An adaptive-reuse framework coordinates spatial organization, circulation, vertical transportation, and building systems to convert single-purpose commercial properties for mixed uses. By emphasizing flexible shared spaces and modular infrastructure, the research aims to reduce conversion constraints and future tenant-turnover costs while supporting long-term building adaptability.
-- Adaptive reuse has become one of the defining problems of American commercial real estate. Office and retail vacancy has pushed owners toward mixed-use conversions, but each conversion is still largely approached as a one-off. There is no widely adopted method for reorganizing an existing building to accommodate several business types.
Qiyuan Liang is one of the architects working on that gap. Based in San Jose, California, he practices at Hammel, Green and Abrahamson Inc. (HGA), whose Silicon Valley office handles corporate and research-and-development work for technology clients. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with a minor in Sustainable Environments, and is a licensed architect in the State of California. His practice spans mixed-use, commercial, adaptive-reuse, and utility infrastructure upgrades.
His design work has drawn recognition outside his firm. "The Indulgent Center: Reimagining San Francisco," his mixed-use proposal for downtown San Francisco, received Silver recognition in the mixed-use architecture categories of the 2026 London Design Awards and 2026 TITAN Property Awards. It proposes four strategic directions: reconfiguring spatial organization, flow systems, facility systems, and introducing advanced transportation tools within the built environment. Alongside design practice, he has continued to publish research, connecting his professional work with broader study of commercial building reuse.
That research now includes "Reconstruction of Commercial Building Space Reuse Mode Driven by Composite Business Types," published in 2026 in International Journal of Engineering Advances. The paper sets out a method for converting single-purpose commercial buildings to host retail, dining, office, cultural, and leisure uses simultaneously.
Most published guidance on adaptive reuse falls into one of two categories. It either examines a single completed conversion that is difficult to generalize or treats reuse as a programming and leasing exercise, with technical constraints handled later by consultants. Liang's paper rejects that separation. It argues that spatial organization, pedestrian circulation, vertical transportation, and building systems capacity are a single problem, and that deciding any one of them in isolation is what causes conversions to fail or to cost more than projected.
The framework proceeds across four coordinated moves. Spatial organization uses progressive zoning, placing high-traffic uses near primary entrances and circulation nodes while assigning equipment-intensive or independently operated uses to peripheral and upper levels. Circulation is organized as a three-tier pedestrian system of dominant paths, secondary diffusion channels, and node-stay areas, informed by pedestrian heat mapping and arrival data. Vertical transportation, including elevators, escalators, stair lobbies, and inter-floor entrances, keeps businesses on different floors commercially connected. Building systems are verified by total load and zone, since composite uses change energy, drainage, exhaust, and fire-protection demands unevenly, with BIM-based clash detection used to coordinate pipeline and equipment routing.
Two aspects of the approach have direct commercial consequences. The first is the treatment of shared space. Atriums, lobbies, corridors, and platforms are designed as flexible interface systems capable of hosting display, events, rest, and temporary activity, rather than as circulation left over between tenants. The second is designing for the next change rather than only the current one: reserved equipment interfaces, movable partitions, detachable ceilings, raised floors, and modular unit combinations are proposed to reduce future tenant turnover costs, a recurring expense in mixed-use conversions.
For practitioners, the paper is operational, specifying what to verify, in what order, and against which constraints. For owners and developers, it addresses a question that design literature usually leaves alone: how to keep a converted building adaptable over a full ownership cycle rather than only through its first lease-up.
Liang's work at HGA continues to focus on mixed-use, commercial, and adaptive-reuse projects in Silicon Valley, where aging commercial stock, high land value, and pressure to combine uses on constrained sites reflect many of the conditions addressed in his research.
Contact Info:
Name: Qiyuan Liang
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Organization: Qiyuan Liang
Website: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=sB46_z8AAAAJ&hl=en
Release ID: 89205481
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