Succesfully reusing heritage

Abstract

While the benefits of adaptive reusing heritage are widely acknowledged by academic and practice, the process's complexity increases. Stakeholders are not willing to consider reuse as a strategy to deal with heritage vacancy. Studies have tried to grasp this complexity by identifying success factors, but till this point, practitioners have not been able to put this to work to improve the process. This research proposes to find out what the success factors are, and when, how, and why they are present, and give them a place and time within the adaptive reuse process. That way, it becomes easier to align resources and attention in future adaptive reuse projects, leading to process improvement. Doing so facilitates the elements to deliver a project successfully. This research will answer the following question: How can success factors improve the process of adaptive reuse of heritage? This research aims to provide insight and recommendations into the complex issue of adaptive reuse projects. Through the literature review and three case study projects, all the key aspects of the main research question were covered on the subjects: adaptive reuse of heritage, the reuse process, success and success factors, process improvements and the actual improvement of the reuse process. This has led to a general adaptive reuse process and a list of the twelve success factors that were perceived as being most important in the case study projects, combined into a process map. The process map describes the adaptive reuse process from idea until delivery where the main activities, complexity, degree of freedom, and success factors indicate how stakeholders can manage the process. This research showed the value and reuse potential of heritage buildings by providing the right tools to increase the chance for successfully delivering a reused building. This research shows that the complex adaptive reuse process can be made simple and insightful by bundling knowledge and experience from practice to ignite the drive to reuse out cultural and historical past. For the process model to impact future adaptive reuse processes, stakeholders have to actively embed the model into their work to learn from it. Next to that, the attractiveness of adaptive reuse projects depends on the collaboration between public and private parties.