Search Results (221)

Adaptive reuse is increasingly central to the conservation and enhancement of twentieth-century architectural heritage, where contemporary functions and regulatory requirements must be reconciled with architectural and cultural values. This study investigates how these demands are reconciled in four buildings of different scales, spatial configurations, and original functions within the UNESCO World Heritage site “Ivrea, Industrial City of the 20th Century”. A qualitative multiple-case study was carried out through archival and bibliographic research, architectural drawings, technical documentation, direct observation, and interviews. For each case study, the original configuration (T0) was systematically compared with the post-reuse current configuration (T1). The resulting transformations were assessed through a common interdisciplinary framework comprising eight indicators related to spatial and functional adaptability, social and urban impacts, heritage integrity and conservation, and environmental and technological performance. The cross-case analysis identified recurring strategies and context-specific differences in the adaptive reuse process. The findings suggest that continued use of contemporary heritage buildings depends not only on the preservation of their material fabric, but also on the capacity of reuse interventions to accommodate new or renewed programs without undermining the buildings’ spatial structure, constructional logic, architectural identity, and relationship with their wider urban context. The study therefore conceptualizes cultural continuity as a multidimensional condition encompassing material, spatial, functional, social, and territorial dimensions, and provides an operational framework for critically evaluating adaptive reuse interventions in modern architectural heritage. Full article

Adaptive reuse has emerged as a key strategy for sustainable urban regeneration by preserving cultural heritage while addressing contemporary socio-economic needs. It also contributes to climate-sensitive urban development through the conservation of embodied carbon, reduction in construction waste, retention of climate-responsive urban forms and enhancement of urban resilience. This study investigates the adaptive reuse of two historic khans in Cyprus using a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) framework to assess their transformation into public and commercial facilities. Combining literature review, on-site observations and structured questionnaires with users and occupants of adjacent properties, the research evaluates accessibility, functional compatibility, urban integration, user satisfaction, economic vitality, environmental quality, management effectiveness and socio-cultural performance. The findings show that successful adaptive reuse extends beyond architectural conservation to strengthen urban vitality, social inclusion and economic activity while supporting the long-term sustainability of historic districts. Well-integrated projects improve walkability, reinforce public life and contribute to climate-sensitive development by extending building life cycles, reducing embodied carbon and preserving passive environmental characteristics. The study demonstrates that post-occupancy evaluation offers an effective framework for assessing the long-term functional, socio-economic and environmental performance of adaptive reuse projects, arguing that heritage conservation and climate-sensitive urban planning are complementary strategies for resilient and sustainable cities. Full article

Cross-platform cultural heritage systems must coordinate structured domain data, shared services, real-time 3D representation, and device-specific interaction. This paper presents a metadata-centered architecture for delivering a numismatic collection through responsive web, map, conventional 3D, and immersive WebXR interfaces. It combines a relational metadata and media layer, shared REST-based services, and device-adaptive clients. It was instantiated with 253 historical coins. Instead of storing a coin-specific 3D model for each record, Babylon.js generates lightweight geometry at runtime and maps paired obverse and reverse images onto its surfaces. Record identifiers, metadata, media references, and query logic are reused across desktop, mobile, and head-mounted display access. An implementation-level check confirmed that an updated record was available through the catalog, map-related view, and 3D/WebXR gallery without client-specific duplication. Complementary formative evaluations involved 97 web participants and 19 WebXR participants, with mean System Usability Scale scores of 80.41 and 83.55, respectively. Feedback identified object manipulation, information legibility, visual fidelity, and interaction comfort as refinement priorities. This study contributes a system-level approach that connects shared cultural heritage services with conventional and immersive clients without separate collection databases or content-management workflows. Full article

Architectural recycling has evolved from historical pragmatism into a vital tool for sustainability, currently driven by the climate crisis and EU policies such as The European Green Deal (EGD) and the New European Bauhaus (NEB). This paper maps the historical trajectory of architectural reuse. Its primary objective is to analyze contemporary approaches to adaptive reuse by comparing permanent, structurally intensive conversions with temporary, fully reversible interventions. The work places these two principles in counter-position and analyzes their mutual relationship. Based on a comparative analysis of European and Slovak case studies, projects are categorized by the degree of structural intervention and the duration of the new function. While conversion is an integral part of the circular economy in Western Europe, it is gradually emerging as an alternative to demolition in Slovakia. The research emphasizes the growing strategic importance of interim use. Temporary conversions, often requiring zero structural input, redefine existing spaces through scenography, mobile elements, lighting, or solely by introducing a new function. Results confirm that ephemeral interventions are effective tools for activating collective memory and testing a site’s potential prior to definitive restoration. Temporary adaptive reuse thus emerges as a viable, sustainable alternative to traditional conversion. It protects monuments from degradation, supports social innovation, and demonstrates that even a minimal, one-hundred-percent-reversible gesture can deliver maximum spatial and conceptual impact in the 21st century. Full article

Sustainable refurbishment of historic healthcare complexes requires more than the preservation of isolated material fragments. It must reconcile cultural significance, continuity of care, inherited environmental qualities, contemporary technical requirements, material compatibility, and future adaptability. Taking the application of prosthetic memory as its central analytical and operative framework, this article examines the refurbishment and extension of psychiatric units U1.1 and U1.2 at the San Francisco Javier Psychogeriatric Centre in Pamplona, located within the former Manicomio Vasco Navarro. Through a qualitative case study, this research combines historical and project documentation, typological and construction analysis, and a diachronic comparison of the original complex, its pre-intervention condition, and the completed refurbishment. Five indicators (typological, environmental, tectonic, material compatibility, and temporal continuity) operationalise prosthetic memory as a strategy for sustainable heritage management. The results show that selective dismantling, functional extensions, reorganised circulation, reactivated courtyards and gardens, and pigmented architectural concrete restored the complex’s operational capacity while preserving the legibility of its inherited structure. This study proposes a transferable, value-based framework connecting cultural significance, functional viability, and sustainable refurbishment. It contributes to the protection of cultural heritage and to waste reduction through prevention, reuse, and recycling, while requiring adaptation to each cultural, climatic, regulatory, and healthcare context. Full article

Architectural heritage interventions often preserve visual form while leaving acoustic memory and everyday sound practices outside the design brief. This article positions soundscape as an architectural material for heritage media architecture and tests it through Sanggar Kungfu Kapasan, a historic Chinese-diaspora kampung in Surabaya, Indonesia. The research combined contextual and soundmark mapping, Pepper’s Ghost prototyping, architectural translation of a semi-transparent virtual layer, and comparative evaluation using 2D visualization and immersive VR. After deduplication, 37 participants evaluated the 2D material, 31 evaluated VR, and 24 completed both modes for within-subject analysis. VR significantly improved perceived physical quality (Δ = +0.46, p = 0.0007, d_z = 0.80), communication quality (Δ = +0.42, p = 0.0218, d_z = 0.50), and overall evaluation (Δ = +0.20, p = 0.0285, d_z = 0.48). Sound-specific VR ratings were positive for place-meaning support (M = 5.87) and scene formation (M = 5.65), and the soundscape design index correlated with communication quality (r = 0.47, p = 0.007). The findings show that soundscape strengthens narrative legibility and architectural fit when deliberately coordinated with visual layering, scene sequencing, and cultural context. The study contributes a soundscape-informed, feng shui-readable workflow for pre-installation evaluation of multisensory heritage interventions. Because the respondent pool was predominantly composed of architecture students, the results are interpreted as a preliminary design-user evaluation rather than community validation. Full article

In large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, inadequate pilots can necessitate pilot reuse, reducing channel-estimation accuracy, while too few received pilot observations can also lead to inaccurate interference-plus-noise covariance estimates. These estimation errors can further degrade the performance of downstream interference suppression and data detection. Learning-based methods have been developed for pilot assignment, channel estimation, and receiver processing, but these methods are often studied separately. This survey organizes recent studies according to where learning-based methods are applied in the signal-processing chain: pilot-domain mitigation, intelligent channel estimation with contaminated or limited pilots, and intelligent receiver processing with contaminated or limited pilots. We also classify the studies by learning method and compare them using the same set of evaluation criteria. Across the surveyed papers, performance is evaluated using different metrics. Many studies also lack evaluations under changing channel or system conditions and do not fully report implementation costs such as computational complexity, memory usage, and latency. Among the studies that satisfy our selection criteria, none directly investigates learning-based estimation of the interference-plus-noise covariance matrix for interference rejection combining (IRC) receivers when only limited pilot observations are available. Based on these findings, we propose a minimum set of benchmarking requirements and identify lightweight online adaptation, joint processing, learning-based covariance estimation for IRC receivers, and robust processing for large-array architectures as future research directions for emerging sixth-generation (6G) systems. Full article

The transition toward urban-scale digital twin and smart city management requires survey-grade 3D basemaps, yet conventional documentation remains time-consuming and prone to inaccuracies. While Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) offers rapid 3D acquisition, capturing complex, GNSS-denied multi-story interiors frequently causes cumulative registration errors and isolated indoor–outdoor data silos. To address this, this study proposes a comprehensive typology-agnostic framework for developing high-fidelity digital twin basemaps. Treating the building as a unified spatial network, the methodology systematically mitigates error propagation through strategic linkage planning, rigid shell-first registration, continuous vertical core anchoring (via stairwells), and adaptive multi-source data fusion. Implemented on an adaptively reused heritage building, the developed basemap achieved an absolute georeferencing accuracy of 30.0 mm (RMSE) against an independent total station control network, alongside a mean relative error of 3.11 mm. Comparative analysis against legacy 2D CAD floor plans revealed simplified geometric representations and categorical dimensional deviations of up to 29.8 cm. Demonstrating its practical utility, the point cloud-centric geometric hub avoids forced geometric idealization, successfully supporting direct immersive visualization, architectural slicing (floor plans, sections, elevations), and multi-LOD algorithmic planar segmentation. This spatially constrained acquisition strategy bypasses legacy limitations, delivering a mathematically verified 3D reality capture essential for smart facility management, heritage conservation, and downstream semantic intelligence. Full article

Adaptive reuse research commonly evaluates completed projects, overlooking cases in which the design, program, and/or construction are not yet finished. This article examines the ongoing reuse of the Çırpıcı Meadow Textile Factory in Istanbul to investigate architectural continuity within a fragmented post-industrial complex. This qualitative single-case study combines three semi-structured interviews with the lead architect, two site visits, photographs, drawings, project visualizations, aerial images, and historical sources. Material, spatial, symbolic, and programmatic transformations are the connected analytical lenses. The findings reveal uneven and conflicting forms of continuity. Original reinforced-concrete structures remain in Blocks L, S, B, and C, whereas H and F have been reconstructed and R is under construction as of July 2026. The courtyard and selected footprints sustain spatial relationships despite material loss, while the surviving denim-washing pools and new steel tower provide references to the industrial past. The shift from a culture-oriented campus to municipal offices has altered the subdivision, circulation, servicing, and access control. Because the complex was unoccupied and its public landscape unbuilt, accessibility, adaptability, and symbolic reception could not be evaluated. The study shows that existing conditions, completed interventions, ongoing works, approved proposals, and abandoned concepts must be distinguished when interpreting continuity in unfinished adaptive reuse projects. Full article

Built cultural heritage in East Africa is often interpreted and taught through monument-based, stylistic, or externally derived frameworks that insufficiently account for the region’s overlapping environmental, cultural, historical, and socio-spatial processes. Responding to this theoretical and pedagogical gap, this article develops a regionally grounded theoretical model of East African built heritage as a layered system, with particular attention to Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, interpretive approach, combining a critical literature review, analysis of selected built heritage layers, and expert perspectives from East African and European/international respondents. The findings show that East African built heritage is shaped by five interrelated layers: environmental foundations, indigenous and vernacular systems, Swahili/coastal Indian Ocean urbanism, colonial reconfiguration, and postcolonial/contemporary transformation. These layers do not form a linear historical sequence; rather, they overlap, interact, are disrupted, and are reinterpreted through material practices, spatial transformation, memory, environmental knowledge, and everyday use. The article argues that East African built heritage is defined by a layered system that is hybrid, fragile, unevenly recognized, partly intangible, and negotiated. It concludes that architectural education must move beyond object-based conservation knowledge transfer toward competency building in historical interpretation, environmental understanding, community engagement, adaptive reuse, and critical design intervention. Full article

Larissa Castle of Argos in the Peloponnese represents one of the most significant fortified landscapes in Greece, reflecting architectural transformation and military adaptation from prehistory to the twentieth century. Amongst its parts, one of the best-preserved towers has recently regained much of its original form through partial restoration works, emerging as a dominant landmark within the castle and the wider Argolic landscape. This study investigates the complete restoration and adaptive reuse of the tower, focusing on the challenge of providing public access while respecting its historical and architectural integrity. Based on detailed architectural analysis, two alternative design approaches for vertical circulation and access to the battlement level are examined. The first proposal employs traditional materials and construction principles, whereas the second introduces a contemporary intervention through a lightweight metal spiral structure. The comparative assessment demonstrates how both solutions can facilitate visitor access, enhance the interpretation of the monument, and reveal the tower’s defensive operation and architectural evolution, while respecting the construction phases of the monument and the international principles of cultural heritage. The proposed reuse as an observation point capitalizes on the tower’s strategic position and exceptional panoramic views over the major archaeological landmarks of the Argolic plain. The original contribution of this study lies in the systematic comparison of two evidence-based intervention strategies—one historically referenced and one explicitly contemporary—within a common conservation framework applicable to similar defense monuments. Full article

Underground heritage spaces represent a distinctive yet underexplored asset of the built environment, characterized by stable microclimatic conditions, limited natural lighting, strong material identity and complex perceptual dynamics. Despite their potential for sustainable regeneration, existing adaptive reuse approaches often fail to establish explicit links between environmental diagnosis, heritage conservation and user-centered design. This study proposes an integrated human-centered framework for the sustainable adaptive reuse of hypogeal heritage spaces, structured into three sequential phases: multisensory environmental diagnosis, reversible architectural design and virtual reality (VR)-based perceptual validation. The framework is applied to a disused historic underground complex in Dugenta (southern Italy), where an underground cavity is being repurposed within a hospitality-oriented redevelopment project. The diagnostic phase combines LiDAR-based geometric acquisition, indoor environmental monitoring and acoustic analysis, translating measured parameters into sensory indicators and a diagnostic criticality matrix. These outputs inform the development of a reversible liner/shell architectural system designed to improve environmental quality while preserving the integrity of the heritage fabric. Finally, alternative multisensory design scenarios are assessed through an exploratory VR-based evaluation focused on perceived restorativeness and spatial experience. The results demonstrate how environmental data can be systematically transformed into traceable design decisions, supporting conservation, user well-being and sustainable heritage regeneration. The proposed framework contributes a replicable methodology for integrating environmental performance, heritage preservation and human-centered design into the adaptive reuse of underground built heritage. Full article

Deep learning (DL) models have achieved remarkable progress in natural language processing, computer vision, content generation, and edge intelligence; however, their rapidly increasing computational complexity, memory demand, and deployment diversity pose significant challenges for practical implementation. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) provide customized low-precision computation, spatial dataflow, on-chip data reuse, reconfigurability, and rich I/O capabilities, making them an important platform for DL inference. This paper presents a systematic review of FPGA-based DL deployment from a cross-layer perspective spanning model, compiler, architecture, runtime, and electronic design automation (EDA). Following a PRISMA-guided evidence synthesis protocol, this review analyzes DL workload characteristics, FPGA architectural optimizations, deployment toolflows, and physical implementation challenges. A unified taxonomy is proposed along the specialization–programmability continuum, including model-fixed accelerators, generator-based accelerators, template-configurable accelerators, and ISA-programmable overlays. These approaches are compared according to hardware regeneration requirements, model adaptability, operator coverage, compilation cost, and deployment flexibility. Furthermore, emerging workloads, including vision Transformers, graph neural networks, large language models, and multimodal models, are analyzed from the perspectives of computation, memory behavior, and runtime coordination. The review shows that FPGA deployment efficiency increasingly depends on memory capacity, mutable state management, operator support, and end-to-end compilation capability rather than peak multiply–accumulate throughput alone. Based on the analysis of 70 primary FPGA implementation studies, this paper highlights that reliable cross-study comparison requires careful consideration of model configuration, precision, execution phase, batch size, memory residency, FPGA platform, and evidence maturity. For multimodal generative models, the current evidence remains limited, with no identified end-to-end FPGA-based vision–language model implementation in the reviewed corpus. This review provides a systematic perspective for future FPGA-based DL deployment research, emphasizing cross-layer optimization, physically aware compilation, extensible accelerator architectures, and practical deployment efficiency. Full article

Industrial heritage sites have predominantly been examined through visual, material, and conservation-oriented frameworks, while the haptic and embodied ways in which contemporary users experience reused industrial heritage environments remain comparatively underexplored. Focusing on Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Centre, a historically significant Ottoman industrial heritage site repurposed as a contemporary cultural and artistic centre, this study examines how material contact, bodily movement, and tactile encounters contribute to the sensory heritage experience. Rather than proposing haptic sensewalking as a new method, the study uses an existing sensewalking approach in a haptic-centred way within the specific context of an Ottoman industrial heritage site undergoing adaptive reuse. Sensory data were generated through in situ walking observations, embodied sensory narratives, tactile descriptions, researcher field notes, and post-walk reflective accounts. The findings suggest that, within this haptic-focused protocol, participants did not describe the site merely as a visual-historical object. Instead, they articulated Tophane-i Amire as an embodied haptic environment in which rough stone textures, participant-perceived coldness and material heaviness, spatial thresholds, uneven walking surfaces, and movement-based encounters made architectural space bodily noticeable. The study does not claim that ordinary visitors naturally prioritise haptic experience; rather, it examines what participants articulated when their sensory attention was deliberately oriented toward tactile, thermal, kinaesthetic, and embodied aspects of the reused industrial heritage environment. The article makes two main contributions. Empirically, it shows how participants described haptic experience at Tophane-i Amire through encounters with rough stone surfaces, participant-perceived thermal qualities, thresholds, floors, and bodily movement. Conceptually, it interprets industrial heritage not only as a visual or material object but also as an embodied haptic environment in which historical meaning is sensed through touch, temperature, movement, and spatial negotiation. Full article

As silicon scaling nears its physical limits and digital systems process ever-growing amounts of data, integrating computation directly within memory is emerging as a key strategy to overcome the constraints of conventional Von Neumann architectures. Approximate In-Memory Computation (IMC) with memristors offers a promising path toward energy-efficient processing for data-intensive applications. Recent adaptive approximate adders exploit operand magnitude to dynamically switch between exact and approximate computation, but typically ignore carry propagation across approximation boundaries, which can significantly degrade application-level robustness. This work introduces RapproX, a family of adaptive memristive approximate adders featuring a lightweight carry lookback mechanism that approximates carry interaction between exact and approximate regions. The proposed approach improves arithmetic robustness while introducing only minimal overhead and enabling resource-efficient implementations through memristor reuse. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approaches achieve superior arithmetic quality compared to State-of-the-Art (SoA) memristive approximate adders. More importantly, the carry lookback mechanism translates into substantial application-level benefits. In image processing, RapproX reduces energy consumption by up to 30.9% compared to the most competitive SoA design and by 50.3% compared to exact computation while maintaining roughly 43 dB Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR). Across a range of machine-learning workloads, including k-means, AlexNet on MNIST, and multiple CIFAR-10 models, RapproX preserves near-exact inference accuracy for the evaluated models at low-to-moderate k and maintains the energy advantages of adaptive approximation, while SoA approximations degrade markedly under the same conditions. These simulation-based results suggest that lightweight carry-aware approximation can improve the robustness of adaptive approximate in-memory computing with only marginal hardware overhead. Full article