The Urban Room: Rethinking Adaptive Reuse After Demolition
Image by Frazer Macdonald Hay There is an uncomfortable question that architects rarely ask. What happens when the building we hoped to conserve has already disappeared? Adaptive reuse has become one of the defining architectural ideas of our age. Around the world, former factories become museums, warehouses become homes, churches become theatres, and industrial landscapes become parks. These projects are celebrated because they offer an alternative to demolition. They remi
Teaching the Next Custodians
Antwerp Workshop Most of us think of buildings as things we own, rent, manage, occupy, or occasionally repair. Rarely do we think of ourselves as their custodians. Yet every building we inherit has already passed through countless hands. Builders, occupants, owners, caretakers, neighbours, designers, and communities have all left traces behind. We arrive in the middle of a story, not at its beginning. The challenge facing future generations is not simply how to build new thin
A Building Speaks Before Demolition
In conversation with a building scheduled for demolition ..... The manuscript I have recently completed, Adaptive Reuse: Conflict, Climate and Conservation / What Buildings Know , is structured as a conversation. Each chapter opens with the voice of a building facing demolition. It reflects on its condition, its memories, and its uncertainty about what comes next. These openings are not decorative. They frame the themes that follow, adaptive reuse, conflict, climate, conserva
What Buildings Know & Why It Matters Now
I have recently completed a manuscript exploring adaptive reuse, not simply as an architectural method, but as a way of thinking about how we live, remember, and change. At its core, the book asks a simple question: What happens if we stop treating buildings as objects to be replaced, and start understanding them as things to be read? Over time, that question became something else entirely. It became clear that adaptive reuse is not only about buildings. It is about how we re
Local Recognition and the ringing of UNESCO Bells in Iraq
After the last major battle for Mosul and whilst pockets of ISIS were still active in the city, I began searching for sites of civil...
