IAF presents New Life, Old Buildings 2025 – Future Heritage

We are delighted to announce the return of New Life, Old Buildings, our innovative city-focused programme exploring how existing buildings can shape more sustainable and inclusive futures.

In September, the programme will return to Limerick, with the theme Future Heritage. At a moment of climate crisis and social change, Future Heritage asks: How can the buildings we already have become the rooms and spaces we need for today? What practices and choices of the present will shape the legacy of tomorrow?

Audiences are invited to join in-person walking tours, site visits, open table conversations and panel discussions in Limerick on 11 and 18 September and webinars on 23 and 24 October that connect local questions to national debates.

With a focus on the most sustainable resource of all, the buildings that are already built, New Life, Old Buildings challenges us to consider how Ireland’s architectural heritage can be reimagined as shared, adaptable and resilient spaces for contemporary life.

By bringing together communities, architects, policymakers and cultural voices, the programme will explore how the people of Limerick envision their city, and how we can collectively build spaces that truly reflect how we live now, and how we want to live in the future.

Now in its third year, New Life, Old Buildings is an evolving and expanding national programme about the future of buildings that are already built. Through this initiative, we seek to promote public awareness and engagement with vacant or under-used buildings and strengthen local and national networks of practitioners, ultimately supporting quality adaptive reuse of built heritage. By fostering a deeper understanding of built heritage preservation and reuse, New Life, Old Buildings aims to inspire a sense of shared responsibility and creative involvement in the future of our built environment.

New Life, Old Buildings is presented by the Irish Architecture Foundation and funded by the National Built Heritage Service and the Heritage Council. The IAF is principally funded by the Arts Council / An Comhairle Ealaíon.

See the full New Life, Old Buildings 2025 programme and book your place.

Photo:

Former vacant commercial building, currently Lumen Street Theatre, 2023 – present. 

Former Shannon Wholesale Electric, 1976 – 2022
A.P.V. DESCO Dairy Supply Company in Limerick, 1956 -1974
Bannatyne Corn Store and Offices of City Mills & Ranks, 1839 -1940

Photo by Deirdre Power.