There’s No Such Thing as a Building

Development
Written By Atrium

News is cool, but what can we learn from history?
2 min read

British architect Frank Duffy made a bold claim in the early 1990s: there’s no such thing as a building. What exists is several layers of components, and each layer wears out and changes on its own schedule. Duffy and his firm DEGW described a shell that might last 30 to 50 years, with interior partitions and ceilings that change about every five.

Writer Stewart Brand carried the idea to a wider audience in his 1994 book How Buildings Learn. Brand split a building into six layers: site, structure, skin, services, space plan, and stuff. The slow layers, like site and structure, constrain the fast ones, like interiors and furnishings. 

His central argument was that every building is a prediction about the future, and every prediction turns out partly wrong. 

The buildings that last are the ones that are easy to change when it does. Which is what we’re seeing with office towers in some markets. 

The Conversion Version

RentCafe’s 2026 report counts 90,300 apartments in the office-to-residential conversion pipeline at the start of the year, up 28% from a year earlier and nearly four times the roughly 23,000 units underway in 2022. Office buildings now account for 47% of all planned adaptive reuse. 

In Washington, D.C., future conversions are coming from buildings that average 90 years old, and report authors point to layouts that are easier to adapt as a driver of which buildings get picked. Owners also face pressure: roughly $213 billion in office loans are coming due.

A 90-year-old building can become housing because its structure was sound and its floor plates could take a new plan. The interiors had already changed many times. That’s the layered idea playing out in real life.

Takeaways for Developers, Owners, and Neighborhoods

  • Build the slow layers to outlast the fast ones. Sound structure and flexible floor plates give a project more than one possible future.

  • Adaptable buildings have more exits. An owner can hold, reposition, or convert instead of facing one choice in a downturn.

  • Underwrite year 25, not only year 3. A useful question for any project: what could this building become if the original use stops working?

  • Reuse keeps neighborhoods intact. Communities often respond better to a familiar building getting a new purpose than to a demolition notice.

  • Design humility is practical. If every plan is partly wrong, the project that can change gracefully carries less risk.

Projects that age well usually weren’t the boldest ones on opening day. They were the ones designed with room for whatever came next. That’s the kind of thinking we bring to development: ask what a building will need to be in 20 years, then leave it the flexibility to get there.

NOTE: This is not to say that we support the blandification of things like fast food restaurants. You’ve seen the memes: McDonald’s in the 80’s was colorful, it stood out. Now you can’t tell a Mickey D’s from an HR Block. 

We understand the idea behind making buildings easily convertible in the future. But architecture can be unique and striking and still achieve timelessness. Look at all the gargoyles on skyscrapers, buildings that are the prime example of a building living many lives. 

Anyway, make practical spaces that are also fun and beautiful. It can be done.

Atrium Management Company provides property management, commercial brokerage, and real estate development services. Learn more here.

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