Reduce, Reuse, Reclad

Kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with powdered precious metal, is a practice of celebrating the life and history of an object. It is an embodiment of the belief that a piece can be more beautiful and valuable for having been broken and repaired.

What if we thought about our aging buildings in the same way? What if, instead of tossing aside or accepting the broken, we transformed these buildings into something more valuable? What if in reimagining their facades it is possible to create something richer and more beautiful than a brand new facade could be?

We believe that designers can bring new life to downtowns, salvage the embodied energy in aging structures and create historied buildings that offer the unique, premiere environments the market demands.

But repositioning and recladding outdated buildings comes with challenges. These existing structures often come occupied, creating logistics challenges in scheduling and sequencing. Floor to floor heights, structural layouts and systems from another era require creative programming and planning strategies. Significant updates to older buildings require a careful and nuanced analysis of current codes and zoning developments. Each of these areas of concern and more will have impacts on the facade design and detailing in ways that are unique to each reclad project.

Although the range of issues requiring project specific analysis in these projects is vast, there are some similarities and lessons to be learned as designers approach transforming these dated facades into high-performance envelopes for adaptable, sustainable, high performing buildings. This paper will explore these design challenges on a range of projects from One Indiana Square in Indianapolis, IN complete in 2009 to One Post Office Square in Boston, MA, currently under construction. We will draw on perspectives beyond architecture and include voices from engineering and construction.