Make Adaptive Reuse Decidable: A Building-Options Workshop for Long-Term Owners

From a descriptive framework to usable decisions

Hamida, Greco, Remøy, Gruis and van Laar study the use and refinement of a circular and adaptable building framework during reuse of a Dutch monumental office building. Their action design research observes practitioner engagement over a five-month period and develops guiding, assessment and reporting artifacts through iterative reflection. The initial framework was useful as a descriptive prompt, but practitioners needed clearer strategies, practical solutions, assessment support and accessible guidance to apply it effectively.

This is a study of framework usability and development in one project, not a controlled demonstration that adaptive reuse outperforms replacement financially or environmentally in every setting. The authors note the single-case limitation and that policy and legislation were not explicitly examined. For a family owner, its contribution is a process insight: a desirable principle needs a workable decision structure before it can influence a real project.

Assemble the building before assembling the pitch

Before a design workshop, the owner appoints a coordinator to assemble available drawings, condition assessments, maintenance history, structural information and prior alterations. Missing records are listed with the professional needed to resolve them. The team should understand the building's current services, access, constraints and heritage context before selecting a fashionable future use. A persuasive rendering cannot substitute for evidence about whether the structure can support the proposed program.

Invite the disciplines needed to test the proposal: design, engineering, operations, finance and relevant user or community perspectives. Legal and regulatory review must be added explicitly because the original study does not resolve that dimension. Participants should know which decisions are open, which requirements are fixed and who has authority to commit resources. The workshop's purpose is to expose trade-offs, not to manufacture consensus around an already chosen outcome.

Convert principles into options

For each feasible use, ask which components can remain, which require replacement, which could be disassembled or adapted later and what information is needed to decide. Record a practical action and evidence requirement beside each circularity claim. For example, preserving a component is only meaningful if its condition and compatibility are understood. Reuse should not be credited twice through overlapping labels or assumed to avoid all future maintenance.

Develop a small number of genuinely different options rather than cosmetic variations of the preferred scheme. Compare usability, accessibility, service life, embodied and operational considerations where defensible data exist, capital cost and future flexibility. Keep quantities with different units separate until an explicit decision rule is agreed. A single sustainability score can hide an unacceptable safety or operational constraint; it should never replace examination of the underlying evidence.

Make flexibility an owned obligation

A long-horizon family may value the ability to change a building again, but that value requires more than saying the design is adaptable. Identify the future changes the team is trying to accommodate, the physical features that enable them and the cost or performance sacrificed today. Record who will maintain the information and components needed for later adaptation. An option that depends on undocumented connections or inaccessible services may be less flexible than the presentation suggests.

The finance lead should show how the project remains viable if demand for the preferred use is weaker than expected. The owner can then decide whether additional flexibility is worth its current cost. These are project-specific judgments and scenarios, not returns demonstrated by the source study. Any claims about carbon savings, heritage benefits or community outcomes should retain their own evidence and limitations rather than borrowing credibility from the framework's academic publication.

Use reflection as a gate, not a ceremony

At each design milestone, revisit the decisions that changed after new information arrived. Preserve rejected options, unresolved constraints and reasons for accepting a trade-off. A practical worksheet should be short enough to use and detailed enough to expose a claim that lacks an owner or source. The study's iterative approach suggests testing the tool with its actual users and revising it when the process becomes descriptive paperwork rather than decision support.

Evaluate the pilot through decision clarity, unresolved technical issues, rework avoided, user comprehension and effort required. Do not claim that a completed workshop proves environmental superiority or investment success. Stop a preferred option when a critical regulatory, structural or operational requirement cannot be met, and return to the alternatives. The intended result is an inspectable route from a building's existing condition to a defensible reuse decision, with future adaptation treated as a concrete design responsibility.

Source, attribution and limits

[1] Mohammad B. Hamida; Angela Greco; Hilde Remøy; Vincent Gruis; Brian van Laar. Making Circular Strategies Work: Advancing an Adaptable Building Framework through Action Design Research. Systemic Practice and Action Research (2025-05-31). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-025-09723-4. CC BY 4.0.

Single Dutch monumental-office reuse case and action design research; policy and legislation not explicitly studied; usability findings do not establish universal financial, carbon or safety outcomes.

Prepared by the Family Office Private Wealth Journal editorial research desk with AI assistance at the direction of Dr. Freedom Cheteni. Original research authors retain full credit and are not authors or endorsers of this companion. This proposed process has not been evaluated in a new empirical study; no independent peer-review acceptance is claimed. This is educational analysis, not individualized investment, legal or tax advice.

Implementation record

Open the cited sources

1. [1] Mohammad B. Hamida; Angela Greco; Hilde Remøy; Vincent Gruis; Brian van Laar. Making Circular Strategies Work: Advancing an Adaptable Building Framework through Action Design Research. Systemic Practice and Action Research (2025-05-31). ↗