Building of Requirement: Liberating Academic Interior Architecture

Abstract

The authors explore the strategies employed in the recent renovation of the William Johnston Building at Florida State University, which preserved the historical exterior while the adapting the interiors to new functions as classrooms, study centers, and common spaces with intentionally undefined purposes. The building’s various use capacities, together with the flexibility of its interior environments, creates what the authors have termed a building of requirement. The paper reveals how the building’s historical interior layouts and architectural elements defined the approach to realizing a postmodern and future-oriented building while fostering new encounters and forming new user familiarities, thereby contributing to the structure’s evolution as living history.