The question of what to do with ruins is as old as architecture, and answers range from demolition to meticulous reconstruction, or: cleverly combining what’s there with something new and functional.

Graphic designer Neomam has taken on a series of uninhabited buildings, playfully updating them while preserving core elements of what was left behind.

Castles on hills, colonial outposts, and farmer cottages are all raw material for these reuses, contrasting with new glass and complemented with rust-colored corten steel.

These kinds of solutions serve a few purposes They can stabilize and help protect existing architecture, but also, by giving it a new function, they add a use that people have a vested interested in preserving.

Doing interventions like these with care, to show the difference between old and new, also helps viewers ‘read’ the difference immediately, distinguishing the additions from the originals in clear and compelling ways.

Plastic piping original mass-produced to carry water from place to place has found a likewise liquid-related second life in the form of flower-holding vessels, blown out like glass into fresh new shapes.

Adapting traditional glass-blowing techniques, Japanese artist Kodai Iwamoto has created a series of signature vases that still show elements of their past lives, including production stamps. The above video illustrates the creative process.

The expansion process also naturally deforms these stamps as well as the coloration of the pipes, creating a variety of hues and details showing the origin of each piece. Custom effects, like vertical ridges, can be achieved by creating slatted formwork (then sliding the tube inside, so when it deforms its shape is informed by the slats).

This ‘Ex-Portation’ series explores the intersection of everyday object reuse and handicraft, turning cheap and available materials toward a new beautiful and functional purpose.

More about the process: “by applying air pressure into a closed pipe,” the artist “then slowly warmed the pipe with a heater to make it soft and moldable. As with glass blowing, many factors such as the shape of the mold, air-pressure and the speed of heating the pipe’s surface affect the shape of an object.”

The whole process is remarkably straightforward, which is part of its beauty — ordinary people can follow this artist’s lead and use simple technology to craft similar works from local scraps.

Cozy on the inside and virtually invisible on the outside, this Modernist home has a reflective facade allowing it to blend in with the natural environment. Meanwhile, residents can enjoy views out thanks to the one-way mirrored panels.

Designed by Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao (images by Rory Gardiner), the vacation complex in Monterrey has been dubbed Los Terrenos (Spanish for “The Terrains”). Each of three structures in the set are based primarily on one material: glass, earth or wood.

The earthen home has solid walls for privacy, ideally suited for bedrooms. Open-plan living, dining and kitchen spaces are in the more open and naturally lit glass companion building.

The glass curtain wall of the mirrored structure is hung to minimize interruption on the exterior, creating a nearly seamless reflective effect.

The other soil-based structure is composed of clay brick and rammed earth, creating a grounded contrast with its disappearing partner. The third structure has yet to be built, but will be elevated and wooden, again tying it to the forested surroundings.

A contemporary home in Spain was designed to wrap a surface well and sits on the associated subterranean cistern, creatively converting it into the solid foundation and habitable basement of this new living space.

The so-called Casa Aljibe (Cistern House) by architect Alejandro Valdivieso (images by David Frutos) is located in Alpedrete on the site of an old local water system that used to supply the neighborhood but stopped functioning over 50 years ago.

The cistern structure was left intact, however, and used for storage. When it came time to build a home for the descendants of the property owners, the architects decided build with and around these existing features.

The resulting design features a curved glass facade shaped by the well and a light prefabricated metal and timber frame system that rests comfortably on the existing stones of the cistern below. The cisterns’ ceiling functions as a patio.

Behind the house, the ground level drops off and the cistern-turned-basement can be accessed via the backyard while the new building elements cantilever out above.

The new additions are designed to be simple and geometric, informed by the shape of what is already on the site but also creating material contrast to distinguish old from new.

Resin is often used creatively to fill in the gaps wooden shapes, but these vases take the opposite approach and employ sliced logs with waned edges as a framing device rather than making it the primary focus of the work.

Los Angeles artist Scott Slagerman worked with Jim Fishman on this Wood & Glass collection, in which each vase is blown into a wooden void.

Naturally, each creation requires careful planning and execution, involving hot materials coming in contact with flammable ones. Some of the works are clear, but reds, purples, greens and oranges playfully compliment and contrast with the woods employed as well, ebbing and flowing as hues do in nature.

Slagerman “has always been captivated by glass – how it is transformed from a fragile, yet unyielding solid state to molten fluidity and back again; and how this mutable substance, through a process that is both delicate and dangerous, can create objects both essential and esoteric.”

He is “fascinated by the role that glass plays in architecture, as well as in the everyday objects that we find around us.” Glassblowing is a an art of speed and dexterity, all the more so when working with something that could catch fire and itself be reshaped by the glass being blown.