Conservation of Historic Khans through Adaptive Re-Use in the Walled-City of North Nicosia: A Comparative Analysis Based on the Concepts of Authenticity and Integrity

Adaptive re-use can be considered as one of the significant methods of conserving historical buildings in different parts of the world. This is on the grounds that through the process of adaptive re-use, buildings will prolong their life instead of being abandoned, and possibly get dilapidated through time and finally face demolish. Many historical buildings have been conserved through adaptive re-use for centuries. Some of these conservation processes led to affect the historical significance of these buildings. Architectural heritage needs to be conserved in such a way to convey the importance of values from past to the present and even for the future generations. Any misguidance in the sustaining of these values during the conservation process will affect the building in negative way by decreasing its many values such as historical and age values. According to the „universal heritage‟ concept, cultural heritage, and consequently, the architectural heritage belongs to all humanity, and should be respected by all. International documents of heritage conservation are therefore the most fundamental guidance for any kinds of interventions to historic structures. This study focuses on conservation of historic khans re-used as contemporary temporary accommodation buildings with additional commercial functions. The research tries to explore the state about the transformed historic khan buildings reused with new functions, where the „integrity‟ and „authenticity‟ values will be discussed after the conservation process. Conservation of the tangible heritage, namely the physical state of building itself, seems problematic when it comes to the „integrity‟ and „authenticity‟ of the intangible heritage values, such as the sense of place, and memories associated with these buildings. To answer this question two main historical „Khan‟ buildings which are located within the northern part of Walled-City in Nicosia are selected as case studies; the Büyük Han Kumarcılar Hanı as they have the potential to showcase different perspectives on the conservation of historic Khan buildings through adaptive re-use. Keywords: Adaptive re-use, conservation, cultural heritage, historical khans, authenticity, integrity