Retrofits Are All the Rage

This article is reprinted with permission from Bloomberg CityLab, where it originally appeared.

At the American Institute of Architects conference this year in Boston, those dressed in black—long the unofficial uniform of uber-creative design professionals—seemed to be outnumbered. The architects prowling the convention center were more likely to be sporting button-down Oxfords or Patagonia, on their way to such sessions as “Next-Level Roofs: Energy Efficiency, Embodied Carbon, and Code Compliance.”

An architectural trend can’t be based on a wardrobe census, of course, but a shift toward more practical, sustainability-oriented work was palpable. And increasingly, that means working on retrofits, rather than creating snazzy new structures. AIA billings survey data in 2022 revealed that architects for the first time were earning more revenue for commissions on existing buildings than new construction. Recent Pritzker Prize wins by Lacaton & Vassal and David Chipperfield represent high-profile recognition of advances in restoration and renovation. Rules are being put in place to encourage adaptive reuse, as in Los Angeles, or to promote a circular economy and limit demolition, as in San Antonio. Those ordinances are alongside financial incentives offered by several local governments for converting office buildings to residential use.

So while some may still dream of becoming the next Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid, many design professionals these days seem to be singularly—almost soberly—occupied with reworking blueprints, as part of the quest to make the built environment as green and socially responsible as possible.

“The most urgent thing that’s on our plate right now is climate action, and that we have to decarbonize very rapidly,” said Carl Elefante, author of the recently published Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future and the architect credited with coining the phrase that the greenest building is the one that is already built.

It might be called the Retrofit Revolution. Or, more dramatically: the End of Architecture. At least as we knew it.

“Architecture’s long capital-P Project of exploring ever-more-complicated forms has finally come to an end. The heroic pursuit of formal complexity for its own sake feels like a bygone thing,” writes editor Jack Murphy in the May issue of The Architect’s Newspaper. “Architects should still make things, but perhaps they should be making maintenance plans or organization charts or business plans or adaptive reuse scenarios or affordable housing. Making form is necessary but easy; it’s the rest of the stuff that is hard.”

Does this mean nobody can build anything new, much less have any fun anymore? Not necessarily. It’s a safe bet there will always be a place for contemporary design—just as long as it’s green.

“There is only one crucial divide in architecture: architecture that is dependent on heavy fossil fuel inputs, and architecture that isn’t,” writes Barnabas Calder, historian of architecture at the University of Liverpool. In this context, style is beside the point.

The more critical distinction with this baseline specification of sustainability is that existing buildings, and all their embodied carbon, generally have an edge over new construction. So not only architecture but related fields like urban design, landscape architecture, planning, engineering, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work “are all duking it out, so to speak, to get a share of this emerging market sector,” said Lori Ferriss, executive director of the Built Buildings Lab.

Increasingly, advances in technology in the field are geared toward retrofits, including determining the all-important issue of cost (it can often be cheaper to renovate versus demolish and build anew, though that’s not always the case). The CARE Tool (Carbon Avoided: Retrofit Estimator) is used by builders to help measure the environmental benefits of renovations. The global design firm Gensler has developed software called Conversions+ that can help determine the viability of converting office buildings to residential use, through a cost-conscious algorithmic analysis of elements such as floor plates, window and elevator locations. A company called Existing Conditions, exhibiting at the AIA convention, offers laser scanning and radar sensors so renovators can know the location and condition of the guts of any building, from pipes to rebar.

And accordingly, much of the brain power in architecture is being devoted to things other than creating sculptural elements that are interesting to look at. The work is almost by definition not showy, in the sense that it’s more likely to be rethinking the arrangement and quality of spaces on the inside of existing buildings, rather than the appearance of facades and exteriors. Some of the best energy and innovation in the field is likely to be found not in starchitect-led firms but ones like Gensler, a roll-up-the-sleeves operation that just won the National Building Museum’s 2025 Honor Award. The company, spurred on by the need for reinvented workplace interiors post-pandemic, has excelled in what This Old House viewers might recognize as the gut rehab. Similarly, a rising star is Annabelle Selldorf, is best known for projects like her expansion of New York City’s Gilded Age Frick Collection.

“Architecture is becoming less about individual expression and more about collective responsibility,” said Harry Cliffe-Roberts, Gensler’s building transformation and adaptive reuse leader.

All kinds of design innovations, whether in new construction or retrofits, are being celebrated more for broader societal goals, like affordable housing. The winner of the Single-Stair Design Competition, for example, was recently honored at the Congress for the New Urbanism in Providence, Rhode Island. Outdated codes requiring multiple egress in multifamily projects four stories and higher have been identified as a major contributor to higher housing costs; the problematique is how to configure stairways to maintain access and safety.

A little bit nerdy, to be sure, but part and parcel of the new ethos.

As to the next logical question: Have US architecture schools kept up? A handful of institutions have prided themselves on weaving practical elements into the curriculum, from zoning to finance. It’s a bit of a subjective assessment, but those that worship a little bit less at the altar of form include Northeastern, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Miami.

At the Rhode Island School of Design, Liliane Wong, author of Adaptive Reuse in Architecture: A Typological Index, has catalogued 50 conversion and reuse projects worldwide, including buildings such as the TWA Hotel at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, the Caixa Forum in Madrid, and the New Museum in Berlin.

“Let’s say I’m a design professor at a top university—I’m so erudite, you can hardly understand a single word I say. Is there a pedagogy of building reuse that would interest that guy?” said Elefante. In creating that pedagogy, he said, retrofit-minded professors ask, “What are the different ways that you can intervene with an existing building? Wouldn’t this be a cool design? It’s sort of the fox guarding the henhouse on getting the designers who scorn existing buildings for their architectural character, to actually understand retrofit as something that could be an interesting design challenge.”

Those who emphasize reuse are up against a stubborn tradition, in both firm culture and design education. “There’s always been a professional bias toward building new,” said Hillary Brown, author of Revitalize | Resettle: How Main Street USA Can Provide New Beginnings for America’s Climate Displaced. “It starts in architecture school where the studios mostly emphasize new form making. The journals seem to prefer new construction … that needs to change.”

Altogether, the prospects don’t look good for architect as artist. It’s not just the technological advances of artificial intelligence, which is poised to do the work of humans just as in the fields of medicine, journalism, and law. Pattern language playbooks provide step-by-step instructions for traditional ways of building. At Northeastern, an initiative called Equitable Zoning by Design offers visualizations of residential buildouts in areas being considered for rezoning. The idea is to conjure an easily repeatable urban design that will make dense multifamily development more acceptable to wary neighbors.

All sensible, though it does raise an uncomfortable question. With all the new software and off-the-shelf guides, who needs creative types to make aesthetic judgements?

Shaking up established frameworks is never easy, as George Clooney, playing the journalist Edward R. Murrow, recognizes in the opening monologue of Good Night, and Good Luck: “This just might do nobody any good.”

What seems likely is that the top architecture schools may have students learn about Le Corbusier as historical artifact—but disabuse their graduates of any notion of operating like him. With an eye toward being that much more employable, the next generation of architects may well demand it.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor to Land Lines.

Lead image: In Boston, this former office building at 31 Milk Street is slated for conversion to 110 residential units. Credit: Jimmy Emerson via Flickr.