Adapt or Die: Why Converting Offices Into Homes Hasn’t Taken Off in Canada

Over on our side of the pond, one of the first notable examples of adaptive reuse in North America was Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. According to the Cultural Landscape Foundation, in the 1960s, architects Lawrence Halprin and William Wurster converted what was then a one-block plot with a chocolate factory into a shopping and tourist destination that’s still standing today, “creating a viable adaptive reuse model for other cities” in the process.