While architecture as a discipline has a long history of engaging prior architectures as reference, it predominantly did so within disciplinary classifications, languages, and values of its own cannon (i.e neo-classism, postmodernism, de-constructivism). There has also been other recent attempts, more on the conceptual domain, to make new architecture with old architecture

In current paradigm shift though, there will a different stance in engaging existing buildings, one that directly confronts the physical and material realities/potentials at hand. As we contemplate architectural potential for spaces that were made for other needs at other times, for materials that might not be directly conducive to present needs and meanings sought; as we decide what to salvage, what to reappropriate, what to reconfigure, what and how to add to; and as we try to make sensible new tectonics for a culture that evolves rapidly, our framing of the problem begins to shift from the territory of responsible ethics towards the territory of potential emergent aesthetics.