When historic structures have fallen into ruin, should architects restore them to their original glory or acknowledge the passage of time? The answer to that question might depend on the significance of the building (and whether or not it’s legally protected), its condition and the client’s vision for its new purpose, but projects that take on this task run the gamut from painstakingly minimalist interventions to dazzling contrasts of old and new. A variety of approaches give new hope to buildings that seem beyond repair, even when all that’s left is a pile of rubble.

Minimal Interventions

Sometimes, the best solution is to allow the ruins to be what they are while adding some functionality back to the structure. These new additions might only include elements that make the building safer and more usable, or they might exert some architectural style of their own, standing out as contemporary against the aged stone.

In the case of Pi des Catalá Tower, a protected landmark on the smallest of Spain’s Balearic Islands, architect Maria Castelló Martínez made interventions “involving only the parts that jeopardized the life of the building most of all.” Local sandstone almost identical to the original materials fills in some damaged areas without hiding the chronological differences between the original substrate and the intervention process. Corten steel contrasts yet complements, reinforcing the doorways and windows, weathering along with the rest of the structure.

From afar, you might not even notice that anything has been added to these 700-year-old medieval ruins in Eastern Jutland, Denmark. Only from certain angles do the new observational staircase elements by MAP Architects become apparent, poking out of the crumbling brick. Visitors can take in the way time has altered the original structure of Kalø Castle from the zig-zagging staircase and use their imaginations to fill in the blanks. To make sure the ruins were up to the task of supporting the new staircase, the architects digitally scanned every individual brick with a portable 3D scanner, and only attached it to the ruins at four integral points.

The 16th century Blencowe Hall in England was added to the national ‘Buildings at Risk’ register after the roofs collapsed in the towers flanking either end, producing a large gash in the facade. Working with the owners and a local architect, Donald Insall Associates re-roofed the building, stabilized threatened areas and inserted a new facade behind the gash without attempting to close it up or hide it. The result is striking, especially at night.

Preserving Ruins As They Are

A 300-year-old cottage has been saved from falling into total ruin by a highly unconventional renovation you’d expect to see in a museum rather than a functional home. David Connor Design and Kate Darby Architects left almost everything intact, enveloping it all within a protective new shell.

“The strategy was not to renovate or repair the 300-year-old listed building, but to preserve it perfectly,” they say. “This would include the rotten timbers, the dead ivy, the old birds nests, the cobwebs and the existing dust. The ruins would be protected from the elements within a new high performance outer envelope. This means that in most places there would be two walls, two windows and two roofs, old and new.”

Ferran Vizoso Architecture took a similar approach with a church in Corbrera d’ebro, Spain. A new, lightweight contemporary membrane made of ETFE panels covers the vulnerable open roof to keep the building from deteriorating further, but in this case, the protective element is barely visible from outside. The windows have been enclosed, as well, creating a newly re-inhabitable space. Other reinforcements, like metal supports under fragile archways, are subtle enough to escape notice.

Ruins as Facades for New Houses

Whereas that English cottage preservation was virtually turned inside-out, with new construction on the outside, a more popular technique for restoring ruins keeps the outer appearance of the original structures intact while placing all interventions inside. If the dilapidated building is fairly intact, you might barely be able to tell anything has changed at all, as is the case with La Ruina Habitada by Estudio Jesus Castillo Oli. The architects wanted to it to be an “inhabitable ruin,” giving the long-abandoned structure new life but keeping all the markers of its age.

In Dumfries, Scotland, the ruins of a 17th-century stone farmhouse remain exactly as they were when the clients purchased the property despite the fact that a new house has gone up within the original footprint. Lily Jencks Studio and Nathanael Dorent Architecture took great pains to barely touch a single stone on the farmhouse, building the new modern residence inside and around its walls.

The Dovecote Studio by Haworth Tompkins takes a similar course with a dilapidated brick building on a music campus in Suffolk, matching its hue with Corten steel.

Blending Architectural Styles with Sensitivity

When modern and historic architecture meet, the results can be controversial, but whether or not they’re successful might be subjective anyway. Purists bemoan any alternation whatsoever to a historic structure, hoping ruins can be restored as faithfully as possible, but that approach might not be appropriate for the given project, especially when it’s difficult or downright impossible to perfectly match the original materials. That was the idea behind one of the most divisive restoration projects in modern memory: the Vilhariques Tower and Matrera Castle in Spain.

Before architect Carlos Quevedo began, both structures were little more than a couple crumbled walls at risk of collapse. The Spanish government wanted the ruins to become educational facilities, but we don’t know exactly what these buildings used to look like, so Quevedo simply built new structures into what’s left of the originals, matching their approximate dimensions. Many locals were outraged, comparing the results to the infamously botched restoration of Elias Garcia Martinez’s fresco of Christ known as Ecce Homo.

But what about ruins located in more urban areas, or those that are still actively in use, but in dangerously poor condition? When they’re legally allowed to just demolish the ruins and start over, developers often choose to do just that. It’s a lot cheaper and easier. So it’s nice to see projects like the Kew House by Piercy & Company in London, which preserves an old stone wall to keep a modern home in character with the rest of the historic block.

The church of the Convent de Sant Francesc Santpedor in Spain had plenty of life left in it before architect David Closes was commissioned to convert it into a cultural facility, but it was in a rough state. The adjacent convent had already been demolished in the year 2000. The church wasn’t particularly well built in the first place, so Closes had his work cut out for him making it functional again. He identified its most striking characteristics, like the potential for natural light within its collapsed naves, and used new materials and modern finishes to highlight them. The damage to the church, all of its wounds and scars from over the years, is still visible, and the architect makes no attempt to pretend an intervention hasn’t taken place.

A similar story unfolds at the Vilanova de la Barca Church, which suffered bombings during the Spanish Civil War. Barcelona-based studio AleaOlea tells the story of what happened to the church with contrasting modern elements. The interruption and destruction of the historic building is starkly visible, but the new construction achieves an easy harmony with its monochromatic consistency.

Salvaging & Repurposing Fallen Components

Even when ruins seem too far gone to be preserved, they can remain a part of the landscape, infusing new construction with history and character. Bergmeister Wolf rebuilt a fallen wall and integrated it into a new, modern home that follows the same lines and contours as the original building.

For the magnificent ‘Aloni’ home on the Greek island of Antiparos, a residence straddling a valley, DecaArchitecture disassembled ruinous stone retaining walls on the property and incorporated them into the facade. Built into the hillside, the camouflaged holiday home maintains the look and feel of the land before it was changed and adapted for contemporary usage.

A site of national historical importance in rural China was in danger of disappearing before the studio 3andwich was tasked with transforming it into a tourist destination. The architects turned a collection of small deserted agricultural outbuildings and rubble from a fallen barn into a recreation of Yang’s School, which now serves as a bookstore and museum. This stone rubble forms the first floor of the main building of the new facility, with fresh wooden construction enclosing the second floor and roof.

Whichever road an architect may choose to take, it’s nice to see some elements of history preserved and maintained, creating less waste while establishing a tangible connection between past and present.

A notorious red light district and black market before it was swept and shut down by authorities in 2005, the cavernous space beneath an overpass in Yokohama sat empty for years until a social redevelopment project gave it a new lease on life. The Koganecho Centre is a complex of cultural spaces tucked between the concrete columns, which act to unify the disparate architectural styles of the individual buildings. Not only has the project made the space functional again for residents of Japan’s second most populous city, it’s given a new identity to a district that was flailing.

Understanding the value of this adaptive reuse project requires knowing a little of Koganecho’s history. The area was razed to the ground by American B-29s during World War II, and the black market sprung up among the ruins. It quickly gained an international reputation after William S. Burroughs extolled the virtues of its drugs. At its peak, it contained 257 shops, many controlled by gangs. It may not have been legal or safe, but nobody could say it wasn’t vibrant. After police wiped it out, Koganecho became a ghost town.

It was art that would bring it back to life, albeit in virtually unrecognizable form. The Koganecho Area Management Center worked with the City of Yokohama and the Keikyu railway company to create an urban renewal project that makes use of the existing structures. Koizumi Atelier, Nishikura Architectural Design Office, Workstation, Contemporaries and Studio 2A were the firms invited to design five structures: a meeting space, an open-air piazza, an artist’s atelier, an art gallery and a cafe. Together, the new buildings occupy a 328-foot stretch beneath the overpass.

Some of them are set squarely within the space between the columns while others are inserted at angles, built around the concrete structures. Some look lightweight and impermanent with corrugated metallic walls, and some as solid as the bridge itself. Jagged rooflines, warm wood steps, large windows and textured surfaces imbue the new complex with warmth and character.

To venture deeper into each one of these structures and learn more about the project, check out this profile on Domus.

A whole lot of valuable land in America’s densest urban centers is occupied by the disused and often toxic remnants of neglected infrastructure, industrial complexes and other blight that could be green space instead. Taking inspiration from New York City’s High Line, an elevated linear park along a former New York Central Railroad spur, many cities are transforming urban riverbanks, viaducts, underpasses, freeway structures and even the tops of tunnels into parks, bike paths, pedestrian routes and other public amenities.

11th Street Bridge Park, Washington DC by OMA and OLIN

An aging freeway structure over the Anacostia River in Washington D.C. is set to become the 11th Street Bridge Park, with officials announcing in October 2017 that a design by OMA + OLIN has been chosen. Each ‘lane’ of the bridge is pulled upward toward the middle, crossing each other to form an X shape; the space underneath these overhangs will host a performance area, cafe, plazas and other public functions.

Lowline, New York City, New York by James Ramsey and Daniel Barasch

Complementing New York City’s famous High Line park, a 1.45-mile greenway built on a former New York Central Railroad spur, the subterranean ‘Lowline’ has been given a green light. Set to be the world’s first underground park, it will be tucked into a former trolley terminal in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, with a design by James Ramsey and Daniel Barasch. “The transformation of an old, forgotten trolley terminal into a dynamic cultural space designed for a 21st century city is truly a New York story,” says Barasch. “We know with input from the community and the city, we can make the Lowline a unique, inspiring space that everyone can enjoy.”

The 606, Chicago, Illinois by Collins Engineering, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Frances Whitehead

Chicago converted its abandoned Bloomingdale Rail Line into a 2.7 mile linear park called the 606 (named for the zip code prefix shared by everyone in the city.) The greenway connects four separate neighborhoods and includes a park and trail system with elevated trails for bikers, runners and walkers as well as event spaces and lots of greenery. The project was designed by the firm Frances Whitehead, which approached it as a ‘living work of art,’ demonstrating the vital role that arts play in the fabric of the city.

The Underline, Miami, Florida by James Corner Field Operations

Down in Miami, a stretch beneath an elevated rail line could become ‘The Underline,’ a new public park by James Corner Field Operations, one of the studios behind the High Line in NYC. The 10-mile-long park and urban trail would sit beneath the city’s MetroRail, following an existing bike path called the M-Path, but widening it and adding a parallel pedestrian path that winds through various ecosystems of native plants and habitats for birds and butterflies. Spaces for arts and recreation would be scattered along the way, like pop-up structures and a bike tune-up station.

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Rail To Trail 12 U S Park Projects Reclaiming Urban Infrastructure

Since shipping containers are made to be stacked, that’s how they’re usually arranged when reclaimed for architectural projects. It just makes sense, right? They fit together in a certain way. But architecture firm Whitaker Studio just smashed that convention in spectacular fashion with one of the most bonkers shipping container projects we’ve ever seen, and the results are as beautiful as they are unusual.

Rising from the rocky Joshua Tree desert in California like a rare flower, this all-white residence is laid out in a starburst shape with several shipping containers pivoted up toward the sky. Each container is capped with glass and oriented to take advantage of a certain view, whether of the sky, the distant mountains, or the adjacent boulders.

Each individual container either serves as a small room for the interior, or as a giant skylight bringing natural light into the core. Dining tables and beds can be spotted through the glass from outside, wedged into the narrow spaces. In some areas, several containers are combined with their walls removed to create larger rooms. The layout is hard to determine from the exterior, but once you see images of the 2,150-square-foot interior, it makes more sense.

Though these renderings are pretty convincing, construction on the Joshua Tree residence is not set to start until 2018 on a 90-acre plot owned by a film producer. Architect and studio founder James Whitaker told ArchDaily that the client and his friends were visiting the plot of land, imagining what should be placed there, when someone pulled out their laptop and showed the group an image of a structure he’d designed several years prior, but that had never been built.

The containers are arranged to fit within the topography of the site, angled wider in some areas to accommodate the hills and rocks, creating sheltered outdoor areas for decks and hot tubs. The site is set on a natural gully created by stormwater, so the containers are raised off the ground, allowing water to pass underneath.

106 vertical concrete tubes making up a massive disused grain silo in Cape Town, South Africa are sliced and carved from the inside out to produce cathedral-like spaces in this incredible transformation. Architect Thomas Heatherwick and his firm contrasted the cold, aging industrial appearance of the complex with faceted glass and organic shapes for a futuristic looking result, a fittingly monumental setting for the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), the world’s largest museum dedicated to African contemporary art.

The silo once stood as a symbol of economic progress in 20th century Cape Town, but as the world around it changed, it was abandoned. Sitting empty since the 1990s, the silo had become a bit of an eyesore, especially as the waterfront around it modernized, but remained historically important. Heatherwick’s project creates 6,000 square meters ((64,583 square feet) of exhibition space in a total of 80 individual galleries along with a rooftop garden, book store, restaurant, bar and conservation laboratories.

“We were excited by this opportunity to unlock this formerly dead structure and transform it into somewhere for people to see and enjoy the most incredible artworks from the continent of Africa,” says Heatherwick. “The technical challenge was to find a way to carve out spaces and galleries from the ten-story high tubular honeycomb without completely destroying the authenticity of the original building.”

‘Tubular honeycomb’ is a good way to describe it. The interior photos reveal voids carefully carved out of the bases of the concrete tubes, revealing their geometries in whole new ways. Some of these tubes act as skylights, while others hold glass elevators or spiraling staircases. The museum stands as an awe-inspiring example of how adaptive reuse can reveal qualities you might never have expected in existing structures.