Adaptive Reuse: The Latest Architecture and News

A canyon is a space no one designed. Its walls expose layers of rock deposited over millions of years, and the passage between them exists because water slowly wore that rock away. Glaciers shaped valleys in a similar way, leaving slopes behind as the ice retreated. Long before architects began shaping spaces, the Earth was already producing them.

Architects have long looked to the ground for geometry. A cliff can suggest a section, a cavity a room, and layered rock a way of stacking material. Some architects build directly into an existing formation, occupying a slope or a cavity on site. Others study a formation and reproduce some of its characteristics elsewhere, from precise geological data to the general experience of a landscape.

+ 23

A team led by Politecnica Building for Humans, with Park Associati and AMDL CIRCLE as architectural co-leads and Studio Mattioli responsible for geology and archaeology, has won the competition for a new cultural hub in Ceto, Italy. The project will transform the former Società Filati Niggeler & Kupfer textile mill into a facility comprising exhibition spaces, research facilities, an auditorium, and visitor services. Located in Valle Camonica, an area known for its prehistoric rock engravings, the proposal approaches the site through the relationship between industrial heritage, archaeology, and the surrounding landscape.

+ 1

Adding new floors on top of a historic building presents a challenge beyond accommodating additional space: how can a contemporary intervention respond to the character of an existing structure? Material selection plays an important role in establishing a relationship between different construction periods, whether the aim is to complement the existing building or create a more distinct architectural expression. The LH Residence in Varna, Bulgaria, designed by STARH, offers an example of how fiber cement can help relate a contemporary addition to a historic building.

As cities struggle to provide adequate and affordable housing, examining built examples of collective housing can help inform decisions about what to build and how. These projects offer opportunities to assess solutions, understand their limitations, and consider what might be applied elsewhere. In Paris, two recent examples combine apartments of different sizes with access to gardens, courtyards, and other outdoor spaces, working with structures already in place.

After a seven-year pause, Amman Design Week returned to Jordan with a premise that feels closely tied to the city itself: that nothing is ever entirely new. Under the theme "Accumulations," the fourth edition of the biennial event brought together more than 220 designers, makers, architects, and collectives across exhibitions, public interventions, talks, workshops, and performances from October 2 to 17. The premise was particularly relevant to Amman, a city whose architecture has been shaped by waves of construction, migration, adaptation, and reuse, where accumulation is not simply a metaphor.

+ 23

On Tarkwa Bay, off the coast of Lagos, the transformation of an abandoned building offers a way to consider how architecture might emerge from the materials, relationships and conditions already present in a place.

Architecture is often encountered at the end, when the uncertainties of making have been resolved into a building, a surface, a space. Less visible are the conditions that allow these outcomes to exist, the movement of materials, the availability of labour, the knowledge held by people and places, and the negotiations through which an idea becomes possible. On Tarkwa Bay, an island off the coast of Lagos accessible only by boat, these conditions are difficult to separate from the act of building itself.

The crossing from the Lagos mainland introduces a different relationship to access. People, tools and materials move across water; some resources are readily available, others less so. Materials move across water; reclaimed elements carry histories from elsewhere; salt and sun alter the behaviour of surfaces; and the availability of local artisans influences how work unfolds. These are not necessarily prohibitions; rather, they make visible the dependencies that building elsewhere can allow us to overlook.

+ 13

Inverting the conventional narrative, this story begins at the end. The day after the world's collapse. While almost the entire population struggles to survive flames and solar storms, a tiny fraction is greeted by a heavily armed guard at the entrance to the Survival Condo Project, a former missile silo in Kansas converted a few years ago into luxury apartments.

Forget, then, the hermit who stockpiles canned food in his basement or the end-times prophet. In recent years, survivalism has expanded into wealthier circles, taking root in Silicon Valley among technology executives and hedge fund managers. What could once be seen merely as an eccentricity has also become a way of thinking about the future and, for some, an investment.

+ 1

This week, questions about housing, safety, and the future of cities came into focus, from the impact of natural hazards to architecture's role in shaping more inclusive urban environments. The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, observed on October 13 under the theme "Resilience Starts at Home," highlighted these questions just days after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck Panama, damaging buildings and prompting evacuations nationwide. Beyond disaster preparedness, the week's developments also reflect broader efforts to address housing needs, give existing buildings new purposes, and create spaces that support education, culture, and public life.

+ 3

Construction has begun on the Frank Liu Jr. Academy for Music and Arts (FLAMA) in Houston, Texas, designed by OMA, led by partner Jason Long, with RDLR Architects as architect of record and SWA Group for landscape design. The project is an adaptive reuse of Houston's historic 1930s J. A. Folger & Co. coffee plant, converted into an educational space for the arts. The 6,050 m² facility will be an open-enrollment, tuition-free public charter school for pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade students. The building is located along Houston's Buffalo Bayou East corridor, directly across from Turkey Bend, a landscape project by Reed Hilderbrand with NADAAA and Rogers Partners that reimagines the former industrial waterfront as a network of public spaces and flood-adapted landscapes. The conversion of the former coffee plant is part of a larger transformation of the area and is expected to open in August 2027.

+ 3

India's stepwells are usually encountered after their useful lives have ended. They are photographed, restored and interpreted as evidence of a water culture that once existed. Beneath the carved stone and descending stairs is a practical question: what happens when a structure built to manage water is put back to work? As Indian cities face water stress, seasonal rainfall and pressure on municipal systems, researchers and restoration efforts are examining whether traditional water structures can function again.

Traditional water architecture was rarely an isolated object. In Ahmedabad, water management was embedded in the organization of the city. Within the historic pols, wells, courtyards and underground Tankas formed part of a distributed system of domestic and communal water storage. A 2026 study in Built Heritage estimates that nearly 10,000 Tankas may still exist across Ahmedabad, many located beneath domestic courtyards.

+ 7

Architecture this week reflects on how buildings and cities adapt to changing cultural, social, and environmental conditions. From the expansion of established institutions and the preservation of architectural archives to new approaches to housing and the use of domestic space, several stories consider how architecture negotiates between existing contexts and future needs. These questions extend beyond individual buildings, touching on the role of public space, infrastructure, energy, and collective memory in shaping the built environment. At the same time, new projects and cultural programs across different contexts demonstrate how architecture can respond to local histories, urban transformation, and resource constraints while establishing new relationships between buildings, landscapes, and the communities that use them.

+ 3

The landscape and scattered settlements of Ireland carry a reputation for wildness. Rugged cliffs meet the Atlantic, green fields roll across the interior, and rain and wind change the scene by the hour. A closer look reveals a worked terrain as historic stone walls divide agricultural fields, roads and paths connect towns to the coast, and castle ruins alongside cottages record centuries of occupation. Change is the expected condition of the island, shaped as much by human hands as by geology and weather, and the practice of treating the existing context as material to adapt and modify runs deep.

Ireland has a large inherited building stock, from vernacular cottages and farm compounds to Georgian and Victorian urban terraces, while a growing share of it sits vacant or derelict as housing remains scarce and expensive. Planning and heritage protections shape what can be altered, while growing attention to embodied carbon makes demolition increasingly difficult to justify. Under these pressures, design strategies for renovation are one of the most inventive areas of contemporary Irish design. Architects cut into old structures to admit light, set new materials against aged ones, and redesign buildings for contemporary lives and routines.

+ 32

This article is part of "Thresholds", a special edition printed newspaper by Cobe Notes x ArchDaily.

There are two unique things about being human that made us survive the early years and spread over the whole planet: sweating and storytelling. Sweating helps cool down the body when running long distances. Stories help us collaborate in big numbers and share knowledge across groups and generations. As architects, we still rely on the same tools to make visions become reality.

As professor of stories Angus Fletcher points out in his book Primal Intelligence, there is a common misconception about the role of stories: when our "rational" brain has developed an idea that we fail to explain to a wider group, we pack it into a story, and suddenly everybody understands. Fletcher argues that it actually works the other way around: ideas come from stories, our brain works in stories, and stories form reality. Architects have a derogatory term for turning that process the wrong side up: "post-rationalisation", for example when diagrams are made to explain a design that is already decided.

There is no shortage of ways to imagine what the world will look like after a climate catastrophe. Genres of movies and novels have been built around the question of what happens when contemporary safeguards fail, from dystopian fiction and post-apocalyptic literature to disaster films, graphic novels, and video games. Burning forests, submerged cities, abandoned infrastructure, resource scarcity, and mass displacement are a familiar visual and narrative vocabulary. We have become remarkably fluent in imagining the consequences of a world that fails to respond to climate change.

+ 23

Office for Future is converting a former school in Stavyshche, Ukraine, into housing for 42 families displaced by the war. Developed for the Charity Foundation Housing for IDP, the project, titled "Dvir – The Shared Courtyard," reuses the approximately 1,900-square-meter building to create 42 apartments and 200 square meters of shared indoor spaces. The intervention combines the existing structure with new timber elements, an energy retrofit, and the transformation of the former asphalt courtyard into a permeable green space.

+ 5

The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland, is expanding its museum ensemble with three new buildings by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, an enlarged and restored park, and the adaptive reuse of several historic structures. The expansion extends the existing museum designed by Renzo Piano, adding exhibition, education, cultural, and public spaces while opening a previously private section of the surrounding landscape to visitors. The expanded ensemble will begin welcoming visitors on September 26, 2026, during a preview phase running through January 14, 2027, before fully opening on January 15. Zumthor's additions comprise the Wyss Museum, the Ammann Pavilion, and the Erlen Torhaus, positioned within the existing landscape and differentiated through their programmes, forms, and material treatments.

+ 11

The African Futures Institute (AFI) has completed its new headquarters in Accra, Ghana, transforming a former tile warehouse in the city's Osu neighbourhood into a centre for architectural education, research, exhibitions, and public programmes. The project retains the existing industrial structure while introducing spaces for teaching, workshops, performances, screenings, and gatherings. Its completion gives the Institute a permanent base in Accra after several years of operating through programmes, partnerships, and temporary spaces across Africa and beyond.

+ 23

"Right to Housing! Now and Forever" is an official European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) to demand affordable, sustainable, and fair housing across the European Union. The ECI is a governance tool that allows citizens to propose new laws for the European Commission to consider. Initiatives must be organized by a group of at least seven EU citizens living in seven different countries and must gather 1 million valid signatures within one year of receiving official approval. The signature collection for "Right to Housing! Now and Forever" launched on September 14, 2026, and aims to collect 1.2 million signatures across the EU to require the European Commission to formally respond to and address the proposal. The project builds on the HouseEurope! European Citizens' Initiative, which focused strictly on building renovation and closed unsuccessfully on January 31, 2026. This new proposal, put forward by a broader coalition, encompasses not only renovation but also financing tools and measures to ensure access.

+ 13