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Upcycling: Toward a Pedagogy of Material and Cultural Conservation

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This in-person lecture is part of the Fall 2025 Sciame Lecture Series, "rePURPOSE."

Prof. Nandini Bagchee is the principal of Bagchee Architects and Associate Professor at the Spitzer School of Architecture (CCNY, CUNY). Her research focuses on activism in architecture and the ways in which ground up collaborative building practices provide an alternative medium for the creation of public space. Nandini is the author of a book on the history and impact of activist-run spaces in New York City entitled, Counter Institution: Activist Estates of the Lower East Side (Fordham University Press, 2018). Nandini’s design work and writing has been published in the New York Times, Interiors Now, Urban Omnibus and the Journal of Architectural Education. She is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council of the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Graham Foundation. Her research-based architectural work involves an engagement with grass roots organizations such as the South Bronx Unite, Upbeat NYC, Interference Archive, the Clemente Center and the Laundromat Project in New York City. Through her practice- Bagchee Architects is working with a few different community land trusts in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens to design community-controlled spaces.

Prof. Fabian Llonch (he/him) is an architect and educator based in New York. He earned his professional architecture degree from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, and a Master of Architecture with Honors from Washington University in St. Louis, where he received the Frederick Widmann Prize. He co-founded llonch+vidalle Architecture (LLV) in 1998, a practice recognized with national and international awards for projects in the U.S., Argentina, and Spain, including the Rock Bridge Christian Church and the Nuevo Centro Cultural in Rafaela. His work has been widely exhibited—in the U.S., Argentina, Spain, Brazil, Ecuador, and at the Venice Biennale—and published in magazines and books internationally. LLV’s monograph, [dis]PLACED, was released in 2015, with a second volume underway. Fabian has taught in Argentina, Spain, Italy, and the United States, and has served as a guest critic at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Pratt, and UPenn. He is currently an Associate Professor at City College of New York, Spitzer School of Architecture.

Prof. Shawn Rickenbacker (he/him) is a trained architect, urbanist, and urban data researcher. He is the Director of the CCNY J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures where he directs the Center’s sponsored research and an Associate Professor of Architecture at the CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture. Under his leadership, the Bond Center has become a hub for pioneering transdisciplinary research among academics, government agencies, communities, and industry partners. His transdisciplinary research and work directly confront the complex intersection of architecture, spatial equity, and the socioeconomic impacts of place-based policies, through the lens of urban data, forensic and design research. His work has been exhibited and published by MIT Press and NY Times.

"Upcycling: Toward a Pedagogy of Material and Cultural Conservation": As architecture confronts a new generation of environmental and urban design challenges, adaptive reuse emerges not merely as a technical solution but as a critical pedagogical framework. Amid climate imperatives to reduce embodied carbon, shrinking inventories of viable urban building sites, and the rise of “zombie buildings” left vacant by shifting economic patterns and work-from-home trends, the discipline must rethink its relationship to existing structures and urban fabric. This presentation explores how adaptive reuse can anchor a pedagogy of decarbonization: teaching designers to prioritize transformation over demolition, leverage latent spatial and material resources, and reimagine the city as an unfinished, renewable construct. Focus will be given to the design of new vertical public and third spaces as augmented social infrastructures, that emerge from repurposed towers, underused podiums and lobbies, and obsolete commercial cores to address sparse urban public space and redefine communal life in dense cities. By engaging with constraints as generative forces, we invite both students and practitioners to view the aged, the empty, and the overlooked not as liabilities but as foundations for regenerative design. Adaptive reuse, in this framing, becomes more than preservation: it is a forward-looking, carbon conscious design ethos suited to our era’s urgent spatial and ecological realities.

Suggested Reading: Llonch, F., & Vidalle, G. (2014). Displaced: Llonch+Vidalle Architecture. Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers.

Gupta, Arpit and Mittal, Vrinda and Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (January 23, 2025). forthcoming American Economic Review, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4124698 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4124698

Mischke, J., Luby, R., Vickery, B., Woetzel, J., White, O., Sanghvi, A., Rhee, J., Fu, A., Palter, R., Dua, A., & Smit, S. (2023, July). Empty spaces and hybrid places: The pandemic’s lasting impact on real estate. McKinsey & Company. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/ymy8sfwv

"rePURPOSE" centers on the practice of adaptive reuse in the built environment. Repurposing, embedded in historical patterns of city building and for the most part discarded in the modern movement, is undergoing a remarkable renaissance. The lecture series invites architects, planners, developers, advocates, and engineers to present the technologies, designs, economic incentives, and policy changes that are needed to advance a substantively renewed and at-scale program of repurposing in New York and other global cities. The reuse of old structures is not a new idea. After the fall of the Roman Empire, for example, the Colosseum was repurposed for housing and workshops during the medieval period. Although reuse is understood as a convention that both requires and imposes minimal impact, rePURPOSE shines light on how the methodology might not be entirely benign, how it might in fact have real impact, and the ways in which it challenges and would necessarily disrupt the very conventions with which we typically assume it is aligned.

Of special, although not exclusive, interest is unpacking the relationship of repurposing to the climate crisis. Might historic preservation sit at the center of technical innovation? Are all older buildings valuable as climate mitigation assets, or will new uses, such as data storage in old buildings, undermine the LCA embodied carbon savings achieved? What rules, laws, and incentives are needed to sustain innovative approaches to meaningful reuse, and to what extent will a complete reform of preservation regulations and zoning frameworks be required?

The Fall 2025 Sciame lecture series will address the profound potential inherent in giving new life to old structures; employing adaptive reuse methodologies to impact environmental, economic, and cultural conditions by reducing waste and carbon emissions, lowering costs and raising property values, maintaining historical character, and preserving local identity.

All lectures are free, open to the public, and held in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture Sciame Auditorium. For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu.

This lecture series is made possible by the Spitzer Architecture Fund and the generous support of Frank Sciame ’74, CEO of Sciame Construction.

(Photograph ©Paul Raphaelson)

Sciame Auditorium (Room 107) 141 Convent Avenue New York, NY 10031

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