Transforming Industrial Heritage and Professional Practice. The Dual Role of Architects: Inner-professional Excellence and Inter-professional Cooperation

Abstract In professional contexts, architects often orientate along inner-professional excellence, defined by the professional discourse of architecture. Transforming heritage sites or listed historic environments means interacting within a constellation of differing discourses or planning perspectives, such as (1) architecture, (2) urban development and (3) heritage conservation. We present three case studies of regeneration of industrial heritage sites. The cases show that inner-professional excellence serves the discourses of (1) architecture, and (2) urban development, but may or may not function in regard to heritage conservation. For planning within historic environments, we suggest to adopt a dual role – that of achieving inner-professional excellence, and of performing inter-professional cooperation within this constellation. To perform inter-professional cooperation, addressing so-called bridging values and test-planning (exploratory planning) might serve as instruments.