Assessment of Changes in Values of Cultural Heritage Buildings due to Adaptive Reuse Works in Walled city of Nicosia

'Values' are sources that carry cultural heritage buildings from the past to the present and to the future. Each cultural heritage building has it’s own unique identity, character and value. Through values, society can understand its past and thus, the desire to preserve cultural heritage within the community arises. However, during conservation and repair interventions, some of these values are disregarded and a decrese of heritage values may occur while attempting to improve these cultural heritage buildings. On the other hand, depending on developing and changing life conditions, cultural heritage buildings may not meet today's needs, so to reactivate these buildings, adaptive reuse projects are realized for heritage buildings in historical areas. In Cyprus, which is very rich in cultural and heritage values, reuse projects have been rapidly increasing. On the other hand, a lot of old and historical buildings are being revitalized in the Historic Walled City of Nicosia with adaptive reuse projects. Although, efforts by the public and investors to reintroduce old heritage buildings, which are rapidly dissappearing to the city and the economy, are seen as a positive development, it should not be ignored that these interventions affect heritage values. In addition, the economic value is emphasized throughout these reuse projects and this causes changes in the authenticity of heritage buildings and changes in values and this causes a detriment to the identity of these buildings. In this study, it is aimed to understand how conservation intervention affects heritage values and the degree of change in their authenticity in the Walled City of Nicosia. To this end, eight cultural heritage buildings that adaptive reuse projects have been applied to in previous decades have been selected and their information was collected through area analysis and survey work in order to evaluate the heritage value and authenticity for each building. These evaluations and analyzes are based on theoretical knowledge derived from reuse works; this study includes the topics of the role of stakeholders, the degree of physical interventions, the appropriateness of the function, the impact of the legal process and the financial resources and their positive and negative effects on heritage values. Keywords: cultural heritage buildings, cultural values, authenticity, adaptive reuse, values-based approach