The Business Incubator by Klea Peca repurposes a 19th-century derelict church into a workspace for enterprise, collaboration and local renewal.
The project is not simply about putting desks inside an old building. Its key move is the insertion of stacked studio boxes into the nave, creating private workspaces while keeping the scale and openness of the church legible.
Project focus
The proposal responds to low economic activity and underused urban space by treating heritage as a working civic asset. The church shell gives the project character, but the incubator programme gives it a new reason to stay active.
Design ideas to notice
- The stacked studios give the nave a new programme without flattening its original volume.
- Private workspaces sit inside a more open shared setting, supporting both focus and collaboration.
- The proposal links preservation to economic use rather than treating heritage as static scenery.
- The wider urban argument matters because the incubator is meant to support local activity beyond the building itself.
Portfolio lesson from this project
For adaptive reuse work, it helps to draw the relationship between old structure and new programme very clearly. The reader should see what is protected, what is inserted and how the new use changes the life of the building.
Explore more project work
The project is useful for students looking at heritage reuse, workspace and community-led regeneration.
Showcase an adaptive reuse project
If your project transforms an existing building, make the old-new relationship easy to understand.
- Name the existing building and what is valuable about it.
- Explain the new use and why it belongs there.
- Show the main insertion, route or programme move clearly.
Next step
Explore more project work in the Architecture Social Projects directory, or submit your own project for the showcase.
Add a comment