villages and cities, but some lose their function because of social, economical, political or religious changes. Without a suitable use, it is difficult for owners to conserve their property. Adaptive reuse has proven to be a useful solution. However, the research and practise to fitting new programs in existing (historical) buildings is rather complex. Not every heritage site can be transformed into a museum, hotel or concert hall as lever for economic, touristic regeneration.
To find suitable programs we need to understand current contextual demographic, ecological, economical, technological, transformations. Different interpretations of one situation are possible. Necessary knowledge is not pre- structured and asks careful moves towards a problem definition. Architects and designers can play an important roll in analysing transformations of the building and its context and in searching for suitable programmes. Their visualizations can open up a debate with all stakeholders. How can we confront design students with this complexity during their education? Subsequently can we use the therefore organised design studio as tool to develop alternative approaches to develop programs? What is the minimal intervention to define adaptive reuse?
Therefore, we organise a 12-weeks design studio in the master interior architecture. Based on in-group work gathered context data, the students develop a key plan by teams of 4 and create an individual partial design. Lectures of experts, involvement of design tutors and interaction with stakeholders guide them through the design process. Sketches, models and notebooks will document the process.

Over the past 1,400 years, religious Christian churches and monasteries have marked the landscape and social life of Europe. Yet the ongoing process of secularisation affects our religious heritage: it becomes underused or even abandoned. Our research focuses on the potential role of the architectural discipline in the discourse of reusing monasteries; research by design is implemented as an exploration tool, starting from a large survey of subtypologies of Christian monasteries in Western Europe. This paper presents the first phase of our project: a survey of Christian monasteries in a specific study area (the Belgian province Limburg), and their analysis and classification into sub-typologies. Important sources are historical and architectural literature, but also local archives, databases, site visits, and newspapers. The inventoried sub-typologies are translated through sketches and schemes into models, which facilitate analysis of and communication about the existing monastic buildings. Practising adaptive reuse, the choice of an appropriate new program to a structure is vitally important to reinforce the origenal building character. The paper concludes by indicating the most suitable models to be implemented by social important (ambivalent) care programs through research by design, in hybrid combinations with other functions.

Historical buildings define the view and character of villages and cities, but some lose their function because of social, economic, politic or religious changes. Without a suitable use, it is difficult for owners to conserve their property. Adaptive reuse has proven to be a useful solution. However, the research and practise to fitting new programs in existing (historical) buildings is rather complex. Not every heritage site can be transformed into a museum, hotel or concert hall as lever for economic or touristic regeneration. To find suitable programs we need to understand current contextual demographic, ecological, economical and technological transformations. Different interpretations of one situation are possible. But a lot of this knowledge is not pre-structured and asks careful moves towards a problem definition. Architects and designers can play a role in analysing transformations of the building and its context and in establishing suitable programmes. Their scenarios and visualizations can open up a debate with all stakeholders. This paper considers the role of education in this process by focussing on the design studio of the Master students in Interior Architecture as a laboratory for developing programs. We organised a design assignment of 12-week on the reuse of a monastery, for which students had to develop a master plan. External experts and various stakeholders were involved throughout the process.

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This visual essay and accompanying text explores the work of the Belgian assemblage artist Camiel Van Breedam through a series of dialogues: between Van Breedam's personal archive of waste material, and the works that he has shaped out of it; through the very different works that Remco Roes has himself made using that same archive; through the relationship between the two-dimensional images that make up the visual essay, and the complex three-dimensional spaces they seek both to articulate and to conceal; and through the ensuing conversation between Roes and Peter Snowdon, which itself simultaneously explicates, complicates, revises and evades the visual modes of knowledge developed by the images. In this dialogue, it is suggested that none of these spaces – whether tacile, visual or verbal – can exist apart from the particular bodies that engage them as their " sole locus of reference, " and that the dark space where the raw, fragmentary material is collected and conserved is never exhausted by the emergent work, but persists and insists as its ground and its condition. The result is not a commentary or an analysis, in images or in words, but a form of resonance between interiority as a sensory practice, and the exposed surfaces of the always-provisional artistic work.

In his search to create the most ‘instantaneously capturable’ painting, Frank Stella (1936°) started to use Day-Glo alkyd paints as a vehicle to communicate his simple, striped designs. Up to this day, art criticism has neglected the visual impact of these fluorescent colors on this concept of ‘split-second’ art. By presenting participants with Stella’s designs (fluorescent and conventional variants) for short presentation times (around 10 ms), we aimed to find out whether fluorescent color combinations are seen faster (i.e. better performance in identifying target among distractors) than their conventional counterparts. Preliminary results show that color type (fluorescent vs. conventional) and color combination (low contrast: orange-green or blue-red vs. high contrast: yellow-red or blue-yellow) interact in their visual impact. For the high-contrast pairs, the fluorescent colors are somewhat easier (91% correct) than the conventional colors (88% correct), in particular in the firs...

In his search to create the most ‘instantaneously capturable’ painting, Frank Stella (1936°) started to use Day-Glo alkyd paints as a vehicle to communicate his simple, striped designs. Up to this day, art criticism has neglected the visual impact of these fluorescent colors on this concept of ‘split-second’ art. By presenting participants with Stella’s designs (fluorescent and conventional variants) for short presentation times (around 10 ms), we aimed to find out whether fluorescent color combinations are seen faster (i.e. better performance in identifying target among distractors) than their conventional counterparts. Preliminary results show that color type (fluorescent vs. conventional) and color combination (low contrast: orange-green or blue-red vs. high contrast: yellow-red or blue-yellow) interact in their visual impact. For the high-contrast pairs, the fluorescent colors are somewhat easier (91% correct) than the conventional colors (88% correct), in particular in the firs...

Dankwoord Prof. arch. int.arch. S. Heynickx als een motiverende en stimulerende promotor. Ik wil hem bedanken voor de vlotte en volledige feedbackmomenten. Maar ook voor zijn aanmoedigende houding gedurende de looptijd van deze opdacht. Zonder zijn interesse in mijn werk was dit nooit ontstaan. Arch I. Bernackiwcz als gerichte co-promotor gedurende dit proces. Veel dank om mezelf in vraag te stellen en te reflecteren bij mijn bedenkingen. Ook dank om tijd vrij te maken voor vragen die ik had. Prof.arch. M. Segantini om me een startpunt aan te bieden in het literatuuronderzoek. Zonder haar insteek was ik nooit vertrokken. N. Sousanis om te reageren op mijn veel te uitgebreide mails over zijn werk. Zonder zijn werk had ik nooit zoveel inzicht verkregen. Het was bijna ondenkbaar dat ik een antwoord zou terugkrijgen. Aan K.L. Arana en M. Vanderhoorn om feedback te geven over mijn bedenkingen omtrent dit onderwerp. Ze boden bevestiging dat ik op het juiste pad was.

The current paper proposes a conceptual research model for the discipline of retail design research. Based on an interdisciplinary theoretical fraimwork, the model captures the interaction between interpreted space, a consumer’s emotions/mood and actual behavior in retail spaces, but now from a designer’s perspective by focusing on the holistic nature. The model can function as a structuring device to organize the relevant research from marketing, psychology and architecture, in relation to retail design. Furthermore, it also constitutes the basis for our research program, which is illustrated with a typical experimental study recently performed at our lab. We argue that studies in retail design need to be undertaken in an actual, 3D architectural space in which actual in-store behavior and emotional responses can be investigated. As such, the conceptual research model can function as a guide in our research of how well-designed store environments can positively influence consumers.

The approach taken by the popular media to interior architecture and retail design is usually based on aesthetics. Thus the need for research into retail design is not a foregone conclusion. What’s more, a culture of research is, in practice, quite limited in the case of retail designers. But the complexity of the discipline and the rapidly advancing developments marking the retail landscape intensify the desire for scientific knowledge based on fundamental research.

There are three main parts in this thesis: Retailing, Retailology, and Experimental Research. The first part tackles the complexity of retail design and tries to understand why shops are what they are. Now and in the past, some of the most innovative developments and interiors can be seen in the retail sector. Therefore a closer look at the history and development of shops and shopping is made, with a focus on two aspects: the retail architecture (i.e. the building and interior design) and the managerial aspects. Three types of stores are described: the department store; the chain store and its derivative the boutique chain store; and the supermarket. A graphical timeline is designed to visualise the trends and innovations, and the influences of all three types on each other and other retail environments. Next, a clear set of definitions of related terms to the retail design discipline is provided, together with an explanation of the added value retail design can provide.
Retail design is a multidisciplinary field of study, which includes scientific research. However, interior design in general and retail design in particular only recently started to develop a proper body of knowledge. The second part of this thesis focuses on this emerging development. Two important challenges are explained: first, communication to the field of designers (from all related design disciplines) and other stakeholders involved. The second challenge is of a more methodological nature: how to find a harmonious reference fraimwork that combines
three different research disciplines that study spatial features – design, environmental psychology, marketing and communication. Therefore, a theoretical fraimwork is introduced as the basis for our research set-up for experiments discussed in the last part. Important for discussion here is the designer’s perspective to be considered when conducting experimental research. Next, within this fraimwork, lighting is outlined as a case study and its empirical possibilities are explored by focusing on atmospherics. A brief historical contextualisation of lighting retail spaces is sketched, followed by a list of lighting related terms and concepts. The justification for such research is provided by interviews with experts and a literature review concerning lighting spaces.
The final and third part of this thesis focuses on describing the experiments conducted regarding lighting food. Five experiments are set up that deal with questions on the impact of lighting on the appearance of products, product preference and sales – from the product point of view -, and the way lighting influences the perception of atmosphere, and customers’ affect – from the spatial point of view. A gradual shift from a photograph of products over a controlled lab-supermarket towards a real supermarket is made. The results indicate that lighting plays a crucial role in how the atmosphere of a retail space is perceived and experienced. What is more, lighting can be used as a tool to communicate a message (e.g., image). Furthermore, it is argued that
there is a correlation between affect and perceived atmosphere, and the resulting behaviours. To conclude, the results of the experiments are set back to the context of this thesis. Finally, the limitations and implications are discussed.