To Improve New York City, Build As the Romans Do

Throughout the history of cities, buildings have been transformed into more useful purposes — whether for reasons involving the economy, politics, culture or religion.

In New York City, there are buildings that could be put to better use for local communities. We’ve traditionally been too concerned with honoring landmarks and other historic buildings by freezing them in time rather than strategically readapting current stock. Zoning requirements prohibit creative new uses for buildings, segregating commercial and residential, for example. By altering the built environment rather than demolishing and building anew, we can preserve our history while offering useful building programs for the community.

It’s time for New York City to take a page out of the playbook of another historic city: Rome. Nowhere is the coexistence of architectural typologies, scales and styles better expressed than in the composition of Rome. The whole city is an amazing example of reinventing architecture through absorption, transformation and additions to existing places. 

In Rome, there are buildings that have been altered radically — well beyond their original form — and transformed into something else entirely. For example, the Theater of Marcellus, a first-century Roman amphitheater, has been literally built upon over time. It was a medieval fortress, a Renaissance palazzo, underwent a Mussolini “restoration,” and is now an exclusive apartment building. The ancient Roman Bath of Diocletian was transformed by Michelangelo into a Renaissance basilica. The Mausoleum of Augustus was adapted into a fortress, a vineyard, a Renaissance garden, a bullring and a concert hall, until its own Mussolini “restoration,” which was intended to become his tomb. 

Romans even recycled buildings: A large part of St. Peter’s Basilica is built of travertine quarried from the Colosseum! The baldacchino at its center is cast from bronze taken from the Pantheon. 

These aren’t just alterations or additions, but buildings that have been radically transformed to the point where they have become something else entirely, changing with the times again and again into new typologies. None of these changes would be approved in our current tightly regulated systems of zoning, preservation or city planning. New York needs its own building renaissance, its own new typologies. Embracing “radical reuse” is how to jump-start the new era.

The traditional way of adding to buildings has been to expand upon the prevalent style of the time. There is a far richer and more complex alternative approach — the idea of simultaneity, the overlapping of different histories that can create something truly contemporary. 

Prime examples of cities that have already done this include Paris, where the Bourse de Commerce — a former wheat market, then commodities exchange — has been transformed into a new contemporary museum for the Pinault Collection. In Washington D.C., Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, the former Newseum building, was transformed into a purpose-driven and flexible education hub for interdisciplinary collaboration. In New York City, when radical reuse is allowed to happen, it produces the Refinery at Domino, once a sugar manufacturing plant turned Class A office space through surgically planting a new building within the old facade, and City Harvest’s Cohen Community Food Rescue Center, a historic warehouse that was adapted into an environmentally responsible state-of-the-art workplace.

Radical reuse is also a highly sustainable way of building, and addressing this through strategic design programs is a win-win. In fact, the most sustainable way to build today is by repurposing existing structures. The benefits of repurposing an existing structure include reduced embodied carbon, costs and time. With 40 percent of the carbon emissions coming from the real estate sector, it is the responsibility of architects and developers to future-proof buildings through aggressive sustainability programs. 

Unfortunately, this is unthinkable in New York City today due to the numerous governing bodies that implement and enforce any modifications to the current built environment. Collectively, the city’s current policies prohibit cost-effective and creative options, and, as a result, the building sector has slowed. Radical reuse would relieve numerous issues we have, including the housing crisis. 

However, change is on the horizon. The recent passage of the City of Yes affordable housing plan provides hope that a radical reuse framework could be enacted, allowing creative conversions among the 80,000 new homes that will be built over the next 15 years. 

City of Yes also presents an opportunity to usher in a new era for New York City’s infrastructure that would rejuvenate and embrace the historic characteristics of the city on the outside, while new spaces for work, play and community are designed within. 

The creation of new parameters and incentives to readapt buildings to best serve our communities today helps preserve and build New York City as a whole. If cities around the world, particularly New York, do not want to become static, we must do as the Romans do and embrace radical reuse. 

Richard Olcott is a New York-based partner at Ennead Architects.