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This in-person lecture is part of the Fall 2025 Sciame Lecture Series, "rePURPOSE."

Philip Kennicott is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Senior Art and Architecture Critic of The Washington Post. He is also a two-time Pulitzer finalist (for editorial writing in 2000 and criticism in 2012), an Emmy Award nominee, a former contributing editor to The New Republic, and a regular contributor to Gramophone. His critically acclaimed memoir, “Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning,” was published by Norton in 2020. His 2015 essay, “Smuggler” was a finalist for the National Magazine Award and anthologized in that year’s volume of “Best American Essays.” He lives in Washington, D.C.

"Rome’s Spolia Churches: Reinventing Recycling": Architects today call it "deconstruction," the purposeful design of new buildings to ensure that almost all construction materials can be repurposed or recycled. This is the cutting edge of architecture in an age that is newly conscious of making buildings that don't contribute unnecessarily to the huge carbon costs of construction. But there is nothing new about repurposing the basic materials of architecture and design. The builders of Rome's "spolia" churches were doing this more than 1500 years ago, and their works remain some of the most intriguing buildings of late antiquity and the middle ages. If we can learn to see them not just as interesting, but as beautiful, we might advance the contemporary project of deconstruction, by making it viscerally appealing not just to the environmentally conscious, but to everyone who wants our built environment to delight the eyes and the mind.

Suggested Reading: Ahmed, N. and Kennicott, P. (2025, April 2). These old Roman buildings could unlock how to build in a warming world. The Washington Post.

"rePURPOSE" centers on the practice of adaptive reuse in the built environment. Repurposing, embedded in historical patterns of city building and for the most part discarded in the modern movement, is undergoing a remarkable renaissance. The lecture series invites architects, planners, developers, advocates, and engineers to present the technologies, designs, economic incentives, and policy changes that are needed to advance a substantively renewed and at-scale program of repurposing in New York and other global cities. The reuse of old structures is not a new idea. After the fall of the Roman Empire, for example, the Colosseum was repurposed for housing and workshops during the medieval period. Although reuse is understood as a convention that both requires and imposes minimal impact, rePURPOSE shines light on how the methodology might not be entirely benign, how it might in fact have real impact, and the ways in which it challenges and would necessarily disrupt the very conventions with which we typically assume it is aligned.

Of special, although not exclusive, interest is unpacking the relationship of repurposing to the climate crisis. Might historic preservation sit at the center of technical innovation? Are all older buildings valuable as climate mitigation assets, or will new uses, such as data storage in old buildings, undermine the LCA embodied carbon savings achieved? What rules, laws, and incentives are needed to sustain innovative approaches to meaningful reuse, and to what extent will a complete reform of preservation regulations and zoning frameworks be required?

The Fall 2025 Sciame lecture series will address the profound potential inherent in giving new life to old structures; employing adaptive reuse methodologies to impact environmental, economic, and cultural conditions by reducing waste and carbon emissions, lowering costs and raising property values, maintaining historical character, and preserving local identity.

All lectures are free, open to the public, and held in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture Sciame Auditorium. For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact  ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu " rel="noopener" target="_blank"> ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu .

This lecture series is made possible by the Spitzer Architecture Fund and the generous support of Frank Sciame ’74, CEO of Sciame Construction.

(Photograph ©Paul Raphaelson)