Importance of International Treaties and Declarations for Adaptive Reuse in Historical Buildings: Berlin Parliament Building and Santral Istanbul Examples

Today, a number of historical buildings, which lost their original functions that were relevant in the period they were built, are subject to the process of "adaptation for reuse" with a new function or an addition. The aim of adaptive reuse is to allow those buildings meet the prevailing needs that emerge as a result of the social, economic, political, and cultural factors of the time. There are international treaties, statutes, declarations, and standards, which specify the fundamentals and principles of conserving historical buildings during adaptive reuse process. The “conservation principles and principles” provided in the aforementioned documents are important in the context of serving as a guide for additions and new functional applications to historical buildings.

The present article aimed to discuss the issue of intervention by additions and new functions based on the two public buildings selected from Germany and Turkey. The study first investigated the extent to which historical buildings were integrated with their surroundings on a contextual scale and what factors determined the said integration. International agreements, declarations, and directives were used as the determining framework for the purposes of the study. In the context thereof, the provisions governing additions and new functions as specified in international treaties, which were entered so far, were reviewed. The articles governing the additions and new functions stipulated in the international treaties and declarations from the “Carta del Restauro” of 1931 to the “Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, 2013” were compiled. Those provisions were adopted as the determining criteria in the assessment of the two historical buildings, including Berlin Parliament Building and Santral Istanbul. While working with examples, the concepts of addition and new function were examined with a historical perspective and in a historical context. It was seen as a result of the study that both historical buildings, which received additions and new functions upon adaptive reuse intervention, complied with the criteria provided in international treaties. The two examples both maintained their values associated with historical heritage and became a focal point across their location, thanks to the adaptive use, which adhered the relevant provisions of the international treaties.