Seminar/Lecture
Exhibition of Student Work
Student Led Projects
©2026 Unearthed Practice
ARCH515—
(re)Framing (re)Use
Marywood University, School of Architecture, Graduate Seminar
This course aims to expand and (re)frame the discussions of architectural value that surround adaptive reuse projects from a focus on economic factors and age–value to a speculative one that assesses architecture's embodied potential to support equity in communities and embrace a just climate–future. Students encounter readings, discussions, and design exercises that probe the ability of adaptive reuse practices and the representational tools of the architect to negotiate local relationships and planetary concerns. The course takes a site specific approach, using Scranton and its post-industrial anthracite coal history as a teaching tool.
Scene 1— (re)Cycling:
Material Ecologies
(re)Cycling builds on the carbon accounting frameworks introduced in the first exercise, shifting focus toward material ecologies and alternative construction temporalities. Working within a defined carbon budget and a palette of reclaimed materials, students will design demountable housing pods sited within the former Scranton State School for the Deaf, (re)imagined as a cohousing collective. Students will confront the failures of linear take–make–waste material streams, examine deconstruction as an architectural, regulatory, and infrastructural practice, and challenge growth–driven models of production through concepts of sufficiency and commoning, framing reuse as both design constraint and opportunity.
Brianna ConniffBrianna ConniffBrianna ConniffJordan SlaterJordan SlaterJordan SlaterTheresa LeTheresa LeTheresa Le
Scene 2— (re)Sampling:
Building Lifespan
(re)Sampling expands from materials to buildings, examining how concepts of architectural lifespan is entangled with code, insurance, risk management, and financial instruments like the 30-year mortgage. Questioning obsolescence and cultural norms of living through practices of repair, maintenance, care, and commoning will be central to class discussion and design intention. Discussing artist Dan Graham's 1978 Alteration to a Suburban House, Beatriz Colomina writes, "Alterations, of a building or a dress, always involve, at a certain point in the process, exposing how a piece holds together... not just the physical but the social structure." In this design exercise, students will (re)sample—understood in the musical sense—a precedent and (re)mix its spatial and organizational logics into a prototypical residential structure. While program remains constant, the resultant projects exceed renovation, radically transforming domestic spatial relations, rituals of inhabitation, and the perception of space inside and out.
Jordan Slater
Scene 2— (re)Presentation:
Continuous Interior
(re)Presenting extends the work of Scene 2 by shifting focus from plan-based transformation to the representation of interior spatial continuity. While the previous exercise operated through planimetric reconfiguration, this assignment asks students to engage the interior as a continuous surface—one that can be unfolded, sequenced, and reconstituted through orthographic drawing. Unrolling as a transformational process becomes another representational strategy for students to communicate the arrangements mixed into the designs from Scene 2.
Jordan SlaterTheresa LeBrianna Conniff
Reading List
(texts in order of assignment)
- Beatriz Colomina, "Double Exposure: Alterations to a Suburban Home," Alex Kitnick ed. October Files: Dan Graham (MIT Press, 2011): 163-171
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Jane M. Jacobs and Stephen Cairns, "Introduction: A Feeling for the Inert" & "Toward a General Economy of Architecture," Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture (MIT Press, 2014): 1-8, 48-67
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Elma Durmisevic, “Reversible Building Design,” Martin Charter (ed.) Designing for the Circular Economy (Routledge, 2019): 344-359
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Jordan Lazell, Solon Magrrizos, Marylyn Carrigan, “Over-Claiming the Circular Economy: The Missing Dimensions," Social Business 8, 1 (2018): 103-114
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Zehan Zhang and Joshua D. Lee, "Decision-making analysis for Pittsburgh’s deconstruction pilot using AHP and GIS," Buildings and Cities, 4 (2023): 292–314
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Sudeshna Ghosh et.al. "Metropolitan Regional Scale Smart City Approaches in a Shrinking City in the American Rust Belt—Case of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania," T. M. Vinod Kumar ed. Smart Metropolitan Regional Development (Springer, 2018): 979-1021
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Daniel M. Abramson, "Architectures of Obsolescence: Lessons for History," Tischleder, et.al. (eds) Cultures of Obsolescence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015): 61-75
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Dennis Maher, "Assembling the Real Imaginary City," Nichole Bouchard ed. Waste Matters: Adaptive Reuse for Productive Landscapes (Routledge, 2021): 52-63
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Alison Von Glinow and Lap Chi Kwong, “Some of This, Some of That,” lecture, Princeton School of Architecture, Princeton, NJ, (2022), video, Vimeo.
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Liliane Wong and Markus Berger, Interventions and Adaptive Reuse: A Decade of Responsible Practice, (Birkhäuser, 2021)
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Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman, “Aesthetics,” and "How to Inhabit the Hyper-aesthetic Image,” Investigative Aesthetics: Conflict and Common in the Politics of Truth (Verso Press, 2022): 39-48, 59-67.
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Olalekan Jeyffous, “Reuse and Reclamation in Artistic Practices and Production,” Nichole Bouchard ed. Waste Matters: Adaptive Reuse for Productive Landscapes (Routledge, 2021): 75-87
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Richard Sennett, "The Bond of Making," Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City (Yale University Press: 2018): 242-263
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Jessica Libby and Hao Zheng, “French 2D Builds Practice Side-by-Side,” The Architect’s Newspaper, April 2020
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Jan De Vylder, “About this. And that,” lecture, Princeton School of Architecture, Princeton, NJ, (2015) video, Vimeo.