ABSTRACT
Adaptive re-use is often mentioned as a tool with which to preserve threatened values and presented as a sustainable development strategy. Projects for adaptive re-use are a hot topic in architecture and urban studies today and almost overshadow issues of heritage conservation. One of the first and most important urban projects for the adaptive re-use of an industrial heritage site emerged in the mid-1960s in the former Ghirardelli Chocolate Company on Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco by architects Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons. Adaptive re-use alongside arguments for the conservation of industrial monuments has become a part of the process of architectural creation and an essential feature of the more natural development of human settlements. The principles of economically sustainable investment and management of industrial heritage monuments, with the support of the private sector and public funding, are now applied to a number of projects. Every re-use project is unique unto itself.
