- Why and how a historical building can be reused?
Conserving a historic building includes maintaining the building physically and preserving its original use or reuse \citep{M_s_rl_soy_2016}. Thus, (re)using historical building is an essential element in conservation. It maintains human legacy and encourages community to keep its own heritage \citep{yaldiz2013definition}. The concept of reusing historical buildings for conservation purposes is not new, but the new concepts tend to connecting the historical buildings reuse with improving their energy performance functioning \citep{magrini2016energy}.
Reusing a historical building means to define new function that is suitable for its natural and community needs. There are three factors that influence selecting a new function. They are: socio culture, economic, and physical factors. Choosing a suitable function among various alternatives depends on decision making action \citep{M_s_rl_soy_2016}. This discussion aims at understanding the required changes in the building and its cultural significance to meet the needs of the new function. This stage shall be done before restoration work to consider the requirements of the new function.
In fact, reusing historical building in a proper way is very important because it helps to maintain the building physical properties. The importance of this issue appears clearly in different cases such as the traditional houses in Walled City of Nicosia in Cyprus. Most of these houses belong to the Ottoman period. Although they were physically preserved, nowadays they are in a bad condition because the using aspect is neglected during the conservation practices \citep{M_s_rl_soy_2016}.
In case of Ottoman houses "Cairene" in Egypt, selecting a new function was done after finishing the restoration work. This process have negatively affected preserving these houses. In addition, the Survey that has been done in this research shows that:
- 33 % of the restored/preserved locations are closed/shut down (which is against the preservation concept) and
- 54 % of the restored/preserved locations are open (18.75 % of them restored/preserved locations are utilized as culture center purposes and other houses are open for visiting purposes only).
- 13 % of these houses are ruined (Figure 8 & table B in Figure 9).
These indicators must be discussed in order to maintain these valuable buildings.