American architect and critic Aaron Betsky's new book, Don't Build, Rebuild, follows a line of questioning that he has traced and retraced over the last many years: that of reuse, moratoriums on further building and the necessity of repurposing material, space and technique for a more considerate approach to architectural practice. What drew the author of this review to the recent text was the use of the term 'imaginative' in the book's subtitle, The Case for Imaginative Reuse. What the reviewer had anticipated from the text was exactly this: an imagination that looked at trends of reuse differently, which, by now, are prevalent in more radical and even conventional practices of architecture. Divided into different sections that exhaustively detail 'The Principles of Imaginative Reuse'; its 'Foundations', 'Traditions', 'Uses' and 'Beyond', the book presents a thorough—while at times belaboured—cross-section for undiscerning enthusiasts and designers alike of the virtues of adaptive reuse, conservation and preservation techniques in design.

Betsky, writing about the framework through which he wishes practitioners to view architecture, states, "There is a deeper set of issues that architecture needs to pursue so that we may reuse our buildings in a better manner. Most of those conundrums form a simple contradiction: we want new things and an always newer world, but we want to be comfortable with that novelty. We want progress, but we also want to be at home in a world that is continually changing." This tension between familiarity and novelty and how they are manifested in practices of reuse form the crux of the text. It is not a statement of providence for Betsky that a world that recycles as its primary mode of production is necessary today. In the introduction, he shares empirical data by citing proposals from the EU and policies in the US, arguing for this reality. As Betsky emphatically notes, architecture today does not need to make new buildings; instead, it needs to find beauty in the everyday.

While his examples are interesting points of departure, the first three sections lean more towards artistic practice. While he does introduce designers and architects in the chapters, interspersing them with the idealistic viewpoints of art projects, the fourth section, which provides real-world examples, feels underwhelming in comparison. Further, by conflating art and architecture, in the reviewer’s view, he estranges the practicalities of construction from the romantic view of practice. This seems to undermine the book’s core plea to rebuild, don't build. Moreover, what  ‘imaginative’ is becomes a matter of questioning in this case. To clarify, Betsky’s concept of ‘imaginative’ architecture—particularly in the context of reuse—manifests itself in principles of the palimpsest, Frankenstein’s monster and ‘blurring’ as detailed in the introduction. In other words, the past jostles with the present and imagined future in tangible ways; both/and and neither/nor. This view, which asks for design practitioners to uphold the past with the present and to provide a critique of society as it is today by working with the existing instead of against, is what Betsky hopes architecture will borrow from art and its practice of collage and assemblage.

The thoroughly researched text, then, hopes to proffer a shift in attitude by demonstrating the historical lineage of principles of preservation and reuse. The first section begins with these histories—dwelling on the notion of ‘spolia’ (Latin for ‘spoils’) that originates from Roman times–and displayed, on the one hand, the tradition of reusing as a pragmatic approach and, on the other, how prevalent these ideas have always been. He then pivots into histories of preservation and restoration, taking readers to 18th-century Europe and its traditions of refurbishment. Here, the notion of 'imagination' comes through in the fact that to make the industrial world seem familiar, architects of the 18th century spent their energies in recreating the architectures of bygone times, often conflating these with an idealised notion of History. Betsky's examples, from the architecture of Eugene Viollet-le-Duc to the writings of John Ruskin, betray the political aims behind practices of restoration. As he elaborates, "The past is indeed a contested place, and how or what we preserve is a proxy for political, economic and cultural beliefs. Although these beliefs are most evident in historic preservation, they have also seeped into other, less charged aspects of reuse: the adaptive reuse of existing buildings."

As noted already, this is particularly relevant in thinking today about what we preserve, what we transform, what we ultimately discard and why. The section also focuses on ways of practising reuse with a focus on materiality. By evoking dumpster diving as a method, Betsky provides examples of architects such as Dutch designer Jan Jongert, best known for his circular design ethics, and the Droog Design Movement, which insisted on reusing everyday objects imaginatively. For Betsky, these variegated instances are also a conduit to think about the complexity of building materials in reuse architecture, emphasising the value of maintenance and repair for a resource-deficient world.

The political implications of reuse are overtly explored in the second section of the labyrinthine text, which delves into the actual processes of rebuilding and/or preserving. The contention that squatting could be seen as a form of reuse was particularly notable for the reviewer. Writing about American artist Theaster Gates' Dorchester Art Project, an art residency and community hub, Betsky broaches the idea that such a form of occupation is akin to being a ‘hunter-gatherer’, as Gates has often stated about his work. The DIY gathering aspect of Gates finds echoes, for Betsky, in the appropriation of unused buildings by squatters generally. Writing about the history of squatting in Europe and New York and the current status of such communities, Betsky questions how such a form of occupation may, on the one hand, have made certain neighbourhoods safer but, on the other, run the risk of gentrification for diverse neighbourhoods. Ultimately, he sees such a habitation as providing an alternative, community-based form of urban living. He hopes that the examples he provides, such as Dorchester or ASIAT, which was a former army barracks that the local government of Vilvoorde, Belgium, gave to local activists and artists to inhabit instead of razing the ruins, underscore the relevance of 'designed ambivalence', where the function is not clear due to the fragmented, assemblage nature of the whole scheme. The insertion, then, of an ephemerality in architecture that Betsky sees as pertinent to flexible spaces.

This idea of the collage and history is vital to Betsky’s framework. He discursively speaks about this in another chapter where he elaborates on ‘Ghost architecture’. This concept, to him, offers a perspective on how architecture can make personal and social memory visible through the catalysing example of artist David Ireland's house, studio and art project, 500 Capp Street, in San Francisco. As Betsky notes, "I know of no other site that brought together the construction and materiality inherent in human artifacts with the notions of archaeology, selective preservation and the display of the past. The house at 500 Capp Street drew on many sources, but it coalesced those influences into the new idea that an act of renovation could also be an act of archaeology: a collection of memories in built form and a work of art." This insertion of archaeology as a system for architecture to think about refurbishment is later brought up in the section with examples of contemporary architecture.

The third section, 'Uses’, provides case studies of recent architectural projects that employ principles of circular design as core construction strategies. The ensuing examples variously demonstrate the principles and ideas Betsky has thus far written about, in practice, not theory. He includes a staggering number of case studies in this section, including, but not limited to, housing, hotels, art galleries and even post offices. Some notable inclusions that Betsky details include: Frank Gehry’s conversion of a car parking structure into the Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles and Carlo Scarpa’s refurbishment of Castelvecchio, which according to Betsky, denote a way to do ‘nothing’ as preservation; the High Line, an elevated train track in New York which is now a park; proposals to regenerate riverine parks by Chinese landscape architects Turenscape and Beijing-based architectural firm DnA’s strategies of acupuncture urbanism as a way to consider broader landscapes and ecologies in strategies of restoration; Studio 54; LocHal, a library and community centre in the Netherlands designed by the firm Civic Architects that transforms a former municipal car and bus repair barn; Neri & Hu’s Waterhouse Hotel in Shanghai that re-inhabits a former Japanese army headquarters; and OMA’s conversion of a former main sorting and distribution hub into a POST Houston, a shopping mall in the US as examples of the many possibilities of ‘imaginative reuse’. These, while interesting, have been talked about extensively and don’t seem to add anything to Betsky’s framework.

The last section, however, that looks beyond the building is intriguing, particularly in the questions it raises for the reviewer. Writing about 168 Upper Street in London, designed by architect Amin Taha, Betsky forces discerning readers to ask: Is nuanced reconstruction through 3D printing, which is also more cost-efficient, the same as refurbishment or complete overhaul? How can we construct and reconstruct memory through the ruined fragments of demolition, and what meaning would these hold? What potential do projection mapping and 3D modelling hold in critically looking at the idea of reconstruction, such as in Geography of Ghosts (2023) where sociologist Wanda Spahl and the architect Dominic Schwab recreated the places immigrants had passed through, for rethinking refuges or housing for them? What, in fact, can we gain from programs such as DALL-E or Midjourney that critically examine buildings today?

To Betsky, the examples here seem to hold the most relevance in this idea of ‘blurring’ alone, where reality seems uncertain, than in actually critiquing the resource-intensive nature of architecture. So, while he offers a new framework for looking at past practices, even introducing AI-generated renders and 3D modelling as a way to imagine reuse, the actual book itself feels very simple, perhaps by design, tailored for a wider audience. He urges architects and educators alike to consider the instances he writes about as ‘our contemporary monuments’, ‘the remains of how we made things, such as factories, and the landscapes that connect us’ to reconsider how we may conduct our practice. However, the reviewer is still of the belief that a less convoluted text focusing on one particular theme, for instance, the monuments of industrial heritage that are threaded through the whole book, might have added more fodder to truly consider the political and economic implications of building; that Betsky is, in fact, so keen on pointing out to practitioners. It is perhaps why, at times, the book feels like a reference dictionary to revisit past ideas and familiar stories to combat the issues we face in design today: resource deficiency, uncertainty of meaning and socio-economic disparity. In this vein, it would be interesting to see how the section on Uses could be further expanded, given Betsky’s framework of ‘imaginative reuse’. It is in these avenues of how we may stop building—proposed and undergoing—that the book serves as a worthy reference point.