Webinar | Re:Design – Rewriting Spaces

How can architecture rewrite what already exists, transforming buildings, cities, and collective memory without erasing their past? This question framed the latest Architecture Hunter webinar, Re:Design - Rewriting Spaces, which brought together Johanne Dahl Holmsberg and Claes Nilsson from COBE and Alborz Mohammadi, Chief Architect at Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, for an in-depth conversation on transformation, preservation, and the creative act of renewal.

Speaking from Copenhagen, Johanne and Claes shared COBE’s decade-long journey in redefining industrial heritage along the city’s harbor. Their projects, from The Silo to Pakhus 54 and the Design Museum Denmark, illustrate a belief that context is not a constraint but a foundation. For COBE, transformation begins by listening - to place, material, and history - uncovering potential within the overlooked. “We don’t see existing buildings as problems, but as possibilities,” Johanne affirmed. Through subtle yet decisive gestures, the studio preserves traces of time while adapting structures for contemporary life, ensuring that each intervention becomes another chapter in an ongoing story.

Their work revealed a design ethos rooted in continuity: doing “as little as possible, but as much as necessary.” By weaving old and new, COBE’s approach rejects the binary of preservation versus innovation, instead proposing architecture as an evolving narrative, one that belongs equally to past, present, and future generations.

From Barcelona, Alborz Mohammadi continued this reflection through La Fábrica, the legendary transformation by Ricardo Bofill that turned an abandoned cement factory into a living laboratory for creativity. Revisiting the project, Alborz described it as “an act of rediscovery rather than redesign,” where the team removed rather than added, revealing hidden geometries, scars, and beauty. Over decades, La Fábrica has continued to evolve, a home, a studio, and a collective space that adapts as new generations join the practice. “We don’t demolish; we edit,” he said, framing architecture as a continuous dialogue between memory and imagination.

Across both practices, transformation emerges not as an aesthetic gesture but as a mindset, one that values reuse over replacement, dialogue over demolition, and evolution over finality. Re:Design - Rewriting Spaces reminded us that to build for the future, architects must first learn to read the stories already written in stone, concrete, and time itself.

_article written by Daniela Moreira da Silva
_speaker 01: Johanne Dahl Holmsberg - Architect & Senior Specialist In Transformation + Preservation at COBE
_speaker 02: Claes Nilsson - Senior Design Architect at COBE
_speaker 03: Alborz Mohammadi - Chief Architect at Bofill Taller De Arquitectura