9 Stunning Architectural Projects That Show What’s Possible with Existing Buildings

As the housing shortage continues, and renovation alone can’t meet demand, a rising number of nonresidential buildings are being repurposed as housing. Although the trend has accelerated since the pandemic emptied out offices, it was already growing. In Santa Ana, California, an underused five-story office building built in the 1960s was recently converted into affordable live-work lofts for artists, who began moving into the space in 2020. The project, called the Santa Ana Arts Collective, made seismic improvements and added new insulation, cladding, and glazing as offices were converted into townhouses of various sizes, with gallery space and a shared makerspace on the ground floor.

The architects calculated that reusing the building avoided more than 2,000 tons of CO2 emissions and diverted 25 million pounds of waste from landfill. Because the apartments require fewer parking spaces than offices, the developers were also able to use part of the surface parking lot to build additional townhouses. The location is within walking distance of a museum and other cultural spaces in the city’s downtown; part of the funding came from a state climate program in support of affordable housing that makes it possible for residents to drive less.

The project was the first built under an adaptive reuse ordinance that the city passed in 2014, modeled on a similar ordinance that Los Angeles used to repurpose old buildings. Other conversions are underway, and more are likely to follow as remote work continues and more companies choose not to re-sign commercial leases. Nationally, the number of office-to-housing conversions jumped 43% between 2018–2019 and 2020–2021. In California, the state government recently set aside $400 million in grants for office conversions.

The projects are typically faster than building from scratch and can be less expensive. They also tend to face less comunity opposition, says Michael Bohn, senior principal for Studio One Eleven, which designed the new space. Although neighbors might fight a new five- or six-story apartment building, adapting a building that’s already standing faces much less risk of the “not in my backyard” objections that have helped slow the growth of new housing in the state.