AUT Architect Academic wins book award
Architecture lecturer Dr J. Antonio Lara-Hernandez has won a top international award for his book on adapting buildings and structures for new uses.
Called Architectural Exaptation: When Function Follows Form, the book won the Gerd Albers Award 2024 at the International Society of City and Regional planners (ISOCARP) congress held recently in Siena, Italy.
ISOCARP is a member-led global organisation with the vision of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
Dr Lara-Hernandez, a senior researcher who starts as a senior lecturer in April, co-wrote the book with New York Institute of Technology Professor Alessandro Melis and Padua University Professor Telmo Pievani.
“It’s an honour to win this prestigious award from such a high-profile group of our peers. In architecture, the concept of “exaptation” refers to this adapting of buildings and structures for new uses. It is becoming increasingly relevant as a transformative response to sustainable and resilient urban development, especially since the Covid pandemic changed the way people work nowadays,” he says.
A famous example of exaptation is Venice, which has continuously adapted its historic structures to meet modern needs, while keeping its unique character. Far from being a static relic of the past, Venice is a dynamic example of how urban spaces can evolve. The city’s ability to repurpose spaces and structures – turning palazzos into museums or residential buildings into boutique hotels – demonstrates architectural exaptation in practice.
Another good example is the Highline in New York where an old, elevated railway was repurposed as a pedestrian walkway, becoming a now-iconic public space.
Closer to home, the revitalised Britomart precinct shows how a tired public space and surroundings buildings can be transformed.
The Gerd Albers Award (GAA) was established in 1999 in honour of Professor Gerd Albers, a co-founder and past president of ISOCARP, and celebrates inspiring publications in the planning field.
'Architectural Exaptation: When Function Follows Form' is Dr Lara-Hernandez's third book and his fourth, The Dusk of Design, will be released in January. Co-written with AUT lecturer Dr Priscila Besen, Prof Melis and Dr Paola Boarin from the University of Auckland, it explores the intersection of evolutionary theories and architectural design, the aim being tonbridge the gap between biology and architecture.