Conservation & Adaptive Reuse
Each city has an important story to tell and its buildings, artefacts and intangible culture are not only our connection to the past, they act as living monuments to educate us on what challenges were overcome by our predecessors, what mistakes were made, the lessons learned, how our cultures and traditions were shaped, and why we do things a certain way today.
“The future of a city and its evolution lies in its connection to future generations.”
Without an understanding of the laws and societal structures that were put in place to create order, and to groom us to be an ideal society— future generations will not be able to form an emotional connection to their city. As a society, this understanding not only helps to shape our progress towards being an ideal society, but also improves our critical & analytical thinking.
This is why the conservation of our heritage assets is crucial — from the things we can see such as our buildings, monuments, artefacts, crafts, traditional dress or ancient tools, to our intangible cultural assets such as performing artforms, recipes, artisanal methods or rituals — both for building that emotional connection and to help us navigate the future of our cities.
The aim of conservation can vary from providing housing opportunities to promoting arts, heritage, culture and tourism. Heritage conservation has also proven to be a great driver of the economy, boosting tourism and increasing property values, but also inspiring entrepreneurship and innovation, and specialised jobs in the field.
Think City’s Conservation & Adaptive Reuse practice works on preserving built heritage and structural integrity through carefully-planned interventions. This includes preparing master plans as the basis of reference for interventions, restorations and adapted space use — connecting heritage building owners to new businesses so that these buildings have new relevance in modern life. With the support of a strong conservation global network, the Conservation & Adaptive Reuse team has strengthened Think City’s position as a trusted delivery partner in culture-based urban regeneration.
>100
Total Heritage Building Projects
8
National Monument Conservation / Heritage Management Plans
> 100
Intangible Cultural Heritage Projects
Conservation Management Plans & Guidelines
Working closely with government and city stakeholders, the crux of our work in Conservation has been in formulating Conservation Management Plans for National Monuments and significant heritage buildings, providing in-depth site and building analyses, assessment of significance of the sites and conservation guidelines.
Conservation and Heritage Management Plans have been endorsed and published, encompassing National Monuments of varying architectural styles and scale, including Fort Cornwallis, Penang, the National Museum, Kuala Lumpur, and the Syed Al-Attas Mansion, Penang. Discussions are underway for further conservation plans.
Conservation Programme Management & Coordination
Our work includes end-to-end implementation and coordination of conservation processes including resource management, experimentation of methods, preservation and more, observing international conservation guidelines, and a team of professional consultants, derived internally as well as from our international network of partners.
Museology & Content Curation
This area of our work looks at preserving the role of history and past culture in society through, first, the discovery and preservation of artefacts, and subsequently the curation of narratives derived from objects, monuments, cultures and places, and finally presenting it to the community-at-large.
The Conservation Team has been working on the physical conservation of Fort Cornwallis in the North Seafront of Penang, which includes the development of an exciting new museum at the fort.
Adaptive Reuse Strategy & Management
Adaptive re-use offers heritage buildings a new lease of life, and helps to enrich neighbourhoods in cities, therefore making life more interesting for citizens. Our work in this area includes developing adaptive reuse strategies in urban planning , as well as matching building owners to business owners to facilitate adaptive reuse.
