Adaptive Reuse of the Non-Existing: Re-Emergence of the Phantom

POLIS UNIVERSITY

Project idea

This thesis reconfigures architecture’s ontology, rejecting the "creator and creation" approach. Three interwoven manifestos dismantle and stasis: architecture never dies, it transitions; adaptive reuse beyond its boundaries; and the architect not as a designer, but as a conductor.

Project description

The 2022 demolition of Albania’s Ballsh Oil Refinery erased its physical structure, but not its individuality and social significance. How can architecture engage with sites that exist only in consciousness and subconsciousness ? This project redefines adaptive reuse by treating demolition as a transition into Non-Existing Architectural Systems (NEAS). Through decoding territorial identity, critical events, and abstracted form, the architect acts as a conductor, orchestrating the site’s rebirth into a sustainable Innovation City.

The Ballsh Oil Refinery, a phantom of Albania’s industrial era, becomes the locus of this thesis—not as an old story to remember, but as a living archive to reinterpret. Its demolition is reframed as a transitional act, where industrial carcasses—rusted pipelines, fractured concrete, oil-stained earth—are not discarded, but reanimated as the DNA of an Innovation City. This project, anchored by three intertwined manifestos, redefines architecture as a discipline of exploration and direction, rather than invention. Buildings are not static artifacts, but evolving entities. The project redefines adaptive reuse as an act of upgradation of a structure, that doesn't need to be physical, transcending mere preservation to heal socio-ecological fractures. The architect, no longer author, operates as a conductor—attuning to territory, event, and geometry. Like a composer discerning harmony in cacophony, they cluster fragmented forces into coherence, revealing projects that preexist within reality’s fabric. Design becomes revelation, not invention. The project is not designed but discovered, its form emerging from the world’s inherent logic. This framework fundamentally shifts how we understand the architecture discipline: the built environment is a mirror to the world’s autopoiesis, where form follows existence. Thus, the thesis resolves in its axiomatic core: architecture is not created—it is an echo of reality’s self-creation, where the architect approach order from the chaos inherent to life itself.

Technical information

This project leverages computational design methodologies to analyze and reinterpret the demolished Ballsh Oil Refinery by engaging with its residual memory and spatial imprints through a parametric workflow in Grasshopper. The Wool Thread Methodology deciphers territorial histories by weaving contextual data—such as topography and historical layers—into the urban fabric, while swarm-based algorithms translate emotive events like protests and demolition into spatial logic, generating dynamic vectors that inform planning strategies. The Wasp plugin’s aggregation algorithms synthesize abstracted geometries from archival imagery, transforming debris patterns and modular systems into architectural forms that emerge from the site’s inherent logic. By bridging memory and materiality, this approach converts qualitative narratives into quantifiable design parameters, employing Wool Thread as a tool for contextual data mapping, swarm algorithms for behavioral analysis of crowd dynamics, and Wasp for geometric aggregation. These tools function as interpretive lenses rather than deterministic solutions, ensuring the design remains deeply rooted in the site’s historical and emotional resonance while exploring its latent spatial possibilities.