ABSTRACT
Adaptive reuse today has become a professional practice in its own right that draws on expertise from various fields such as architecture, conservation, interior design, landscape design, planning, and engineering. However, in the past, the practice of altering existing buildings for new uses occurred spontaneously and was handled in a pragmatic way. In this chapter we describe how adaptive reuse has evolved from a user-led process to a highly specialized discipline. We first present a review of a seminal text from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century conservation theory as to their view on building adaptation and reuse. Next, we present a literature review on adaptive reuse theory that emerged from the 1970s onwards and that we have categorized into five different approaches: typological, architectural, technical, programmatic, and interior. To conclude, we present a glossary with definitions of the various terms used in relation to building adaptation and reuse.
