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According to experts, adaptive reuse is important for a community because it:
- Maintains cultural heritage. In areas with historic architecture, adaptive reuse is a form of preservation. It restores culturally significant sites that would otherwise be left to decay or demolished to make room for parking lots.
- Slows urban sprawl. When builders search for new construction sites, they must often choose land further outside of a city center since the land within a city is usually occupied by old buildings or more expensive real estate. This fuels the process of urban sprawl, a term for the unrestricted expansion of urban areas, contributing to air pollution and other environmental impacts, dangerous traffic patterns, higher infrastructure costs, and social isolation. Adaptive reuse offers a counter to this phenomenon.
- Creates a new community beacon. Adaptive reuse architecture is functional and often incredibly beautiful. For example, the Tate Modern art gallery in London is housed in a building formerly known as the Bankside Power Station, a decommissioned electricity plant. Taking an adaptive approach allowed builders to create a unique and beautiful art gallery that is now a cultural attraction in the city.
Adaptive reuse is an excellent option for many projects because it can lower construction costs. On the whole, it uses more labor than it does building materials, and while material costs have skyrocketed in the last few decades, labor costs have increased only slightly.
Adaptive reuse also forgoes all demolition expenses, which are often expensive and a significant portion of a construction budget. Local tax incentives and federal historic tax credits for the adaptive reuse of buildings ease budget concerns for builders repurposing old buildings.
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Adaptive reuse can also speed up construction since building a new structure often takes significantly longer than rehabbing an existing one.
Many spaces in an old building may be habitable after only minimal refurbishment, so even if the project is still ongoing, owners can open parts of the building for business.
Interestingly, reinventing heritage buildings isn't something new – the ancients did it too. According to Candace Richards, who is the assistant curator of the Nicholson Collection, and has been part of the Sydney University Museums team for more than 15 years, anywhere permanent materials such as marble and granite were used to build monuments and infrastructure, recycling and reuse followed.
"The ancient Roman world is littered with examples of architectural recycling," Richards wrote.
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"The Arch of Constantine is possibly the most referenced structure in spolia studies," Richards said. "Dedicated in 315, the arch celebrates Constantine's victory over his rival Emperor Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge."
"First noticed by Raphael, the arch was built from a mixture of new and recycled decorative building material. Scenes of animal hunts, religious sacrifice, and historic battles were taken from monuments built in the second century CE, including those of the emperors Hadrian, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius. These scenes represented the 'golden years' of Rome's past."
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