Redrawing commercial ruins: an integrated methodology for adaptive reuse

Abstract

The ongoing “retail apocalypse” affecting European commercial buildings, largely driven by the rise of e-commerce, underscores the urgent need to develop strategies for the reuse and management of vacant building stock. This context is aggravated by the concerning mismatch between the targets set in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and the slow progress toward climate neutrality, which calls for more sustainable and eco-friendly approaches in the construction sector as well. Therefore, formulating adaptive reuse models that reconcile economic viability, promote the introduction of social programs, as well as energy-efficiency retrofitting, is both challenging and imperative for vacant retail boxes. This study proposes a scalable and replicable methodology for the adaptive reuse of disused and decommissioned retail buildings, grounded in comparative analyses of historical and suburban contexts. The approach integrates typo-morphological evaluations with evolutionary assessments to identify both obsolete and persistent architectural components over time. Its aim is to reconceive vacant retail spaces as catalysts for new social and spatial processes, combining BIM-based quantitative analysis with qualitative insights that are often overlooked in architectural practice. Applied to the Austrian context through the regeneration of a suburban building near Vienna, the method demonstrates the value of drawing and representation as cognitive and design instruments for codifying architectural language and identifying recurring spatial patterns. The case study highlights the potential of adaptive reuse as a strategy for sustainable suburban redevelopment, one that avoids over-commercialization and limits further land consumption. The proposed model offers a structured evaluative framework for comparable cases and establishes a basis for future forms of automated assessment through advanced representational technologies.