Adaptive Reuse: Extending the Lives of Buildings

Building in existing fabric requires more than practical solutions and stylistic skills. The adaptive reuse of buildings, where changes in the structure go along with new programs and functions, poses the fundamental question of how the past should be included in the design for the future.

On the background of long years of teaching and publishing, and using vivid imagery from Frankenstein to Rem Koolhaas and beyond, the author provides a comprehensive introduction to architectural design for adaptive reuse projects. History and theory, building typology, questions of materials and construction, aspects of preservation, urban as well as interior design are dealt with in ways that allow to approach adaptive reuse as a design practice field of its own right.

The second revised edition includes a bibliography and detailed indices.

• Fundamental introduction to an important field of architectural design
• For those who teach and those who learn
• Expanded edition includes a comprehensive bibliography

Liliane Wong’s focus on architectural interventions to existing structures led her to cofound the Int|AR Journal on design interventions and adaptive reuse, which promotes creative and academic explorations of sustainable environments through exemplary works of reuse. A longtime volunteer at soup kitchens, Wong emphasizes in her teaching the importance of public engagement in architecture and design.
Wong’s teaching and research areas include design as social activism, the mathematics of curved space, the affordable modular home and technical textiles. Recent work with students includes Don’t You Sit Down, an installation on Jim Crow laws, and Crossing the Pell, a multi-year investigation of adapting infrastructure, which has since become an immersive exhibition, part of which is installed in the US Capitol. Wong was recognized by Design Intelligence in 2018–19 as one of the top 25 most admired educators in the US in the fields of architecture, interiors and landscape architecture.