Academic office to occupy terrace building (9)

'academic office' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I cannot judge whether it can be defined by this definition.

'to occupy terrace building' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'to' is found in the answer.
an anagram of 'terrace' is 'recrate' which is present in the remaining letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).

Can you help me to learn more?