Uncomfortable Heritage: Adaptive Reuse and New Narratives

不适遗产：适应性再利用与新叙事

This workshop aims to bring together interdisciplinary researchers from China, the US, Europe, and the UK to explore the challenges and opportunities of reusing uncomfortable heritage. By examining the repurposing of buildings and sites with problematic pasts—such as prisons, asylums, and colonial sites—the event will foster dialogue on integrating materiality and meaning in architectural conservation and heritage studies. It seeks to advance cross-cultural collaboration and deepen understanding of heritage’s role in shaping contemporary identity and memory.
The proposed workshop builds upon the project team’s existing work on conceptualizing the term "uncomfortable heritage," first published in the International Journal of Heritage Studies (2018) and recently included as an entry in the forthcoming Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict (2025). This research workshop will serve as a platform for scholarly exchange and cross-cultural debate on the adaptive reuse of uncomfortable heritage. Through case studies and theoretical discussions, it will explore how decisions about physical alterations, material conservation, and narrative reinterpretation shape processes of remembering and forgetting. Key topics include the tension between commodification and societal expectations, the ethical challenges of balancing strategic forgetting with honest engagement, and the ways new uses or reinterpretations can evoke unease or reshape societal perceptions.