The Architecture of the Everyday: Adaptive Re-use and the Value of Junk DNA
- Frazer Macdonald Hay
- Apr 23
- 3 min read
Text and Image by Frazer Macdonald Hay
We rarely notice the buildings that shape our daily lives—until they’re gone. That corner shop we never entered, the shadowy alley we always cut through, the redundant church tower glimpsed through trees. These are the architectural equivalents of "junk DNA": overlooked, uncelebrated, sometimes embarrassing, but essential to the cultural and emotional fabric of our lives.
In biology, junk DNA was long thought to be useless—non-coding, functionless leftovers from evolution. But when scientists began removing it, they discovered something surprising: cells began to malfunction. Development stalled. Life suffered. That so-called junk turned out to be crucial to the organism’s functioning.
Our built environment works the same way. The everyday, the ugly, the awkward buildings of our towns and cities—often dismissed as obsolete or unpleasant—carry social, cultural, and emotional meaning. When we erase them without understanding their role, we risk damaging the social body they quietly support.
Adaptive Re-use as Cultural Repair
Adaptive re-use is an underused tool in national and international cultural redevelopment. It offers a way to breathe new life and meaning into neglected or misused buildings while enhancing the social and cultural context in which they sit.
At its best, adaptive re-use involves thoughtful architectural intervention. The new is distinguishable from the old, yet sits in a dialogue with it. It respects the building’s cultural significance, retains its integrity, and adds a contemporary layer that fosters relevance and future use.
As Lynch suggests, the everyday built environment forms part of our unconscious memory map: the familiar turn of a street, the sunny side of a building, the place we once met someone. These mundane encounters matter. They root us.
A Field Guide to Junk DNA Buildings
To argue that all buildings have value is not to say all buildings should be preserved as monuments. But it is to say that even the most unloved structures deserve a pause, a moment of curiosity. What memories do they hold? What social functions do they quietly perform? What might be lost if they vanish?
Below are four examples—each a quiet carrier of cultural code—and thoughts on how adaptive re-use might offer a way to care for them.
1. Public Toilets and Urban Nooks
Often erased. Always essential.
Public toilets are among the first to be shuttered during cuts. Considered dirty or dangerous, they’re seen as liabilities. But they are essential for dignity and access—especially for women, carers, disabled individuals, and those without a private refuge.
They can also hold hidden histories: informal queer meeting spots, colonial-era infrastructure, or landmarks of daily urban rituals.
Adaptive Re-use Opportunity: Tiny libraries, story booths, micro-museums, rest spaces—adaptive reuse could honour their social function while allowing new layers of meaning to emerge.
2. Churches and Religious Buildings in Decline
No longer full of worshippers, still full of meaning.
Many religious buildings are now empty, but they remain cultural touchstones. People remember them not only for services attended but for weddings, funerals, confirmations, and quiet moments of grief or hope.
They also shape the skylines and soundscapes of our towns and cities.
Adaptive Re-use Opportunity: Community centres, spaces for quiet contemplation, interfaith dialogue hubs, or social care facilities. New uses can honour their pasts while meeting current needs.
3. Urban Nooks and Leftover Spaces
Unplanned. Unloved. Unforgettable.
The alleys, undercrofts, back lanes, and gaps between buildings—these places may appear insignificant. But they hold micro-memories: childhood shortcuts, quiet arguments, hidden graffiti, a secret smoke.
They are often the negative space of emotional geography.
Adaptive Re-use Opportunity: Co-designed micro-parks, memory walks, poetry posts, or scent gardens. Soft, respectful interventions can highlight their meaning without overwriting it.
4. Council Offices and Registry Buildings
Faceless, yet formative.
Registry offices and civic centres are often seen as bland spaces of bureaucracy. But these are sites of major life transitions: marriages, name changes, births, deaths, housing support, court hearings. The architecture may be banal, but the emotions that pass through them are anything but.
Adaptive Re-use Opportunity: Transformed into community legal clinics, archives of social history, local democracy hubs, or collaborative art spaces. The goal: to make visible the emotional and civic labour that has always happened within.
Looking After the Everyday
Adaptive re-use is not just about saving beautiful buildings. It’s about understanding the systems of memory and meaning that keep societies coherent. We cannot know the full impact of a building’s loss until it’s gone—until we notice the blank space where memory used to be.
The everyday structures of our lives may not be grand, but they are foundational. Like junk DNA, they are the silent scaffold of identity, continuity, and care. We must learn to read them differently—and to reuse them wisely.
