April 25, 2025
How Barbara Buser Sparked a Reuse Revolution
Buser Goes Against Mainstream Architecture
As part of this effort, Buser founded the Bauteilbörse Basel, or the Building Parts Exchange, in 1996. The first of its kind in Switzerland, the Bauteilbörse offered secondhand building components for reuse, from window frames to structural beams. While today it operates in 16 cities, Buser notes that Bauteilbörse never became “mainstream” and was shunned by the architectural scene. She was, however, undeterred, and she started her architectural office, Baubüro in Situ, with partner Eric Honegger in a former industrial building, putting in place an uncommon and curious methodology. In 1998, they converted a large, derelict bank in the center of Basel into a café and community center. In the following years, old factory sites became infused with new life; an old market hall became the city’s most diverse pop-up food court; and at the time of writing, the former Franck mustard factory is being converted into a dance hall and community center.
These are not mere architectural interventions. Buser sets up new companies—each a network of funders and supporters—to effectively manage or acquire the sites, giving her team full agency on what can happen there. The primary goal is not profit, but shared ownership and pragmatic management. Once things are up and running, Buser usually exits and starts the next venture.
Her approach is remarkable. “She is very politically engaged but also has incredible business savvy,” says Chrissie Muhr, who codirects Berlin’s Experimental Foundation. “In Basel, she has been extremely influential, working alongside the city and various stakeholders in large transformational projects that will shape the city for years to come. She combines an entrepreneurial approach with political positioning that shines through her commitment to sustainability, ecology, and participation.”
Developing a Materials-First Design Strategy
Begun in 2020, the K.118 reconversion project in Winterthur, commissioned by the Abendrot Foundation, served as Buser’s watershed opportunity to study the real potential of reuse in architecture. Baubüro and a team from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences tested a methodology that inverted the conventional building process, beginning with an inventory of available materials for reuse, and allowing that to determine the final shape and form of the building. The external steel staircase was originally in an office building in Zurich; steel beams in the main hall once structurally supported a supermarket distribution center in Basel. Alongside these elements, the K.118 features natural materials, such as wood, straw, and clay. The university team evaluated the process upon its completion and concluded that the reuse strategy saved 60 percent of the typical CO2 emissions in a regular planning and construction process.
“That’s when I started to get really nervous,” Buser tells me, explaining both how excited and apprehensive she was to share these findings as far and wide as possible. She embarked on a tour that included more than 100 lectures worldwide while also founding Zirkular, or Circular, an engineering and planning company that has changed the attitude toward reuse in Switzerland. Zirkular employs 100 people and sources material for reuse from buildings, demolition sites, and donors all over the country, matching supply with demand while also supporting architecture offices, urban planners, and policymakers in their reuse planning journeys and leading both small-scale workshops and higher education programs.
Reuse Meets Architectural Demand
Three decades into her reuse crusade, public opinion has changed, Buser says, and now, “everybody wants to [do reuse], but they don’t know how.” Zirkular has found itself advising large companies with a lot of real estate. “The advice we give is: Keep your own stuff for your future construction,” Buser tells me, while simultaneously pushing that anyone who is seriously invested in reuse should be ready to prefinance the dismantling of building components.
“Sometimes I say we should stop construction for ten years,” she notes, “and develop other ways to go about it, namely how to find material; how to classify it; how to check, test, and so on.” And is there enough supply of existing materials to meet the demand of construction projects? Buser points out that “the problem was never to get the material, but always to get it into use again.”
Buser Challenges the Statuo-Quo of Construction
Buser’s efforts have paved the way for what Charlotte Malterre-Barthes calls “more virtuous architectures.” Malterre-Barthes, who is an assistant professor of architectural and urban design at Swiss research university EPFL, has in recent years argued for a moratorium on new construction. She told me that, despite her reservations about reuse itself, given the difficulty of scaling up “due to its demands for perseverance and access to specific networks and legal-financial frameworks,” as well as “the risks of both greenwashing and the cannibalistic nature of reuse,” the momentum generated by Buser’s work is undeniable. “Her practice has tremendously influenced young practitioners who challenge the current demolition/new construction model, showing a way beyond both the climate and imagination crisis.”
When asked about the source of her seemingly inexhaustible energy, the seventy-year-old Buser is pragmatic, stating that for every success story that kept her afloat, there were many unsuccessful ones along the road. She also acknowledges her family and her health as important factors. Undeterred, she keeps going forward, lighting the way for the rest of us. Activism, as we know, is work that never really ends.
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