CO Adaptive Architecture

CO Adaptive was founded by Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston in 2011. Within an industry highly predicated on the finished image of architecture, we seek to turn focus to the means of making and maintaining it. We believe that design and building is a process rather than an end result; it should be a collaborative practice that works to solve today’s biggest challenges—and does this by building upon the past rather than reinventing it. All of our work addresses a creative tension whose resolution is central to a sustainable future: the balance between reducing operational energy while also minimizing embodied energy. We tackle this challenge by working with existing buildings, retrofitting them for resilience and durability using healthy, equitably sourced, local and renewable materials. Reuse is paramount—it stores carbon and obviates the need for the extraction, manufacture, and transport of new materials. Most of our projects are designed to meet the exacting Passive House sustainability standard that aims to reduce active heating and cooling loads by 80-90%. In order to retrofit an old building for energy efficiency and to fulfill new uses, material is generally removed; and it is along this boundary that we find our main mission and role to innovate. To have a greater impact on this process of taking old buildings apart—focusing on deconstruction and shaping attitudes about “waste”—we launched our construction arm, CO Adaptive Building, in 2021, on the eve of CO Adaptive Architecture celebrating 10 years in business. Our work has won numerous awards, including the Municipal Arts Society’s MASterworks Design Award for Best Adaptive Reuse project. CO Adaptive has been recognized as part of Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard, featured as a Next Progressive by ARCHITECT Magazine, and showcased in the inaugural exhibition Architecture Now: New York, New Publics at The Museum of Modern Art.