Adaptive Reuse
Offering A Way To Breathe New Life Into Existing Structures That Have Outlived Their Purpose.
Our team offers deep knowledge of a range of building materials and construction methods. This helps ensure our designs and recommended corrective actions are responsive to our clients’ goals and aspirations while remaining sensitive to each building’s original character and potential. We devise sustainable solutions that ensure future viability and create value.
Our wide range of projects requiring adaptive reuse include working with public agencies and private property owners. This experience ranges from full-scale rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of commercial and residential properties, as well as healthcare, cultural and educational institutions. Please take a look at the examples that follow, of adaptive reuse projects we have accomplished. Whether it’s the Long Island University Teaching Research Center requiring the transformation of an existing warehouse to a new school for Veterinary Medicine or the multiple conversions of a supermarket to a health club to, ultimately, the Teterboro Aviation Institute of Maintenance, the adaptive re-use of a 1,000,000 landmarked can company into a 7 story luxury condominium; renovation of an abandoned 200,000 sf former manufacturing warehouse into four high schools for the Elmhurst Educational Campus serving over 1,600 students; or the makeover of a vacant treatment center into a ground-breaking Miami Center Mental Health and Recovery for continuum care for individuals with serious mental illness previously residing in outdated detention centers.
Adaptive reuse projects, whether they are conversions of historic city infrastructure, or breathing new life into outdated buildings, pose unique design challenges - and present unique design solutions that we embrace as a test to our skill and craftsmanship.
Adaptive reuse takes many forms, from preserving heritage to transforming vacant buildings into opportunities to revitalize communities. It is the repurposing of buildings that have outlived their original purpose. Its main goals include preserving architectural and cultural heritage, transforming urban blight, and igniting social change. These approaches share a goal of extending the useful life of buildings as societal and technological needs evolve. With every project, we strive to safeguard and enhance significant properties for the enjoyment of future generations.
Prolonging the lifespan of buildings is a sustainable strategy with social and financial advantages. SBLM, for many years, has been turning existing buildings into schools, commercial buildings, offices, or apartments. We are keenly aware of how small changes in one place can contribute to bigger changes in Earth’s global climate. The adaptive reuse of existing buildings are a resource for tackling climate change. Buildings represent ‘embodied carbon.’ Keeping and using existing buildings avoids the release of massive quantities of greenhouse gases, emissions caused by needlessly demolishing and replacing existing buildings.
Fundamental to SBLM’s goal of the successful adaptive reuse project are the many pre-assessments and planning stages. We carefully assess the building to ensure it’s a good candidate for adaptive reuse. During the planning process we determine what elements will be reused or replaced, from the roof to the doors to the windows to the walls. In the best adaptive reuse projects, every element that can be reused is reused to respect the building’s historic features and materials, as well as any unique features. We integrate architecture, design, engineering, historic preservation, and materials conservation in our projects to ensure a structure’s new life is even better than its previous one.
Long Island University College of Veterinary Medicine, New Teaching Research Center, Adaptive Reuse Of 1970’s Warehouse
South Florida Criminal Justice Treatment Center Adapted to Miami Center for Mental Health & Recovery Facility
1920's Era Printing Plan Transformed into Butler Hotel
An Adaptive Reuse Journey… Supermarket Becomes a Health Club Which Is Transformed into An Aviation Technical School
Elmhurst Educational Campus Repurposed Warehouse Transformed Into Four High Schools
The Adaptive Reuse of Historic American Can Company Warehouse into High End Canco Lofts
Supermarket Becomes Central Orthopedic Group Imaging Center
