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This in-person lecture is part of the Fall 2025 Sciame Lecture Series, "rePURPOSE."

: With a background spanning industrial design, economics, and journalism, Ruchika Modi brings a multifaceted understanding of the ways in which cities function to her architectural practice. Modi's experiences living and working in Mumbai (then Bombay), New Delhi, and San Francisco have also influenced her nuanced view of urban planning and design, inspiring her passion to find architectural solutions to a range of relevant issues, from sustainability to inequality. At PAU, Modi sets the firm's vision in partnership with Creative Director Vishaan Chakrabarti, including shaping the firm's diverse portfolio of projects and overseeing all aspects of the design process. Currently, Modi is leading the design team for the FAA's new sustainable airport traffic control tower prototype, which will be adapted to replace over 100 aging towers in regional and municipal airports across the nation. She is also project lead for Princeton University's newest residential college, Hobson College, as well as for the master plan. She spearheaded the design of the iconic Domino Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn, an adaptive reuse project transforming the historic nineteenth-century factory into offices with a mixed-use ground level, which opened in the fall of 2023. Modi holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, where she was awarded the Charles McKim Prize for Excellence in Design / Saul Kaplan Traveling Fellowship, the William Kinne Fellows Prize for Study and Travel Abroad, and the Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prize. Modi received her BA in economics from the University of Delhi and a BA with distinction in interior architecture from the California College of Arts, San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited at the Center for Architecture in New York, the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, and the China International Architectural Biennale in Beijing.

"Palimpsest | Repurposing a Sugar Refinery":

Suggested Reading:

"rePURPOSE" centers on the practice of adaptive reuse in the built environment. Repurposing, the practice of adaptive reuse, embedded in historical patterns of city building, and for the most part discarded in the modern movement, is undergoing a remarkable renaissance. In the Fall 2025 rePURPOSE lecture series, architects, planners, developers, advocates, and engineers will present the technologies, designs, economic incentives, and policy changes that are needed to advance a substantively renewed and at-scale program of repurposing in New York and other global cities. The reuse of old structures is not a new idea. (After the fall of the Roman empire, for example, the Colosseum was repurposed for housing and workshops during the medieval period). Although reuse is understood as a convention that both requires and imposes minimal impact, rePURPOSE shines light on how the methodology might not be entirely benign, how it might in fact have impact, and the ways in which it challenges and would necessarily disrupt the very conventions with which we typically assume it is aligned. Of special, although not exclusive, interest is unpacking the relationship of repurposing to the climate crisis. Might historic preservation sit at the center of technical innovation? Are all older buildings valuable as climate mitigation assets? What rules, laws, and incentives are needed to sustain innovative approaches to meaningful reuse?

Do preservation rules and laws need to be amended to allow for modification to protected historic fabric?
Will financing tax credit incentive programs need to be created to enable ROI and economic impact?
Measuring the environmental impact of reuse and whether it promotes or offsets economic development in emerging economies.
Will new uses, such as data storage in old buildings, undermine the LCA embodied carbon savings achieved?
To what extent will conversions such as office to residential require new zoning frameworks and complete reform of regulatory, density, and FAR considerations?
Could conversions enable innovation in ventilation systems and even off-site transfer of geothermal energy systems energy and if maximized could represent significant impact?

All lectures are free, open to the public, and held in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture Sciame Auditorium. For live captioning, ASL interpretation, or access requests, please contact  ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu " rel="noopener" target="_blank"> ssadean@ccny.cuny.edu .

This lecture series is made possible by the Spitzer Architecture Fund and the generous support of Frank Sciame ’74, CEO of Sciame Construction.

(Photograph ©Paul Raphaelson)