Retrofitting, in its very name, carries a contradiction. The prefix, “retro,” signals a backward glance—an engagement with what has already been built—while “fit” suggests an act of adjustment, an attempt to make something work within existing constraints rather than designing from scratch. Unlike demolition, which clears the slate for new construction, retrofit operates within the building’s current life, unmaking past interventions in order to rework them into new configurations. As such, retrofit is never a singular event but an ongoing negotiation of material durability and resident adaptation.

To retrofit is, in many ways, to unbuild selectively. Unlike planned obsolescence, which assumes destruction as a precursor to progress, retrofit requires dismantling in order to extend a structure’s life. It is both an act of reversal and of improvisation, where past decisions—whether design choices, material selections, or policy frameworks—must first be undone before they can be remade. Yet retrofit is not just about repair, it is about confronting the instability of what came before.

This dynamic is particularly visible in Piatra-Neamț, Romania, where the retrofitting of high-rise apartment blocks exposes the layered vulnerabilities embedded in past building practices. One of the most widespread interventions—the application of polystyrene insulation—was intended as a solution to heat loss, yet it has paradoxically accelerated new forms of decay, when done without attention to ventilation. “Polystyrene is like putting a nylon bag over someone’s head: it doesn’t let the building breathe,” a construction worker explained. While insulating walls, polystyrene also traps moisture, leading to condensation, corrosion of steel reinforcements, and microbial growth within concrete walls (Brand 1994).

What was meant to stabilize the building has instead unmade it, slowly dissolving its internal structure. One resident from a hastily retrofitted building described this process succinctly: “We thought we were improving the building, but after the insulation, the entire kitchen wall started showing mold.” Retrofitting, then, is not simply about upgrading homes but about exposing their material histories—revealing weak points and unintended consequences that must be reckoned with. In this sense, retrofit is unbuilding as much as it is building.

From design to fitting: The improvisational logic of retrofit

Retrofit is often framed as a technical intervention—a planned solution to inefficiency. Yet, unlike conventional design, which follows a logic of intention and control, retrofit operates through fitting, a process of negotiation and compromise. This distinction is crucial because it challenges dominant architectural paradigms that assume buildings can be designed as stable, coherent objects. If design imposes order, retrofit works within disorder—it adapts rather than dictates, making do with what is available rather than starting anew.

This is especially evident in resident-led retrofitting efforts, where work is carried out not as a single, cohesive project but as a series of piecemeal, contingent interventions. In the H2B block, for instance, retrofitting was not initiated by municipal authorities but by a retired administrator, Mr. Bud, who coordinated insulation efforts in response to state inaction. Without access to centralized funding, he relied on collective organizing and informal knowledge, sourcing materials piecemeal, mediating between residents with different financial capacities, and ensuring compliance with often contradictory regulations (Șalaru 2025). In this way, retrofit unsettles the authority of design by revealing buildings not as finished objects but as continuous sites of intervention. Retrofitting does not produce a final state­—it produces a new phase in the life of a building, one that is still partial, and subject to future unmakings.

Retrofit as the unbuilding of responsibility

Unbuilding is not only material; it is also social and political. Just as retrofitting unbuilds walls, ceilings, and insulation layers, it also unbuilds previous systems of governance, accountability, and infrastructural care. Under socialism, state agencies managed housing maintenance, treating apartment blocks as collective resources. Today, in small cities throughout Romania, retrofitting often unfolds as a fragmented, resident-driven process, where the burden of decision-making and financial responsibility has been unbuilt from state institutions and redistributed onto individuals.

This shift is evident in the way residents, rather than municipalities, have become the primary agents of infrastructural care. In Piatra-Neamț, EU policies mandate energy-efficient renovations, yet their implementation remains uneven, forcing residents to navigate bureaucratic obstacles, financial constraints, and technical complexities on their own. Those with resources can retrofit quickly, while others must rely on patchwork solutions, partial interventions, or deferrals. This process is not neutral: it deepens existing inequalities, creating a landscape of infrastructural unevenness, where some buildings are fully insulated, others partially covered, and many left untouched.

This patchwork urban landscape of haphazardly retrofit buildings embodies the socio-economic inequalities that exist in post-socialist cities, completely upending the uniform landscape that characterized 1970s urban planning. Furthermore, it reveals the idiosyncrasies of the retrofitting process, depending on the individuals that take the initiative. Some, such as Mr. Bud, make huge efforts to coordinate a centralized process and distribute the costs fairly—others champion a more individualistic approach, leading to partially retrofit blocks with inefficient energy savings.

Retrofit, then, is not only about making buildings “fit” new environmental and energy standards; it is about shifting responsibility for unbuilding and rebuilding onto those least equipped to bear it. Residents are left to dismantle the bureaucratic barriers of funding applications, to navigate conflicts over material choices, and to absorb the risks of retrofit failures. In this sense, retrofit does not always stabilize buildings—it has the potential to destabilize the very systems that once sustained them, replacing collective care with individualized precarity.

Retrofit does not simply prolong a building’s life; it unbuilds previous assumptions about permanence, governance, and architectural control. Just as retrofit challenges the stability of structures, it also unsettles the political and social infrastructures that once maintained them. It is a process of selective unmaking, of improvisation rather than design, of constant revision rather than completion. If modernist architecture promised coherence and control, retrofit reveals buildings as unstable and porous. It is not a return to an ideal past, nor a seamless path to efficiency. It is a form of living with unbuilding, where homes remain perpetually in process, continually made and unmade.