Adaptive Reuse as Configuration Knowledge: Design Intelligence in Seven European Post-Industrial Trajectories

Abstract

Adaptive reuse of post-industrial heritage is often studied through technical performance, formal intervention strategies, or decision-support models. While these approaches clarify important aspects of reuse, they give limited attention to how projects evolve through the combined effects of architectural decisions, governance arrangements, financing mechanisms, policy instruments, social programs, and inherited fabric. This paper examines adaptive reuse as a time-structured project trajectory. It applies a hybrid methodology combining within-case reconstruction and comparative cross-case analysis to seven European projects in Brussels, Essen, Rotterdam, San Sebastián, Florence, Vienna, and Barcelona. The cases are analyzed across six dimensions: Asset & Context, Governance & Finance, Circularity, Social & Cultural, Policy & Design, and Outcomes & Transfer. The comparison shows that adaptive capacity depends on the alignment of governance, project time, and intervention strategy. Governance determines who can revise decisions and under what conditions; adaptation time is produced through funding horizons, approval procedures, institutional continuity, and civic or public stewardship; and strategies of retention, replacement, reversible insertion, and incremental occupation distribute future risk differently across project phases. From this synthesis, the paper extracts ten conditional lessons that frame adaptive reuse as configuration knowledge: transferable insights whose relevance depends on the interaction among governance capacity, temporal sequencing, inherited fabric, financing, policy support, and social objectives. The paper argues that knowledge transfer in AR should be understood as disciplined translation across comparable constraints, not as the replication of models, rankings, or best-practice templates.

1. Introduction

1.1. Post-Industrial Void

Across Europe, obsolete industrial sites remain a visible part of the urban landscape, often characterized by large-span halls, rigid structural shells, mono-functional layouts, and underused brownfield land that sit in tension with surrounding urban life [1,2,3,4]. Their reuse poses architectural and environmental challenges, especially as renovation has become central to decarbonization and circular-economy agendas [5,6]. Almost 75% of Europe’s building stock is currently energy inefficient, and more than 85% of today’s buildings are expected to remain in use in 2050 [5]. Housing accounts for 52% of the EU’s material footprint, while buildings consume 42% of total energy and generate 35% of greenhouse gas emissions; 20–25% of the life-cycle emissions of the current EU building stock are embedded in construction products and components [5]. Globally, the buildings and construction sector accounts for 34% of energy-related CO₂ emissions and around 34% of energy demand [6]. These figures make reuse and renovation strategically important, especially when circular approaches extend product lifetimes, recirculate materials, and reduce dependence on high-emission products [5,6]. Renovation and maintenance also represent a substantial share of construction activity in the European Union, reinforcing the practical relevance of existing fabric as a primary field of contemporary construction practice [7].

Adaptive reuse (AR) has evolved from an ad hoc response to building obsolescence into a consolidated field of architectural inquiry and practice, linking architecture, interior intervention, and conservation [2,8]. Its scope has also expanded toward placemaking and urban regeneration, where reuse converts obsolete structures into public, cultural, economic, and sustainable urban value [9]. This shift reframes existing buildings from passive containers into active frameworks that condition interpretation, intervention, and future use [2,8,10]. Canonical precedents, particularly Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio, helped establish reuse as a critical act of selective transformation, distinct from simple preservation or wholesale replacement; later scholarship clarified the different intensities and relationships through which new insertions engage host fabric [2,3,10,11]. AR can be understood as a disciplinary practice of revaluation, in which cultural memory, inherited fabric, spatial occupation, and contemporary use are actively negotiated through design [2,10].

Yet a significant gap remains in how AR is studied. Some studies examine AR through technical and assessment-oriented approaches focused on energy performance, retrofitting, and compliance [12,13,14]. Other studies analyze formal transformation, intervention strategies, and the relationship between existing fabric and new architectural insertion [1,2,9]. Related urban-rehabilitation research shows that small-scale regeneration can preserve cultural continuity while supporting social use, economic vitality, and urban integration [15]. Creative rehabilitation studies further demonstrate how obsolete urban structures can be reactivated as public and productive spaces while contributing to city image and place-based value [16]. Urban-identity research adds that revitalization depends on spatial vitality, accessibility, pedestrian use, and the capacity of architectural adjustment to reinforce local distinctiveness [17]. Technical façade research further shows that intervention in existing buildings is not only spatial or formal, but also material, environmental, and urban-performative: nanomaterials and nanocoatings can improve façade durability, energy efficiency, self-cleaning capacity, air-quality performance, maintenance reduction, urban attractiveness and visual quality, and built-heritage preservation [18]. Decision-support studies have refined evaluation through sustainability rankings, multi-criteria assessment models, success-factor frameworks, and perception-based analyses [19,20,21,22,23,24]. Decision-support studies have refined evaluation through sustainability rankings, multi-criteria assessment models, success-factor frameworks, and perception-based analyses [19,20,21,22,23,24]. Related work has also addressed governance frameworks and policy typologies [25], European management practices [26], post-industrial reuse in specific national contexts [27], and individual urban-industrial heritage settings [28]. However, these strands have rarely been brought together to compare major European post-industrial reuse projects as time-structured trajectories. What remains underdeveloped is a comparative understanding of how architectural decisions interact with governance arrangements, policy instruments, social programs, and inherited fabric across project phases, and how these interactions generate trade-offs, lock-ins, adaptive capacity, and scope for later revision [2,29].

Recent adaptive-reuse research increasingly frames intervention in existing heritage buildings as a multidimensional process extending beyond questions of form, conservation, or technical upgrading alone. Systematic reviews have shown that successful heritage reuse depends on the combined influence of architectural, structural, socio-cultural, economic, environmental, legal, managerial, authenticity-related, energy-related, and functional factors [30]. Recent frameworks also stress the mutual dependence of architectural, economic, social, cultural, environmental, regulatory, technical, and stakeholder-related dimensions [31]. Related studies connecting AR with the Sustainable Development Goals, European Quality Principles, circular economy, and participatory assessment further show that reuse decisions are shaped by design choices, institutional conditions, environmental targets, public expectations, and long-term operational requirements [32,33,34,35]. AR extends the service life of buildings while functioning as a contemporary restoration practice: it examines the degree of transformation that can be accepted while preserving cultural continuity, material legibility, compatible use, environmental responsibility, and public relevance over time.

This study addresses the remaining gap by examining seven European post-industrial AR projects as trajectories: time-structured project systems that evolve through successive interventions, occupations, and governance arrangements [2]. Each case is reconstructed through documented evidence and uses cross-case comparison to identify conditional lessons about how AR operates as a coupled system over time [2,10]. The aim is to develop a more precise account of the design intelligence embedded in AR practice and of the configuration knowledge that can travel across cases while preserving their differences [2,10].

1.2. Research Questions

• RQ1: How do architectural decisions interact with governance arrangements, environmental ambitions, social programs, and policy frameworks to shape the trajectories of AR projects across different contexts?
• RQ2: What recurring patterns, tensions, and trade-offs become visible when post-industrial AR projects are examined collectively as trajectories?
• RQ3: What forms of knowledge can be transferred from these projects without reducing AR to prescriptive models, rankings, or best-practice templates?

1.3. Research Aims, Objectives, and Novelty

This research treats industrial heritage AR as a source of architectural knowledge generated across multiple European cases. The seven projects are not presented as individual best-practice examples. Instead, the study examines the design intelligence that emerges when they are read as time-structured systems shaped by governance, phasing, fabric strategy, and contextual conditions.

The analysis develops an evidence-based critical reading of how AR projects negotiate heritage values, financial pressures, public ambitions, institutional arrangements, and long-term adaptability. It avoids simple judgments of success or failure and identifies recurring relationships, trade-offs, limits, and conditions of transfer.

The study’s novelty lies in its configurational logic, not in proposing a new typology or theme. Recent literature has already clarified many individual success factors, evaluation criteria, and circular-economy benefits of AR [30,31,32,33,34,35]. What remains less developed is how these factors interact and evolve across project time.

This paper translates restoration and AR concerns: retention, transformation, reopening, financing, and revisability, into a comparative framework that explains how governance, temporal sequencing, fabric strategy, and institutional support generate different forms of adaptability and constraint.

The main contribution is to show that transferable knowledge in AR is conditional. It depends on how governance arrangements, temporal sequencing, fabric strategies, and site-specific constraints align over time. In doing so, the research supports the transfer of architectural knowledge across contexts while preserving the institutional conditions, soft values, and particular constraints of individual sites.

2. Conceptual Framework

The framework conceptualizes AR of industrial heritage as a non-linear, project-based transformation unfolding across time. The framework clarifies how reuse projects evolve through shifting constraints, negotiated priorities, and institutional contingencies, and how these dynamics condition the lessons that can be extracted across cases.

Each project is read as a trajectory: a time-structured project system in which architectural, institutional, and programmatic decisions interact across phases, producing outcomes shaped by path dependence and evolving project conditions. Trajectories are structured through inherited assets, intervention decisions, governance arrangements, and contextual pressures. This framing draws on three complementary theoretical positions. Brand’s [36] evolutionary model treats buildings as systems of shearing layers: Site, Structure, Skin, Services, Space Plan, and Stuff; each changes at a different temporal rate, so the building at any moment reflects differential change across layers [3]. Till’s [29] account of contingency positions architecture as a dependent discipline embedded in “the mess” of the real world. From this perspective, the social, political, financial, and physical conditions that disrupt architectural intentions are not external disturbances, but constitutive conditions of practice. Latour and Yaneva [37] and Yaneva et al. [38] extend this temporal logic by describing buildings as “series of transformations”, entities that exist in a constant state of memory and anticipation across time [2,10]. Together, these positions support an interpretive reading of projects as negotiated trajectories in which decisions, compromises, and recalibrations are constitutive of architectural outcomes within real project conditions. Complementary perspectives on use, inhabitation, and architectural adaptation clarify how buildings remain open to appropriation after design completion [3,39]. Spatial experience also depends on perception: line, surface, movement, scale, light, shadow, and viewpoint can actively reshape how users read and inhabit architectural environments [40]. This human-centered reading is further extended by future-oriented approaches that consider long-term social responsibility and intergenerational users in AR decision-making [41].

Because industrial reuse rarely operates within a single value regime, the framework adopts a layered value ontology structured as a three-layer concentric model [31]. The model clarifies how different value types function within project trajectories and why tensions among them are structurally recurrent. The core layer comprises relatively stable intrinsic foundations, especially architectural/physical and historical/cultural values. The middle layer encompasses dynamic drivers: economic, social, and environmental dimensions, that enable or obstruct implementation. The outer layer captures enabling conditions: policy, regulation, and technical/implementation factors that shape feasibility and institutional support. Tensions between layers are recurrent structural features of AR trajectories, and the framework treats them as such. These two models intersect where physical permanence meets value stability: Brand’s slower-changing layers: Site, Structure, Skin [36] typically embody Zhang’s Core Layer values: intrinsic heritage [31], while Brand’s faster-changing layers: Space Plan, Stuff, accommodate Zhang’s Middle Layer drivers: functional/economic needs, all within the regulatory constraints of Zhang’s Outer Layer.

The framework further treats AR as time-structured. Decisions are not only made but revisited and re-weighted as constraints and opportunities shift; project trajectories therefore depend on when choices are taken, by whom, and with what scope for revision. A three-phase breakdown is used to locate critical decisions within project time [42]. In the pre-project phase, decisions center on whether to preserve, reuse, or demolish. The preparation phase involves selection among potential new functions or design strategies. The post-completion phase encompasses evaluation and feedback that inform subsequent adjustments and future reuse initiatives. This phasing serves as an analytical scaffold for identifying where, within the life of a project, particular forms of reasoning and institutional negotiation take hold.

The framework explicitly integrates governance, policy, and social programs as interacting forces that shape design logic and project development over time [9]. These forces are considered insofar as they condition what can be designed, funded, approved, delivered, and sustained over time, and how architectural intentions are translated into operational arrangements and long-term trajectories. Governance is positioned within the framework as an operative layer that structures temporal horizons, delimits architectural agency, and shapes the scope for revision across project phases.

Recent AR scholarship supports this governance-oriented reading. Vafaie et al. identify management, legal, socio-cultural, authenticity, environmental, and functional factors as key success conditions for heritage reuse [30]. Zhang et al. emphasize the interdependence of tangible and intangible factors and position stakeholders within the decision-making framework [31]. In restoration terms, governance becomes part of design because it translates conservation principles, contemporary functions, material and technical responsibilities, environmental ambitions, and public obligations into project decisions. This point is especially relevant in post-industrial heritage, where transformation must remain accountable to inherited fabric, collective memory, compatible use, circular performance, and future adaptability.

The framework treats transferability as context-dependent learning. What travels between cases is not a replicable architectural form, but a set of conditional insights that may inform action under comparable constraints [2,10]. This stance is consistent with case-based research, which emphasizes the value of context-dependent knowledge for complex practices [43], and with architectural research methodology, which understands transfer as disciplined translation grounded in context [44]. Taken together, these concepts frame AR as a contingent, value-layered, and time-structured practice. They also support the interpretation of project trajectories and the derivation of ensemble-level lessons across the seven cases.

Within this logic, technically responsible intervention depends on integrating diagnostic survey and parametric/HBIM modelling as preparatory, knowledge-generating stages. Non-invasive thermographic diagnosis establishes the material and structural conditions needed to set intervention priorities and prevent indiscriminate destructive work, while parametric/HBIM workflows channel that data into an updatable digital environment where restoration design and conservation decisions can be evaluated before irreversible implementation choices are made [45,46].

The six analytical dimensions operationalize these theoretical positions into a consistent reading grid. Figure 1 maps the dimensions onto both the value ontology and the temporal phasing model, clarifying how each dimension captures a specific intersection of value type and project phase.

3. Research Methodology

3.1. Research Design and Case Selection

This study reconstructs and compares seven urban post-industrial AR projects through a qualitative comparative case-study design, see Figure 1, combining within-case project reconstruction with cross-case synthesis [43,47]. This design is appropriate for AR because architectural decisions, governance structures, financing arrangements, heritage constraints, implementation processes, and post-completion adjustments are closely connected and must be reconstructed case by case [43,47]. The method combines qualitative document analysis [48], content analysis of documentary evidence [49], web content analysis of online and organizational website data [50,51,52,53,54], and gray-literature appraisal using multivocal-review quality criteria [48], supplemented by online secondary-data quality assessment principles [55,56].

Case selection followed purposive logic, with no assertion of representativeness for the wider population of European remodeling, adaptation, and repurposing projects [43,44,47,50]. Projects were included when they met five criteria: urban post-industrial origin; AR at building or district scale; substantial completion or operational maturity; documentation across the six analytical dimensions; and variation in governance, ownership, financing, intervention strategy, and national context. Waterfront, rural, unbuilt, ordinary renovation, single-function, and poorly documented projects were excluded. Comparability derives from the consistent application of a shared analytical framework across heterogeneous cases, not from similarity of scale, program, ownership, or national context [43,44].

The seven selected cases sit at the midpoint of Eisenhardt’s recommended range of four to ten cases, balancing sufficient variation for cross-case comparison with the analytical depth required for within-case trajectory reconstruction [57]. To the authors’ knowledge, these seven projects have not previously been examined together through a common trajectory-based framework linking governance, phasing, fabric strategy, publicness, and post-completion adaptability.

3.2. Analytical Grid and Data Collection

The analytical grid covers six dimensions and eleven sub-dimensions: Asset & Context (Site & Accessibility, Heritage Status, Spatial System), Governance & Finance (Ownership, Investment), Circularity (Fabric & Reuse, Energy Systems), Social & Cultural (Public Space, Functional Mix), Policy & Design (Innovation), and Outcomes & Transfer (Market & Transfer). These dimensions were developed through AR literature and preliminary case reading using deductive and inductive coding [1,2,44,49,58]. Zhang et al.’s value ontology informed the grouping of dimensions [31], while van Laar et al.’s temporal phasing structured the evidence from inherited conditions through preparation, implementation, and post-completion outcomes [42], see Figure 1.

Evidence was assigned to the relevant sub-dimensions and appraised according to source authority, independence, specificity, date, accessibility, corroboration, and claim-level relevance before cross-case interpretation [58,59]. Data collection drew on academic publications, institutional and planning documents, heritage records, technical reports, media coverage, audiovisual sources, and architect or project websites. The evidence base [43,47] comprised up to 31 sources per case, published in English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.

Institutional, planning, heritage, academic, technical, and official project sources were prioritized for factual verification. Architect and project websites were used mainly for design intent, phasing, authorship, and declared project logic, while media and professional sources were retained only when they provided verifiable information not available from primary sources. Assertions were retained when supported by more than one source type or linked to verifiable milestones, including planning approvals, funding announcements, ownership changes, heritage listings, completion dates, and documented operational adjustments [55,56]. Weakly supported claims were either qualified or excluded.

Each case contains approximately 45–60 identifiable information units across the eleven sub-dimensions and three content categories: attribute, documented values, and key findings.

Within-case reconstruction traced each project as a time-structured trajectory, examining how inherited fabric, governance, financing, heritage constraints, design decisions, and post-completion adjustments interacted across time [43,60,61,62]. Cross-case synthesis then compared the cases dimension by dimension to identify recurring configurations [62]. The shared analytical grid enabled comparison of governance and delivery models while preserving each project’s contextual specificity [39,41,44]. This matrix-based synthesis used explicit categories to structure evidence before interpretation [49,59].

Patterns were retained when similar relationships between governance, phasing, fabric strategy, publicness, or transferability appeared across multiple trajectories. Contrasting cases were also retained when they clarified the boundary conditions under which a configuration became viable, constrained, or prone to lock-in. The synthesis addressed three questions: how governance and financing shaped adaptation time; how temporal conditions affected spatial and fabric decisions; and how early interventions created later flexibility, constraint, or lock-in. The resulting interpretation identifies configuration knowledge: conditional insights that become meaningful when governance, time, fabric, finance, policy, and social objectives are read together. Transferability is therefore understood as disciplined translation across comparable constraints, without assuming replication of forms, ownership models, or delivery structures.

3.3. Analysis Procedure and Limitations

The study reconstructs publicly documented AR trajectories. It does not provide post-occupancy evaluation, technical audit, financial audit, user-satisfaction analysis, measured environmental performance assessment, or direct stakeholder interview evidence. Limitations include source asymmetry, promotional framing, uneven documentation, language differences, and inconsistent quantitative data. Although multilingual source collection broadened the evidence base, variations remained in the availability, depth, and type of documentation across cases.

Figure 2 summarizes the source-treatment procedure used to filter heterogeneous documentary claims before comparative analysis. Promotional and narrative sources, including project websites, architect statements, media reports, and audiovisual material, were used only for declared aims, design intent, phasing, authorship, and architectural narratives. They were not treated as standalone evidence for performance or outcomes [50,51,52,53,54]. Claims concerning impact or transferability were retained only when corroborated by stronger documentary evidence or verifiable project milestones [55,56]. Trustworthiness follows secondary qualitative-data guidance [49].

4. Within-Case Trajectory Analysis and Cross-Case Synthesis

4.1. Within-Case Trajectory Analysis

4.1.1. Tour & Taxis (Brussels, Belgium)

Tour & Taxis (Table 1) illustrates AR structured through long-duration phasing across multiple redevelopment stages [63,64]. The project (Figure 3) inherited a large, strategically located, and historically enclosed logistics landscape whose scale and infrastructural position created major urban potential while also making transformation institutionally and spatially complex [63,64]. Redevelopment advanced through staged alignment between governance, capital deployment, and spatial decisions over time.

The governance arrangement gave the project temporal elasticity. Under a single private landowner operating within a strong regional planning framework, the site could be reorganized through a long-term investment horizon that avoided immediate full-site closure [63,64]. This enabled phased recalibration, in which higher-yield contemporary development at the site edges helped finance the slower restoration of the monumental heritage core [65]. Governance therefore shaped the project’s capacity to defer decisions, sequence investment, and redistribute risk across time.

This temporal flexibility supported a fabric strategy oriented toward revisability. The intervention treated the major industrial structures as climatic envelopes within which structurally independent programs could be inserted. In Gare Maritime (Figure 4), demountable Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) volumes were introduced inside the historic steel-and-glass shell without collapsing the distinction between inherited fabric and new occupation [66].

Brand’s framework [36] predicts that coupling between slower layers, such as Structure and Skin, and faster layers, such as Space Plan and Stuff, reduces adaptability. Gare Maritime deliberately decouples these layers: the steel-and-glass shell functions as a climatic boundary independent from the CLT insertions, allowing the Space Plan to remain negotiable while the heritage envelope stays stable. This decoupling helps explain why long-duration phasing remains viable.

The design intelligence lies in physical preservation combined with the avoidance of premature spatial closure. The case also shows that public value and private delivery do not form a simple opposition. Although the site remains largely under private control, redevelopment transformed a formerly closed logistics enclave into a permeable mixed-use quarter that reconnects surrounding neighborhoods through parks, circulation networks, and semi-public interior environments [63,64,66]. Publicness is produced through a governed development structure in which planning obligations, phased delivery, and anchor uses support urban accessibility.

At the same time, the trajectory’s viability depends on conditions not easily reproduced: exceptional site scale, strong transit connectivity, long-horizon capital, planning continuity, and anchor tenants capable of stabilizing phased delivery [63,64]. Tour & Taxis therefore shows how governance capacity, temporal elasticity, and reversible fabric strategy aligned under specific metropolitan conditions.

Zhang’s framework [31] helps explain why this alignment matters. Core-layer heritage values survive when middle-layer drivers, including economic viability, and outer-layer conditions, including regulatory support, reinforce each other. Tour & Taxis tests this relationship: the heritage core was preserved because the planning framework made perimeter density profitable enough to cross-subsidize core restoration. The case therefore supports Zhang’s argument that heritage value depends on alignment between economic, regulatory, and cultural conditions [31].

In Tour & Taxis, the main mechanism is the decoupling of durable heritage envelopes from changeable occupation layers, as summarized in Table 1. The case illustrates Brand’s distinction between slow-changing layers, such as Structure and Skin, and faster-changing layers, such as Space Plan and Stuff [36]. However, this separation is also institutional and financial. Read through Zhang et al. [31], van Laar et al. [42], and Till [29], reversibility depends on the alignment between heritage value, planning control, investment phasing, and governance capacity.

Table 1. Within-case synthesis of Tour & Taxis, Brussels.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Inner-city permeable brownfield	33 ha total site; 9 ha public park; 1 km to N-Station; transit/tram access.	Closed logistics enclave transformed into an accessible, mixed-use urban quarter connecting separated neighborhoods.	[64,65,67,68,69,70]
	Heritage Status	Monumental industrial anchor	Gare Maritime: 45,000 m2; Entrepôt Royal: 45,000 m2; Sheds: 17,000 m2.	Preservation of early-20th-century Flemish neo-Renaissance customs buildings and steel-and-glass freight sheds.	[66,71,72,73,74,75]
	Spatial System	Perimeter density displacement	140,000 m2 new Gross Floor Area (GFA) in 17 perimeter buildings (Lake Side).	Core heritage halls are preserved as large public/semi-public voids, with new contemporary density concentrated on the site’s perimeter.	[64,65,66,68,69,76,77,78]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Guided private delivery	Private owner (Nextensa); Detailed Plan Particulier d’Affectation du Sol/local land-use plan (PPAS) approved 2017.	Private ownership closely governed by regional/municipal masterplans requiring public benefits (parks, housing).	[63,64,65,67,79,80]
	Investment	Patient capital & phasing	Timeline: 2001–early 2030s; €250 M+ total estimated investment.	Multi-decade development strategy relying on long-term private capital, stabilized by major public-sector anchor tenants.	[63,64,65,67,80,81]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Reversible shell-and-infill	12 CLT timber pavilions “Gare Maritime: the Europe’s largest CLT project” (10,000 m3); original paving reused.	“Light-touch,” demountable contemporary insertions placed inside historic envelopes, ensuring structural independence and reversibility.	[66,75,82,83,84,85,86]
	Energy Systems	District-scale fossil-free autarky	17,000 m2 building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) panels (3000 MWh/yr); BREEAM Outstanding.	Combining passive design with district-scale renewables to achieve CO2-neutral operations exceeding site consumption.	[66,82,83,84,86,87,88,89,90,91]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Curated public/semi-public gradient	9 ha park (community farm, gardens); 17,000 m2 event capacity.	Elimination of physical barriers to create a 9-hectare public park, flowing into semi-public covered “city” spaces.	[64,65,67,68,69,70,75,77,79,83]
	Functional Mix	24/7 programmatic activation	800+ new apartments; several thousand jobs (public & private).	Comprehensive mix of government anchors, residential, retail, and cultural programming ensuring constant site vibrancy.	[64,67,71,78,80,81,82,83,91,92]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Conditional Public–Private Partnership (PPP) regeneration	7 international architecture firms; Europa Nostra Award (2008: conservation category, 2021: Gare Maritime).	Innovative PPP balancing private economic viability with mandated public infrastructure and heritage conservation.	[64,65,66,68,69,75,76,77,78,79,83,84,85,86,87]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Heritage-driven market premium	>75% residential sales; €3600–4000/m2; requires 30-year horizon.	High commercial success and residential uptake, but transferability is strictly conditional on site scale, patient capital, and public transit.	[63,64,67,76,80,81]

Table 1. Within-case synthesis of Tour & Taxis, Brussels.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Inner-city permeable brownfield	33 ha total site; 9 ha public park; 1 km to N-Station; transit/tram access.	Closed logistics enclave transformed into an accessible, mixed-use urban quarter connecting separated neighborhoods.	[64,65,67,68,69,70]
	Heritage Status	Monumental industrial anchor	Gare Maritime: 45,000 m2; Entrepôt Royal: 45,000 m2; Sheds: 17,000 m2.	Preservation of early-20th-century Flemish neo-Renaissance customs buildings and steel-and-glass freight sheds.	[66,71,72,73,74,75]
	Spatial System	Perimeter density displacement	140,000 m2 new Gross Floor Area (GFA) in 17 perimeter buildings (Lake Side).	Core heritage halls are preserved as large public/semi-public voids, with new contemporary density concentrated on the site’s perimeter.	[64,65,66,68,69,76,77,78]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Guided private delivery	Private owner (Nextensa); Detailed Plan Particulier d’Affectation du Sol/local land-use plan (PPAS) approved 2017.	Private ownership closely governed by regional/municipal masterplans requiring public benefits (parks, housing).	[63,64,65,67,79,80]
	Investment	Patient capital & phasing	Timeline: 2001–early 2030s; €250 M+ total estimated investment.	Multi-decade development strategy relying on long-term private capital, stabilized by major public-sector anchor tenants.	[63,64,65,67,80,81]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Reversible shell-and-infill	12 CLT timber pavilions “Gare Maritime: the Europe’s largest CLT project” (10,000 m3); original paving reused.	“Light-touch,” demountable contemporary insertions placed inside historic envelopes, ensuring structural independence and reversibility.	[66,75,82,83,84,85,86]
	Energy Systems	District-scale fossil-free autarky	17,000 m2 building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) panels (3000 MWh/yr); BREEAM Outstanding.	Combining passive design with district-scale renewables to achieve CO2-neutral operations exceeding site consumption.	[66,82,83,84,86,87,88,89,90,91]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Curated public/semi-public gradient	9 ha park (community farm, gardens); 17,000 m2 event capacity.	Elimination of physical barriers to create a 9-hectare public park, flowing into semi-public covered “city” spaces.	[64,65,67,68,69,70,75,77,79,83]
	Functional Mix	24/7 programmatic activation	800+ new apartments; several thousand jobs (public & private).	Comprehensive mix of government anchors, residential, retail, and cultural programming ensuring constant site vibrancy.	[64,67,71,78,80,81,82,83,91,92]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Conditional Public–Private Partnership (PPP) regeneration	7 international architecture firms; Europa Nostra Award (2008: conservation category, 2021: Gare Maritime).	Innovative PPP balancing private economic viability with mandated public infrastructure and heritage conservation.	[64,65,66,68,69,75,76,77,78,79,83,84,85,86,87]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Heritage-driven market premium	>75% residential sales; €3600–4000/m2; requires 30-year horizon.	High commercial success and residential uptake, but transferability is strictly conditional on site scale, patient capital, and public transit.	[63,64,67,76,80,81]

Figure 3. Reintegration of the former logistics brownfield into the metropolitan urban fabric through mixed-use redevelopment, public landscape transformation, and enhanced connectivity between formerly separated districts, Tour & Taxis, Brussels [93].

Figure 3. Reintegration of the former logistics brownfield into the metropolitan urban fabric through mixed-use redevelopment, public landscape transformation, and enhanced connectivity between formerly separated districts, Tour & Taxis, Brussels [93].

Figure 4. Gare Maritime, Tour & Taxis, Brussels: preserved steel-and-glass freight hall adapted through structurally independent timber infill, illustrating a reversible shell-and-infill strategy [94].

Figure 4. Gare Maritime, Tour & Taxis, Brussels: preserved steel-and-glass freight hall adapted through structurally independent timber infill, illustrating a reversible shell-and-infill strategy [94].

4.1.2. Zeche Zollverein (Essen, Germany)

Zeche Zollverein (

Table 2. Within-case synthesis of Zeche Zollverein, Essen.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Landscape-scale industrial	100 ha UNESCO site boundaries; 5 km to Essen main station.	Decommissioned coal mine and coking plant in the Ruhr region transformed into an expansive open-landscape campus.	[96,97,98]
	Heritage Status	Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity architectural style)—Eigenständige Variante des Bauhaus-Gedankens (an independent variant of the Bauhaus concept)	Shaft XII (1928–1932); Coking plant (1957–1961); UNESCO status (2001).	Early-to-mid 20th-century monumental mining infrastructure preserved as an icon of the Modern Movement.	[96,99,100,101,102,103]
	Spatial System	Compact vertical + open landscape	Coal washery: 280 m long; complete processing line preserved.	Symmetrical arrangement of vertical machine halls and horizontal battery structures preserved in situ.	[96,97,98,101,103,104]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Multi-level public stewardship	Stiftung Zollverein (est. 1998); Land State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) acquisition post-1986.	Long-term public foundation management under state, regional, and municipal coordination.	[95,105,106,107,108]
	Investment	Sustained public funding	€200 M (2001–2009); €84 M cumulative regional funding.	Multi-decade investment program relying on major EU and regional public funding streams to stabilize the site.	[95,98,107,108,109,110]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Preservation-through-conversion	12,000 m2 Kohlenwäsche conversion (OMA); SANAA School 5000 m2.	“Light-touch” AR retaining original heavy machinery, using reversible contemporary architectural insertions.	[105,108,111,112,113,114,115]
	Energy Systems	Mine-water heat recovery	Geothermal water (28–35 °C); Climate Neutral 2030 target.	Transitioning from fossil fuel extraction to climate neutrality via geothermal heat pumps using flooded mine shafts.	[116,117]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Industrial nature park	1.5 million annual visitors; 100 ha Agence Ter landscape masterplan.	Fenced production site transformed into a permeable, 100-hectare public Park and event landscape.	[96,118,119]
	Functional Mix	Regional cultural anchor	1030 on-site jobs; 200,000 annual visitors to Ruhr Museum.	Dense cluster of museums, education, creative industries, and corporate headquarters.	[96,98,113,114,115,119,120,121]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Masterplan-led cultural cluster	160,000 m2 masterplan area; €23 M SANAA budget.	Strategic use of a flexible masterplan (OMA) and high-profile architectural interventions to guide long-term development.	[108,109,110,111,112,113,114,115,120]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Publicly capitalized model	Average visitor grade visitor satisfaction; 2168 indirect jobs created.	Successful regional anchor, but transferability depends on massive scale and sustained, patient public capital.	[95,96,98,106,114,117,122]

) represents AR structured through landscape-scale public stewardship and long-duration institutional support. The project inherited a decommissioned 100-hectare coal mine and coking plant (Figure 5) and was stabilized through multi-agency public governance and sustained, multi-decade EU and regional funding, insulating transformation from short-term speculative pressure [95,96,97]. By securing financial and institutional continuity, the site could be treated as cultural infrastructure with a long-term public mandate [31].

Public stewardship gave the project temporal capacity. With rapid financial return playing a secondary role, transformation could unfold through extended conservation, phased occupation, and cumulative institutional investment across multiple phases [95,96,97]. Governance therefore structured the conditions under which design decisions could remain open across time.

This temporal latitude supported a preservation-through-conversion strategy. The project retained major industrial structures and heavy machinery in situ, preserving Site, Structure, and industrial Skin as stable long-life layers. Localized contemporary interventions, including the SANAA School and Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s Kohlenwäsche conversion, operated as faster-changing Space Plan insertions within the existing industrial apparatus (Figure 6) [98,99].

Latour and Yaneva [37] and Yaneva et al. [38] treat buildings as stabilized outcomes of successive translations, not fixed objects. Zollverein exemplifies this logic: each intervention, including the SANAA School, OMA’s Kohlenwäsche conversion, and Agence Ter’s landscape work, redefines the site without resolving it into a final form. Each intervention translates Zollverein into a new actor-network, including museum, school, and park, while enrolling the existing material fabric as a stable ally [37,38]. These translations depend on interessement devices, here the UNESCO listing and the Stiftung’s funding continuity [95,96,97,99,101,103], which prevent any single actor from dominating the network and closing the site into a single commercial trajectory.

The project also exposes clear limits to transferability. Its viability depends on conditions rarely available elsewhere: exceptional scale, UNESCO-level recognition, long-duration public coordination, and uninterrupted capital support across decades [95,96,97]. Zeche Zollverein therefore illustrates how public stewardship, temporal continuity, and preservation-led transformation aligned under specific institutional conditions.

In Zeche Zollverein, the mechanism shifts from building conversion to long-term territorial stewardship, as shown in Table 2. Brand’s layer logic [36] is extended beyond the individual building to the industrial landscape, where infrastructure, machinery, open grounds, and spatial memory operate as slow-changing elements. Zhang et al.’s value ontology [31] clarifies how core cultural and historical values are sustained by institutional and financial support, while van Laar et al.’s phasing model [42] helps explain the long duration of stewardship after closure, conservation, and reuse.

4.1.3. Van Nelle Factory (Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

Van Nelle Factory (Table 3) highlights AR under severe heritage constraint, where preservation requirements sharply narrowed the range of permissible architectural change [31]. This 1920s functionalist icon (Figure 7) passed into private ownership under strict UNESCO and national conservation mandates that limited alteration of the historic envelope [125,126]. To reconcile these constraints with commercial viability, redevelopment followed a grounded renewal model, with renovation phased over time to maintain occupation and revenue generation [127].

Conservation regulation structured both the timing of decisions and the range of architectural options. Because the envelope could not be substantially altered, adaptation proceeded through controlled interior transformation [125,126]. Governance therefore created a narrow field of action in which viability depended on incremental upgrading and careful technical integration.

The box-in-box strategy preserved the UNESCO-listed glass-and-steel envelope while concentrating new occupation and services within internal layers [127,128,129,130,131]. The protected façade remained a stable heritage boundary, while the secondary internal layer, interstitial corridor zones, and service-distribution floor topping absorbed the pressure of contemporary use [129,130,132]. This reduced the physical conflict between conservation and technical upgrading: services and environmental control could be introduced inside the building without turning the historic curtain wall into a changeable service-bearing element [129,130]. Van Nelle illustrates how strong conservation constraints can still support adaptive capacity when protected fabric and changeable interior systems remain physically separated [36,127,128,129,130,131].

Figure 8 and Figure 9 illustrate the preserved architectural envelope and the continued visual dominance of the glass curtain wall, circulation spaces, and transport bridges. In Van Nelle Factory, adaptation is produced by redirecting change into internal systems, as reconstructed in Table 3. Brand’s model [36] explains the separation between the protected modernist envelope and the more flexible internal layers. Zhang et al. [31] clarify how authenticity becomes a source of economic and cultural value, while Till’s contingency framework [29] helps interpret conservation limits as productive design conditions, not external restrictions.

Table 3. Within-case synthesis of Van Nelle Factory, Rotterdam.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Canal-side industrial zone	5 ha site; 4 km to city center; 2 km to rail station.	Multimodal historic transport complex (canal, road, rail) integrated into the northwestern Rotterdam urban fabric.	[125,126,127,128,133,134]
	Heritage Status	Modernist “Daylight Factory”	Built 1925–1931; UNESCO World Heritage (2014); 65-year operational lifespan	Pioneering 1920s functionalist complex renowned for glass-and-steel curtain walls, operating until 1996.	[125,126,127,128,133,134,135,136]
	Spatial System	Flexible plan libre	55,000 m2 workspace; 8-story main building >300 m length.	Linear gravity-flow production buildings with mushroom columns, allowing flexible, generic open-plan volumes.	[127,128,129,130,133,134,135,136,137]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Private multi-partner consortium	Sold in 2000; Joint Venture of 780 private partners + Kondor Wessels.	Transferred from production company to a private real estate consortium under strict UNESCO heritage preservation limits.	[125,127,128,131,136]
	Investment	Phased private capital	>€50 M invested since 2000; €5 M 10-year maintenance budget.	“Grounded renewal” model utilizing gradual, phased private renovation to enable continuous site operation and revenue.	[127,131,136,137]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Box-in-box preservation	100% curtain wall retained; 100 mm lightweight concrete topping.	Maximum retention of historic skin with reversible “box-in-box” contemporary interior insertions to protect aesthetics.	[127,128,129,130,131,132,134,136,137,138]
	Energy Systems	Data center waste-heat recovery	70–80% gas reduction (to 200,000 m3/yr); 1.5 M kg CO2eq saved.	Leveraging original passive daylighting alongside integrated modern systems (data center heat, solar buffering).	[130,139,140]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Semi-public creative campus	5000 architectural tour visitors/year; 2000–7000 event capacity.	Shift from closed factory to a curated, semi-public creative workspace heavily reliant on guided architectural tourism.	[125,126,127,128,131,133]
	Functional Mix	Premium intellectual labor hub	100+ companies; 55,000 m2 flexible workspace.	High-end mixed-use ecosystem spanning offices, ateliers, coworking, major event venues, and heritage interpretation.	[126,127,128,131,133,139]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Conservation-led adaptation	A-label sustainable management; Golden Green Key certification.	Reversal of “form follows function”; strict design rules ensure new uses adapt to the rigid modernist envelope.	[127,128,129,130,131,132,134,135,136,137,138,139]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Prestige-driven commercial success	95% occupancy within 5 years; World Monument Fund Prize.	High commercial occupancy driven by heritage prestige; transferability requires architecturally exceptional assets.	[126,127,128,131,139,140]

Table 3. Within-case synthesis of Van Nelle Factory, Rotterdam.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Canal-side industrial zone	5 ha site; 4 km to city center; 2 km to rail station.	Multimodal historic transport complex (canal, road, rail) integrated into the northwestern Rotterdam urban fabric.	[125,126,127,128,133,134]
	Heritage Status	Modernist “Daylight Factory”	Built 1925–1931; UNESCO World Heritage (2014); 65-year operational lifespan	Pioneering 1920s functionalist complex renowned for glass-and-steel curtain walls, operating until 1996.	[125,126,127,128,133,134,135,136]
	Spatial System	Flexible plan libre	55,000 m2 workspace; 8-story main building >300 m length.	Linear gravity-flow production buildings with mushroom columns, allowing flexible, generic open-plan volumes.	[127,128,129,130,133,134,135,136,137]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Private multi-partner consortium	Sold in 2000; Joint Venture of 780 private partners + Kondor Wessels.	Transferred from production company to a private real estate consortium under strict UNESCO heritage preservation limits.	[125,127,128,131,136]
	Investment	Phased private capital	>€50 M invested since 2000; €5 M 10-year maintenance budget.	“Grounded renewal” model utilizing gradual, phased private renovation to enable continuous site operation and revenue.	[127,131,136,137]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Box-in-box preservation	100% curtain wall retained; 100 mm lightweight concrete topping.	Maximum retention of historic skin with reversible “box-in-box” contemporary interior insertions to protect aesthetics.	[127,128,129,130,131,132,134,136,137,138]
	Energy Systems	Data center waste-heat recovery	70–80% gas reduction (to 200,000 m3/yr); 1.5 M kg CO2eq saved.	Leveraging original passive daylighting alongside integrated modern systems (data center heat, solar buffering).	[130,139,140]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Semi-public creative campus	5000 architectural tour visitors/year; 2000–7000 event capacity.	Shift from closed factory to a curated, semi-public creative workspace heavily reliant on guided architectural tourism.	[125,126,127,128,131,133]
	Functional Mix	Premium intellectual labor hub	100+ companies; 55,000 m2 flexible workspace.	High-end mixed-use ecosystem spanning offices, ateliers, coworking, major event venues, and heritage interpretation.	[126,127,128,131,133,139]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Conservation-led adaptation	A-label sustainable management; Golden Green Key certification.	Reversal of “form follows function”; strict design rules ensure new uses adapt to the rigid modernist envelope.	[127,128,129,130,131,132,134,135,136,137,138,139]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Prestige-driven commercial success	95% occupancy within 5 years; World Monument Fund Prize.	High commercial occupancy driven by heritage prestige; transferability requires architecturally exceptional assets.	[126,127,128,131,139,140]

Figure 7. Van Nelle Factory industrial grounds, a UNESCO-listed modernist “Daylight Factory,” adapted through conservation-led reuse while preserving its original glass-and-steel curtain-wall envelope and transport bridges [141].

Figure 7. Van Nelle Factory industrial grounds, a UNESCO-listed modernist “Daylight Factory,” adapted through conservation-led reuse while preserving its original glass-and-steel curtain-wall envelope and transport bridges [141].

Figure 8. Interior stairwell of the Van Nelle Factory, showing the preserved glass curtain wall, tiled circulation space, and overhead transport bridge that express the building’s modernist “Daylight Factory” logic [142].

Figure 8. Interior stairwell of the Van Nelle Factory, showing the preserved glass curtain wall, tiled circulation space, and overhead transport bridge that express the building’s modernist “Daylight Factory” logic [142].

Figure 9. Glass curtain-wall façade of the Van Nelle Factory and its four transport bridges, modified from [143].

Figure 9. Glass curtain-wall façade of the Van Nelle Factory and its four transport bridges, modified from [143].

4.1.4. Tabakalera (Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain)

Tabakalera (Table 4) shows how institutional alignment can support major spatial reconfiguration while maintaining heritage continuity. After the closure of the large state-owned tobacco factory (Figure 10), the site was acquired through a tri-partite governance structure equally shared by municipal, provincial, and regional governments [144,145,146]. This multi-level public ownership distributed financial and political responsibility across three institutions, allowing the project to withstand the disruptions of the 2008 crisis without collapsing into fragmentation or speculative compromise [147].

Governance stabilized a non-market cultural agenda. Freed from the need to secure immediate real-estate returns, the project could be reorganized around long-term civic and cultural objectives, with less pressure to preserve maximum rentable floor area [144,145,146,147,149]. Governance therefore defined the mandate through which architectural transformation became possible.

This institutional backing supported selective retention and large-scale interior opening (Figure 11). While the historic exterior façades and structural system were preserved as stable Structure and Skin layers, the Space Plan was comprehensively reorganized through the introduction of an open internal street and a contemporary glass prism. These interventions transformed a closed industrial block into a permeable urban connector by separating programmatic change from the permanence of the protected envelope [150].

By integrating previously dispersed cultural services and opening the building to surrounding urban flows, Tabakalera supports Till’s argument that publicness is institutionally produced through governance, programming, and urban integration [29]. Till also argues that architectural autonomy collapses when financial and political conditions are treated as external constraints instead of constitutive materials [29]. In Tabakalera, tri-partite governance produced the institutional capacity to finance interior demolition and public programming that a private development model would probably have avoided. Contingency therefore becomes a productive condition of the project [29]. Stable public ownership also enabled preparation and delivery decisions to support major interior reconfiguration while preserving long-term civic use [42].

In Tabakalera, the mechanism is the separation between preserved exterior identity and reconfigured interior publicness, as summarized in Table 4. The retained envelope stabilizes heritage continuity, while the internal street, open circulation, and cultural programming transform the building’s civic role. This case is particularly legible through Till [29], because institutional alignment, political negotiation, and public ownership are not secondary conditions; they are what make spatial reconfiguration possible. Zhang et al. [31] and van Laar et al. [42] further explain how public value and project phasing are protected through shared governance.

Table 4. Within-case synthesis of Tabakalera, Donostia/San Sebastián.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Central urban factory	13,277 m2 plot; adjacent to Estación del Norte and Cristina Enea Park.	State-owned former tobacco factory positioned strategically between the historic city center, transit hubs, and public park.	[144,145,146]
	Heritage Status	20th-century manufacture	Built 1886–1913; 26,000 m2 original footprint; >1000 peak workers.	Massive industrial rectangle built in the style of old factory houses, operating for 90 years before privatization closure.	[144,147,149,150]
	Spatial System	Courtyard grid & glass prism	37,000 m2 total GFA post-renovation across 5 floors; 113 × 75 m base.	Traditional quad-patio layout transformed via the insertion of an internal street and a contemporary glass prism landmark.	[144,152,153,154,155]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Tri-partite public governance	Purchased 2004; 15-member board (5 per public institution).	Joint ownership equally shared by municipal, provincial, and regional governments to drive a unified cultural strategy.	[144,156,157]
	Investment	Public multi-phase funding	€56 M final construction budget; €1.1 M shared annual operating budget.	Long-term public investment overcoming economic crisis budget-cuts, sharing operational costs equally across 3 entities.	[153,154,158]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Substantial interior transformation	22 construction lots; perimeter walls eliminated; new glass insertion.	Preservation of the main historic façade and structural essence while executing heavy internal demolition for open adaptability.	[144,152,153,155]
	Energy Systems	Institutional energy efficiency	ISO 50001:2018 certification (2024) [159]; EREIAROA project integration.	Formalized transition toward energy sustainability via HVAC optimization and municipal environmental integration frameworks.	[160,161]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Permeable urban connector	777,000 annual visitors (2023); internal public street circulation axis.	Elimination of industrial perimeter walls transformed the closed enclave into an open, free-circulation public street.	[145,146,162,163]
	Functional Mix	Consolidated cultural cluster	229-seat cinema; 4-star hotel; 247,200 Medialab visitors.	Integration of previously dispersed city cultural services (film archive, labs, library) alongside commercial hotel/dining.	[144,145,154,163,164]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Competition-led integration	“3 en Raya” winning design (2008); 3rd ranked cultural center in Basque region.	AR initiated via international design competition, tightly coupled with the 2016 European Capital of Culture plan.	[155,165,166,167,168,169]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Strong cultural economy impact	+11.5% visitor growth (2022–2023); 20,000+ monthly lab users.	Key driver of talent attraction and cultural participation; transferability relies on mid-scale sites and aligned public policy.	[162,163,166,167,168,169]

Table 4. Within-case synthesis of Tabakalera, Donostia/San Sebastián.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Central urban factory	13,277 m2 plot; adjacent to Estación del Norte and Cristina Enea Park.	State-owned former tobacco factory positioned strategically between the historic city center, transit hubs, and public park.	[144,145,146]
	Heritage Status	20th-century manufacture	Built 1886–1913; 26,000 m2 original footprint; >1000 peak workers.	Massive industrial rectangle built in the style of old factory houses, operating for 90 years before privatization closure.	[144,147,149,150]
	Spatial System	Courtyard grid & glass prism	37,000 m2 total GFA post-renovation across 5 floors; 113 × 75 m base.	Traditional quad-patio layout transformed via the insertion of an internal street and a contemporary glass prism landmark.	[144,152,153,154,155]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Tri-partite public governance	Purchased 2004; 15-member board (5 per public institution).	Joint ownership equally shared by municipal, provincial, and regional governments to drive a unified cultural strategy.	[144,156,157]
	Investment	Public multi-phase funding	€56 M final construction budget; €1.1 M shared annual operating budget.	Long-term public investment overcoming economic crisis budget-cuts, sharing operational costs equally across 3 entities.	[153,154,158]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Substantial interior transformation	22 construction lots; perimeter walls eliminated; new glass insertion.	Preservation of the main historic façade and structural essence while executing heavy internal demolition for open adaptability.	[144,152,153,155]
	Energy Systems	Institutional energy efficiency	ISO 50001:2018 certification (2024) [159]; EREIAROA project integration.	Formalized transition toward energy sustainability via HVAC optimization and municipal environmental integration frameworks.	[160,161]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Permeable urban connector	777,000 annual visitors (2023); internal public street circulation axis.	Elimination of industrial perimeter walls transformed the closed enclave into an open, free-circulation public street.	[145,146,162,163]
	Functional Mix	Consolidated cultural cluster	229-seat cinema; 4-star hotel; 247,200 Medialab visitors.	Integration of previously dispersed city cultural services (film archive, labs, library) alongside commercial hotel/dining.	[144,145,154,163,164]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Competition-led integration	“3 en Raya” winning design (2008); 3rd ranked cultural center in Basque region.	AR initiated via international design competition, tightly coupled with the 2016 European Capital of Culture plan.	[155,165,166,167,168,169]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Strong cultural economy impact	+11.5% visitor growth (2022–2023); 20,000+ monthly lab users.	Key driver of talent attraction and cultural participation; transferability relies on mid-scale sites and aligned public policy.	[162,163,166,167,168,169]

4.1.5. Manifattura Tabacchi (Florence, Italy)

Manifattura Tabacchi (Table 5) illustrates AR structured through a public–private joint venture, with long-horizon regeneration supported by sustainability-linked financing. The project reactivated a protected six-hectare Rationalist complex (Figure 12) through an ownership model combining Italy’s state-backed CDP Immobiliare, part of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, with private international capital from Aermont [170]. This structure helped reconcile heritage constraints with market ambition. During the preparation phase, the project relied on phased activation, opening selected portions of the site to temporary cultural and educational uses years before full completion [42,171].

This phasing created a mechanism for testing uses, building public familiarity, and reducing the risks of committing too early to fixed long-term programs [171]. Governance and finance therefore created temporal conditions under which programming and investment could be adjusted progressively across successive phases.

Architecturally, this temporal logic took the form of a “volumes-zero” strategy that minimized demolition and retained the Rationalist grid. The project preserved slower-changing Site, Structure, and Skin values while using selective insertions and temporary occupation to keep faster-changing Space Plan and Services layers open. Staged commitment and iterative negotiation with heritage authorities helped prevent premature programmatic closure [30]. Combined with upgraded environmental performance through systems such as botanical air filtration [173], this strategy avoided early design lock-in and preserved room for recalibration (Figure 13).

Manifattura Tabacchi shows how joint-venture governance, phased activation, and conservation-led transformation can use time to reduce the risks of long-term reuse. In this case, the mechanism is delayed closure, as shown in Table 5. Temporary uses, phased activation, cultural programming, and gradual investment keep the project open before final stabilization. This extends van Laar et al.’s phasing model [42], because the preparation phase becomes an active design strategy, not a simple pre-construction stage. Brand [36] helps explain how a stable inherited spatial order can support flexible programming, while Till [29] clarifies how uncertainty, negotiation, and market ambition are managed as part of the project instead of being resolved in advance.

Table 5. Within-case synthesis of Manifattura Tabacchi, Florence.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Rationalist “city-in-miniature”	6 ha site; 100,000–110,000 m2 covered area; 2.5 km to station.	Massive former state tobacco complex situated between Florence’s historic center and Cascine Park.	[170,171,173,175,176]
	Heritage Status	Italian Fascist-era Rationalism	Constructed 1933–1940; 16 existing buildings; 410,000 m3 volume.	Protected Rationalist industrial complex decommissioned in 2001 following tobacco-sector privatization.	[170,173,175,177,178]
	Spatial System	Compact concrete grid	Factory: >21,000 m2; residential lots: 25,000 m2; Teatro Puccini tower.	Reinforced-concrete industrial blocks and travertine administrative façades organized around internal streets.	[170,171,179,180,181,182,183,184,185]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Public–private joint venture	Public–private joint venture formed in 2016: 40% CDP Immobiliare, 60% Aermont Capital.	Structured collaboration between institutional ownership, private capital, and heritage authorities.	[171,179,181,182,183,184,185]
	Investment	Phased Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-linked capital.	Total investment: €350 M; €92.3 M sustainability-linked loan; €30 M Factory sub-project.	Large-scale phased regeneration financed through sustainability-linked loans and progressive activation before completion.	[179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187,188]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Conservation-led retention	16 existing buildings retained; 4 new buildings added; original materials and openings restored or reused.	Conservation-led retention prioritizing fabric reuse, material recovery, and preservation of industrial character.	[177,178,179,180,182,185]
	Energy Systems	Nature-based infrastructure	560 m2 rooftop botanical garden; 5000 m3/h botanical air-filtration capacity.	Environmental strategy integrates geothermal energy, rainwater reuse, rooftop greening, and Fabbrica dell’Aria filtration systems.	[170,182,185,189,190,191,192]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Open civic quarter	+23,628 m2 public/open space; 1000+ trees planted.	Former closed factory transformed into an open civic quarter with green squares, pedestrian networks, and tram integration.	[170,173,178,179,180,184,185]
	Functional Mix	Dense creative/educational mix	37,000 m2 education/offices; 800 students; 39 social-housing units.	Dense creative and educational mix combining fashion education, offices, retail, housing, and social housing.	[170,175,176,180,184,185,186,187,188,193,194,195,196]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Dynamic masterplan evolution	Masterplan evolved from SANAA/Studio Mumbai to q-bic/Piuarch; BREEAM Excellent target (Zenit).	Iterative masterplan development balancing Rationalist preservation, new density, and environmental performance.	[170,177,178,179,180,185,197]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Progressive institutional uptake	About 70% complete by 2025; 1000+ daily users before completion.	Early activation demonstrates transfer potential, but depends on patient capital, phased programming, and strong governance.	[178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187,188,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,202]

Table 5. Within-case synthesis of Manifattura Tabacchi, Florence.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Rationalist “city-in-miniature”	6 ha site; 100,000–110,000 m2 covered area; 2.5 km to station.	Massive former state tobacco complex situated between Florence’s historic center and Cascine Park.	[170,171,173,175,176]
	Heritage Status	Italian Fascist-era Rationalism	Constructed 1933–1940; 16 existing buildings; 410,000 m3 volume.	Protected Rationalist industrial complex decommissioned in 2001 following tobacco-sector privatization.	[170,173,175,177,178]
	Spatial System	Compact concrete grid	Factory: >21,000 m2; residential lots: 25,000 m2; Teatro Puccini tower.	Reinforced-concrete industrial blocks and travertine administrative façades organized around internal streets.	[170,171,179,180,181,182,183,184,185]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Public–private joint venture	Public–private joint venture formed in 2016: 40% CDP Immobiliare, 60% Aermont Capital.	Structured collaboration between institutional ownership, private capital, and heritage authorities.	[171,179,181,182,183,184,185]
	Investment	Phased Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-linked capital.	Total investment: €350 M; €92.3 M sustainability-linked loan; €30 M Factory sub-project.	Large-scale phased regeneration financed through sustainability-linked loans and progressive activation before completion.	[179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187,188]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Conservation-led retention	16 existing buildings retained; 4 new buildings added; original materials and openings restored or reused.	Conservation-led retention prioritizing fabric reuse, material recovery, and preservation of industrial character.	[177,178,179,180,182,185]
	Energy Systems	Nature-based infrastructure	560 m2 rooftop botanical garden; 5000 m3/h botanical air-filtration capacity.	Environmental strategy integrates geothermal energy, rainwater reuse, rooftop greening, and Fabbrica dell’Aria filtration systems.	[170,182,185,189,190,191,192]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Open civic quarter	+23,628 m2 public/open space; 1000+ trees planted.	Former closed factory transformed into an open civic quarter with green squares, pedestrian networks, and tram integration.	[170,173,178,179,180,184,185]
	Functional Mix	Dense creative/educational mix	37,000 m2 education/offices; 800 students; 39 social-housing units.	Dense creative and educational mix combining fashion education, offices, retail, housing, and social housing.	[170,175,176,180,184,185,186,187,188,193,194,195,196]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Dynamic masterplan evolution	Masterplan evolved from SANAA/Studio Mumbai to q-bic/Piuarch; BREEAM Excellent target (Zenit).	Iterative masterplan development balancing Rationalist preservation, new density, and environmental performance.	[170,177,178,179,180,185,197]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Progressive institutional uptake	About 70% complete by 2025; 1000+ daily users before completion.	Early activation demonstrates transfer potential, but depends on patient capital, phased programming, and strong governance.	[178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187,188,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,202]

4.1.6. Gasometer City (Vienna, Austria)

Gasometer City (Table 6) represents AR under time-compressed, publicly subsidized delivery. Charged with transforming four monumental nineteenth-century brick gas holders (Figure 14), the City of Vienna organized a simultaneous multi-developer redevelopment model heavily supported by social housing subsidies [203,204]. Since the project had to be rapidly absorbed into Vienna’s housing and transit systems, the development model demanded early spatial and functional closure, leaving little scope for phased adjustment.

Governance and finance compressed revisability in this case. The requirement for rapid, large-scale delivery limited staged experimentation and later programmatic recalibration. Governance acted as a mechanism for securing early certainty through coordinated, once-and-for-all intervention, not as a producer of temporal elasticity [203,204]. This led to an extensive interior replacement strategy (Figure 15).

Figure 14. Gasometer City, Vienna: aerial view of four preserved nineteenth-century brick gas holders adapted through shell retention and new mixed-use residential, commercial, and cultural insertions [205].

Figure 14. Gasometer City, Vienna: aerial view of four preserved nineteenth-century brick gas holders adapted through shell retention and new mixed-use residential, commercial, and cultural insertions [205].

Brand’s model [36] predicts that retaining Skin and Structure preserves adaptability only when new layers remain separable. Gasometer City complicates this assumption. The retained masonry shells preserved the visual identity of the industrial landmark, but the new internal concrete structures, fixed vertical zoning, service systems, residential subdivisions, and ownership fragmentation reduced the scope for later reprogramming [204,206,207]. The concrete cores, services, and residential subdivisions became tightly coupled, meaning that later reprogramming would require structural intervention, not only spatial reorganization [206]. Although four star architects introduced formal variation, the overall system remained constrained by rigid vertical zoning.

Figure 15. Gasometer C, Vienna: interior view of the retained nineteenth-century brick shell containing a new multi-story residential and commercial core, illustrating a shell-retention strategy with a fixed internal spatial structure [208].

Figure 15. Gasometer C, Vienna: interior view of the retained nineteenth-century brick shell containing a new multi-story residential and commercial core, illustrating a shell-retention strategy with a fixed internal spatial structure [208].

The consequences of early closure became visible after completion, when lower-level retail struggled and the combination of permanent insertions and fragmented ownership made reprogramming difficult [207]. Gasometer City therefore exposes more than the costs of heavy intervention. It shows how time-compressed governance can produce spatial lock-in. The insertion of permanent concrete cores tightly coupled Structure, Services, and Space Plan, limiting the future separability of building layers [36].

Here, the central conflict is between shell retention and the permanence of the inserted internal system. Once the circular industrial volume was subdivided by concrete structure, vertical circulation, service zones, and residential occupation, future adaptation became tied to a fixed spatial and institutional framework [204,206,207]. The case illustrates how shell retention alone does not guarantee adaptability when the inserted spatial and institutional systems are tightly coupled [36,204,206,207].

In Gasometer City, the mechanism is closure through compressed delivery, as reconstructed in Table 6. The case demonstrates the limits of visual preservation. Brand’s model [36] shows that retaining Skin is insufficient when new Structure, Services, Space Plan, and ownership systems become fixed. Read through van Laar et al. [42], the compression of decision-making and delivery reduces post-completion revisability. Zhang et al. [31] and Till [29] further clarify how policy pressure, economic objectives, and ownership fragmentation can preserve heritage image while weakening long-term adaptive capacity. Till argues that architecture depends on the mess of real-world conditions [29]. Gasometer City managed time-compressed subsidy through early closure, while Can Batlló treated civic indeterminacy as a design medium. This difference explains why one trajectory locked in and the other remained open.

Table 6. Within-case synthesis of Gasometer City, Vienna.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Monumental gas infrastructure	Four former municipal gasometers; U3 Gasometer station directly adjacent; approx. 8 min to Stephansplatz.	Four massive decommissioned municipal gas storage tanks integrated into a larger urban district via direct metro connection.	[203,204,206,207]
	Heritage Status	19th-century brick cylinders	Built 1896–1899; protected/listed in 1981; approx. 72–75 m high and 62 m diameter; approx. 90,000 m3 storage capacity per gasometer.	Protected late-19th-century brick infrastructure, once the largest gasworks in Continental Europe, closed following the shift to natural gas.	[203,204,209,210]
	Spatial System	Shell retention with new core	Gasometer A: approx. 28,000 m2; Gasometer B: approx. 35,000 m2 and 22 floors; Gasometers C + D: 97,000 m2 GFA and 62,000 m2 usable area.	Major internal replacement occurred: the former gas-holder interiors/tank fittings were removed or dismantled, while new multi-story structures were inserted inside the retained exterior shells.	[209,211,212,213,214,215]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Fragmented developer delivery	Developers/clients included SEG, WBV-GPA/GPA/WPV, GESIBA, and Gasometer Mall ErrichtungsgesmbH; individual gasometers were assigned to different development actors.	Development split across multiple non-profit housing cooperatives and private developers acting under a city-led framework.	[210,211,212,214,216]
	Investment	Subsidized housing finance	Total cost approx. ATS 2.4 billion/€174 million; City of Vienna subsidy approx. ATS 310 million/€22.5 million; construction period mainly 1999–2001.	Time-compressed, large-scale simultaneous construction heavily reliant on municipal social housing subsidies to achieve viability.	[210,216]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Significant interior replacement	Exterior brick shells/façades retained; roof/dome structures retained, dismantled, restored, or re-erected; internal tank fittings/interior elements dismantled or removed; façades rehabilitated.	The project followed a shell-retention logic: the monumental exterior image was conserved, while the former industrial interiors were replaced by new residential, commercial, office, archive, parking, and cultural functions.	[209,212,213,214,215,217]
	Energy Systems	District heating integration	Vienna 2040 plan phases out fossil-gas heating and expands climate-neutral heating/cooling systems, including district-heating transition at city scale.	Transitioned from fossil gas storage to integration into Vienna’s climate-neutral district heating network and passive archive cooling.	[218,219]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Metro-linked mall spine	Approx. 22,000 m2 mall; around 70 shops; approx. 4200-capacity event hall; direct U3 connection.	The lower levels operate as a commercial, entertainment, and circulation spine, creating an indoor urban passage connected to public transport.	[206,207,210,212]
	Functional Mix	Vertical mixed-use zoning	615 apartments; student residence with approx. 253 places; offices; shops; event hall; cinema/entertainment uses; Vienna City and State Archives.	The project uses vertical mixed-use stacking: commercial and entertainment functions at the base, offices and institutional/archive uses in the middle, and housing/student housing above.	[204,206,207,210,220,221,222]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Architectural stylistic contrast	Architects: Jean Nouvel, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Manfred Wehdorn, and Wilhelm Holzbauer.	Use of four different star-architects to create distinct, contemporary interior identities contrasting with the uniform historic shells.	[203,211,212,217,223,224]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Rigid operational lock-in	Consistently full housing; requires strong social-housing finance.	Strong initial residential uptake, but the rigid architectural insertions limit future functional adaptability; context-dependent.	[210,220,221,222,225]

Table 6. Within-case synthesis of Gasometer City, Vienna.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Monumental gas infrastructure	Four former municipal gasometers; U3 Gasometer station directly adjacent; approx. 8 min to Stephansplatz.	Four massive decommissioned municipal gas storage tanks integrated into a larger urban district via direct metro connection.	[203,204,206,207]
	Heritage Status	19th-century brick cylinders	Built 1896–1899; protected/listed in 1981; approx. 72–75 m high and 62 m diameter; approx. 90,000 m3 storage capacity per gasometer.	Protected late-19th-century brick infrastructure, once the largest gasworks in Continental Europe, closed following the shift to natural gas.	[203,204,209,210]
	Spatial System	Shell retention with new core	Gasometer A: approx. 28,000 m2; Gasometer B: approx. 35,000 m2 and 22 floors; Gasometers C + D: 97,000 m2 GFA and 62,000 m2 usable area.	Major internal replacement occurred: the former gas-holder interiors/tank fittings were removed or dismantled, while new multi-story structures were inserted inside the retained exterior shells.	[209,211,212,213,214,215]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Fragmented developer delivery	Developers/clients included SEG, WBV-GPA/GPA/WPV, GESIBA, and Gasometer Mall ErrichtungsgesmbH; individual gasometers were assigned to different development actors.	Development split across multiple non-profit housing cooperatives and private developers acting under a city-led framework.	[210,211,212,214,216]
	Investment	Subsidized housing finance	Total cost approx. ATS 2.4 billion/€174 million; City of Vienna subsidy approx. ATS 310 million/€22.5 million; construction period mainly 1999–2001.	Time-compressed, large-scale simultaneous construction heavily reliant on municipal social housing subsidies to achieve viability.	[210,216]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Significant interior replacement	Exterior brick shells/façades retained; roof/dome structures retained, dismantled, restored, or re-erected; internal tank fittings/interior elements dismantled or removed; façades rehabilitated.	The project followed a shell-retention logic: the monumental exterior image was conserved, while the former industrial interiors were replaced by new residential, commercial, office, archive, parking, and cultural functions.	[209,212,213,214,215,217]
	Energy Systems	District heating integration	Vienna 2040 plan phases out fossil-gas heating and expands climate-neutral heating/cooling systems, including district-heating transition at city scale.	Transitioned from fossil gas storage to integration into Vienna’s climate-neutral district heating network and passive archive cooling.	[218,219]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Metro-linked mall spine	Approx. 22,000 m2 mall; around 70 shops; approx. 4200-capacity event hall; direct U3 connection.	The lower levels operate as a commercial, entertainment, and circulation spine, creating an indoor urban passage connected to public transport.	[206,207,210,212]
	Functional Mix	Vertical mixed-use zoning	615 apartments; student residence with approx. 253 places; offices; shops; event hall; cinema/entertainment uses; Vienna City and State Archives.	The project uses vertical mixed-use stacking: commercial and entertainment functions at the base, offices and institutional/archive uses in the middle, and housing/student housing above.	[204,206,207,210,220,221,222]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Architectural stylistic contrast	Architects: Jean Nouvel, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Manfred Wehdorn, and Wilhelm Holzbauer.	Use of four different star-architects to create distinct, contemporary interior identities contrasting with the uniform historic shells.	[203,211,212,217,223,224]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Rigid operational lock-in	Consistently full housing; requires strong social-housing finance.	Strong initial residential uptake, but the rigid architectural insertions limit future functional adaptability; context-dependent.	[210,220,221,222,225]

4.1.7. Can Batlló (Barcelona, Spain)

Can Batlló (Table 7) represents an AR trajectory driven by civic accretion, self-management, and sweat equity, not conventional development finance. The project inherited a large abandoned nineteenth-century textile complex (Figure 16), but its trajectory changed after the 2011 citizen occupation forced a new governance arrangement: a long-term public-commons concession granting management rights to a neighborhood assembly [226,227]. Limited capital did not prevent transformation. Volunteer labor, collective organization, and open-ended occupation converted temporal indeterminacy into an operational resource.

Governance produced elasticity through self-management, with civic organization replacing institutional capital as the main stabilizing force. Since redevelopment was not constrained by immediate market closure, transformation proceeded incrementally. Decisions remained open through assembly based negotiation and uses emerged through occupation instead of a fixed master program [226,227]. Governance stabilized uncertainty by distributing it socially across time. This interpretation aligns with broader European research on civic-led adaptive heritage reuse, which identifies co-governance, inclusion, responsible funding, and flexibility as mechanisms through which civic initiatives generate social added value and sustain AR processes [26,228].

Figure 16. Map of the self-managed neighborhood initiative Can Batlló, modified from [229].

Figure 16. Map of the self-managed neighborhood initiative Can Batlló, modified from [229].

This governance logic translated into a participatory, low-budget fabric strategy (Figure 17). Interventions prioritized minimal demolition, salvaged materials, reversible modular insertions, and later cooperative CLT housing, including La Borda [230,231]. In Can Batlló, the mechanism is civic temporal capacity, as summarized in Table 7. Adaptation is produced through occupation, assembly governance, public-commons arrangements, volunteer labor, and incremental reuse.

Figure 17. Can Batlló, Barcelona: public park created from a former industrial textile compound, illustrating park-led regeneration through new public space, and urban permeability [232].

Figure 17. Can Batlló, Barcelona: public park created from a former industrial textile compound, illustrating park-led regeneration through new public space, and urban permeability [232].

Brand’s model [36] assumes that market cycles drive layer change. Can Batlló complicates this assumption: civic governance makes Space Plan and Stuff negotiable through assembly decisions, while the public-commons concession protects Structure and Skin from market pressure. The case therefore suggests that Brand’s framework needs supplementation for commons-based ownership, because the speed of change across layers is distributed according to social capacity.

Till’s framework would predict that collective governance produces unstable outcomes [29]. Can Batlló shows that assembly based negotiation can stabilize uncertainty through social mechanisms, not only financial ones. This extends Till’s argument by identifying civic capacity as a form of temporal carrying capacity. Can Batlló also shows how public-commons governance, incremental occupation, and reversible reuse can operate outside speculative real-estate logic, provided that strong civic mobilization, social capacity, and long-term collective commitment are present [37]. Latour and Yaneva [37,38] are especially relevant here, because the project remains open through repeated transformation, negotiation, and civic redefinition, not through a fixed development sequence.

Table 7. Within-Case Analytical Matrix: Can Batlló, Barcelona.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Walled inner-block factory	14 ha complex; 29,437 m2 new park; €10.16 M park cost; 18,700 m2 provisional opening.	Former textile enclosure progressively opened through neighborhood pressure, tactical reuse, and park-led regeneration.	[226,227,230,231]
	Heritage Status	Catalan industrial textile	From 1878; decline by early 1960s; 1976 public-facility/green designation; 2006 plan: 4.7 ha green area and 300 social-housing units.	Industrial compound saved from demolition by citizen occupation and planning.	[230,231,233]
	Spatial System	Horizontal brick-iron naves	Retained low-rise naves; Escola de Mitjans Audiovisuals de Barcelona (EMAV) 5800 m2; La Borda: 28 units, 3071 m2 GFA, six floors, 25.5 m timber structure.	Industrial sheds, timber housing, and park space form a mixed reuse system.	[226,227,233,234,235]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Public–commons concession	Municipal ownership; community concession; 30 + 10/20 years; €650 social rent; c.14,515 m2; 370 active people, 24 projects.	Public land granted to a self-managed neighborhood platform without asset sale.	[236,237,238,239]
	Investment	Sweat equity + municipal funds	La Borda: €2.7 M; 800 participatory titles; 82,185 volunteer hours; €5 social return per municipal euro.	Financing combines municipal support, sweat equity, cooperative funding, ethical finance, and social return.	[236,237,239,240]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Participatory modular reuse	BlocOnze > 5000 m2 recovered; EMAV 5800 m2; Coòpolis 900 m2; La Borda: 660 m3 CLT and 40 m3 laminated timber.	Industrial memory remains legible through low-impact, collective, partly dismantlable interventions.	[226,227,233,234,235,241,242,243]
	Energy Systems	nZEB & passive urban cooling	La Borda: final energy 36.92 kWh/m2/year versus 87.49 baseline; water intake 70 versus 127 L/person/day; >10,000 m2 permeabilized.	Energy, water, CLT, passive design, no underground parking, and drainage operate together.	[226,227,234,240,242,244]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Self-managed civic commons	29,437 m2 park; 18,700 m2 early opening; 370 active people; >48,400 users/year.	Former yards become public park and commons facilities governed through neighborhood assemblies.	[226,227,234,240,242,244]
	Functional Mix	Social economy ecosystem	28 cooperative dwellings; EMAV 5800 m2; Coòpolis 900 m2 with training, workstations, and incubation.	Combines housing, public education, cooperative economy, workshops, incubation, and services.	[230,233,234,236,240,242,243]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Horizontal social metrics	Community Balance/Social Return Evaluation; four areas; 2018/2019 versions; EUmies 2022 Emerging Architecture Prize.	Innovation is institutional: commons governance, social-return metrics, and non-speculative production.	[234,236,237,238,239]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Substantive anti-speculation model	Self-managed since 2011; 30+ projects/350+ activists; La Borda 75-year land arrangement; ≤€450/month average 70 m2 unit.	Transfer depends on activism, asset transfer, cooperative finance, affordable land, and commons legal tools.	[231,234,237,238,239,240,241,245]

Table 7. Within-Case Analytical Matrix: Can Batlló, Barcelona.

Analytical Dimension		Attribute	Documented Values	Key Findings	References
Asset & Context	Site & Accessibility	Walled inner-block factory	14 ha complex; 29,437 m2 new park; €10.16 M park cost; 18,700 m2 provisional opening.	Former textile enclosure progressively opened through neighborhood pressure, tactical reuse, and park-led regeneration.	[226,227,230,231]
	Heritage Status	Catalan industrial textile	From 1878; decline by early 1960s; 1976 public-facility/green designation; 2006 plan: 4.7 ha green area and 300 social-housing units.	Industrial compound saved from demolition by citizen occupation and planning.	[230,231,233]
	Spatial System	Horizontal brick-iron naves	Retained low-rise naves; Escola de Mitjans Audiovisuals de Barcelona (EMAV) 5800 m2; La Borda: 28 units, 3071 m2 GFA, six floors, 25.5 m timber structure.	Industrial sheds, timber housing, and park space form a mixed reuse system.	[226,227,233,234,235]
Governance & Finance	Ownership	Public–commons concession	Municipal ownership; community concession; 30 + 10/20 years; €650 social rent; c.14,515 m2; 370 active people, 24 projects.	Public land granted to a self-managed neighborhood platform without asset sale.	[236,237,238,239]
	Investment	Sweat equity + municipal funds	La Borda: €2.7 M; 800 participatory titles; 82,185 volunteer hours; €5 social return per municipal euro.	Financing combines municipal support, sweat equity, cooperative funding, ethical finance, and social return.	[236,237,239,240]
Circularity	Fabric & Reuse	Participatory modular reuse	BlocOnze > 5000 m2 recovered; EMAV 5800 m2; Coòpolis 900 m2; La Borda: 660 m3 CLT and 40 m3 laminated timber.	Industrial memory remains legible through low-impact, collective, partly dismantlable interventions.	[226,227,233,234,235,241,242,243]
	Energy Systems	nZEB & passive urban cooling	La Borda: final energy 36.92 kWh/m2/year versus 87.49 baseline; water intake 70 versus 127 L/person/day; >10,000 m2 permeabilized.	Energy, water, CLT, passive design, no underground parking, and drainage operate together.	[226,227,234,240,242,244]
Social & Cultural	Public Space	Self-managed civic commons	29,437 m2 park; 18,700 m2 early opening; 370 active people; >48,400 users/year.	Former yards become public park and commons facilities governed through neighborhood assemblies.	[226,227,234,240,242,244]
	Functional Mix	Social economy ecosystem	28 cooperative dwellings; EMAV 5800 m2; Coòpolis 900 m2 with training, workstations, and incubation.	Combines housing, public education, cooperative economy, workshops, incubation, and services.	[230,233,234,236,240,242,243]
Policy & Design	Innovation	Horizontal social metrics	Community Balance/Social Return Evaluation; four areas; 2018/2019 versions; EUmies 2022 Emerging Architecture Prize.	Innovation is institutional: commons governance, social-return metrics, and non-speculative production.	[234,236,237,238,239]
Outcomes & Transfer	Market & Transfer	Substantive anti-speculation model	Self-managed since 2011; 30+ projects/350+ activists; La Borda 75-year land arrangement; ≤€450/month average 70 m2 unit.	Transfer depends on activism, asset transfer, cooperative finance, affordable land, and commons legal tools.	[231,234,237,238,239,240,241,245]

4.2. Comparative Cross-Case Analysis

The seven trajectories show that AR operates as a coupled system in which governance, time, and fabric strategy mutually condition one another. Governance configuration shapes temporal elasticity, while the time available to a project influences the spatial strategies it can sustain, with consequences for long-term constraint or revisability.

Table 8. Cross-Case Synthesis Matrix.

Project	Governance & Capital Configuration (Outer Layer)	Temporal Structuring (Phasing Logic)	Spatial & Fabric Strategy (Core Layer)	Systemic Trade-Off & Boundary Condition (Transferability Limit)
Tour & Taxis	Single private landowner constrained by regional masterplan; patient capital structured around negotiated public return	Elastic 30-year phasing enabling cross-subsidization between heritage restoration and perimeter densification	Reversible shell-and-infill; historic steel-and-glass halls operate as climatic envelopes hosting independent timber insertions	Adaptability derives from temporal elasticity; collapses without large landholding scale, regulatory leverage, and public anchor tenancy
Zeche Zollverein	Dedicated public foundation coordinating multi-level and EU funding streams	Multi-decade conservation trajectory uncoupled from commercial return pressures	Preservation-through-conversion retaining industrial machinery and spatial sequences in situ	Monumental cultural permanence achieved; requires sustained public subsidy and heritage legitimacy at national/international scale
Van Nelle Factory	Private consortium operating under rigid UNESCO and national conservation mandates	Continuous occupation model allowing phased technical upgrades without functional interruption	Preservation-through-use via strict box-in-box decoupling of services and space plans from protected envelope	Commercial prestige secured through conservation rigidity; replicable only where exceptional heritage value justifies restricted architectural agency
Tabakalera	Tri-level public ownership aligning municipal, provincial, and regional governance	Stabilized phasing protected by institutional co-funding across economic cycles	Preserved exterior identity combined with comprehensive interior reconfiguration and public circulation	Urban cultural consolidation achieved through institutional alignment; vulnerable to political turnover and budgetary contraction
Manifattura Tabacchi	State-backed public–private joint venture under heritage supervision; ESG-linked capital instruments	Progressive activation strategy staging temporary uses prior to full build-out	Campus-based “volumes-zero” retention with selective contemporary insertions inside Rationalist grid	Phased activation mitigates early lock-in; dependent on sophisticated financial structuring and heritage negotiation capacity
Gasometer City	Multi-actor delivery under city-led subsidy regime; fragmented cooperative ownership	Time-compressed, simultaneous redevelopment enforcing early configurational closure	Retained masonry shells combined with permanent internal concrete structures, fixed vertical zoning, and fragmented ownership	Rapid urban absorption achieved at cost of long-term flexibility; spatial and institutional lock-in emerge when market conditions shift
Can Batlló	Public land granted through long-term commons concession; governance embedded in neighborhood assemblies	Open-ended incrementalism; occupation precedes formalization and institutional consolidation	Participatory, low-budget modular reuse; reversible insertions and cooperative timber housing	Civic temporal capacity depends on organized social capacity, municipal tolerance for uncertainty, and long-term commons governance

synthesizes governance and capital configuration, temporal structuring, spatial and fabric strategy, and transferability limits across the seven cases.

Table 9. Operational comparative matrix.

Project	Governance & Ownership	Investment Model	Intervention Strategy	Sustainability & Energy	Functional Mix	Innovation & Market/Transfer
Tour & Taxis	Private ownership under strong public planning control	Patient capital over a long horizon, reinforced by public anchor tenants and cross-subsidization	Reversible shell-and-infill strategy with demountable timber insertions inside preserved historic halls	Large-scale environmental ambition, BIPV integration, passive design, and fossil-free district logic	Offices, government anchors, residential, retail, culture, events, and public parkland	Strong conditional PPP model; transferability requires site scale, planning leverage, and long-duration investment
Zeche Zollverein	Public foundation with multi-level regional and state support	Long-duration public and EU-backed investment not primarily tied to short-term return	Minimal intervention and preservation-through-conversion across a landscape-scale industrial complex	Geothermal mine-water reuse and long-term environmental stewardship	Museums, cultural institutions, education/design functions, tourism, events, and selected business uses	Strong model of heritage as public cultural infrastructure; transferability depends on sustained subsidy and regional governance capacity
Van Nelle Factory	Private ownership under strict heritage and UNESCO constraints	Private phased investment sustained through continuous occupation and prestige value	“Box-in-box” approach decoupling new services and occupation from the protected envelope	Incremental performance upgrading and operational sustainability synergies	Offices, creative and knowledge-sector uses, museum/tourism functions, and technical infrastructure	Benchmark model of preservation-through-use; transferability depends on exceptional heritage value and market prestige
Tabakalera	Shared ownership by city, province, and regional government	Long-term public investment with institutional co-funding	Exterior and structural identity retained, but interior comprehensively reorganized for permeability and cultural integration	Energy-efficiency retrofits, HVAC optimization, and institutional management upgrades	Contemporary art, cinema, Medialab, cultural production, hotel, and public circulation spaces	Innovation lies in institutional coordination and cultural-policy anchoring; transferability depends on stable public governance
Manifattura Tabacchi	Public–private joint venture under heritage oversight	Phased ESG-oriented regeneration financed through private-public capital and temporary activation	“Volumes-zero” retention strategy with selective insertions and gradual reactivation of the Rationalist campus	High-performance upgrades and nature-based environmental systems within a heritage-led framework	Creative production, education, ateliers, events, residential/student functions, and commercial uses	Strong model of phased heritage-finance alignment; transferability requires regulatory flexibility and sophisticated capital structuring
Gasometer City	City-led redevelopment with cooperative/non-profit and developer ownership across components	Subsidy-intensive model embedded in Vienna’s social-housing system	Historic shells retained but interiors rebuilt through permanent concrete cores, fixed vertical zoning, and tightly coupled residential/service layers	District energy integration, passive climate moderation in selected uses, and later alignment with urban decarbonization goals	Housing, student residence, retail, cinema, event uses, offices, and leisure	Effective large-scale delivery, but relatively high programmatic and spatial lock-in; transferability depends on strong subsidy regimes
Can Batlló	Public land under long-term public–commons concession; community-led governance through assemblies and cooperatives	Hybrid civic funding combining municipal support, cooperative finance, ethical banking, sweat equity, and voluntary labor	Participatory, incremental, low-budget reuse with reversible insertions and reclaimed materials	nZEB-oriented cooperative housing, passive measures, biomass heating, and low-carbon ecological infrastructure	Cooperative housing, makerspaces, social-economy activities, educational and common spaces	Strong social innovation and commons-based governance; transferability depends on organized civic capacity and enabling public institutions

operationalizes these configurations across governance, investment, intervention strategy, sustainability and energy, functional mix, and transfer. Together, these two tables do not classify or rank the projects; they clarify how different AR trajectories combine governance, time, and fabric under specific conditions.

4.2.1. Governance Structures as Temporal Regulators

Governance determines how long decisions remain open to revision. Governance is not merely a fixed background condition. At critical moments, actors actively reorganize it as part of the project process. The seven trajectories reveal governance operating in two registers: as inherited constraint that delimits possibilities, and as negotiated achievement that actors reshape through institutional invention, conflict, and phased coordination [9,29]. This interpretation aligns with adaptive heritage reuse research that treats governance, institutional context, and regulatory frameworks as active conditions shaping what can be approved, financed, delayed, or transferred, not merely as external background variables [246,247].

What matters most is whether a governance arrangement keeps decisions open to revision over time, regardless of its formal public, private, or mixed status. Here, revisability refers to the capacity of a project system to reopen, recalibrate, or renegotiate decisions through time via institutional, financial, and spatial adjustment. Tour & Taxis achieves this through patient capital and cross-subsidized phasing; Zollverein through multi-level public stewardship; Can Batlló through civic concession and assembly based negotiation. In each instance, authority, finance, and approval structures absorb uncertainty, extending decision horizons and enabling recalibration in response to new uses, market shifts, or conservation demands. Gasometer City illustrates how pressure for early political and financial certainty compresses the revision window and concentrates decision-making in a single major intervention. Governance functions here as a temporal regulator, defining whether adaptation unfolds through staged learning, negotiated adjustment, or once-and-for-all closure. Governance capacity is unevenly constituted. Public stewardship can decouple transformation from immediate commercial return and sustain long-duration conservation, as at Zollverein, although it still depends on institutional continuity and co-funding stability. Private or joint-venture arrangements, Tour & Taxis, Manifattura Tabacchi, can also generate temporal flexibility. They do so, however, only where planning frameworks, capital structures, and heritage negotiation mechanisms permit recalibration and resist immediate lock-in.

Civic concession models reveal a different possibility: governance elasticity can itself be produced through collective mobilization, as at Can Batlló, but only under conditions of strong social organization and municipal tolerance for indeterminacy. This civic trajectory is also consistent with research on commoning AR, where collective governance, social capacity, and negotiated public–community arrangements generate social innovation and keep reuse processes open to later adjustment [26,228]. Ownership category on its own explains little. More important is whether the arrangement allows closure to be deferred, risk to be distributed, and decisions to be renegotiated over time [29,42,43].

The cases also reveal tensions between modes of publicness. Tour & Taxis’s curated public/semi-public gradient produced through single private ownership and planning obligations (Table 1) restricts the participatory openness that civic governance enables at Can Batlló, where neighborhood assemblies negotiate access collectively (Table 7). At Tabakalera, sustained institutional cultural programming and 777,000 annual visitors (Table 4) may displace the informal, unprogrammed use that characterizes Can Batlló’s incremental occupation (Table 7). Conversely, Can Batlló’s assembly based control privileges organized civic groups over casual public access, creating tension with the universal accessibility implied by Tabakalera’s tri-partite public ownership (Table 4) or Tour & Taxis’s nine-hectare public park (Table 1). Selecting among these modes involves political trade-offs about who has the right to access, program, and maintain shared space.

4.2.2. Temporal Elasticity and Spatial Decision-Making

Temporal elasticity tends to shape how existing fabric is treated. It is an institutional output that emerges where capital structures, governance arrangements, and operational support allow uncertainty to be absorbed through occupation, testing, and phased adjustment [3,29,31]. Phase-based AR research supports this logic by showing that decisions taken in pre-project, preparation, and post-completion phases carry different implications for later adaptability and evaluation [42]. Tour & Taxis illustrates this through its 30-year phased recalibration, enabling reversible shell-and-infill strategies that preserve future option value. Zollverein’s multi-decade conservation trajectory similarly allows preservation-through-conversion, retaining industrial machinery in situ while accommodating localized contemporary interventions. Manifattura Tabacchi’s phased activation strategy, staging temporary uses prior to full build-out, tests programs before commitment and reduces early lock-in. Under such conditions, spatial strategies preserve option value through selective retention, reversible insertion, and incremental occupation. This also corresponds to circular building adaptability arguments, where long-term usability depends on design, technical, and organizational capacities that allow buildings to accommodate change over time [248].

In time-compressed trajectories, architectural intelligence is concentrated in a coordinated intervention that must secure immediate functional coherence. Gasometer City exemplifies this pressure: the City of Vienna’s simultaneous, multi-developer delivery model, reliant on social housing subsidies, demanded immediate spatial and functional finality. The result was comprehensive interior replacement within retained historic shells, with concrete vertical zoning that created tight coupling between program and structure. Where political or financial certainty must be secured early, the pressure to stabilize finance, governance, and program tends to favor comprehensive restructuring, harder zoning, and reduced scope for later reinterpretation. Similar built outcomes may therefore conceal different institutional logics: large-scale intervention may reflect design ambition in one project, but compressed governance and funding conditions in another.

Spatial strategy should be understood primarily as a response to institutional conditions, not as an autonomous stylistic choice. At Van Nelle Factory, the strict “box-in-box” approach, reversible contemporary systems inserted into protected plan libre spaces, was mandated by UNESCO and national conservation regimes that prohibited envelope alteration, not by autonomous architectural decision. Decisions about what is preserved, replaced, hollowed out, or inserted are conditioned by the degree of revisability available through project time. Reversibility is viable only where governance and financing permit later adjustment; where those capacities are absent, as at Gasometer City, closure becomes the mechanism through which uncertainty is managed. These temporal conditions take architectural form in decisions about what remains open, what becomes fixed, and what can still be renegotiated later [10,31,42].

4.2.3. Early Spatial Decisions and Systemic Effects

Spatial interventions produce delayed institutional and operational consequences. Fabric strategy responds to an inherited building and distributes risk across time. This supports nonlinear readings of AR, where transformation occurs through changing building layers and their different temporal capacities, not through a single completed design act [249]. Tour & Taxis preserves structural independence by treating historic steel-and-glass halls as weather-protecting envelopes, inserting demountable CLT pavilions that allow interior programs to be recalibrated without damaging heritage fabric. Zollverein retains interpretive openness by keeping massive industrial machinery in situ, enabling future spatial sequences to be reconfigured around these anchors. At Can Batlló, participatory modular reuse, collectively built reversible insertions, and reclaimed components enabled incremental reoccupation shaped by neighborhood assembly decisions. These systems maintain option value and enable later adaptation without wholesale rupture. In this context, reversible and loosely coupled interventions operate as circular adaptability devices, while tightly coupled structural-programmatic systems reduce future change capacity [248].

By contrast, Gasometer City’s complete removal of internal industrial mechanisms, retaining only exterior brick shells as stylistic envelopes for heavy concrete structures, consolidated program and structure into a tightly coupled system. When lower-level retail programs later struggled against market shifts, the inflexible cooperative ownership structures and permanent concrete insertions made reprogramming difficult. Systems that achieve coherence at delivery through such consolidation expose the project to greater vulnerability if use patterns, financial conditions, or governance arrangements later change [10,29,250].

The key distinction is whether an intervention preserves room for future adjustment or closes it down.

Tabakalera executed substantial internal demolition to insert an open internal street and contemporary glass prism, yet preserved future maneuverability by decoupling façade preservation from new internal permeability. The distinction, then, lies between strategies that preserve future maneuverability and those that foreclose it.

When spatial closure aligns with fragmented ownership, rigid programming, or subsidy-driven delivery, as at Gasometer City, technical and institutional lock-in reinforce each other. Conversely, where spatial systems remain reversible or loosely coupled, as at Tour & Taxis, Zollverein, and Can Batlló, projects retain greater capacity to absorb new demands without damaging either heritage value or operational viability. Fabric strategy functions as an intertemporal mechanism by distributing the consequences of present decisions into future phases of governance, use, and maintenance [3,31,39].

4.2.4. Boundary Conditions Across Trajectories

Each trajectory depends on specific enabling conditions. These enabling conditions include institutional continuity, legal permissibility, governance capacity, management arrangements, financial structure, and heritage-value recognition [30,246,247]. Can Batlló’s civic accretion presupposes organized social capacity and municipal tolerance for uncertainty; without the 2011 citizen occupation and subsequent public-commons concession, the project could not have bypassed speculative real-estate paradigms [226,227,236,237,238,239]. Zollverein’s long-duration conservation depends on sustained public funding, institutional continuity, and UNESCO-level heritage legitimacy; the 1998 foundation establishment and multi-decade EU and regional investment streams stabilized the site against commercial development pressures [95,96,97,105,106,107,108,109,110]. Tour & Taxis’s private mixed-use regeneration requires landholding scale, robust regional planning frameworks, and capital patient enough to absorb deferred returns over a 30-year horizon [63,64]. Gasometer City’s time-compressed delivery depended on strong municipal subsidy regimes, including approximately €22.5 million from the City of Vienna, centralized coordination across four simultaneous developers, and the political capacity to enforce early spatial and functional closure [210,216].

These boundary conditions are not secondary variables but integral components of each trajectory. They define the circumstances under which governance can remain revisable, time can be stretched or compressed, and fabric can remain open or become fixed.

Each trajectory also contains internal contradictions that the matrices compress: Tour & Taxis’s private profitability depends on public anchor tenants; Zollverein’s cultural permanence requires uninterrupted subsidy; Gasometer City’s rapid delivery produced retail failure and reprogramming difficulty; Can Batlló’s civic empowerment presupposes organized social capacity that may erode. Table 8 captures these tensions through its boundary-condition and trade-off column, while Table 9 operationalizes them across governance, investment, intervention strategy, sustainability, functional mix, and transfer.

Transferability therefore does not lie in replicating visible forms, ownership labels, or technical systems. It depends on whether the legal, institutional, financial, managerial, and social conditions that made a given reuse strategy viable can be assembled in another context [30,246,247]. The reversible shell-and-infill strategy at Tour & Taxis cannot simply be copied to a small-scale, fragmented ownership site with time-compressed funding; it would collapse without the specific configuration that enabled it. What travels between projects is configuration knowledge: an understanding of how governance structure, temporal pacing, spatial strategy, and operational support align under particular constraints. Lock-in, as Gasometer City demonstrates, follows from time-compressed delivery and fragmented ownership regardless of architectural quality. Civic accretion, as Can Batlló shows, becomes possible when governance concedes long-term control to organized social capacity. Phased activation, as Manifattura Tabacchi illustrates, mitigates early closure through staged commitment and iterative negotiation. Accordingly, the value of reading these seven trajectories together lies not in offering best-practice templates, but in clarifying the conditions under which different AR logics become viable, resilient, or prone to lock-in [2,10,43].

5. Interpretation

5.1. From Theoretical Lens to Configuration Knowledge

The lessons that follow do not claim that governance, temporality, reversibility, publicness, or adaptive capacity are new concepts; these concerns are already present in AR theory, architectural contingency theory, building temporality, value-based reuse assessment, and phase-based decision frameworks [2,29,36,37,38,39,41,42].

The contribution of this study lies in showing how these concepts combine across seven post-industrial AR trajectories into recurring configurations that condition flexibility, lock-in, vulnerability, and transferability. This configurational position aligns with recent AR research showing that reuse outcomes are shaped by interacting success factors, decision sequences, governance contexts, regulatory constraints, fabric transformation, and circular adaptability, beyond isolated design or conservation variables [30,42,246,247,248,249]. Their analytical value lies in the relationships they establish among governance, time, fabric, and context.

The theoretical framework provides the analytical lens. Brand’s shearing layers [36] help distinguish building components with different temporal rhythms. Till’s account of contingency [29] frames architecture as dependent on political, financial, social, and physical conditions. Latour and Yaneva’s reading of buildings as series of transformations [37,38] supports the interpretation of AR as a trajectory. Zhang et al.’s value ontology [31] clarifies overlapping heritage, economic, social, environmental, and regulatory values. van Laar et al.’s phase-based framework [42] helps locate when decisions are made, delayed, or reopened. The cross-case analysis grounds these concepts in the seven cases. Reversibility, for instance, depends on governance, funding, heritage regulation, and phasing, not only on design intention. Patient capital and planning control support reversible shell-and-infill at Tour & Taxis; public stewardship stabilizes preservation-through-conversion at Zollverein; strict conservation regulation narrows architectural agency at Van Nelle; time-compressed subsidized delivery produces spatial and institutional lock-in at Gasometer City; and civic governance enables incremental reuse at Can Batlló.

Table 8 and Table 9 identify recurring cross-case relations across the seven projects. Figure 18 reorganizes these relations into ten configurational lessons and indicates their main project anchors. Together, they show how governance, project time, fabric strategy, publicness, maintenance, and transferability combine across different adaptive-reuse trajectories.

Viewed through recent AR and conservation literature, these configurations are not simply managerial patterns, but distinct positions toward inherited fabric [30,31,32]. Reversible insertion, preservation-through-conversion, significant interior reconfiguration, shell retention, and incremental civic occupation each distribute responsibility differently between memory, use, environmental performance, public access, economic feasibility, and future change [2,10,30,33,34,35]. The following lessons translate adaptive-reuse evidence into restoration-relevant knowledge by clarifying how interventions can remain legible, governable, socially accountable, environmentally justified, and open to later adaptation.

5.2. Ten Lessons

5.2.1. Institutional and Temporal Conditions

Lesson I: Governance as Operative Layer

Governance enters AR projects as a pre-existing institutional condition, but it is also reshaped through negotiation, conflict, and coordination over time. Adaptive capacity depends on whether institutional arrangements permit decisions to be revisited across project phases [29,39]. This view is reinforced by adaptive heritage reuse research showing that governance context and regulatory frameworks directly shape what can be approved, financed, delayed, negotiated, or transferred [246,247]. Under patient-capital regimes, revisability is sustained through phased recalibration; under civic concession models, it is produced through continuous negotiation; under time-compressed subsidy regimes, it is sacrificed for rapid closure. Governance is not a background condition but an operative design layer that structures revision horizons while itself remaining susceptible to renegotiation and redesign.

Lesson II: Temporal Elasticity as Institutional Output

Temporal elasticity is not a design preference but an institutional output. Where capital structures and governance arrangements permit extended timelines, projects metabolize uncertainty through learning-by-occupation and post-construction recalibration [3,29,36]. This corresponds to phase-based AR research showing that pre-project, preparation, and post-completion decisions carry different consequences for later evaluation, adaptation, and reuse capacity [42]. Under patient-capital regimes, elasticity tends to enable cross-subsidized phasing over decades; under phased activation models, temporary uses test programs before full commitment and reduce early lock-in; under time-compressed delivery, intelligence is concentrated in a single decisive intervention, reducing future revisability. Successful AR distributes architectural intelligence across the building’s life cycle instead of exhausting it at the point of delivery.

Lesson III: Stabilization Mechanisms as Temporal Carrying Capacity

Stabilization mechanisms create temporal carrying capacity: the ability of an AR trajectory to absorb short-term shocks while sustaining long-term strategic continuity [3,9]. Public foundation ownership, patient capital, cooperative equity, and ESG-linked financial instruments each provide a distinct form of institutional buffer by extending decision horizons and reducing exposure to premature closure. The issue is not abstract time alone. What matters is whether specific financial and governance arrangements can carry a project through market volatility, political discontinuity, and funding cycles without exhausting its adaptive potential. Without such stabilizers, program diversity can become volatility, and governance alone may prove insufficient to preserve long-term revisability. The key lesson is that transformation requires an initial project strategy and, just as importantly, a durable institutional capacity to sustain it across time.

5.2.2. Fabric Strategy and Path Dependence

Lesson IV: Fabric Strategy as Risk Allocation

Fabric strategy allocates risk across time. Reversible systems preserve option value by allowing future programs to change without damaging heritage fabric. This aligns with circular building adaptability research, where long-term usability depends on technical, spatial, and organizational capacities that allow buildings to accommodate change over time [248]. Irreversible insertions may consolidate coherence at delivery, but they heighten exposure to later market or operational shocks [10,250]. The critical choice concerns how risk is distributed across time and whether the intervention leaves room for later adjustment.

Lesson V: Layer Selection Under Different Regimes

Layer selection emerges through negotiation among governance structures and heritage regimes; building physics alone does not determine it [36]. Nonlinear AR research similarly treats transformation as a process of working across building layers with different temporal capacities, not as a single completed intervention [249]. Under rigid conservation mandates, change may concentrate in services and space planning, with structure and skin more strongly protected. Under phased private development, structure can act as a reversible envelope. Under civic self-management, all layers may become negotiable through collective decision-making. Architects should accordingly prioritize polyvalence, forms capable of accommodating changing roles without major structural alteration [3,39]; but such flexibility depends on governance models that actually permit movement across layers.

Lesson VI: Lock-In as Socio-Technical Convergence

Lock-in tends to emerge when spatial rigidity and institutional rigidity reinforce one another [29,39,251]. Gasometer City exemplifies this condition: concrete insertions fixed cooperative ownership structures and limited later reprogramming when market conditions shifted. Environments organized around fixed meanings fail when inhabitants cannot act of their own accord. Avoiding lock-in requires governance structures that enable modification and spatial strategies that preserve room for reinterpretation instead of focusing only on present efficiency. Regulatory and organizational barriers therefore matter because they can convert spatial decisions into long-term constraints, especially when ownership, approval regimes, and reprogramming rights become difficult to revise [246,248].

5.2.3. Publicness, Scale, and Stewardship

Lesson VII: Publicness as an Institutional Regime of Access and Care

Publicness is produced through access regimes, stewardship capacity, and the institutionalization of care and access. Permeability may be achieved through curated gradients under single ownership (Tour & Taxis), sustained cultural programming under institutional alignment (Tabakalera), or assembly based collective negotiation under civic governance (Can Batlló) [26,228]. These modes are not mutually compatible: curated gradients restrict participatory openness; institutional programming may displace informal use; assembly based control privileges organized groups over casual access. The durability of publicness depends not on which mode is chosen, but on whether access rules and care responsibilities are institutionalized. The “in-between” threshold remains the key spatial condition [39], but its continuity depends on governance as much as on form [9,252].

Lesson VIII: Territorial Coordination Beyond the Single Building

At landscape or campus scale, AR depends on territorial coordination across multiple assets, actors, and infrastructures. Distributed risk, climate exposure, uneven intervention intensities, and the alignment of social and technical flows require institutions capable of long-duration stewardship across multiple assets, not a single building [251].

Successful trajectories depend on governance structures capable of coordinating high-preservation cores, adaptable shells, public-domain functions, and territorial systems across time, while also integrating policy, funding, infrastructure, and operational continuity [253]. At this scale, the public domain depends on coordinated institutional capacity able to organize continuity across a heterogeneous spatial field [39].

Lesson IX: Maintenance as Economic and Institutionalized Care

Design intent persists only where governance is supported by the economic, professional, and operational capacity needed to sustain adaptation after completion. Fragmented institutional capacity is associated with either erosion through deferred upkeep and ad hoc modification, or rigidity where governance can no longer support incremental adaptation [36]. At the sectoral scale, construction economies, public investment, workforce skills, sustainable-design knowledge, and demographic change shape whether buildings can be upgraded, reprogrammed, and maintained over time [254]. At the architectural scale, graft-based or parasitic additions show how economic restraint can become a design strategy: a low-cost contemporary layer attached to an existing host structure can add usable space, mediate environmental performance, and extend inherited fabric without consuming additional land [255]. Within this framework, Tabakalera’s rooftop glass insertion can be understood as part of a broader graft logic, where contemporary addition supports renewed civic use while keeping the inherited building legible. At the heritage-management scale, recent research on historic fabric and public-space restoration shows that inadequate maintenance can interrupt access, accelerate material degradation, and weaken urban and cultural continuity, while planned maintenance, preventive management, and coordinated stakeholder action can reposition neglected heritage as active urban infrastructure [256]. At the infrastructural scale, productive low-carbon systems remain viable only when technical design is aligned with investment risk, policy stability, collective use, and local distribution mechanisms [257]. Proactive care is therefore not a post-design technical issue; it is an economic, institutional, and architectural condition for keeping adaptation active over time [3].

5.2.4. Transferability

Lesson X: Transferability as Configuration Knowledge

Transferable knowledge in AR is configuration knowledge: reasoning about how governance, temporal pacing, fabric strategy, and stewardship align under specific constraints [10,29,39,250,258]. Unlike Alexander’s pattern language, which offers reusable solutions to recurrent design problems [253], configuration knowledge foregrounds the temporal, institutional, and material contingencies that condition each adaptive-reuse trajectory. It resonates with Schön’s situated knowing-in-action [259] and Flyvbjerg’s phronetic emphasis on context, judgment, and power [43], yet remains distinct in its diagnostic purpose. Architectural training itself reflects this logic: future architects are trained in design studios to test options, receive visual critique, revise proposals, use multiple representational tools, and adapt their methods as constraints change [260]. At the level of practice, architectural decision-making similarly unfolds through situated choices, constraints, feedback, and revision, not through fixed recipes [261]. In research terms, this positions configuration knowledge as a creative and analytical framework for constructing architectural understanding, not as a template for direct application [262].

The cases clarify how different configurations produce different outcomes. Reversible shell-and-infill preserves future option value under patient capital; lock-in demonstrates how time-compressed delivery and fragmented ownership foreclose adaptability regardless of architectural quality. Configuration knowledge thus travels through diagnostic reasoning [263]: it helps decision makers assess whether governance capacity, funding horizons, fabric reversibility, social organization, and stewardship are sufficiently aligned before architectural commitments harden into premature fixity. This makes transferability a diagnostic act. While previous AR research identifies architectural, functional, managerial, economic, legal, environmental, socio-cultural, and authenticity-related conditions as important [30,246,247], this study contributes by showing how those conditions become operationally linked through project-specific alignments of governance, temporal pacing, fabric strategy, and stewardship.

5.3. Configurational Synthesis

Table 10. Configurational Synthesis Matrix.

Lesson	Configuration Logic	Theoretical Basis	Diagnostic Indicators	Configuration Vulnerability	Primary Case Anchors	Analytical Added Value
Lesson I. Governance as Operative Layer	Governance shapes whether decisions remain open, negotiated, delayed, or fixed early.	Contingency and value-layer governance [29,31]; AR and placemaking governance [9]; governance context and regulatory barriers in adaptive heritage reuse [246,247]	Ownership structure; decision rights; planning control; approval flexibility; funding horizon; capacity for phased adjustment.	Fragmented or closure-oriented governance reduces the capacity to revise program, funding, or spatial strategy after completion.	Tour & Taxis: private phasing under public planning control. Zeche Zollverein: public/foundation stewardship. Tabakalera: institutional cultural governance. Manifattura Tabacchi: long-term phased development. Gasometer City: municipal delivery followed by fragmented ownership. Can Batlló: civic and commons-based governance.	Reframes governance as a diagnostic condition of adaptive capacity.
Lesson II. Temporal Elasticity as Institutional Output	Project time is institutionally produced through capital structures, approval regimes, ownership continuity, and operational support.	Contingency and building temporality [29,36]; phase-based AR decision frameworks [42]	Duration of capital commitment; temporary use; phased approvals; interim activation; tolerance for incomplete occupation; post-completion feedback capacity.	Limited temporal elasticity produces early programmatic fixation and reduces learning through occupation.	Tour & Taxis: long phased redevelopment. Zeche Zollverein: multi-decade stewardship. Van Nelle Factory: continuous occupation and gradual adaptation. Manifattura Tabacchi: phased activation. Gasometer City: compressed simultaneous delivery. Can Batlló: incremental civic activation.	Shows that project time is not neutral duration but a governance and financing outcome.
Lesson III. Stabilization Mechanisms as Temporal Carrying Capacity	Stabilization structures allow reuse trajectories to absorb financial, institutional, or programmatic shocks without exhausting adaptive potential.	Context-dependent case knowledge [43]; contingency under institutional uncertainty [29]; multi-factor AR success conditions [30,247]	Public stewardship; foundation governance; anchor institutions; interim uses; cross-subsidy; civic labor; ESG-linked finance; operational co-funding.	Weak stabilization exposes reuse trajectories to market cycles, interrupted funding, programmatic instability, or decline after delivery.	Zeche Zollverein: foundation stewardship and public/EU funding. Tabakalera: public cultural programming and management. Manifattura Tabacchi: staged development and interim activation. Can Batlló: civic labor and negotiated continuity.	Distinguishes passive duration from active institutional buffering.
Lesson IV. Fabric Strategy as Risk Allocation	Fabric strategy transfers present design decisions into future phases and preserves or reduces option value.	Shearing layers and building adaptation [3,36]; AR theory [10]; circular building adaptability and nonlinear layer transformation [248,249]	Structural independence; service separability; demountable components; maintenance access; lease flexibility; phased intervention; capacity for future reprogramming.	Rigid fabric conditions or institutional constraints turn reversibility into a symbolic claim and limit future adaptability.	Tour & Taxis: reversible timber insertions. Zeche Zollverein: conservation with new cultural/infrastructural layers. Van Nelle Factory: box-in-box decoupling. Manifattura Tabacchi: staged intervention. Gasometer City: permanent internal structures and rigid zoning. Can Batlló: incremental selective adaptation.	Shows that reversibility depends on whether fabric conditions, governance arrangements, and financial structures are aligned.
Lesson V. Layer Selection Under Different Regimes	What can change is negotiated through heritage mandates, governance, technical feasibility, and economic pressure.	Value-layer ontology and shearing layers [31,36]; nonlinear AR and changing building layers [249]; circular adaptability [248]	Heritage protection level; permitted intervention zones; structure/skin/services/space-plan distinction; conservation authority requirements; technical service strategy.	Poor layer selection creates excessive restriction, inappropriate intervention, or weak long-term usability.	Van Nelle Factory: conserved envelope with inserted internal systems through a box-in-box strategy. Tour & Taxis: heritage shell used as long-life envelope. Gasometer City: retained shell combined with fixed internal concrete structure.	Shows that heritage protection does not dictate one design response; it defines a field of possible layer negotiations.
Lesson VI. Lock-in as Socio-Technical Convergence	Lock-in develops when spatial rigidity and institutional rigidity reinforce each other.	Contingency and social-use adaptation [29,39]; building adaptation [3]; regulatory and organizational barriers to reuse [246]; circular adaptability constraints [248]	Irreversible insertions; fragmented ownership; fixed zoning; limited reprogramming rights; weak post-completion coordination; restricted maintenance or alteration capacity.	Spatial fixity combined with institutional fragmentation produces underuse, costly reprogramming, and operational inflexibility.	Gasometer City: retained shells, permanent concrete insertions, fixed vertical zoning, and fragmented ownership.	Links technical fixity and governance fixity as mutually reinforcing conditions.
Lesson VII. Publicness as an Institutional Regime of Access and Care	Publicness is produced through access rules, programming, stewardship, maintenance, and care.	Social-use and threshold theory [39]; placemaking through AR [9]; public-life theory [252]; commoning adaptive heritage reuse [26,228]	Access regime; opening hours; programming; security rules; affordability; maintenance responsibility; civic participation; collective governance capacity.	Treating publicness as open space or ownership alone risks controlled, empty, exclusive, or poorly maintained public-looking spaces.	Tour & Taxis: managed public/semi-public gradient. Tabakalera: cultural programming and institutional operation. Can Batlló: commons governance, civic access, and collective care.	Decouples public value from legal ownership and formal openness.
Lesson VIII. Territorial Coordination Beyond the Single Building	Large-scale reuse depends on aligning assets, infrastructures, actors, programs, public spaces, and time horizons.	Context-dependent case knowledge [43]; AR and urban placemaking [9]; governance context and multi-factor reuse conditions [30,247]	Site scale; infrastructure integration; coordination body; public-space continuity; multi-building phasing; institutional networks; landscape and mobility integration.	Weak coordination leads to fragmented redevelopment, disconnected public realm, uneven maintenance, and poor program-infrastructure alignment.	Zeche Zollverein: industrial-cultural landscape coordination. Tabakalera: cultural anchor linked to surrounding urban public life. Tour & Taxis: district-scale reintegration through phasing, public space, and transit proximity.	Reframes scale as an institutional and temporal coordination problem, not only a spatial one.
Lesson IX. Maintenance as Institutionalized Care	Design intent persists only where governance converts adaptation into routine maintenance, operational care, and long-term stewardship.	Building adaptation and long-term use [3,36]; multi-factor success conditions and circular adaptability [30,248]	Maintenance budget; operational responsibility; monitoring routines; participatory care; co-funding stability; repair capacity; capacity for incremental adaptation.	Deferred care erodes adaptive quality; over-rigid care regimes prevent incremental adjustment and produce institutional stagnation.	Van Nelle Factory: planned maintenance and operational upgrading. Zeche Zollverein: foundation stewardship. Tabakalera: institutional operation. Can Batlló: distributed civic care.	Repositions maintenance as part of design intelligence, not as a post-design technical issue.
Lesson X. Transferability as Configuration Knowledge	Transferability depends on whether governance, time, fabric strategy, finance, social capacity, and stewardship can be reassembled under comparable constraints.	Context-dependent case knowledge [43]; situated judgment and configuration knowledge [10,29,39]; AR success factors, governance context, and regulatory constraints [30,246,247]	Similarity of governance capacity; funding horizon; heritage constraints; social organization; reversibility; maintenance capacity; regulatory flexibility; operational continuity.	Copying visible design forms without their enabling conditions produces weak transfer, premature closure, or inappropriate replication.	Tour & Taxis: transferable only with scale, patient capital, and planning leverage. Zollverein: transferable only with sustained public stewardship. Gasometer City: warns against transferring shell-retention without revisability. Can Batlló: transferable only with civic organization and municipal tolerance.	Defines transfer as diagnostic reasoning, not replication of forms, ownership models, or technical solutions.

consolidates the ten configurational lessons derived from the cross-case synthesis into a synthesis matrix. Grounded in the analytical framework developed in this paper, it translates case-specific interpretation into broader conditions of judgment: governance capacity, project time, fabric strategy, publicness, maintenance, and transferability. The matrix links each lesson to its theoretical basis, configuration logic, diagnostic indicators, vulnerabilities, case anchors, and analytical value. This interpretation aligns with wider AR research showing that reuse outcomes are shaped by interacting success factors [30], phase-specific decisions [42], governance and institutional context [247], regulatory barriers [246], fabric transformation [249], and circular adaptability, reversibility, and dismantlability [248]. Table 10 should therefore be read as a diagnostic framework for situated comparison: it clarifies what must be examined before a strategy is abstracted from one project and applied elsewhere.

6. Conclusions

This study examined seven European post-industrial adaptive reuse projects as evolving architectural trajectories. The comparison shows that adaptive capacity is not produced by fabric retention alone, nor by any single governance model, financing structure, or intervention technique. It emerges from the alignment between inherited fabric, ownership, funding horizons, regulatory conditions, environmental ambitions, social programs, maintenance capacity, and the degree of freedom preserved for future change.

Taken together, the findings provide three connected answers to the research questions:

• Architectural decisions shape adaptive reuse trajectories through their interaction with governance, finance, policy, environmental objectives, and social programming;
• The recurring tensions across the cases concern temporal elasticity, fabric strategy, publicness, maintenance, and the risk of institutional or spatial lock-in;
• The transferable knowledge generated by these projects is configurational, not prescriptive. What can travel across contexts is not a visible form or fixed model, but a diagnostic understanding of how governance capacity, funding duration, regulatory support, material strategy, public access, and long-term stewardship align under specific conditions.

The lessons developed from the cross-case synthesis should therefore be read as diagnostic propositions, not as universal models to copy. Their value lies in clarifying how adaptive reuse capacity is built through institutional-temporal, material-spatial, and civic-operational alignment. Ownership, funding duration, approval procedures, and stewardship determine whether decisions can remain open or be revised over time. Retention, insertion, replacement, reversibility, and incremental occupation distribute future risk between inherited fabric and new use. Public access, social programming, environmental responsibility, maintenance, and long-term management determine whether reuse remains an active urban resource after completion.

The paper’s main contribution is to define adaptive reuse knowledge as conditional and relational. It shifts attention from isolated success factors to the way those factors combine across project time. Adaptive reuse is strongest when design does not simply preserve inherited structures or accommodate new functions, but keeps future adjustment possible. This requires architectural quality together with funding instruments, stewardship agreements, access obligations, maintenance frameworks, environmental responsibility, and coordination across planning, heritage, housing, cultural, and urban policies.

For practice and policy, adaptive reuse should be evaluated as a long-term project condition, not only as a completed intervention. The central questions concern who controls the site, how funding supports later adjustment, whether interventions remain reversible or revisable, how public access is secured, who maintains the project, and how the site connects to wider urban systems.

Because the study relies on publicly available documentary evidence, its findings are strongest as an analysis of documented project trajectories. Further field-based research could test the framework through interviews, post-occupancy evaluation, maintenance records, and longitudinal performance data.