ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore how care, as a concept, can help create new perspectives on our relations with the historic environment, and more specifically practices of adaptive reuse of built heritage. We argue that using the concept of ‘care’ instead of ‘protection’ as a frame for how we approach and deal with heritage can change how we conceptualize and undertake conservation as a practice. We illustrate our thinking through two case studies: High Street West, Sunderland (United Kingdom) and Hof Prädikow in Prädikow near Berlin (Germany). By conceptually (re)framing heritage as what María Puig de la Bellacasa calls a ‘matter of care,’ and conservation practices as the ways we care about, for, or through heritage, we explore how an ethics of care perspective can help to rethink the ways we deal with our built heritage.
