Sat, Jun 13 · 2026
Join Layer for ET133 at AIA A'26
Spend Wednesday of AIA A'26 on a coach tour through three of San Diego's most-cited adaptive reuse projects, all of them working breweries operating inside buildings originally constructed for another purpose. The tour uses each brewery as a case study to look at how reuse decisions shape water, energy, materials, and what owners must manage over time.
This is an official AIA Conference on Architecture A'26 program session (ET133). Layer is leading the tour alongside Lagarsoft SRL and Montrose Environmental.
Can't make Wednesday? The same three breweries are also the route for the Thursday Evening Beer Tasting Tour (ET176), Layer's evening-social companion tour.
The route
A round trip from the San Diego Convention Center, three stops, all by coach.
Stop 1: Ballast Point Little Italy
An existing industrial building in Little Italy, adapted into a central craft brewery and brewery-restaurant. We start here because the Little Italy neighborhood has reshaped itself through smaller-scale adaptive reuse over the past two decades, which sets up the urban-context lens we'll carry through the day.
Stop 2: Stone Brewing at Liberty Station
Liberty Station is the redeveloped Naval Training Center San Diego. Stone Brewing occupies one of the largest single buildings on the 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival campus, originally constructed as part of the U.S. Navy's West Coast training facility. We'll see both the brewery floor and the World Bistro & Gardens.
Stop 3: Mission Brewery
The final stop is Mission Brewery in the East Village, housed in the 1913 former Wonder Bread Factory. A 2007 landmark settlement saved the building from demolition. The original concrete structure, tall ceilings, and large floor plates were retained — the industrial-scale volume is what makes the building so well suited to brewing.
A shared lens for evaluating adaptive reuse
At each stop, the tour uses the same reuse lens to examine how the building was evaluated, adapted, and put back into service:
Systems and operations. How reuse decisions shape water use, energy demand, mechanical loads, and what an owner must manage and measure over time
Materials and embodied carbon. What was retained, what was replaced, and the embodied energy preserved by reuse
Urban context. How the building reads in its neighborhood now, and how reuse changed the surrounding block
The lens stays the same across the three stops so attendees can compare cases directly.
Your tour leads
Mike Lee, Layer. Layer is the flexible database that connects to Revit, used by architecture firms for the Room Data Sheets, FF&E schedules, surveys, and condition assessments that adaptive reuse projects depend on. Mike runs marketing and product at Layer.
Agustina Aboy Berrutti, Lagarsoft SRL. Lagarsoft is a BIM and technology consultancy with a long list of adaptive reuse and preservation projects across South America. Agustina is an Architect / BIM Specialist and Project Manager at the firm.
Daniel McDermott, Montrose Environmental. Montrose handles environmental consulting and greenhouse-gas accounting on adaptive reuse projects, including the asbestos, lead, and site contamination work that almost always shows up in older buildings. Daniel leads sustainability consulting in their AEC practice group.
The logistics
Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Time: See the official AIA26 schedule for the published start and end times
Departure: San Diego Convention Center (specific lobby published in the AIA26 schedule)
Session code: ET133
Format: Coach round-trip from the convention center, three brewery stops
Fee: Set by AIA. See the AIA26 schedule for the current fee.
Capacity: Limited. Register through the AIA26 schedule.
Find Layer at booth 1142
The Layer team is at booth 1142 on the AIA26 expo floor, ground level, June 11 and 12. If you can't get a tour spot but want to talk through how Layer fits into adaptive reuse work — Room Data Sheets, condition assessments, FF&E specifications, AI Field Fill — drop by the booth and ask for a demo.
Companion tour
ET133 is the Wednesday daytime education tour. Layer also co-hosts a Thursday evening social-focused tour — same three breweries, beer-tasting format, networking-oriented — added to the AIA26 program at AIA's request.
