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Call for Abstracts

(from) Adaptive Reuse
(to) Adaptive Architecture
May 21-22 2026

Submission deadline: March 26 2025

ABSTRACTS submission deadline:

March 26, 2025

Please email the following submission materials to cripticollab@gmail.com

300-words abstract proposals (.docx)

1-2 images max

name, institution, affiliation

100-words bio

All submissions will be blind peer-reviewed. Applicants will be contacted in mid May 2025 with a decision.

As American philosopher Nelson Goodman reminds us, every making starts not from nothing but from something. Despite the growing interest in ADAPTIVE REUSE since the 1970s in what is now considered an emerging discipline, there is not yet a well-formulated theory, nor the full awareness of how increasingly dominant it is becoming in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry (AEC).

While the adaptive reuse of various building typologies is nowadays a widespread practice–a radical cultural shift (from) ADAPTIVE REUSE (to) ADAPTIVE ARCHITECTURE would facilitate the transition from a widespread culture of new construction to a culture of adaptability in the field of architecture regardless of whether the building under consideration is new, pre-existing or designated heritage. Every building project could be approached from the perspective of its present (and future) ADAPTABILITY.

This call invites papers supporting the redefinition of the boundaries between architectural design and ADAPTIVE ARCHITECTURE to explore meaningful theories of alterations of new or existing buildings, arguing that all past is present and that all making is a remaking.

ADAPTIVE ARCHITECTURE is an attitude towards the built environment. The topic has global relevance in current sustainability and environmental challenges. Despite the evolution and creation of pedagogical curricula that embrace the culture of re(use) and re(cycle), architecture schools are still predominantly focused on new construction, even when many projects in the building industry deal with remodelling and adaptations of existing and historic buildings. A few publications have begun to address adaptive reuse theories, including their relations to heritage practices. In architectural design, projects often start not from something but from scratch, each time anew, even though all places and sites have deeply situated histories. In this context, an in-depth study providing an international perspective on adaptability in architecture (whether this refers to new construction or building alterations) is much needed. Adaptability practices and the associated technologies are becoming increasingly indispensable for practicing architects.

Adaptability often gives rise to interpretive conversions aimed at recontextualizing ideas, details, or buildings along with their sites through re-design, forming de facto a project within an(other) project, or a story within an(other), allowing to re-enter a pre-existing reality anew (physically and culturally) through radical re-interpretations. With this in mind, we ask what stories emerge when places evolve, telling stories and contributing to an inclusive and diverse sense of cultural orientation through architectural adaptability.

Contemporary material conservation practices and policies examined in the context of emerging critical conservation theories, highlight social and cultural sustenance and sustainability, as well as questions of equity and inclusivity in the renewal of cities. The study of climate adaptation, deep retrofitting and vulnerability assessments can further expand these themes.

Transhistorical adaptability suggests that places are constructed by merging unfinished stories. Adaptability is a market-driven material and technological practice that is socially and culturally oriented.

Moving towards an understanding of the practices of ADAPTIVE ARCHITECTURE, this international call for papers invites contributions from architectural historians, theorists, conservation scholars, researchers, designers and practicing architects to draw out the connections between architecture, its imagination and the qualities of sustainable environments as places aspiring to be socially just, inclusive and equitable.

This event is part of the SSHRC grant Quality in Canada’s Built Environment: Roadmaps to Equity, Social Value and Sustainability led by Canada Research Chair Jean-Pierre Chupin, Montreal University, which addresses the diversity of public environments impacting the everyday life of millions of Canadians in urban spaces, buildings and landscapes, addressing these four research clusters, which paper proposals can address:

1. Spatial justice and heightened quality of life.
2. Integrated resilience, material culture and adaptative reuse.
3. inclusive design for health, wellness, ageing and special needs.
4. processes and policies supporting the reinvention of built environments.

References

ARREGUI, Aníbal , Gesa MACKENTHUN, Stephanie WODIANKA, eds. 2018. DEcolonial Heritage Natures, Cultures, and the Asymmetries of Memory. Waxmann.
BAKER-BROWN, Duncan. 2024. The Re-use Atlas: A Designer’s Guide Towards a Circular Economy. London: RIBA Publishing.
BERGER, Markus. 2023. Repair Sustainable Design Futures. London & New York: Routledge.
BRILLANT, Richard and Dale KINNEY (eds.), Reuse Value, Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, Ashgate, Farnham, England and Burlington, VT, 2011.
CAIRNS, Stephen and Jane M. JACOBS, Buildings Must Die, A Perverse View of Architecture, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014.
CHANDLER, Alan and Michele PACE. 2019. The Production of Heritage. The politicization of Architectural Conservation. London: Routledge.
CRAMER, Johannes and Stefan BREITLING. 2007. Architecture in Existing Fabric. Planning, Design, Building. Berlin, Boston: Birkhäuser.
ECO, Umberto. 1989. The Open Work. Translated by Anna Cancogni. Harvard University Press.
FRANK, Karen (guest ed.). 2016. AD Architecture Timed. Designing with Time in Mind, vol. 86, no. 1, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
GOODMAN, Nelson, Ways of Worldmaking, Hacket Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1978.
KOOLHAAS, Rem and Jorge OTERO-PAILOS. 2014. Preservation is Overtaking Us. Columbia Books on Architecture and the City.
LEATHERBARROW, David. 2020. Building Time. Architecture, Event and Experience. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
OTERO-PAILOS, Jorge, Erik Langdalen and Thordis Arrhenius, eds. 2016. Experimental Preservation. Lars Müller Publishers.
PLEVOETS, Bie and Koenraad VAN CLEEMPOEL. 2019. Adaptive Reuse of the Built Heritage. Concepts and Cases of an Emerging Discipline. Oxon and New York: Routledge.
SCHMIDT, Robert III, and Simon AUSTIN. 2016. Adaptable Architecture. Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge.
SCOTT, Fred. 2008. On Altering Architecture. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
STONE, Sally. 2020. Undoing Buildings. Adaptive Reuse and Cultural Memory. New York and Oxon: Routledge.
ROCKCASTLE, Garth. 2008. “Why Re-Place?” RePlaces, Forum of Design for the Public Realm, vol 20, no. 1: 4-9.
TRACHTENBERG, Marvin. 2010. Building in Time. From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion. New Haven: Yale University Press.
WONG, Liliane. 2016. Adaptive Reuse, Extending the Life of Buildings. Basel: Birkhäuser.
HANDA, Rumiko. 2015. Allure of the Incomplete, Imperfect, and Impermanent: Designing and Appreciating Architecture as Nature. London: Routledge.

To make the shift (from) ADAPTIVE REUSE (to) ADAPTIVE ARCHITECTURE, the following themes will be addressed in this international conference:

FROM SINGLE AUTHORSHIP TO MULTI-AUTHORSHIP DESIGN

In the modern and contemporary Western world, an imbalance has led to approaches in preservation which limit the possibility of creative intervention within a historical context. At the same time, designers often do not view historic or heritage buildings as likely canvases for creation, imbued as they are with a culture of instant making. Under what conditions could projects be conceived as “open works,” and how can architecture be designed for future adaptability? Open works contravene conventions and are deliberately equivocal, open to diverse readings rather than fixed by dominant narratives. The openness of the stories told through buildings and places involves the occupants, the designers, and other stakeholders with invested interest, which may range from economic, cultural, social, and geo-political. While a drawing may be autographic, an authentic allographic architecture results from multiple authorships (through collaboration on a project) over time (through adaptability and change).

FROM HISTORICAL MATERIALISM TO A CULTURE OF STORYTELLING(S)

Material conservation efforts are not sufficient to sustain a sense of place. Interventions in a historical context should go beyond compliance with conservation standards and guidelines, which are transient. International charters offer general principles for a global conservation practice. Conversely, close-up readings into the particularities of place offer sited-insight to re-envision buildings and sites. Understanding the past as inventory can turn cities into museums, congealing design imagination. Indeed, while the past is at work within the present, it does not fully coincide with it. Architectural stories are not the product of the accumulation of information, which produces an indexable material history to be preserved. Adaptability is more akin to “storytelling” than “historical materialism,” as defined by Walter Benjamin. The time-lapse between additions, changes, and transformations can generate plural stories manifesting diverse and, at times, conflicting perspectives—realizing contiguous imageries of past and future events, evoking and provoking a process through which memory traces overlay in the imagination. In this way, the past is not erased from memory but rather ambiguously dwells within a possible future, aiding sustainability practices and establishing a design dialogue between the layers of different and even contested sites and their stories.

FROM A CULTURE OF DEADLINES TO A CULTURE OF MULTIPLE BEGINNING(S)

Presently, the architect’s responsibilities are timed by design and construction deadlines. At the same time, drawings are held as contractual work records for the legislated liability period, varying according to local legislation. In contrast, an architect of record is seldom in place past the construction time. The historicity of buildings is measured in linear time. At the same time, the separation between the present and the historical past is marked by conservation guidelines that establish the number of years required for a building to be deemed historic. In this context, ADAPTABILITY exemplifies an in-between practice that is neither architecture nor conservation per se; instead, it demonstrates an architecture in becoming. This approach substitutes the dominant IMAGINATION OF ENDINGS (conservation as is or single-author design) with an imagination of MULTIPLE BEGINNINGS (design alterations, multi-author design) in a historical context.

FROM A USE CULTURE (FUNCTIONALISM) TO A CULTURE OF CONVERSION

Inspired by the form follows function concept, modernism was not keen to consider conversion as a modality of creativity, and existing buildings were seldom the chosen site of creation. Since the 1920s, according to Cramer and Breitling, the terminologies “conversion” and “conversion architect” have been used to discredit the work of modernization in a historical context. Perhaps this is because the conversion is loosely defined as a change of use or because we lack a deeper understanding of it as a form of material imagination. New buildings were often designed as finished objects for short life cycles, focusing on individual creators rather than architecture as the product of multiple authors, stories, and time. This attitude makes architecture less apt to age well, less inclusive, and less sustainable. Use can be temporary in architecture and not, as it is often assumed, the primary intended purpose. Practices, such as conversion and adaptive reuse, are essential to bridge the fields of architecture and conservation.

FROM (HISTORICAL) ARCHITECTURE TO (TRANSHISTORICAL) ADAPTABILITY

Architecture is not just a spatial art—it is a temporal art. The transhistorical adaptability project activates potential readings of architecture (and its representational media) through inter-scalar temporal relations, nurturing a multichroic imagination within an extended timeframe. From this perspective the making of architecture is a slow-inter-generational phenomenon and an integral part of the project of architecture. This suggests seeing architecture not as a finished product but as a complete yet unfinished work. Ambiguous conversions reveal time-dependent interpretations influenced by changing economic, social, cultural and geo-political contexts. Adaptability reveals the qualities of architecture as a nested site of knowledge construction.

FROM THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NEW TO A PEDAGOGY OF ADAPTABILITY

While architecture schools are still predominantly focused on new construction, conservation programs have focused primarily on preservation and restoration with lesser attention to the design dimension of conversion and adaptive reuse projects. The emerging field of adaptive reuse has, however, caused a shift in architectural pedagogies and has also seen the establishment of new master programs focusing on adaptability. Which pedagogical approaches have been taken, experimented with or still await implementation, and how do they connect with architectural practice?

Co-convenors

Dr. Federica Goffi Professor of Architecture, Carleton University [Author of the Call for Papers]

Dr. Mariana Esponda Professor of Architecture, Carleton University

Dr. Mario Santana Professor in Architectural Conservation and Sustainability Engineering, Carleton University

Keynotes

Sybil
Mckenna

ARCHITECT
EVOQ Architecture

Sybil McKenna has played key roles in numerous planning, architectural and heritage projects, with mandates for the Parliamentary and Judicial Precincts in Ottawa including the Master Plan for Blocks 1, 2, and 3, and the current Block 2 Redevelopment. With 30 plus years of experience in Canada, the United States, and China, she is a seasoned architect and skilled communicator. Throughout her career, and in parallel with her architectural practice, Sybil has been a guest design critic at architecture schools across North America and has held appointments at The Ohio State University, Carleton University, and McGill University, where she teaches architectural design.

Héctor
Fernández Elorza

ARCHITECT

Héctor Fernández Elorza, PhD, is a Lecturing Professor in Architectural Projects at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, ETSAM since 2001. He has been a Visiting Professor at numerous institutions, including the Escuela de Arquitectura de Zaragoza & ETSAB-Barcelona (Spain), Universitá Di Roma “La Sapienza", Fachhochschule Köln (Germany), NTNU University in Trondheim (Norway), Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole in Copenhague (Denmark), KTH University in Stockholm (Sweden), Universidad Católica de Rio de Janeiro (Brasil), University of Belgrade (Serbia), the Royal Institute of British Architects-RIBA, and the Cooper Union. In 2000 and 2012 he participated at the Biennale di Architecture di Venezia. As practicing architect, he designed and built the Mausoleum for the oceanografist Odón de Buen; the Auditorium and Documentation Centre of Contemporary Architecture in “Nuevos Ministerios” (Madrid); the Agricultural park, Valdefierro´s park (Zaragoza). He is author and co-author of E. G. Asplund, Exposición de Estocolmo 1930; Babelia; Pensar con las manos and Materia y material, La ortografía del espacio y el alfabeto de la estructura; Chicago-Nueva York y Arqueología Contemporánea. His work has been showed widely in Spain and abroad. In 2009 and 2010 he has been awarded the ROMA PRIZE (Spanish Academy in Rome).

Rumiko
Handa

ARCHITECT

Rumiko Handa is Professor Emerita of Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. She is a registered architect, and holds a Ph.D. in Architectural Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.Arch. from the University of Tokyo. She received the American Institute of Architecture Students' 2001-2002 National Educator Honor Award. She is the author of Allure of the Incomplete, Imperfect, and Impermanent and Presenting Difficult Pasts through Architecture and a co-editor of Conjuring the Real: The Role of Architecture in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Her writings also have appeared in: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians; Design Studies; Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture; Preservation Education & Research; The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America; etc. She lives in Lincoln, NE, and loves to travel.

Liliane
Wong

ARCHITECT

Liliane Wong is Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design where, for more than a decade, she was Chair of the Department of Interior Architecture. Her interest and teaching in adaptive reuse led her to co-found the Int|AR Journal that promotes explorations of sustainable environments through exemplary works of reuse. She was recognized by Design Intelligence for 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 as one of the top 25 most admired design educators in the US.

She is the author of Adaptive Reuse in Architecture: A Typological Index, Adaptive Reuse_Extending the Lives of Buildings, co-author of Libraries – A Design Manual Manual, co-editor of Adaptive Reuse: A Decade of Responsible Practice.

A long-time volunteer at soup kitchens, her teaching emphasizes the importance of public engagement in architecture and design. Recent projects include Crossing the Pell, an interactive/experiential exhibition on adapting infrastructure, Don’t You Sit Down, an installation on segregation and Jim Crow laws, Projecting Change, a community exhibition on the future of coastal neighborhoods and Saving Superman, a reuse of an Art Deco high-rise.

Liliane Wong received her BA in Mathematics from Vassar College and her MArch from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

A registered architect in Massachusetts, she has practiced through her own firm, Mahon Wong Associates as well as with the Boston firms of Perry Dean Rogers and FHCM.

Event
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May 21-22 2026

Opening Remarks

Co-convenors
Federica Goffi
Mariana Esponda
Mario Santana

Rumiko
Handa

KEYNOTE

Sybil Mckenna

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