Strategies for Architectural Conservation and Adaptive Reuse

Dear Colleagues,

Social, economic and industrial developments have left architectural compounds and urban areas disposed of or at risk of abandonment. Architectural and urban adaptive reuse has been sought as a solution, but a large body of literature draws attention to the consequences of economically driven regeneration in establishing social and economic restructuring, causing marginalisation of underprivileged communities, and how such schemes could encourage the commodification of historic assets. In addition, the lack of community engagement in adaptive reuse and conservation strategies affects the outcomes of these processes, which results in new areas that do not represent the values and aspirations of contemporary communities. Therefore, appropriate strategies for architectural and urban conservation and adaptive reuse are crucial to activate the role of heritage, as a cultural product, and design, as a creative practice, in promoting sustainable growth and stimulating urban and rural regeneration and community resilience within the historical context.

With the emergence of key international initiatives, such as the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape HUL approach for appropriate adaptive reuse strategies, it has become apparent that heritage assets are critical catalysts that stimulate environmental, economic and community regeneration of the historic built environment, and thus, sensitive and innovative reuse of historic buildings and areas is needed, promoting by doing so locally accepted regeneration, community appreciation and the preservation and management of these heritage assets. This emphasises the need to juxtaposition research and practice with community engagement to synthesise impactful adaptive reuse strategies and schemes that reconnect communities to their heritage and help them understand their past and communal identity, and consequently enhance their wellbeing.

With the emergence of community-led approaches and tools for the interpretation and valuation of cultural heritage (critical heritage, cultural mapping, etc.), adaptive reuse strategies have been diversified, using design and conservation as tools to regenerate historic and heritage places while promoting their tangible and intangible heritage dimensions. Thus, this Special Issue aims to serve as a platform to assemble such recent and innovative research findings and draw attention to different approaches relating to the field of adaptive reuse and architectural conservation. Through an open access mode, this Special Issue intends to disseminate this knowledge widely at a time when the heritage context is facing critical challenges posed by urbanisation and the need for economic development. The discussion in this Special Issue intends to cover diverse types of historic and modern heritage and to focus on (but not be limited to) the following thematic areas:

• Conservation, Adaptive Reuse and Creative Placemaking;
• The Role of Conservation and Adaptive Reuse in Climate Adaptation;
• Post-Conflict Heritage Regeneration;
• Memorization Through Heritage Conservation and Adaptive Reuse;
• Heritage Conservation and Adaptive Reuse as a Peace-Making Strategy;
• The Contribution of Architectural Design (and/or) Communities to Heritage Preservation, Conservation and Adaptive Reuse;
• The Contribution of New Technologies to Conservation and Adaptive Reuse;
• Critical Heritage for Inclusive Adaptive Reuse and Conservation Strategies;
• Adaptive Reuse of Urban/Architectural Military and Industrial Heritage;
• The Role of Urban Conservation and Adaptive Reuse in Equitable Development;
• Rural Heritage Contribution to Sustainable Development and Resilient Communities;
• Coastal Heritage and its Adaptive Reuse;
• Cultural Landscape Revitalization Strategies;
• Cultural Mapping, Cartography and Palimpsest as Tools for Heritage Adaptive Reuse.

Best papers from the International Conference on the Conservation of Architectural Heritage (CAH) 2024 will be published in this special issue.

Dr. Tarek Teba
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Architecture is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• architectural conservation
• community-led design
• heritage adaptive reuse
• rural heritage
• military heritage
• industrial heritage
• cultural landscape
• inclusive conservation
• creative placemaking for conservation
• critical conservation
• cartography
• palimpsest
• cultural mapping
• HBIM
• digital heritage