With demand for senior housing rising alongside a surplus of underutilized real estate, James B. Adams ’09 MSRED makes the case in Urban Land for adaptive reuse as a high-impact development strategy that enables social infrastructures to evolve within existing spatial fabrics.

At the historic Fairfax Hotel in Washington, D.C., Adams, now SVP of Development at Maplewood Senior Living, has overseen its transformation into Inspīr Embassy Row, a luxury senior living community. This project, part of a broader $600 million development portfolio, reframes aging not as retreat but as active engagement with the city where legacy architecture is repurposed to meet new modes of care and longevity.

Associate Professor Adam Lubinsky ‘01 M.Arch, Interim Director of the MSRED program and co-leader of WXY Architecture + Urban Design, is among 21 GSAPP alumni contributing to LEED-certified projects worldwide, aggregated in a recent Columbia Magazine feature. In the 2022 expansion of the Javits Center, Lubinsky’s firm integrated new event spaces with an extended rooftop farm, connecting interior and exterior environments to improve resource efficiency and occupant experience. The incorporation of solar panels, rainwater collection, and other green systems tailored to the building’s complex program earned the center LEED Gold certification.