The buildings have been adapted in a piecemeal fashion.piecemealpiece‧meal /ˈpiːsmiːl/ adjective 
The buildings have been adapted in a piecemeal fashion. a piecemeal approach to the problem—piecemeal adverb: The new fire regulations have been introduced piecemeal.
WORD ORIGINpiecemeal
Origin:
1200-1300 piece + -meal ‘by one part at a time’ (11-19 centuries) (from Old English mælum)EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- Improvements have been largely piecemeal, without adequate government support.
- Both were piecemeal efforts, too far from the city centre, whose shops and businesses drive the local economy.
- Milosevic has granted piecemeal concessions while sowing the kind of confusion that he has used in the past to stymie opponents.
- Nor did they see any future in piecemeal political reform of the autocracy.
- She was struggling to save a patchwork system of segregated education by piecemeal projects.
- The proposals are intended as a package and not for piecemeal negotiation.
- The use of resources was a piecemeal affair.
- To his disappointments it developed in a piecemeal fashion.
- Why is it fair to pass piecemeal reforms for powerful industries?
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY The buildings have been adapted in a piecemeal fashion.COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSNOUN
a process that is piecemeal happens slowly and in stages that are not regular or planned properly: The buildings have been adapted in a piecemeal fashion.· Crumley starts by analysing the piecemeal approach to development and lack of adequate environmental control in the Cairngorms.
· The changes in the state sector before the 1980s have occurred in a relatively piecemeal fashion.· To his disappointments it developed in a piecemeal fashion.· The charges against Sutyagin can, therefore, be established only in piecemeal fashion.· It is only during this century that statutory services have been developed and they came in a very piecemeal fashion.· They may conceive of it in piecemeal fashion, recognising particular boundaries as and when it is unavoidably necessary to do so.· The process of drainage and enclosure was probably occurring in a piecemeal fashion all through the late Saxon period.· The cuckoo's adaptations were simply too perfect to have evolved bit by bit, in piecemeal fashion.
The buildings have been adapted in a piecemeal fashion. a piecemeal approach to the problem—piecemeal adverb: The new fire regulations have been introduced piecemeal.