Just Don't Build: The Case for Imaginative Reuse

Part of the 2025 Fall Speaker Series

Just Don't Build: The Case for Imaginative Reuse

We have more than enough buildings. Instead of wasting natural resources we cannot replenish and polluting our environment even further with new construction, we should reuse, rethink, and reimagine what we already have. We should do such in a manner that opens up existing structures for all of us and allows us to understand where we have come from, where we are, and where we might be going: buildings should be repurposed so that they are sustainable and open, and reveal the history embedded in their materials, spaces, and structure. This lecture will show how new forms of reuse are continuing and opening up the traditions of preservation, rehabilitation, and adaptive reuse and will show what might be possible without building new structures.

Aaron Betsky is a critic and teacher living in Philadelphia. He is a Visiting Professor at the Michael Graves School of Public Architecture at Kean University and at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, he was Professor and Director of the School of Architecture and Design at Virginia Tech and, prior to that, President of the School of Architecture at Taliesin. A critic of art, architecture, and design, Mr. Betsky is the author of over twenty books on those subjects. He writes a weekly blog, Beyond Buildings, for architectmagazine.com. His latest books are Assembling Community (2025), The Monster Leviathan (2024), Don’t Build, Rebuild: The Case for Imaginative Reuse (2024), Fifty Lessons from Frank Lloyd Wright (2021), Making It Modern (2019) and Architecture Matters (2019).

Q&A and refreshments to follow. 

$35 for Members: PAGP Member discount will be automatically applied at checkout when logged in. If you are a member of the Athenaeum, please enter the promo code provided by the Athenaeum at checkout.