Presentation of this interesting resource by Eric Hunting:

“Adaptive reuse -the repurposing of found artifacts and structures, particularly industrial in nature- has been a fixture of architectural, interior, and industrial design since the early 20th century. As an ad-hoc practice it is probably as old as our species itself, our cultures and technology originating in the repurposing of the found objects of nature. It is a fundamental characteristic of human intelligence and a basic phenomenon by which we evaluate the intelligence of other tool-using animals. And yet, in the Industrial Age, this activity came to be seen as an oddity relative to the industrial production of purpose-made artifacts until, with the advent of mass social awareness of environmental issues, we came to understand the environmental virtues of reuse as a means to curb our escalating production of waste and recycling as a means to curb our voracious consumption of resources.

The contemporary movement in adaptive reuse, recycling, and upcycling may have its origins in the Post-Industrial cultural movement starting in the mid 20th century. Intellectuals of the time, anticipating an imminent collapse of Capitalism and its attendant Industrial Age paradigms in a mass social back-lash against the excesses of the corporate class, the disappointments of consumerism, and the social and economic injustice left in their wake, began suggesting the cultivation of a new suite of survival technologies based on the adaptive reuse of the detritus of the Industrial Age. From this notion emerged an Industrial Style movement in Modernist architectural design based on the adaptive reuse of found industrial structures and their tough and simple materials, a High-Tech Style of interior design based on reusing industrial artifacts in a domestic context, and an Urban Nomad movement combining many areas of design toward the repurposing of industrial and consumer waste into ad-hoc structures and furnishings intended or DIY fabrication. These movements soon merged with the growing environmentalist movement and its attendant Soft Technology movement with this notion of adaptive reuse itself repurposed into an expression of environmental conscientiousness.

After some decades of cultural back-peddaling -thanks to the preempting of the anticipated mass western social upheavals of 60s and 70s through Globalization and the political/economic mollycoddling of the western middle class – a new wave of environmental concern has swept across the globe in response to the threat of Global Warming. This has inspired new interest and exploration of upcycling and adaptive reuse with upcycled products burgeoning and now regarded as chic. However, this area of design has not seen the creation a dedicated showcase, the design and green media still only randomly presenting these upcycled/reuse designs and products. One has not had a good means to see the state of this movement in any comprehensive way.

The Superuse blog, created by 2012 Architects and Suite75, offers one of the first on-line media channels dedicated to this subject and gives us a breakdown of the overall recycling/reuse scene into sub-categories of Products, Concepts, Architecture, Materials, Art, and Media. The blog also features related news on topics of specific types of industrial and consumer waste, the recent phenomenon of companies adulterating green and recycled products now that demand has grown, links to related sites, and notices on different events and competitions related to the field. With the Superuse blog one can really get a sense of the scope and impact of this movement. It is no longer the province of a few avant garde designers and quirky entrepreneurs. This is a very vital aspect of design in general that is seeing more mainstream presence than ever before. Adaptive Reuse is a seed that seems to have finally taken root and started to sprout.”