News — CO Adaptive

The University of Virginia

Adaptive Futures: Reclaiming Labor and Material Flows

January 27th 2025

Ruth was invited to speak at UVA alongside Jane Hutton to discuss the social and ecological dimensions of material flows, tracing the journey of materials from their sources to architectural constructs. They shared insights on building responsibly for the future, emphasizing sustainable practices and equitable labor.

The Architect’s Newspaper

2024 Best of Design Awards, Editors’ Pick

December 2nd 2024

COA’s Tiny Queens Passive House was awarded an Editors’ Pick by the AN Best of Design Awards in the Residential–Single-unit category.

Brownstoner

The Insider: Boerum Hill Townhouse Reno Beefs Up Energy Efficiency, Saves Detail

October 24th 2024

CO Adaptive multiplied the energy efficiency of a landmarked 19th century townhouse while preserving exquisite plasterwork.

Remodelista

Adding Energy Efficiency and Revived Style to 1860s Quarters in Brooklyn

August 23rd 2024

The 1860s brick row house in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill had a lot going for it...CO Adaptive, a Brooklyn architecture practice and building studio specializing in energy-efficient design, was readymade for the job.

Dezeen

CO Adaptive overhauls Queens home to meet Passive House standards

August 3rd 2024

Brooklyn studio CO Adaptive has retrofitted a terraced house in Queens, New York to meet Passive House energy efficiency standards.

Society of American Registered Architects

2024 Design Award of Excellence

June 11th 2024

We are very happy to announce that our Timber Adaptive Reuse Theater for the Mercury Store was awarded the 2024 Design Award of Excellence by the SARA New York Council.

New York Times

‘You Can Be a Little Different in Queens’: Why This Home Is Not Like the Others

May 31st 2024

Instead of a conventional renovation, one New Yorker took a progressive approach. Now he pays almost nothing for energy, and the air is always fresh.

Sustainability Hub for Offshore and Coastal Solutions to Climate Change

Governors Island

April 16th 2024

CO Adaptive has been selected to provide the interior design, lighting design, and sustainability consulting for the renovation of a 23,000 SF climate research center on Governor’s Island for Buttermilk Labs.

Syracuse Architecture

NYC: In Practice, Practicum Program and Roundtable

April 15th 2024

A professional elective course that combines academic readings and podcasts, writing assignments, and classroom discussions while exposing students to architectural practice through a three-week full-time practicum at a New York office. The practicum component of the course is a structured immersion into professional practice that allows students to watch and to learn from architects and designers as they perform their job responsibilities.

Cornell AAP

The Circular Economy: Science and Business of Construction Stakeholder Edition

February 8th 2024

The elective partners with seven (7) New York State stakeholders who have offered to participate in interviews and answer questions on their business models, finances and strategic setup. In groups, we will conduct interviews with these stakeholders, understand, map and graphically represent their answers, check references, codes and legislation, and – as a class – synthesize the answers, understand commonalities of the industry and geographic area as well as stakeholder-unique gaps and barriers. The final result is a graphic mapping of the reuse ecosystem across stakeholders, as well as seven written reports summarizing the specifics of each stakeholder within this framework.

Stakeholders: Finger Lakes Reuse, Tri-Lox, ReUse Action, Preservation Architecture, CO Adaptive, LCP Group. and Contento’s

Leaning Out X / Women in Circularity

Center for Architecture

January 31st 2024

The cause and effect of our impact on environments—and the impact these environments have on us—has highlighted the importance of understanding ecosystems and circularity in built, cultural, and natural contexts. We also want to understand the communities that create, maintain, and evolve in these contexts. Women that have pioneered in circularity will share their work and exchange thoughts in this moderated panel. Please join theAIANY Global Dialogues Committee for the 10th annual Leaning Out event as we meet and converse with some of these extraordinary thinkers, designers, and architects.

Speakers:
Mae-ling Lokko, Assistant Professor, Yale University’s School of Architecture; Assistant Professor, Yale’s Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (Yale CEA)
Ruth Mandl, Principal and Architect, CO Adaptive
Viviana Pozzoli, Co-founder, Equipo de Arquitectura
Abeer Seikaly, Artist, Architect, Designer

Moderator:
Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture & Design, The Museum of Modern Art

You can watch the event here.

After Comfort

e-flux

December 2nd 2023

A series of presentations and discussions on what tomorrow’s comfort might look like and how architecture’s value is evolving through its entanglement with the building industry, economic systems, and energy transitions. Talks are centered around After Comfort: A User’s Guide, e-flux Architecture’s editorial collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Liverpool, and Transsolar.

The event is organized by Daniel A. Barber, co-editor of After Comfort: A User’s Guide, Nick Axel, deputy editor at e-flux Architecture, and Christina Moushoul, assistant editor at e-flux Architecture. It is moderated by Daniel A. Barber, and includes participants Florian Idenburg (SO-IL), Dorit Aviv (UPenn), and Bobby Johnston and Ruth Mandl (CO Adaptive).

US Architects Declare

Adaptive Futures Series

October 13th 2023

Join Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston of CO Adaptive as they discuss their project in Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY. Originally an industrial site housing a metal foundry, this heavy timber building was transformed into a new developmental space for theater artists, and exemplifies low carbon design thinking in several ways.

The Architectural League of New York

Beaux Arts Ball 2023: Sea Change

September 29th 2023

“Beaux Arts Ball 2023: SEA CHANGE celebrated circularity, reinvention, and the interdependence of planetary ecosystems and the built environment. In 2023, the Ball returned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Agger Fish Corp.’s Building 269. The space was transformed anew with an immersive installation by Brooklyn-based studio CO Adaptive, conceived in dialogue with this year’s theme, and with lighting designed by Joel Fitzpatrick and Ken Farmer. The exuberant graphic identity was once again crafted by Michael Bierut, Britt Cobb, and their team at Pentagram.”

The Municipal Art Society of New York

2023 MASterworks Design Awards Best Adaptive Reuse

September 28th 2023

The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) announced today the winners of the annual 2023 MASterworks Awards which celebrates the best new spaces and buildings in New York City’s public realm. New York City is renowned for its architectural beauty and brilliantly designed spaces and buildings and the MASterworks Awards recognize the best additions to the city’s built environment completed in 2022.

DETAIL

The Mercury Store in New York by CO Adaptive Architecture

September 20th 2023

A wonderful feature from one of our favorite publications!

American Institute of Architects New York

Building Tour: Timber Adaptive Reuse Theater by Co-Adaptive

September 13th 2023

Join us for a two-hour tour of the Timber Adaptive Reuse Theater located in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal District. The tour will be led by Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston of CO Adaptive Architecture, as well as Claudia Zelevansky of Mercury Stores. Content will include a brief history of the building’s previous iterations and the adaptive re-use of the industrial building into a new cultural facility for Mercury Stores. The project is representative of how the architects understand the the design of one building as part of a holistic system whose component parts have an effect on their environment.

Columbia University

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation

September 6th 2023

Ruth and Bobby have been invited to teach a graduate level advanced design studio on the theme Uncertain Futures. Their studio, Industry of Waste, tasks students with developing architectural products and processes for a circular economy, and to look at how these economies and ecologies will adapt to an uncertain future in New York City’s Red Hook Grain Terminal.

Photo by Ofer Wolberger

Metropolis

CO Adaptive Uses Low Carbon Design to Rejuvenate Old Buildings

December 19th 2022

Catalogues a visit by Metropolis to our new facility in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and highlights discuissions around circularity and de-construction withg our team and trade partners.

Museum of Modern Art

Architecture Now
New York, New Publics Exhibition

February–July 2023

In a city where many aspects of our social lives are shaped by real estate and economic forces, architecture can play a vital role in fostering participation and belonging. New York, New Publics showcases 12 projects for public-facing spaces across New York City’s five boroughs. In contrast to the violent nature of urban renewal and other disruptive metropolitan initiatives of the past century, recent design approaches propose subtler, nimbler interventions. Considering the city as an ecosystem, these inventive approaches envision a future in which architecture creates more accessible, sustainable, and equitable cities.

New York, New Publics is the inaugural installation of Architecture Now, a new periodic exhibition series that will serve as a platform to highlight emerging talent and foreground groundbreaking projects in contemporary architecture.

Remodelista

The Low Impact Home

September 2022

NBC Open
House

Elegantly Renovated Bedstuy Townhouse

August 2022

A feature on Ruth and Bobby’s Passive House in Bedstuy where they give a tour to NBC and some behind the scene footage of the project.