The projects and texts featured in this second issue of the year can be read within the broader framework of contemporary theoretical debates that challenge the prevailing expansionist model of architectural production. Following critical positions formulated, among others, by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, architecture here no longer appears as a discipline of growth, but rather as a practice of reorganizing what already exists. This shift represents not only a methodological change, but also a transformation of the discipline’s epistemological foundation itself, in which notions of novelty are gradually replaced by concepts of transformation, adaptation, and circulation.
The reconstruction and conversion projects presented here understand existing buildings as reserves of spatial and material possibilities, in which dismantled components are recomposed into new configurations. Material thus no longer appears as a relic of the past, but as an active medium of ongoing transformation. Another layer of the projects shifts this logic toward smaller scales and broader systems: from housing experiments that reorganize the relationship between climate, layout, and material, to proposals for urban tools operating in the fields of regulation, care, and housing policy. Architecture thus expands beyond the boundaries of the object and enters the realm of institutional and economic structures.
In the context of current environmental demands, this issue – following the previous one (see ERA21 #01/2026 (Re)Discovered Materials and Innovations) – can be understood as a shift in the debate on sustainability, one that extends beyond new construction and focuses on working with the existing environment.
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