Faces of Change

Local codes have improved the regulation of sustainability and energy efficiency in buildings but don’t yet fully address the sourcing of materials and their relative long-term energy costs. In this month’s Focus section, AN considers projects of various scales that rehabilitate damaged industrial sites, recycle construction materials, adaptively reuse existing structures, support landscape explorations, and design new possibilities for familiar elements.

Eight architects in London—Adam Khan Architects, Architecture 00, Mole Architects, SelgasCano, 6a, Barozzi Veiga, HNNA, and David Kohn Architects— have inserted a series of dynamic structures on the rehabilitated site of a former industrial natural gas plant. The stylized facades of Greenwich Design District create an engaging public space for offices, a food hall, and an experimental media center.

Testbeds is a project of New York–based firm New Affiliates with Sam Stewart-Halevy that repurposes mock-ups from construction sites to support community gardens. In Queens, they partnered with the Department of Parks and Recreation’s GreenThumb program to demonstrate how the mock-ups—normally thrown away after use in design and construction projects—can be recycled. The architects hope Testbeds, currently on view at MoMA as part of its New York, New Publics exhibition, can be adopted by developers and expanded to serve other community gardens.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, TenBerke’s adaptive reuse of the Lewis International Law Center at Harvard surgically rehabilitates Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbott’s 1957 stone-clad concrete structure, adding square footage by expanding the top floor and reconfiguring the interior to accommodate more flexibility and social interaction.

The Four Rooftop Pavilion, by Los Angeles–based firms Found Projects and >Schneider Luescher, offers public programs within the recently completed Pingshan Children’s Park in fast-developing Shenzhen, China. The site preserves a landscape of banyan, eucalyptus, and lychee trees as a children’s play area to educate the next generation about the value of ecology and the natural environment. Grand Mulberry, in New York’s Little Italy neighborhood, uses custom-designed red bricks manufactured by Glen-Gary to preserve neighborhood character and history. The 20-unit residential building, designed by Morris Adjmi Architects, houses the Italian American Museum on its ground floor and takes inspiration from the 19th-century Italianate style, inflected with Adjmi’s contemporary flair.

In small ways, each facade-forward project makes a difference in its context.