Post-Office Turn investigates how work digitalization is reshaping the urban and architectural landscapes of Milan and Turin. The research combines urban-scale analysis with building-scale observation to understand the transformative potential of the ordinary office stock. It integrates mapping, morphological study, policy analysis, and design-based inquiry to explore how existing buildings can “learn” to become residential or hybrid spaces in response to structural shifts in work patterns. By framing adaptive reuse as both an environmental necessity and an opportunity for low-carbon urban regeneration, the project aims to contribute to contemporary debates on the future of cities and the sustainable reactivation of their built legacies.

Aims and Objectives

This research focuses on the adaptive reuse of ordinary buildings, with particular attention to office stock as a key site of transition in cities undergoing economic, social, and environmental transformation. Vacancy, obsolescence, and changing work practices make office buildings a crucial testing ground for contemporary reuse strategies.
The project investigates emptiness as both a physical condition (vacant surfaces, underperforming structures) and a systemic condition (changes in labour, policies, governance, and markets). It examines how reuse practices unfold across different scales and how design, policy, and environmental knowledge interact in shaping new transformation pathways.

Objectives:

• Detect and analyze spatial patterns of vacancy in office building stocks in Italy, with a specific focus on Turin and Milan.
• Document reuse and conversion practices, identifying technical, social, economic, and regulatory drivers in a comparative perspective.
• Connect architectural transformation with urban governance, planning frameworks, and collaborative design processes.
• Assess the environmental, social, and economic implications of reuse, with particular attention to embodied carbon, material cycles, and lifecycle performance.

Methods

The project employs a multilayered comparative framework, integrating different forms of knowledge production and representation:

• Urban data analysis to detect vacancy patterns and characterize office stocks at multiple scales.
• GIS mapping to visualize spatial distributions, morphological structures, and transformation potentials.
• On-site fieldwork to document architectural conditions, ongoing interventions, and local practices.
• Comparative architectural redrawing, focusing on typology, depth, façade systems, circulation, and spatial adaptability.
• Historical and policy research linking macro-urban narratives with building-scale transformations.
• Environmental and energy analysis, assessing embodied carbon and lifecycle implications.
• Design-based inquiry to explore adaptive reuse strategies and prototype transformation scenarios.

The methodology builds upon the Manhattan pilot study developed for the 14th São Paulo Biennale (2024–2025), which tested mapping protocols, analytical tools, and documentation methods. The Italian study will:

1. Test the transferability of these tools to metropolitan regions characterized by different governance structures, building stocks, and regulatory conditions.
2. Challenge and refine the methodology, producing a context-sensitive framework adaptable to diverse urban legacies.

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This booklet delves into the ongoing international discourse surrounding the preservation (or not) of the built legacy. By examining how even unacknowledged aspects of our inheritance play an integral role in the broader conversation, this publication offers insights into the evolving perspectives shaping the potential futures of our built legacy.

The contributions, spanning critical heritage, architecture of reuse, future literature studies, post-preservation, and counter-preservation, outline the dual nature of the built legacy of the past—both a positive and negative commons influenced by social, cultural, economic, and environmental contexts.

By providing a comprehensive overview of leading international theories, the book aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on the adaptation of urban legacy, heritage, and landscape.

The volume collects the outcomes of the International Seminar “Designing the Future of the Past,” held on 17-18th February 2022 in Turin. The event was conducted in collaboration with the Doctoral programs in “Architecture: History and Project” and featured the participation of the PhD program in “Architectural and Landscape Heritage” at Politecnico di Torino. This intensive seminar served as an integral component of the DASP PhD Course titled “Designing the Future of the Past” for the academic year 2022-2023.

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Unfinished ruins have become a key urban theme since the 2008 financial crisis, when thousands of constructions remained unfinished in countries like Spain, Ireland and Iceland. However, the phenomenon in Italy dates back to a few decades earlier, and such a historical framework has led the group of artists Alterazioni Video to refer to these spaces as a new architectural style: ‘Incompiuto’. The artists’ objective is to put incompletion back on the agenda by viewing it from a cultural perspective, envisioning different ways of dealing with it: to finish the works, to demolish them, to leave them as they are, or to opt for an ‘active’ arrested decay. This presentation will review each of these approaches, connecting them with recent, non-orthodox approaches to conservation, and disentangling the creation of new heritage meanings.

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In this seminar, Caitlin DeSilvey and Martin Grünfeld will engage in conversation about the relevance of the concept of ‘curated decay’ for museum and heritage collections. Museum practice has traditionally aimed to protect objects by arresting processes of decay and degradation. In her work, however, DeSilvey has demonstrated that the accommodation of material and metabolic transformation in certain contexts has the potential to generate both cultural and ecological value. Over the past year, a transdisciplinary group of conservators, researchers and artists at the University of Copenhagen’s Medical Museion have taken up DeSilvey’s invitation to engage in ‘care beyond conservation’, with the development of an experimental site for exploring life processes at the museum – The Living Room. In their conversation, DeSilvey and Grünfeld will explore their collaborative research interests and explain how they are investigating and interpreting different ways of hosting life at the museum.

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This series brings together four leading researchers to speak about today’s most experimental approaches in the field of preservation theory, spanning from critical heritage studies, post-preservation, entropy, and non-traditional approaches to material conservation to counterpreservation.

The first seminar will be based on the text “Counterpreservation as concept”, that will be briefly presented by prof. Sandler and then discussed in an open conversation with all the participants to the seminar. The text attached is the first chapter of Daniela Sandler’s book Counterpreservation: Architectural Decay in Berlin Since 1989.

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The adaptive reuse of existing buildings is central to the contemporary architecture debate. This phenomenon has become so important that prominent architects argue that the total demolition of any historic building in the contemporary city seems unthinkable.

Within this debate, the concept of potential emerges as a commonly-used, but undefined term in the field of preservation: its meaning is questionable.

Stemming from the roots of the contemporary preservationist debate, the present research embraces well-established theories in building adaptation and the most innovative approaches such as ‘experimental preservation’, ‘post-preservation’ and ‘counterpreservation’, considering heritage as an evolving concept.

In the field of adaptive reuse, the recovery of ‘untapped potential’ in existing buildings is one of the main adaptation goals. Although the use of the term potential varies in the literature, there appears to be some agreement within the field of adaptive reuse that it refers to ‘unexpressed transformability’.

This research aims to define, decode and assess the concept of transformative potential in existing buildings through a post-functional perspective.

The work intends to define this potential by its physical elements in the architectural realm.

The theoretical objective of this research is to add the concept of transformative potential to the current preservationist debate. This novel notion may then widen preservation theory in evaluating existing buildings by ‘tendencies’ embedded in the architectural form.

The research is broken down into four main chapters; the first chapter serves as a theoretical framework based on a literature review.

The critical literature review identifies many kinds of potentials and the present research chooses to develop transformative potential, mainly focusing on the physical features of buildings.

Adaptive reuse theory presents ‘building adaptation potential’ as the sum of elements establishing the degree of freedom in adaptation. Moreover, how its loss can be prevented emerges as fundamental, without defining this potential.

The hypothesis addresses this transformative potential in the architectural form, considering this form as a state of equilibrium between the structure of space and materials. The thesis will investigate both the qualitative and quantitative evolution of the form, in morphology and materials, at a specific time and following diachronic and transcalar perspectives.

A well-established approach in adaptive reuse studies, the methodology of this work is to refer to collective case studies. The sample consists of 20 successful cases of buildings adapted across Europe in the last 15 years, including adaptation projects from radical to minimum intervention. The case study selection will consist of studies within a variety of morphostructural types. The classification of buildings in typologies covers the classical treatises spanning from Vitruvius to Durand. Here, the proposal is to unbuild the classical typological classification in place of a morphological one.

The methodology integrates three main methods. Firstly, the morphological analysis consists of a critical redrawing of original buildings, highlighting dimensional features and configurational aspects and their evolution in the urban context. Secondly, the retrospective embodied energy assessment shows the flow of primary materials in each reuse activity using an I-O simplified formula. Thirdly, the evaluation of decay stages applies a reviewed ‘shearing layers’ method to assess building integrity over time.

The task is to express the transformative potential as a relationship between dimensional features, embodied energy and rate of decay, outlining a pattern within existing features and adaptive reuse interventions. This transformative potential may give weight to multiple use options in existing buildings, disassembling traditional classification by original function.

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Through this framework, the transformation potential of the assets is defined by identifying various indicators, capable of informing evaluations and intervention strategies applicable to assets of different types and consistencies, going beyond the scope of the initial investigations performed.

The interest of the research team was to develop reasoning on the economics of intensity of use and the risk profile associated with transformation potential.

1 A multi-disciplinary approach

The interdepartmental centre of the Polytechnic University of Turin, FULL (Future Urban Legacy Lab), through the Department of Architecture and Design, proposes integrating the analysis of the availability for use of the municipal built heritage with a reflection on the intensity of use, the dynamics of transformation and the potential for transition.

Turin is a laboratory that has produced experiences capable of providing an overview of these issues, such as TorinoAtlas and the editions of the Giorgio Rota report, through specific and sector-specific studies.

In a context of widespread and heterogeneous availability of transformable assets in the urban fabric, not just property owned by the municipality, FULL proposes a paradigm shift. The phenomenon of availability is understood as a set of dynamic relationships between components in the built space of the city (the buildings, the morphology of the blocks and their aggregation), and not as isolated episodes. This approach allows municipal properties to be placed within the broader framework of the availability of assets and spaces for use in Turin, and to enrich the interpretation by also examining other urban phenomena.

Through this framework, the transformation potential of the assets may be defined by identifying various indicators, capable of informing evaluations and intervention strategies applicable to assets of different types and consistencies, going beyond the scope of individual case studies.

The interest of the research team is to develop reasoning on the economics of intensity of use and the risk profile associated with transformation potential.

Regeneration processes may fail or not be triggered despite the mobilisation of resources. We believe that regeneration should not be prescribed as a one-size-fits-all solution to all available uses of the built heritage.

Failure is particularly helpful in codifying the potential, allowing the reasons to be traced to the intrinsic characteristics of the asset or the management conditions.

In analysing built heritage, FULL therefore refers to a specific economic assessment, required by the call, mapping the ‘real options’, i.e. the possibilities for undertaking ‘risk’ actions associated with heritage, as well as for deferring them pending more predictable contextual conditions or renouncing them completely.

The method proposed by FULL is based on a transdisciplinary approach that envisages a continuous and integrated comparison between applied techniques and economic, management and design skills, restoring urban phenomena through the analysis of large quantities of data and targeted focus, in order to reflect on and operate within the city.

2 The method: measure, recognise, value

FULL is developing projects relevant to the issues raised by the call: preparing strategies for rehabilitating underused cultural sites identifying their potential (for the Piedmont Region); exploring the relationship between the distribution of commercial activities and urban form (with the Chamber of Commerce); reorganising spatialised data on Turin and prioritising codes and regulations for the purpose of regeneration (for the City of Turin – support to the drafting of PRG variant).

Through experiments in the field of regeneration of polluted sites and by examining urban phenomena, FULL is also developing technical platforms for the integration and interoperability of data on the city, functional to a context of transformation of the existing fabric.

Based on the experience gained, FULL proposes a working method that is developed through:

– Measuring and representing availability starting from the municipal heritage by spatialising the phenomenon and relating it to other dynamics of use of the built environment.

– Recognising asset types through classification according to distribution, construction and morphology categories.

– Describing the potential of available properties starting from the aggregation of common possibilities and critical issues, in order to propose enhancement strategies.

2.1. Measuring and representing available properties

2.1.1. Spatialising data

In order to spatially represent the phenomenon of availability for use, FULL proposes an integrated system between the data related to municipal properties (which will be made available by the contracting station), the open data of the Municipality of Turin and the Metropolitan City (including Geoportal, Museo Torino, OICT, ISTAT and Smartdatanet-Yucca), and the new spatial data processed by the interdepartmental centre, thus enhancing the existing wealth of knowledge through:

1 Fine-grained representations that can add significant detail to existing analyses.

2 New mappings of phenomena that are still poorly mapped.

3 Representations that bring out latent or unexpected phenomena by relating spatialised databases.

2.1.2. Identifying intensity of use

FULL proposes extending the concept of ‘availability’ to under-utilised properties. Through indicators built on intensity of use, it will be possible to map not only disused properties, but also the degree of use where properties are used.

In order to investigate heterogeneous municipal properties, it is proposed to identify specific indicators of under-use by functions/types of assets, starting with data on municipal properties (e.g. intensity of use of schools compared to demographic data and other indicators to be agreed upon). Intensity of use makes it possible to consider all municipal properties, even those that are only partially used, in the definition of development strategies.

2.1.3. Integrating geographies of availability

In order to interpret the potential of the available municipal properties, FULL proposes integrating the analysis with a geography of data and sources related to other types of available properties (privately-owned or owned by public persons other than the administration). The interdepartmental centre is developing projects that can build indicators of availability of use for specific categories of assets. By cross-referencing data on active licences with information on buildings (surface, use, estimated population) and their morphological characteristics, FULL is, for example, mapping commercial spaces not in use in Turin. The interdepartmental centre is also developing Airbnb data in Turin in order to allow the examination of phenomena of residential property use otherwise invisible to traditional demographic analyses.

2.1.4. Verifying results through control operations

In order to verify and examine the results of measurements and mappings described so far, FULL proposes experimenting with integrating detailed localised data with focus and tuning operations, by:

– Analysing changes in urban morphology over time by comparing 3D aerial data collected at successive times, and corresponding digital surface models (DSM).

– Integrating localised data to track the actual attendance at a location (e.g. GPS open tracking of users, telephone cells etc.).

– Aggregating co-generated inputs combined with geo-referenced data through crowdmapping and mobile mapping tools.

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