Adaptive Reuse with a Fresh Eye

Woods Bagot origins extend back to 1869, when architect Edward John Woods founded his practice in Adelaide. In 1905, he was joined by another prominent local architect, Walter Bagot. Today, under recently appointed CEO Sarah Kay, Woods Bagot has 17 studios across six regions, including the 40-person New York studio, which I visited recently. The company's focus on adaptive reuse projects is a relatively recent interest that is explicitly stated in the firm’s sensitively designed interior on Broad Street in Manhattan’s Financial District. It is distinguished for its expansive open space and robust juxtaposition of sleek modern materials over a carefully preserved rough stone and concrete work within the original 1932 skyscraper directly adjacent to the New York Stock Exchange Building.

Apart from managing the New York office, where he is one of five principals, Stephenson oversees adaptive-reuse projects. He is responsible for their design, construction administration, and overall management. Adaptive reuse has become a major strategy for many architects around the world, and therefore several of Woods Bagot's studios — particularly in Shanghai, London, and Melbourne, along with the New York office — have developed significant expertise in this field. Stephenson has been working on such projects for at least 12 years, when various conversions from one building type to another or renovations of older buildings in the US started coming into the office. Working on these and other international projects, Woods Bagot relies on the resources and intelligence the firm’s studios share.

Stephenson was born in 1982 and raised in southwest Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He comes from a family of teachers: his father taught industrial arts and ran a woodshop at a local junior high school, while his mother was a librarian and speech pathologist who taught at an elementary school. The idea of wanting to build things was embedded in him early on, so he took architecture and industrial design courses in high school and then earned his bachelor's (2005) and master’s (2007) degrees in architecture from the University of Cincinnati. He had a short stint at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in New York between the degrees, solidifying his desire to work in the city, especially at a global corporate office. Upon graduation, he returned to SOM, where he became aware of Woods Bagot, which was planning to open new locations in the US at the time. By 2010, he was ready to make his move to join the then-two-year-old studio, which had also just opened an office in San Francisco and was looking for people with his experience and interests. Stephenson came aboard when the New York office had barely ten people. What immediately attracted him was that all the firm’s studios felt like one practice. “There is a constant flow of communication between the locations,” he told me, “There is a kind of close collaboration that enables better projects.”

Matt Stephenson (MS): All these methods create additional value for buildings not built from scratch. They bring a certain unique character that is hard to evaluate. However, we can easily recognize the advantages in terms of sustainability because reusing existing structures means a dramatic reduction in embodied carbon. That’s a huge advantage for such conversions. In a way, existing buildings have paid their carbon debt already. So, if we can reuse that, it would be a huge benefit. Sixty percent of all embodied carbon in buildings is in concrete. Half of that number is spent on building the foundation and structure. When buildings are converted, almost all foundations and structures are reused. That’s a huge carbon offset. We can reduce our overall carbon footprint by around 30% by reusing all that. Overlaying intelligent design systems means that the operational carbon for such projects can drop at least 20% compared to new construction. This means that repurposed buildings can save about 40-50% of their carbon footprint. That’s an intelligent way of building.

MS: Many of the projects I personally work on are adaptive reuse. We just completed three conversions in New York. Perhaps the most interesting is the Gramercy Square in Gramercy Park in Manhattan. This project is a renovation and rehabilitation of the former Cabrini Medical Center, founded in 1892 as the Columbus Hospital and served until 2008 when it closed during the financial crisis. This project was replanned. The resulting design is a residential complex of four buildings, three converted and partially reclad, and one built from the ground up, with the same square footage as the original precinct. The tallest preserved structure is a 17-story tower that stitched everything together. This new campus of buildings totals 400,000 square feet (37,160 m²). I find this project interesting because it presents a hybrid typology: first, there is a new building, then a reclad of an existing building in the middle, and, in the end, the repurposed interior with a preserved exterior. So we used a variety of strategies across one project where several buildings are all linked by a unifying courtyard.

MS: Sometimes, the focus of these reuse projects is purely on preservation, especially on landmark buildings. I particularly like situations that have space to do both preservation and new design. I like the idea of reaction when each project requires a unique solution. Everything starts with identifying the best elements that are worth keeping. Such ideas are more functionally driven than perhaps what was the big aesthetic idea originally. So, we are more driven by the ideas that will ensure the project's success. We tend to focus on those ideas and amplify them in our new design. And there is never one idea that can be applied to many projects. Every project tends to be very particular, although such elements as natural light or passive ventilation are invariably important to us.

For example, for our 49 Chamber Street project, which is a conversion of the bank and its offices to apartments, the preservation of some of the architectural features of the 1912 building was one of the key driving forces behind our design. The original landmarked banking hall is a gorgeous space that we helped transform into an immersive art gallery, while secondary entrances were reestablished as the residential lobby. The roof was covered by mechanical equipment, which we removed and transformed it into a beautiful garden for the residents. The historical character of this building is as much a material for us as brick or marble.We highlighted the existing structure efficiently and elegantly.

MS: One such project we completed a couple of years ago, Union Crossing in the Bronx, had no preservation requirements. It is the former South Bronx Union Standard Warehouse. Built in 1916, this industrial building has been renovated into a mixed-use neighborhood center for office spaces, local business shops, artists, creators, and event spaces. In this case, we used the original structure to guide the project’s overall aesthetics. Material elements, such as beautiful masonry walls, terracotta details, industrial flooring, and door hardware, pointed to what needed to be saved and highlighted. The project incorporates an internal street with commercial functions to invite the public right into the building and to have a chance to display some of those beautiful elements.

MS: I would say so. In all of these projects, what may be called prewar elements are engaged and mixed with modern additions. They follow different design ideologies. You feel a big difference in character when you move from one part of these projects to another. These contrasts are sometimes placed next to each other, and sometimes they become true fusions in which elements from different time periods are directly juxtaposed. One of our projects in London is a 1980 office building converted into a hotel. Another project in Melbourne, called Younghusband, is a 122-year-old redbrick wool store and adjoining network of industrial early-20th-century buildings converted into flexible commercial tenancies. A series of new entities have been incorporated into the old shell. They respect the character and vibrancy of the original building but create a new campus-like typology.

MS: We study many such historical and contemporary examples. That’s part of our academic-based practice. We are aware of many examples, such as Herzog & de Meuron’s recent conversion of a power plant into an arts center in Brooklyn or the Refinery at Domino by PAU on the East River, also in Brooklyn. We study these projects closely, looking at the craft and trying to position ourselves in a larger narrative of what forms adaptive reuse could take. We don’t have a specific narrative that we want to follow. You have to be a good designer to understand that each problem is different from the one before. How do you apply design principles to resolve issues for a particular building in order to meet the objectives set by the client? Certainly, many great projects teach us tremendously, but there are still specific cases that need to be approached with a fresh eye, identifying solutions that can benefit a specific situation the most. 

MS: I would pick two projects among those I am personally working on now. The first one is the former St. John’s Seminary in Brooklyn, which we are now converting into residential. This building features exquisite masonry walls and window fenestration that we will preserve, and we are redesigning the public spaces in the building’s courtyard. The other project is the conversion of the Hudford automotive manufacturers into apartments in the Bronx. This building is characterized by a beautiful, understated brickwork on the facade. We plan to carry such details to public areas inside this building. The connection between the old and the new is very interesting. Also, within the company, we are working on unusual projects in China where older industrial buildings are converted into popular retail complexes. We maintain a constant dialogue across our studios globally, and by sharing our resources and design expertise, we cross-pollinate them with fresh and exciting ideas.