When S9 Architecture was hired in 2018 to transform the Neuhoff Packing Plant in Nashville into a mixed-use development, the firm found the sprawling meat-processing facility in rough shape. On a bluff above the Cumberland River, and shuttered since 1977, the complex had caved-in roofs, water-filled basements, and vegetation growing inside. S9, the project’s design architect, carved out unsound parts of the existing masonry-and-concrete structures and placed new buildings to make a “porous” assemblage with framed views and interconnected courtyards, explains John Clifford, founding principal. In one such public space—leading to the elevator lobby for offices within an adapted existing building—columns of a demolished portion of the old plant remain, like sculpture. Says Dryden Razook, S9 principal, “We think of it as a stabilized ruin.”