Full Text
DESIGNING RELATIONAL LANDSCAPES THROUGH ADAPTIVE REUSE AND COLLECTIVE SPATIAL PRACTICES
ABSTRACT
Contemporary architectural practice increasingly recognises adaptive reuse as an essential response to environmental, social and economic challenges. Nevertheless, it continues to be interpreted predominantly through technical or conservation-oriented perspectives, overlooking its broader capacity to reorganise relationships between architecture, inhabitants and territory. This paper proposes re-incorporation as a relational design strategy through which adaptive reuse generates landscape beyond material preservation. Building upon Georges Teyssot's concept of incorporation and Bruno Latour's relational understanding of spatial production, the research reconceptualises landscape as a dynamic condition emerging through the interaction between bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems rather than as a static visual setting. A qualitative comparative methodology is employed to analyse four internationally recognised projects—Parc de la Villette (Paris), High Line (New York), Zollhaus (Zurich) and Bellevue (Munich)—selected for their capacity to transform existing spatial conditions through adaptive intervention. The findings demonstrate that, despite their different programmes and contexts, all four projects generate landscape by reorganising embodied practices, collective infrastructures and environmental relationships. Adaptive reuse therefore operates not simply as a strategy of conservation but as a continuous process of spatial transformation capable of producing new forms of collective inhabitation. By positioning re-incorporation as a conceptual framework linking architecture, landscape and adaptive transformation, this research contributes to contemporary discussions on adaptive reuse while offering a transferable perspective for designing more resilient, socially engaged and environmentally responsive built environments.
KEYWORDS: Adaptive Reuse; Landscape; Re-incorporation; Relational Design; Collective Inhabitation.
INTRODUCTION
Landscape has traditionally occupied a secondary position within architectural discourse, frequently understood as the visual or environmental setting surrounding the architectural object. Such interpretations privilege representation over interaction, reinforcing distinctions between architecture and nature, object and context, or building and territory. Contemporary ecological and social challenges increasingly question these binary understandings, demanding architectural approaches capable of recognising landscape as an active and continuously evolving field of relationships rather than a static backdrop. Within this perspective, landscape emerges not through formal composition alone but through the dynamic interactions established between bodies, infrastructures, ecological systems and everyday spatial practices (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50).
The growing importance of adaptive reuse reflects this broader disciplinary shift. Faced with the environmental consequences of continuous demolition and reconstruction, architects have progressively embraced strategies capable of extending the life of existing buildings while reducing material consumption and preserving embodied resources. Yet adaptive reuse continues to be interpreted primarily through technical, environmental or heritage-oriented perspectives, emphasising energy performance, circularity or conservation. Although these dimensions remain fundamental, they only partially explain the transformative capacity of architectural intervention. Reusing architecture does not simply preserve physical structures; it reorganises the relationships through which buildings participate in collective life, ecological processes and urban transformation.
This paper argues that adaptive reuse should therefore be understood as a relational design strategy rather than solely as a technical process of conservation. Its significance lies not only in maintaining existing material fabric but in activating new relationships between architecture, bodies and territory. Within this framework, landscape is no longer conceived as a pre-existing condition awaiting architectural intervention but as a living construct continuously generated through embodied practices, shared infrastructures and environmental exchanges.
This interpretation is developed through the concept of re-incorporation. Building upon Georges Teyssot's understanding of incorporation as the process through which architectural space becomes internalised within bodily routines and everyday practices (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169), re-incorporation extends this relationship by recognising the reciprocal capacity of those practices to transform architecture itself. Buildings are therefore understood not as completed objects whose meaning is fixed upon construction, but as relational systems continuously reshaped through occupation, adaptation and collective inhabitation. Architecture becomes less a finished artefact than an evolving medium through which social, ecological and material relationships are constantly renegotiated.
This perspective resonates with Bruno Latour's rejection of rigid distinctions between society, nature and technology. Rather than existing as autonomous domains, these elements operate as heterogeneous networks whose interactions continuously produce reality (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50). Applied to architecture, this implies that landscape cannot be conceived independently from the interactions established between buildings, infrastructures, environmental systems and everyday practices. Landscape is therefore not represented or discovered; it is continuously produced.
Andrea Branzi similarly conceives architecture as an open and adaptive system capable of evolving through incremental transformation rather than permanent formal stability. Rejecting the modernist pursuit of definitive forms, Branzi proposes a more flexible architectural condition in which buildings remain receptive to successive processes of adaptation, occupation and reinterpretation (Branzi, 2006, pp. 13–15). Adaptive reuse consequently becomes more than an environmental strategy: it establishes architecture as an active mediator of changing relationships whose permanence derives from transformation rather than fixity.
Against this theoretical background, the research addresses the following question: How can adaptive reuse operate as a relational design strategy capable of producing landscape through collective spatial practices rather than formal composition?
To answer this question, the study adopts a qualitative comparative methodology centred on four internationally recognised projects: Parc de la Villette (Bernard Tschumi, Paris), High Line (Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations, New York), Zollhaus (Enzmann Fischer Partner, Zurich) and Bellevue (Hirner & Riehl Architekten, Munich). Rather than comparing typological or formal characteristics, the projects are examined according to the relational mechanisms through which they reorganise interactions between architecture, collective inhabitation and environmental systems.
Accordingly, this research makes two principal contributions. First, it expands current understandings of adaptive reuse by repositioning it as a relational design strategy capable of generating new forms of collective life rather than merely preserving existing buildings. Second, it reconceptualises landscape as a metabolic and continuously evolving condition emerging through reciprocal interactions between architecture, bodies and ecological systems. In doing so, it proposes re-incorporation as a conceptual framework capable of connecting landscape theory, adaptive reuse and architectural practice within a unified relational perspective.
FROM REPRESENTATION TO RELATIONAL LANDSCAPES
The understanding of landscape has progressively shifted from a predominantly visual and representational concept towards a dynamic and relational condition. Rather than functioning as the physical setting surrounding architecture, landscape is increasingly recognised as a process continuously produced through the interaction of ecological, social and material systems. This transition reflects a broader epistemological shift within contemporary architectural thought, replacing static conceptions of space with an understanding of the built environment as a network of evolving relationships.
Rather than functioning as an autonomous object placed within landscape, architecture actively participates in its production by reorganising the interactions through which places are inhabited, perceived and transformed. Consequently, the conventional distinction between architecture and landscape becomes progressively less relevant, as both emerge from the same relational processes. Landscape is therefore understood less as an object of representation than as the spatial consequence of continuous environmental, material and social exchanges.
This interpretation finds theoretical support in Bruno Latour's understanding of reality as a heterogeneous network where human and non-human actors continuously establish new associations (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50). Applied to architecture, this perspective suggests that landscape cannot be conceived independently from the relationships established between buildings, infrastructures, ecological systems and everyday practices. It is not an external condition awaiting intervention but a relational field continuously assembled through occupation and transformation.
RE-INCORPORATION AS A RELATIONAL DESIGN STRATEGY
The transition from representational to relational understandings of landscape requires a corresponding transformation in the way architecture itself is conceived. If landscape emerges through networks of interactions rather than formal composition, architectural design can no longer be understood as the production of autonomous objects. Instead, architecture becomes one of the agents through which relationships are established, transformed and continuously renegotiated. It is within this framework that the concept of re-incorporation is proposed.
The concept builds upon Georges Teyssot's understanding of incorporation, according to which architecture progressively becomes internalised through bodily routines and everyday practices (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169). Rather than functioning as an external container of human activity, architectural space extends bodily capacities through objects, spatial organisations and environmental conditions, becoming inseparable from everyday experience.
However, incorporation alone describes only one direction of this relationship. While bodies continuously absorb architectural conditions, architecture is itself transformed through occupation. Everyday practices modify programmes, redefine spatial hierarchies and generate new forms of collective inhabitation. Re-incorporation therefore describes this reciprocal process, recognising that architecture and inhabitation continuously reshape one another.
From this perspective, adaptive reuse extends beyond functional adaptation. Rather than accommodating changing programmes alone, it reorganises relationships between architecture, inhabitants and environmental systems. Buildings preserve their material continuity while simultaneously acquiring new social, ecological and spatial capacities. Their permanence derives not from resisting transformation but from enabling it.
This understanding fundamentally challenges conventional interpretations of permanence. Architectural relevance no longer depends exclusively upon material durability or formal stability, but upon the capacity of buildings to sustain successive cycles of occupation, reinterpretation and adaptation. Architecture therefore persists through its relational continuity rather than through physical immutability.
Andrea Branzi's conception of contemporary urbanism reinforces this interpretation. By rejecting definitive architectural forms in favour of open and adaptive systems, he proposes an understanding of architecture capable of initiating processes rather than determining final states (Branzi, 2006, pp. 13–15). Adaptive reuse consequently becomes an architectural strategy through which existing buildings remain active participants within changing territorial and social conditions.
This perspective also expands the meaning of adaptive reuse itself. Existing buildings embody far more than structural material or historical value; they preserve social practices, spatial memories and environmental relationships accumulated over time. Architectural intervention therefore operates not by replacing these conditions but by activating their latent potential through carefully calibrated transformations. Reuse becomes a process of relational continuity in which architecture evolves without severing its existing connections.
Landscape consequently emerges through this reciprocal interaction. Every transformation of architectural space simultaneously redefines patterns of occupation, ecological exchanges and collective practices. Architecture no longer occupies landscape as an external object but actively contributes to its continuous production.
These transformations rarely occur through singular or spectacular gestures. Instead, they develop gradually through the accumulation of subtle modifications that progressively reshape everyday life. This research describes such incremental processes as silent mutations: continuous adjustments through which architecture acquires new relevance without erasing its previous identity. Silent mutations operate simultaneously across material, social and ecological dimensions, allowing adaptive reuse to function as an open-ended process rather than a finite architectural act.
Re-incorporation therefore proposes a conceptual shift from architecture understood as object towards architecture understood as process. Buildings remain relevant not because they resist change but because they continuously reorganise the relationships that sustain collective life. Within this perspective, adaptive reuse becomes a relational design strategy capable of producing landscape through the permanent interaction between bodies, architecture and environmental systems.
METHODOLOGY
This research adopts a qualitative comparative methodology to investigate how adaptive reuse operates as a relational design strategy capable of producing landscape through collective spatial practices. Rather than evaluating technical performance or environmental efficiency, the analysis examines how architectural interventions reorganise relationships between bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems across different contexts.
A comparative approach was selected because the concept of re-incorporation is not associated with a single architectural typology or programme. Instead, its relevance lies in explaining relational processes that emerge across distinct spatial and cultural conditions. Comparing projects with different functions and scales therefore allows transferable design principles to be distinguished from context-specific solutions.
The study analyses four internationally recognised projects: Parc de la Villette (Bernard Tschumi, Paris), High Line (Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations, New York), Zollhaus (Enzmann Fischer Partner, Zurich) and Bellevue (Hirner & Riehl Architekten, Munich). Although differing significantly in programme and context, the projects were selected according to three common criteria.
First, each intervention transforms existing spatial or infrastructural conditions rather than producing autonomous architectural objects. Second, each project reorganises collective inhabitation through new forms of shared occupation and spatial interaction. Third, each establishes reciprocal relationships between architecture and ecological processes, integrating environmental systems into broader social and spatial transformations.
The comparative analysis is structured around three interconnected dimensions derived from the theoretical framework developed throughout the paper. The first examines embodied practices, exploring how architecture both shapes and is reshaped through everyday occupation (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169). The second analyses collective infrastructures, investigating how architectural interventions reorganise social relationships through shared spatial systems (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50). The third addresses ecological reciprocity, examining how environmental processes become integrated within architectural transformation (Branzi, 2006, pp. 13–15).
These dimensions are understood as complementary rather than independent categories. Together they provide an analytical framework through which the concept of re-incorporation can be examined across different architectural contexts without reducing the comparison to typological or stylistic similarities. Consequently, the analysis privileges process over form, focusing on the relational mechanisms through which architecture continuously generates landscape.
RESULTS
The comparative analysis demonstrates that the four selected projects extend adaptive reuse beyond the preservation or functional transformation of existing structures. Despite their distinct programmes, geographical contexts and architectural strategies, they reveal a shared capacity to reorganise relationships between bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems through architectural intervention. Rather than understanding architecture as an isolated object inserted into landscape, each project actively produces landscape by transforming existing relational networks. Their comparison therefore enables the concept of re-incorporation to be examined as an operational design strategy rather than a purely theoretical proposition.
PARC LA VILETTE: Landscape as a System of Relations
Bernard Tschumi's Parc de la Villette (1982–1998) represents a decisive departure from traditional conceptions of landscape based upon visual unity or formal composition. Rather than designing a park through predetermined aesthetic hierarchies, Tschumi establishes an open system composed of independent yet interacting layers—points, lines and surfaces—whose continuous overlap generates multiple possibilities of occupation and movement. Within this framework, architecture does not prescribe fixed behaviours but creates conditions through which users continuously redefine spatial relationships.
This organisational strategy exemplifies the relational logic proposed throughout this paper. Landscape emerges neither from the individual architectural elements nor from their visual coherence, but from the interactions generated between circulation, programme and bodily appropriation. Architecture therefore becomes a catalyst for collective activity rather than an object of contemplation, allowing landscape to remain permanently unfinished through use. Such openness directly reflects Latour's understanding of relational networks, in which spatial reality emerges through continuous associations rather than predetermined structures (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50).
From the perspective of re-incorporation, La Villette demonstrates that architectural permanence can coexist with continuous transformation. Although the physical framework remains relatively stable, its meaning is constantly reconstructed through the diverse practices, events and movements taking place across the site. Architecture therefore becomes incorporated into collective routines while simultaneously being redefined by them, illustrating how landscape is continuously produced through reciprocal interaction rather than formal completion.
HIGH LINE: Re-Incorporating Infrastructure
The High Line offers a complementary interpretation of adaptive reuse by transforming obsolete railway infrastructure into an ecological and social landscape. Rather than replacing industrial heritage, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations preserve the existing structural framework while fundamentally redefining its environmental and collective functions.
Walking replaces transportation as the primary spatial activity, while vegetation evolves from residual condition to active architectural component. Infrastructure consequently ceases to function exclusively as technical support and becomes a catalyst for ecological succession, social encounter and urban continuity.
The significance of this intervention lies not simply in preserving an existing structure but in revealing the latent relational potential embedded within it. Adaptive reuse therefore functions simultaneously across material, ecological and social dimensions, allowing architecture to establish new forms of interaction without erasing previous territorial identities.
From the perspective of re-incorporation, the High Line illustrates how architectural permanence is achieved through transformation rather than conservation alone. Existing material structures retain their historical continuity while accommodating entirely new patterns of occupation, demonstrating that adaptive reuse extends beyond preservation towards the continuous production of relational environments.
ZOLLHAUS: Collective Infrastructures and Shared Habitation
Among the projects analysed, Zollhaus most explicitly demonstrates the social dimension of re-incorporation. Developed within Zurich's cooperative housing movement, the project challenges conventional understandings of domestic space by replacing the autonomous dwelling with an architecture structured around collective infrastructures.
Shared kitchens, workshops, circulation spaces and communal facilities are conceived not as complementary amenities but as the primary organisational elements of everyday life. Domestic routines therefore extend beyond private interiors into collectively managed environments, encouraging cooperation, participation and continuous spatial negotiation.
Rather than separating architecture from social organisation, Zollhaus demonstrates how spatial design actively produces new forms of collective inhabitation. Buildings become relational infrastructures whose value resides less in their physical configuration than in their capacity to sustain evolving patterns of everyday interaction.
This condition directly reflects the concept of re-incorporation developed throughout the paper. Architecture continuously adapts through occupation, while collective practices simultaneously acquire spatial expression through architectural form. Adaptive reuse consequently becomes a process of relational continuity, preserving existing structures while enabling entirely new modes of living together.
BELLEVUE: Silent Mutations
While Zollhaus emphasises collective infrastructures at an urban scale, Bellevue illustrates how relatively modest architectural interventions may generate profound relational transformations. Through the adaptive reuse of an existing residential structure, Hirner & Riehl Architekten introduce minimal yet strategically positioned interventions that activate new relationships between inhabitants, neighbourhood and public life. The integration of shared spaces, particularly the public café, transforms the building into a mediator between domestic occupation and the surrounding urban environment.
Rather than relying upon large-scale physical transformation, Bellevue operates through what this research has described as silent mutations. Small architectural modifications gradually reorganise patterns of encounter, everyday routines and collective appropriation without erasing the existing identity of the building. Adaptive reuse therefore functions through accumulation rather than rupture, allowing architecture to remain recognisable while continuously expanding its relational capacities.
This gradual transformation demonstrates that re-incorporation is not dependent upon the scale of intervention but upon its ability to reorganise relationships. Architecture acts less through formal novelty than through the careful recalibration of existing spatial conditions, enabling new ecological, social and material interactions to emerge over time. Bellevue therefore reinforces the argument that adaptive reuse should be understood as a relational process rather than solely a technical operation.
COMPARATIVE SYNTHESIS
Although the four projects differ substantially in programme, context and architectural language, they reveal a consistent relational logic. Rather than generating landscape through formal composition, each intervention reorganises existing relationships between architecture, bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems.
Parc de la Villette constructs openness through overlapping spatial systems; the High Line transforms obsolete infrastructure into an ecological public landscape; Zollhaus reorganises domestic life through collective infrastructures; Bellevue demonstrates how incremental architectural adjustments can reshape patterns of inhabitation over time. Together, these projects confirm that adaptive reuse is not defined by stylistic similarity but by its capacity to activate new relational processes through existing spatial conditions.
Across all four case studies, three recurring dimensions become evident. First, architecture transforms embodied practices, redefining how space is occupied and experienced through everyday routines. Second, it reorganises collective infrastructures, enabling new forms of cooperation and shared inhabitation. Finally, it establishes ecological reciprocity, integrating environmental processes into architectural transformation rather than treating them as external additions.
Taken together, these findings demonstrate that adaptive reuse should be understood less as a strategy of material preservation than as a relational design process through which architecture continuously produces landscape by activating new interactions between existing structures, collective life and environmental systems.
DISCUSSION
The results support the central hypothesis that adaptive reuse can be understood as a relational design strategy rather than solely as a technical or conservation-oriented practice. Across the four case studies, architectural transformation consistently extends beyond material preservation, reorganising the relationships through which buildings, infrastructures, communities and ecological systems interact. This interpretation reinforces Latour's understanding of spatial production as a network of continuously evolving associations (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50), while simultaneously expanding Teyssot's concept of incorporation towards a reciprocal process in which architecture and inhabitation continuously redefine one another (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169).
Rather than presenting adaptive reuse as a fixed design methodology, the analysis demonstrates its capacity to operate across different architectural typologies and urban contexts. Although each project adopts distinct spatial strategies, all reveal that architectural permanence depends less on preserving physical form than on sustaining the capacity for continuous transformation. In this sense, the concept of re-incorporation provides a theoretical framework capable of explaining how adaptive interventions generate landscape through evolving social, material and environmental relationships.
The findings also reinforce Andrea Branzi's vision of architecture as an open system whose resilience derives from adaptability rather than permanence (Branzi, 2006, pp. 13–15). Landscape therefore emerges not as a predefined spatial condition but as the outcome of ongoing interactions between architecture, collective practices and ecological processes.
The present research is intentionally conceptual and comparative. Consequently, its conclusions are based on the interpretative analysis of selected architectural precedents rather than empirical observation of user behaviour or quantitative environmental performance. Future investigations could complement this framework through post-occupancy evaluations, participatory methods or longitudinal studies capable of assessing how relational transformations evolve over time. Such approaches would further validate re-incorporation as both a theoretical construct and an operational design strategy.
CONCLUSION
This paper has argued that adaptive reuse should be understood not merely as a strategy for preserving existing buildings but as a relational design strategy capable of producing landscape through the continuous reorganisation of relationships between bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems. By moving beyond technical and conservation-oriented interpretations, the research demonstrates that architecture generates landscape whenever it establishes new conditions for collective inhabitation, ecological reciprocity and spatial transformation.
The concept of re-incorporation constitutes the principal contribution of this research. Extending Georges Teyssot's notion of incorporation, it describes the reciprocal process through which architecture is continuously transformed by everyday practices while simultaneously reshaping them (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169). Architecture is therefore understood not as a completed object but as an evolving relational system whose permanence depends upon its capacity to accommodate change.
The comparative analysis demonstrates that this process operates consistently across distinct architectural contexts. Although Parc de la Villette, High Line, Zollhaus and Bellevue differ considerably in programme, scale and geographical setting, each project generates landscape by reorganising embodied practices, collective infrastructures and ecological relationships rather than by producing isolated formal compositions. Adaptive reuse consequently emerges as a transferable relational strategy rather than a typological or technical operation.
More broadly, this research contributes to contemporary architectural discourse by repositioning landscape as a living and continuously evolving condition produced through interaction rather than representation. In doing so, it proposes re-incorporation as a conceptual framework capable of connecting adaptive reuse, landscape and architectural practice within a unified relational perspective.
Ultimately, the future relevance of architecture may depend less upon the production of new buildings than upon its capacity to reinterpret those that already exist. In an era increasingly defined by environmental uncertainty and resource scarcity, adaptive reuse offers more than an ecological response to the existing built environment. It provides an opportunity to rethink architecture itself as a continuous process through which buildings, communities and landscapes evolve together.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Branzi, A. (2006). Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Milano: Skira.
Corner, J., & Diller Scofidio + Renfro. (2015). The High Line. London: Phaidon Press.
Enzmann Fischer Partner. (2021). Zollhaus Zürich. Baden: Park Books.
Latour, B. (1990). "On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications Plus More Than a Few Complications." Philosophia, 25(3), 47–64.
Teyssot, G. (1994). "The Mutant Body of Architecture." In E. Diller & R. Scofidio (Eds.), Flesh: Architectural Probes (pp. 8–35). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Teyssot, G. (2013). A Topology of Everyday Constellations. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Tschumi, B. (1994). Event-Cities. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Tschumi, B. (1996). "The Pleasure of Architecture." In Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Waldheim, C. (Ed.). (2006). The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
ABSTRACT
Contemporary architectural practice increasingly recognises adaptive reuse as an essential response to environmental, social and economic challenges. Nevertheless, it continues to be interpreted predominantly through technical or conservation-oriented perspectives, overlooking its broader capacity to reorganise relationships between architecture, inhabitants and territory. This paper proposes re-incorporation as a relational design strategy through which adaptive reuse generates landscape beyond material preservation. Building upon Georges Teyssot's concept of incorporation and Bruno Latour's relational understanding of spatial production, the research reconceptualises landscape as a dynamic condition emerging through the interaction between bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems rather than as a static visual setting. A qualitative comparative methodology is employed to analyse four internationally recognised projects—Parc de la Villette (Paris), High Line (New York), Zollhaus (Zurich) and Bellevue (Munich)—selected for their capacity to transform existing spatial conditions through adaptive intervention. The findings demonstrate that, despite their different programmes and contexts, all four projects generate landscape by reorganising embodied practices, collective infrastructures and environmental relationships. Adaptive reuse therefore operates not simply as a strategy of conservation but as a continuous process of spatial transformation capable of producing new forms of collective inhabitation. By positioning re-incorporation as a conceptual framework linking architecture, landscape and adaptive transformation, this research contributes to contemporary discussions on adaptive reuse while offering a transferable perspective for designing more resilient, socially engaged and environmentally responsive built environments.
KEYWORDS: Adaptive Reuse; Landscape; Re-incorporation; Relational Design; Collective Inhabitation.
INTRODUCTION
Landscape has traditionally occupied a secondary position within architectural discourse, frequently understood as the visual or environmental setting surrounding the architectural object. Such interpretations privilege representation over interaction, reinforcing distinctions between architecture and nature, object and context, or building and territory. Contemporary ecological and social challenges increasingly question these binary understandings, demanding architectural approaches capable of recognising landscape as an active and continuously evolving field of relationships rather than a static backdrop. Within this perspective, landscape emerges not through formal composition alone but through the dynamic interactions established between bodies, infrastructures, ecological systems and everyday spatial practices (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50).
The growing importance of adaptive reuse reflects this broader disciplinary shift. Faced with the environmental consequences of continuous demolition and reconstruction, architects have progressively embraced strategies capable of extending the life of existing buildings while reducing material consumption and preserving embodied resources. Yet adaptive reuse continues to be interpreted primarily through technical, environmental or heritage-oriented perspectives, emphasising energy performance, circularity or conservation. Although these dimensions remain fundamental, they only partially explain the transformative capacity of architectural intervention. Reusing architecture does not simply preserve physical structures; it reorganises the relationships through which buildings participate in collective life, ecological processes and urban transformation.
This paper argues that adaptive reuse should therefore be understood as a relational design strategy rather than solely as a technical process of conservation. Its significance lies not only in maintaining existing material fabric but in activating new relationships between architecture, bodies and territory. Within this framework, landscape is no longer conceived as a pre-existing condition awaiting architectural intervention but as a living construct continuously generated through embodied practices, shared infrastructures and environmental exchanges.
This interpretation is developed through the concept of re-incorporation. Building upon Georges Teyssot's understanding of incorporation as the process through which architectural space becomes internalised within bodily routines and everyday practices (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169), re-incorporation extends this relationship by recognising the reciprocal capacity of those practices to transform architecture itself. Buildings are therefore understood not as completed objects whose meaning is fixed upon construction, but as relational systems continuously reshaped through occupation, adaptation and collective inhabitation. Architecture becomes less a finished artefact than an evolving medium through which social, ecological and material relationships are constantly renegotiated.
This perspective resonates with Bruno Latour's rejection of rigid distinctions between society, nature and technology. Rather than existing as autonomous domains, these elements operate as heterogeneous networks whose interactions continuously produce reality (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50). Applied to architecture, this implies that landscape cannot be conceived independently from the interactions established between buildings, infrastructures, environmental systems and everyday practices. Landscape is therefore not represented or discovered; it is continuously produced.
Andrea Branzi similarly conceives architecture as an open and adaptive system capable of evolving through incremental transformation rather than permanent formal stability. Rejecting the modernist pursuit of definitive forms, Branzi proposes a more flexible architectural condition in which buildings remain receptive to successive processes of adaptation, occupation and reinterpretation (Branzi, 2006, pp. 13–15). Adaptive reuse consequently becomes more than an environmental strategy: it establishes architecture as an active mediator of changing relationships whose permanence derives from transformation rather than fixity.
Against this theoretical background, the research addresses the following question: How can adaptive reuse operate as a relational design strategy capable of producing landscape through collective spatial practices rather than formal composition?
To answer this question, the study adopts a qualitative comparative methodology centred on four internationally recognised projects: Parc de la Villette (Bernard Tschumi, Paris), High Line (Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations, New York), Zollhaus (Enzmann Fischer Partner, Zurich) and Bellevue (Hirner & Riehl Architekten, Munich). Rather than comparing typological or formal characteristics, the projects are examined according to the relational mechanisms through which they reorganise interactions between architecture, collective inhabitation and environmental systems.
Accordingly, this research makes two principal contributions. First, it expands current understandings of adaptive reuse by repositioning it as a relational design strategy capable of generating new forms of collective life rather than merely preserving existing buildings. Second, it reconceptualises landscape as a metabolic and continuously evolving condition emerging through reciprocal interactions between architecture, bodies and ecological systems. In doing so, it proposes re-incorporation as a conceptual framework capable of connecting landscape theory, adaptive reuse and architectural practice within a unified relational perspective.
FROM REPRESENTATION TO RELATIONAL LANDSCAPES
The understanding of landscape has progressively shifted from a predominantly visual and representational concept towards a dynamic and relational condition. Rather than functioning as the physical setting surrounding architecture, landscape is increasingly recognised as a process continuously produced through the interaction of ecological, social and material systems. This transition reflects a broader epistemological shift within contemporary architectural thought, replacing static conceptions of space with an understanding of the built environment as a network of evolving relationships.
Rather than functioning as an autonomous object placed within landscape, architecture actively participates in its production by reorganising the interactions through which places are inhabited, perceived and transformed. Consequently, the conventional distinction between architecture and landscape becomes progressively less relevant, as both emerge from the same relational processes. Landscape is therefore understood less as an object of representation than as the spatial consequence of continuous environmental, material and social exchanges.
This interpretation finds theoretical support in Bruno Latour's understanding of reality as a heterogeneous network where human and non-human actors continuously establish new associations (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50). Applied to architecture, this perspective suggests that landscape cannot be conceived independently from the relationships established between buildings, infrastructures, ecological systems and everyday practices. It is not an external condition awaiting intervention but a relational field continuously assembled through occupation and transformation.
RE-INCORPORATION AS A RELATIONAL DESIGN STRATEGY
The transition from representational to relational understandings of landscape requires a corresponding transformation in the way architecture itself is conceived. If landscape emerges through networks of interactions rather than formal composition, architectural design can no longer be understood as the production of autonomous objects. Instead, architecture becomes one of the agents through which relationships are established, transformed and continuously renegotiated. It is within this framework that the concept of re-incorporation is proposed.
The concept builds upon Georges Teyssot's understanding of incorporation, according to which architecture progressively becomes internalised through bodily routines and everyday practices (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169). Rather than functioning as an external container of human activity, architectural space extends bodily capacities through objects, spatial organisations and environmental conditions, becoming inseparable from everyday experience.
However, incorporation alone describes only one direction of this relationship. While bodies continuously absorb architectural conditions, architecture is itself transformed through occupation. Everyday practices modify programmes, redefine spatial hierarchies and generate new forms of collective inhabitation. Re-incorporation therefore describes this reciprocal process, recognising that architecture and inhabitation continuously reshape one another.
From this perspective, adaptive reuse extends beyond functional adaptation. Rather than accommodating changing programmes alone, it reorganises relationships between architecture, inhabitants and environmental systems. Buildings preserve their material continuity while simultaneously acquiring new social, ecological and spatial capacities. Their permanence derives not from resisting transformation but from enabling it.
This understanding fundamentally challenges conventional interpretations of permanence. Architectural relevance no longer depends exclusively upon material durability or formal stability, but upon the capacity of buildings to sustain successive cycles of occupation, reinterpretation and adaptation. Architecture therefore persists through its relational continuity rather than through physical immutability.
Andrea Branzi's conception of contemporary urbanism reinforces this interpretation. By rejecting definitive architectural forms in favour of open and adaptive systems, he proposes an understanding of architecture capable of initiating processes rather than determining final states (Branzi, 2006, pp. 13–15). Adaptive reuse consequently becomes an architectural strategy through which existing buildings remain active participants within changing territorial and social conditions.
This perspective also expands the meaning of adaptive reuse itself. Existing buildings embody far more than structural material or historical value; they preserve social practices, spatial memories and environmental relationships accumulated over time. Architectural intervention therefore operates not by replacing these conditions but by activating their latent potential through carefully calibrated transformations. Reuse becomes a process of relational continuity in which architecture evolves without severing its existing connections.
Landscape consequently emerges through this reciprocal interaction. Every transformation of architectural space simultaneously redefines patterns of occupation, ecological exchanges and collective practices. Architecture no longer occupies landscape as an external object but actively contributes to its continuous production.
These transformations rarely occur through singular or spectacular gestures. Instead, they develop gradually through the accumulation of subtle modifications that progressively reshape everyday life. This research describes such incremental processes as silent mutations: continuous adjustments through which architecture acquires new relevance without erasing its previous identity. Silent mutations operate simultaneously across material, social and ecological dimensions, allowing adaptive reuse to function as an open-ended process rather than a finite architectural act.
Re-incorporation therefore proposes a conceptual shift from architecture understood as object towards architecture understood as process. Buildings remain relevant not because they resist change but because they continuously reorganise the relationships that sustain collective life. Within this perspective, adaptive reuse becomes a relational design strategy capable of producing landscape through the permanent interaction between bodies, architecture and environmental systems.
METHODOLOGY
This research adopts a qualitative comparative methodology to investigate how adaptive reuse operates as a relational design strategy capable of producing landscape through collective spatial practices. Rather than evaluating technical performance or environmental efficiency, the analysis examines how architectural interventions reorganise relationships between bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems across different contexts.
A comparative approach was selected because the concept of re-incorporation is not associated with a single architectural typology or programme. Instead, its relevance lies in explaining relational processes that emerge across distinct spatial and cultural conditions. Comparing projects with different functions and scales therefore allows transferable design principles to be distinguished from context-specific solutions.
The study analyses four internationally recognised projects: Parc de la Villette (Bernard Tschumi, Paris), High Line (Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations, New York), Zollhaus (Enzmann Fischer Partner, Zurich) and Bellevue (Hirner & Riehl Architekten, Munich). Although differing significantly in programme and context, the projects were selected according to three common criteria.
First, each intervention transforms existing spatial or infrastructural conditions rather than producing autonomous architectural objects. Second, each project reorganises collective inhabitation through new forms of shared occupation and spatial interaction. Third, each establishes reciprocal relationships between architecture and ecological processes, integrating environmental systems into broader social and spatial transformations.
The comparative analysis is structured around three interconnected dimensions derived from the theoretical framework developed throughout the paper. The first examines embodied practices, exploring how architecture both shapes and is reshaped through everyday occupation (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169). The second analyses collective infrastructures, investigating how architectural interventions reorganise social relationships through shared spatial systems (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50). The third addresses ecological reciprocity, examining how environmental processes become integrated within architectural transformation (Branzi, 2006, pp. 13–15).
These dimensions are understood as complementary rather than independent categories. Together they provide an analytical framework through which the concept of re-incorporation can be examined across different architectural contexts without reducing the comparison to typological or stylistic similarities. Consequently, the analysis privileges process over form, focusing on the relational mechanisms through which architecture continuously generates landscape.
RESULTS
The comparative analysis demonstrates that the four selected projects extend adaptive reuse beyond the preservation or functional transformation of existing structures. Despite their distinct programmes, geographical contexts and architectural strategies, they reveal a shared capacity to reorganise relationships between bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems through architectural intervention. Rather than understanding architecture as an isolated object inserted into landscape, each project actively produces landscape by transforming existing relational networks. Their comparison therefore enables the concept of re-incorporation to be examined as an operational design strategy rather than a purely theoretical proposition.
PARC LA VILETTE: Landscape as a System of Relations
Bernard Tschumi's Parc de la Villette (1982–1998) represents a decisive departure from traditional conceptions of landscape based upon visual unity or formal composition. Rather than designing a park through predetermined aesthetic hierarchies, Tschumi establishes an open system composed of independent yet interacting layers—points, lines and surfaces—whose continuous overlap generates multiple possibilities of occupation and movement. Within this framework, architecture does not prescribe fixed behaviours but creates conditions through which users continuously redefine spatial relationships.
This organisational strategy exemplifies the relational logic proposed throughout this paper. Landscape emerges neither from the individual architectural elements nor from their visual coherence, but from the interactions generated between circulation, programme and bodily appropriation. Architecture therefore becomes a catalyst for collective activity rather than an object of contemplation, allowing landscape to remain permanently unfinished through use. Such openness directly reflects Latour's understanding of relational networks, in which spatial reality emerges through continuous associations rather than predetermined structures (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50).
From the perspective of re-incorporation, La Villette demonstrates that architectural permanence can coexist with continuous transformation. Although the physical framework remains relatively stable, its meaning is constantly reconstructed through the diverse practices, events and movements taking place across the site. Architecture therefore becomes incorporated into collective routines while simultaneously being redefined by them, illustrating how landscape is continuously produced through reciprocal interaction rather than formal completion.
HIGH LINE: Re-Incorporating Infrastructure
The High Line offers a complementary interpretation of adaptive reuse by transforming obsolete railway infrastructure into an ecological and social landscape. Rather than replacing industrial heritage, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations preserve the existing structural framework while fundamentally redefining its environmental and collective functions.
Walking replaces transportation as the primary spatial activity, while vegetation evolves from residual condition to active architectural component. Infrastructure consequently ceases to function exclusively as technical support and becomes a catalyst for ecological succession, social encounter and urban continuity.
The significance of this intervention lies not simply in preserving an existing structure but in revealing the latent relational potential embedded within it. Adaptive reuse therefore functions simultaneously across material, ecological and social dimensions, allowing architecture to establish new forms of interaction without erasing previous territorial identities.
From the perspective of re-incorporation, the High Line illustrates how architectural permanence is achieved through transformation rather than conservation alone. Existing material structures retain their historical continuity while accommodating entirely new patterns of occupation, demonstrating that adaptive reuse extends beyond preservation towards the continuous production of relational environments.
ZOLLHAUS: Collective Infrastructures and Shared Habitation
Among the projects analysed, Zollhaus most explicitly demonstrates the social dimension of re-incorporation. Developed within Zurich's cooperative housing movement, the project challenges conventional understandings of domestic space by replacing the autonomous dwelling with an architecture structured around collective infrastructures.
Shared kitchens, workshops, circulation spaces and communal facilities are conceived not as complementary amenities but as the primary organisational elements of everyday life. Domestic routines therefore extend beyond private interiors into collectively managed environments, encouraging cooperation, participation and continuous spatial negotiation.
Rather than separating architecture from social organisation, Zollhaus demonstrates how spatial design actively produces new forms of collective inhabitation. Buildings become relational infrastructures whose value resides less in their physical configuration than in their capacity to sustain evolving patterns of everyday interaction.
This condition directly reflects the concept of re-incorporation developed throughout the paper. Architecture continuously adapts through occupation, while collective practices simultaneously acquire spatial expression through architectural form. Adaptive reuse consequently becomes a process of relational continuity, preserving existing structures while enabling entirely new modes of living together.
BELLEVUE: Silent Mutations
While Zollhaus emphasises collective infrastructures at an urban scale, Bellevue illustrates how relatively modest architectural interventions may generate profound relational transformations. Through the adaptive reuse of an existing residential structure, Hirner & Riehl Architekten introduce minimal yet strategically positioned interventions that activate new relationships between inhabitants, neighbourhood and public life. The integration of shared spaces, particularly the public café, transforms the building into a mediator between domestic occupation and the surrounding urban environment.
Rather than relying upon large-scale physical transformation, Bellevue operates through what this research has described as silent mutations. Small architectural modifications gradually reorganise patterns of encounter, everyday routines and collective appropriation without erasing the existing identity of the building. Adaptive reuse therefore functions through accumulation rather than rupture, allowing architecture to remain recognisable while continuously expanding its relational capacities.
This gradual transformation demonstrates that re-incorporation is not dependent upon the scale of intervention but upon its ability to reorganise relationships. Architecture acts less through formal novelty than through the careful recalibration of existing spatial conditions, enabling new ecological, social and material interactions to emerge over time. Bellevue therefore reinforces the argument that adaptive reuse should be understood as a relational process rather than solely a technical operation.
COMPARATIVE SYNTHESIS
Although the four projects differ substantially in programme, context and architectural language, they reveal a consistent relational logic. Rather than generating landscape through formal composition, each intervention reorganises existing relationships between architecture, bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems.
Parc de la Villette constructs openness through overlapping spatial systems; the High Line transforms obsolete infrastructure into an ecological public landscape; Zollhaus reorganises domestic life through collective infrastructures; Bellevue demonstrates how incremental architectural adjustments can reshape patterns of inhabitation over time. Together, these projects confirm that adaptive reuse is not defined by stylistic similarity but by its capacity to activate new relational processes through existing spatial conditions.
Across all four case studies, three recurring dimensions become evident. First, architecture transforms embodied practices, redefining how space is occupied and experienced through everyday routines. Second, it reorganises collective infrastructures, enabling new forms of cooperation and shared inhabitation. Finally, it establishes ecological reciprocity, integrating environmental processes into architectural transformation rather than treating them as external additions.
Taken together, these findings demonstrate that adaptive reuse should be understood less as a strategy of material preservation than as a relational design process through which architecture continuously produces landscape by activating new interactions between existing structures, collective life and environmental systems.
DISCUSSION
The results support the central hypothesis that adaptive reuse can be understood as a relational design strategy rather than solely as a technical or conservation-oriented practice. Across the four case studies, architectural transformation consistently extends beyond material preservation, reorganising the relationships through which buildings, infrastructures, communities and ecological systems interact. This interpretation reinforces Latour's understanding of spatial production as a network of continuously evolving associations (Latour, 1990, pp. 47–50), while simultaneously expanding Teyssot's concept of incorporation towards a reciprocal process in which architecture and inhabitation continuously redefine one another (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169).
Rather than presenting adaptive reuse as a fixed design methodology, the analysis demonstrates its capacity to operate across different architectural typologies and urban contexts. Although each project adopts distinct spatial strategies, all reveal that architectural permanence depends less on preserving physical form than on sustaining the capacity for continuous transformation. In this sense, the concept of re-incorporation provides a theoretical framework capable of explaining how adaptive interventions generate landscape through evolving social, material and environmental relationships.
The findings also reinforce Andrea Branzi's vision of architecture as an open system whose resilience derives from adaptability rather than permanence (Branzi, 2006, pp. 13–15). Landscape therefore emerges not as a predefined spatial condition but as the outcome of ongoing interactions between architecture, collective practices and ecological processes.
The present research is intentionally conceptual and comparative. Consequently, its conclusions are based on the interpretative analysis of selected architectural precedents rather than empirical observation of user behaviour or quantitative environmental performance. Future investigations could complement this framework through post-occupancy evaluations, participatory methods or longitudinal studies capable of assessing how relational transformations evolve over time. Such approaches would further validate re-incorporation as both a theoretical construct and an operational design strategy.
CONCLUSION
This paper has argued that adaptive reuse should be understood not merely as a strategy for preserving existing buildings but as a relational design strategy capable of producing landscape through the continuous reorganisation of relationships between bodies, infrastructures and ecological systems. By moving beyond technical and conservation-oriented interpretations, the research demonstrates that architecture generates landscape whenever it establishes new conditions for collective inhabitation, ecological reciprocity and spatial transformation.
The concept of re-incorporation constitutes the principal contribution of this research. Extending Georges Teyssot's notion of incorporation, it describes the reciprocal process through which architecture is continuously transformed by everyday practices while simultaneously reshaping them (Teyssot, 1994, p. 169). Architecture is therefore understood not as a completed object but as an evolving relational system whose permanence depends upon its capacity to accommodate change.
The comparative analysis demonstrates that this process operates consistently across distinct architectural contexts. Although Parc de la Villette, High Line, Zollhaus and Bellevue differ considerably in programme, scale and geographical setting, each project generates landscape by reorganising embodied practices, collective infrastructures and ecological relationships rather than by producing isolated formal compositions. Adaptive reuse consequently emerges as a transferable relational strategy rather than a typological or technical operation.
More broadly, this research contributes to contemporary architectural discourse by repositioning landscape as a living and continuously evolving condition produced through interaction rather than representation. In doing so, it proposes re-incorporation as a conceptual framework capable of connecting adaptive reuse, landscape and architectural practice within a unified relational perspective.
Ultimately, the future relevance of architecture may depend less upon the production of new buildings than upon its capacity to reinterpret those that already exist. In an era increasingly defined by environmental uncertainty and resource scarcity, adaptive reuse offers more than an ecological response to the existing built environment. It provides an opportunity to rethink architecture itself as a continuous process through which buildings, communities and landscapes evolve together.
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