Nearly a century before it was a hip smattering of bars and cafes, the neighborhood now known as Frogtown (and more formally known as Elysian Valley) was a harsh industrial landscape, built far beyond the human scale to rival Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Chicago as the manufacturing center of the nation. Everything from airplane parts to soap was produced in hastily constructed factories clinging to the southern edge of the Los Angeles River, all 51 miles of which had been rapidly concretized following a devastating inland flood in 1938. This artificial landscape, entirely transformed for the sake of utility within a matter of years, has not been easy to adapt to a post-industrial economy; even less so to a post-COVID cultural sphere. The natural elements present across the site, however, offer some advice: Vegetation grows in the cracks of its concrete riverbed; water pools in its depressions; damselflies, carp, herons, and other wildlife take shelter all across the gray expanse. Time apparently stops for nothing and no one. Nature makes due.The landscaping outside relates to vegetation along the riverfront. (Gavin Cater)The need and inevitability of adaptation learned from observing the surefooted, unfolding spirit of nature are front of mind for Michael Breland and Peter Harper, who operate their architecture firm BrelandHarper from a repurposed corner studio of their own design on Silver Lakes Hyperion Avenue. When tasked with converting more than 50,000 square feet of underused factory buildings on the northwest corner of Frogtown into a set of flexible office spaces, the two preserved the structurally sound elements without being too sentimental about the rest. The first question you have to ask yourself with adaptive reuse projects is whats working here and whats not, Michael Breland told AN. There will always be elements of these projects that cant be saved from demolition, which is what separates preservation from adaptive reuse. Biodiverse gardens line the exterior walkways. (Gavin Cater)While modernizing the former factories, they additionally set out to update the reputation of the office park, a campus type long associated with suburban seas of asphalt pushed up against thin strips of manicured lawns and bland building envelopes. By contrast, Breland-Harperacting as the landscape architects, in addition to their roles as architects and interior designerslined the exterior walkways with biodiverse gardens that soften virtually any place the buildings meet the ground. The border between the campus and the river is likewise blurred by landscaping, allowing employees to quickly escape the office environment. The site is raised several feet above the rivers edge, so our way of trying to connect was largely through the landscaping, Harper said, by using some of the plants that grow in the river that started to filter beyond the property line. Rough bricks give way to smooth stucco and warm wood finishes. (Gavin Cater)And unlike other, heavier-handed approaches to adaptive reuse in the Los Angeles areasuch as Eric Owen Mosss work along Culver Citys Hayden Tract or ZGFs readapted Spruce Goose Hangar for GoogleBreland-Harpers Los Angeles River campus only quietly announces the transformation of its antiquities. Clues can be found in material transitions, where rough bricks give way to smooth stucco and warm wood finishes, and where building additions (an awning here, an interior wall and skylights there) compensate for what was apparently missing. Our main challenge, said Breland, was tying together these buildings that were all built at different times and with different uses without heightening their contrasting elements. Masons fabricated weeping CMU walls by hand across the property to be in dialogue with the original CMU walls while creating a more organic visual language throughout.The interiors were flexibly designed so as to accommodate various future uses. (Gavin Cater)A challenge of the project involved tying together buildings built at different times and with different uses. (Gavin Cater)While a handful of local businesses, including Paper Chase Press and 10 Speed Coffee Frogtown, have already taken residence, BrelandHarper designed the project to adapt to the unknown. The interiors are flexible, accounting for walls that are currently shifting, being added and coming down by new leaseholders over time, Breland said. Adaptation is not a fictional thing ten years in the future when its a single campus for multiple clients.BrelandHarper was responsible for the architecture, interiors, and landscaping work. (Gavin Cater)Los Angeles is not the young city it once was; its architects, in the near future, will have to retrofit the citys aging structures to meet the needs for building density. The path to obsolescence in architecture is the inability to see its value and ability to change, Peter Harper told AN. The way to keep older buildings embedded in our culture is to find new uses for them.Shane Reiner-Roth is a writer and lecturer on architecture and urbanism.