Ease of Retrofitting

“As the country looks ahead to recovery from this recession, it is clear that public/private partnerships at a multitude of scales—national, state, and local—will be needed more than ever to collectively take on the challenges and opportunities to retrofit suburbia.” - Retrofitting Suburbia

The concept of retrofitting suburbia is something that I find super interesting at this particular junction in time. We reside at a point in time in which junk spaces are becoming increasingly vacant and a shift is occurring away from these spaces. What is society to do with these spaces that are becoming abandoned? The area I’m from in Florida is very suburban and a lot of these spaces will see adaptive reuse projects that seek to integrate new programs into a hollow carcass. The projects are often pretty successful at smaller scales, but I think architecture, especially suburban architecture, will have to face these issues of abandonment and reintegration of programs at a much larger scale. An entire abandoned suburban neighborhood does not make for a simple retrofit. It does create an interesting dialogue for the current and future state of suburban architecture. Retrofitting these projects definitely works at smaller scales when the surrounding area is already developed and rooted strongly.