Excuses

The work of Chicago- and Cambridge-based architecture and design collaborative Norman Kelley begins with what already exists. Like tailors, they make measured alterations to buildings, interiors, furniture, and art.

Excuses: Buildings and Projects by Norman Kelley gathers 16 of their projects completed between 2012 and 2025. They are presented as a flipbook of situational observations—or excuses—through recurring triptychs of technical drawings, casual photography, and critical captions. Norman Kelley offers its excuses as an alternative theory to adaptive reuse, towards a way of looking for place in the contradictions between past and present, wrong and right, old and new.

Contributions by architects and educators Jan de Vylder and Spencer McNeil and curator and researcher Irene Sunwoo reflect on Norman Kelley’s varied work, offering perspectives on practice, theory, and collaboration.