From Reuse Potential to Reuse Success: Developing and Applying the Adaptive Reuse Success Index for Industrial Heritage Buildings

Adaptive reuse is widely used to extend the life of heritage and industrial heritage buildings, but its assessment remains divided between reuse potential, alternative selection, sustainability, post-occupancy performance, and conservation-based evaluation. This article develops the Adaptive Reuse Success Index (ARSI), a literature-derived framework for assessing adaptive reuse success as a multidimensional architectural condition. The framework was developed through a structured framework-development review and full-text coding of 31 studies, supported by a documented Scopus audit trail. Assessment concepts were extracted, normalized into codes, synthesized into themes, and translated into measurable indicators. ARSI comprises eight dimensions: Heritage Conservation Value, Functional Compatibility, Technical/Physical Performance, Environmental/Circular Performance, Economic Viability, Social and Community Value, Urban Integration and Regeneration, and Governance and Implementation Capacity. These dimensions are operationalized through a 40-indicator matrix with equal-weight scoring, literature-prominence sensitivity weighting, and non-compensatory safeguards. An illustrative application to Santralistanbul shows that the framework can separate strong heritage, functional, and urban performance from weaker or insufficiently evidenced social, economic, technical, and governance conditions. ARSI is proposed as an initial diagnostic framework rather than a validated universal index, offering a structured basis for comparative assessment and post-reuse evaluation in industrial heritage contexts.