#adaptive-reuse

#adaptive-reuse

In an earnings call on Nov. 6, 2024, Douglas J. Healey, senior executive vice president of leasing for Macerich, which owns the mall, announced that RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) had signed a lease to take over the 50,000-square-foot building at 1000 S. Main St. Neiman Marcus closed the prominent corner location in 2021 after filing for bankruptcy the year before.

Kulhads, also known as terracotta mud cups, once defined the everyday ritual of tea at railway stations across India. Used briefly and discarded soon after, they accumulated along tracks and coastlines, leaving a quiet record of consumption. For this pavilion, more than 18,000 of these cups were gathered from local communities in Dharavi and reused as a building material with structural purpose.

Danish architecture studio Henning Larsen has been selected to redesign and expand Glyvra School in the Faroe Islands, proposing a landscape-driven educational campus that responds directly to the region's topography and climate. Conceived as a "learning village," the project rethinks the role of the school in a small coastal community, positioning architecture and outdoor space as integral parts of everyday learning.

Younghusband is a cherished example of turn-of-the -century Victorian industrial architecture, employing vast redbrick structures, original ghost signage, and a distinctive saw-tooth roof.

The dream project for me isn't a skyline object or spectacle, it's a long-life system -a project whose structure is reused, materials are upgraded and recycled rather than replaced, and performance improves over time. Where sustainable strategies aren't hidden in basements, or rooftops, but become part of the architectural experience. A dream project would be an urban district reimagined, edited with a scalpel (rather than a sledgehammer) with its declining building stock given a new life through subtle upgrades, modest interventions, and attention to craft and building performance.

Tucked down a cobblestoned, tree-lined alley in the 11th arrondissement, just steps from the Place de la Nation, a Paris loft has been given a new life. The space, a former artist's studio turned residence, opens directly onto the street and is crowned by a transom window that floods the interior with natural light. Interior designer Caroline Pusset, who founded Studio Rœus with her sister, points to the soaring proportions as a starting point for the redesign.

Planned as an adaptive reuse of an industrial harbor structure, the project positions a former port building as a civic cultural facility woven into the maritime edge of the city. The proposal, with its dramatically curving rooftop, treats the existing fabric as a spatial and infrastructural resource, retaining its massing and presence while introducing architectural elements that enable public access and contemporary cultural use.

The potential of existing buildings to shape cities and communities in flux through reuse and adaptation is the key focus of HouseEurope! and their activism: addressing the pressing challenge across much of Europe, where it is often easier, cheaper, and faster to demolish buildings than to renovate.

Amid the tides of time, architecture bears witness to change, taking on new roles within the same site. Situated within an elementary school campus, the project occupies a rare, well-preserved early 20th-century residential buildingoriginally constructed during the Japanese colonial periodnow embedded within a contemporary educational environment. Once a humble dwelling, the space now serves as a rush-weaving classroom. Rather than restoring a relic, the design opens a dialogue between history and daily life, creating a third space between memory and use.

Even before the client decided to compete in the public sale of a military domain, he involved architect Maarten Dekoninck in his plans. He gave a positive recommendation and later transformed the brutalist building, characterized by concrete and steel windows, into a residential house with an office function.

The intervention centers on a second-floor wall inscribed with a handwritten poem by Shamlou addressed to his wife and muse, Aida. Rather than treating the inscription as a preserved artifact, the design extends this wall into a spatial and semi-structural element that organizes circulation throughout the building. Known as the 'Aida Wall,' the new structure rises from the to the , forming a three-dimensional promenade that connects interior programs and visually opens the house toward the surrounding city.

Arid reworks and extends a two-story corner building from 1951 in the Patissia district of Athens into a hybrid residential, co-living, and co-working building. The project, dubbed Veil, renovates the original fabric and adds three new floors above it, resulting in an 850-square-meter building that engages directly with its neighborhood's spatial logic. The intervention is shaped by Karamanlaki Street's characteristic morphology, where setbacks generate 'prassies,' semi-open front gardens.

Florent Joliot + 9 Category: Educational Architecture, Schools Lead Team: Celine Tedde, Jerome Apack Design Team: AT architectes Engineering & Consulting > Structural: i2c Engineering & Consulting > Other: AD2i, PHD ingenierie Engineering & Consulting > Acoustic: Jean AMOROS Engineering & Consulting > Environmental Sustainability: DOMENE Landscape Architecture: Marie-Pierre Gregoire City: La Fare-les-Oliviers

Located at 76 Charlotte Street, the 2,000-square-foot basement-level space, dubbed Downstairs at dMFK, is accessed via a lushly planted mirrored lightwell, which creates the illusion that the space extends under the street. There are 16 workstations, meeting rooms, a kitchen, and a host of other sections that support focused tasks and group work. Vendors were invited to experiment in this ideal setting for their test products, as long as the items complemented the existing aesthetic.

As cultural institutions continue to proliferate worldwide in this digital era, the museum itself appears increasingly in need of redefinition. Rather than offering a single model or solution, Architecture for Culture: Rethinking Museums, written by architectural historian and curator Béatrice Grenier, argues for a more contextual and plural understanding of what a museum can be: an institution shaped by its environment, its public, and the specific cultural questions it seeks to address.

It's hard to think of two more fundamental social needs than a) not being forced to relieve yourself on the street and b) not having other people relieve themselves on the street yet the public toilet is an ignored and vanishing public amenity. The British Toilet Association reports that 40% of public toilets have closed since 2000 Victorian facilities in particular attract developers, not least because their dignified buildings endure: solidly built, centrally located and still embedded in the daily flow of the city.

The project concerns the first house in a row of four terraced dwellings, built along a narrow plot. Originally conceived as modest workshops made with ordinary materials, typical of the fabric of Bagnolet, these structures have gradually been converted into family homes. They belong to that fragile typology of small workers' houses-descendants of a precarious form of housing, sometimes close to the shack-whose transformation demands the utmost care.

The building was created by two couples who met in the early 1980s, after the mayor announced a program to help artists take over abandoned apartment buildings. There were lots of meetings, and lots of interested artists, but the program never took off. Garrick Dolberg liked the idea enough to try doing the work on his own. In 1981, he was a sculptor with a day job in construction.

Jo Nagasaka-led Schemata Architects completes the head office for Uchida Shōten, a hardware manufacturer with a 160-year history in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The team roots the two-story wooden structure in the spatial logic of the historic town that surrounds it. The site sits along the former Tōkaidō road, once Fujisawa-juku, the sixth post town of the Edo period, where narrow, elongated plots shape a distinctive townhouse culture that still structures the area today.

Dun'ao Village in Xiangshan, Ningbo, sits inland among low hills and rice fields. The project began with a desire to reflect the calm, poetic atmosphere of this secluded landscape. Instead of rigid architectural frameworks, we initiated the design with sketches and poems, aiming for lightness, openness, and play. We revitalized three abandoned utility structures using a combination of steel containers and inflatable forms.

Renato Mangolin + 19 Category: Houses, Renovation Coordination: Amanda Arcuri Collaboration: Danilo Filgueiras, Gabriel Martucci Intern: Mariana Guimaraes Lighting Design: Diana Joels Civil Engineering Team: Plano C Arquitetura e Execucao Metalwork: Metalurgica Sena More SpecsLess Specs Renato Mangolin Text description provided by the architects. The objective was to reflect on the relationship between the kitchen and the other spaces of the Duvivier-Byington house, a project by the Carioca architect Lucio Costa dated 1988, located in Rio de Janeiro.

All of the original structural concrete columns were left exposed, as were the cement floors and some areas of terrazzo. The effect is that there is a varied palette of stone and similar elements. "A nice surprise was finding numerals that had been painted on the structural columns and which date from the construction of the building," says Jáuregui. The studio decided to leave them as a nod to the structure's history.

For all its architectural and cultural grandeur, Vienna has never had much diversity of places to stay. The capital has long relied on a handful of storied institutions, while its culinary scene modernized around them. That's part of what makes the arrival of Mandarin Oriental Vienna, the group's first outpost in Austria, so significant. More than a decade in the making, this landmark transformation of an Alfred Keller-designed courthouse, built in the early 20th century, signals a new era of hospitality for the Austrian capital.

People really show up for the arts here. Our event is run by artists in the building. It's been growing so much over the past few years. This year has been very very busy, it's crazy.

Bistro Ferdinand, located in Bratislava's iconic Sad Janka Krala park, was designed following a public tender for a new tenant. The project revitalized the original pavilion by architect Ferdinand Koncek from 1982, which was renovated in 2024 by Jan Studeny and Peter Stec. The interior aims to reflect the atmosphere of the park and foster a sense of community. Conceived as the main bistro of the park, Ferdinand is open, inclusive, and welcoming.

Designing for yourself is always a bold move, and in Lviv, KOSHULYNSKYY & MAYER co-founders Karina Mayer and Danylo Koshulynskyy prove why it's worth it. Their 1,000-square-foot KM Home sheds the developer's original layout in favor of something far more intentional. The home feels tailored, efficient, and deeply personal, a layout that actually supports the way they live day to day.

The phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution describes how distant species can develop similar structures when confronted with comparable challenges. Dolphins and ichthyosaurs, for example, are separated by millions of years of evolutionary history, yet both evolved nearly identical hydrodynamic bodies. Architecture has its own parallels: A-frame structures emerged independently in both the European Alps and Japan, even without direct cultural exchange, as spontaneous responses to snow, wind, and material scarcity.

Palestinian architect Suad Amiry has been awarded the 2025 Great Arab Minds Award in the Architecture and Design category. Founder and director of the Riwaq - Centre for Architectural Conservation, Amiry was recognised for her long-standing work in documenting, preserving, and reusing Palestinian architectural heritage through conservation practices that link historic structures with contemporary community needs. Her approach positions architecture as both a repository of collective memory and an active social framework, emphasising the role of heritage in everyday urban and rural life.