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Reuse and renovation offer one potent path forward. They save between 50 and 75 percent of embodied carbon emissions compared to new construction. Governments and institutions worldwide increasingly recognize this environmental significance and are enacting numerous incentives and regulations to encourage reuse and curb the building industry’s carbon pollution. Yet the architectural profession—as well as the schools that populate its ranks—continue to promote the notion that creating brand-new buildings is the most valuable and creative form of architectural expression. Architects who design formally distinctive buildings from scratch have long been rewarded with more lucrative commissions and accolades. Still, growing interest within the architecture and planning fields about the reuse, repair, and reinvention of what already exists is evidenced by the troves of recent conferences, exhibitions, and publications on the topic. Major architecture prizes are recognizing reuse projects, too.

This issue of Harvard Design Magazine seeks to develop and expand this increasingly vital movement, engaging reuse across multiple scales—from individual buildings to downtown streets and the regulatory frameworks that organize our cities. Highlighting creative and interdisciplinary thinking, the issue promotes the act of bringing new life to what already exists as a powerful brief for designers, their clients, and the communities they serve. As resistance to viewing the reuse and repair of buildings as a legitimate form of design wanes, the appeal at the heart of Sandburg’s poem—“let us find a city”—is hopefully capturing the attention of future generations. This issue asks: If we free ourselves from the inherited limits on design practice, what new kinds of architecture, cities, and ways of being might we create?

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