Co-Adaptive—Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston
Part of the MIT Fall 2026 Architecture Lecture Series
Presented with the Architecture and Urbanism Group
CO₂
COAdaptive
As our planet gets hotter, and more extreme weather events become the norm, CO Adaptive is positioning themselves as an unbuild, design and build practice: a new model that reunites designers and builders through collaboration in order to re-think our joint role in shaping the built environment; contending with architecture at the intersection of saving embodied carbon and reducing operational energy. As stewards of the existing material repository contained in our cities, CO Adaptive aims to increase the resilience and reusability of all that already surrounds us.
Their talk will engage the breadth of the practice’s work—from adaptive reuse projects and high-efficiency retrofits to material salvage operations, remanufacturing, and design for disassembly. These projects yield a critical perspective on how buildings and materials re-engage in their next iteration of use, working towards a reality in which extractive and depleting habits are replaced by a circular library of abundance.
CO Adaptive is an unbuild-design-build practice founded by Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston in 2011. Initially it was started as an architecture practice, focused on retrofitting existing building stock to create energy efficient, climate resilient and spatially beautiful environments.
To have a greater impact on the process of taking old buildings apart—emphasizing deconstruction, and shaping attitudes about “waste”—CO Adaptive Building was established in 2021 and CO Adaptive Disassembly in 2026. The attention of all three intertwined practices is on converting existing buildings from a linear economy to a circular one.
CO Adaptive’s work has received numerous awards and recognition, including winning the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices 2026, A|N’s 2025 Best of Practice Award, and the 2025 Trust for Governors Island Climate Solutions Challenge. Their adaptive reuse project for The Mercury Store was featured in MoMA’s Inaugural New York New Publics exhibition and won the MASterworks Design Award for Adaptive Reuse in 2023. Ruth and Bobby are frequent lecturers on circular design, have taught a graduate design studio at Columbia GSAPP, and are excited to be teaching a studio at MIT this fall.
This lecture will be held in person in the Sidara Auditorium (W41- 1216) and streamed online on YouTube. Lectures are free and open to the public. Registration is required.
