Buddy Holly Museum, an adaptive re-use approach

In an ever-increasing need for the practice of adaptive re-use, there remains the growing problem of the contrasting ideas of re-use. The National Trust's Courthouse Conservation Handbook defines restoration as the "scholarly research" and act of the retaining the existing structure. It goes on to define rehabilitation as "little effect on the original fabric" and defines conservation as the "sensitive attempt to integrate...modern additions."

The issue of adaptive re-use in architecture is changing much like the culture and history of the particular pieces of architecture that fall into that category. Although there are the evident contrasting ideas of how far one can add, alter, and enhance existing architecture to bring it back from dead space, there is a sense of understanding beginning to surface. Adaptive re-use is at odds with the traditional goals of preservationists. A prominent preservation expert Swanke Hayden Connell Architects' Theodore Prudon reasons that "traditional rules won't apply to recent buildings" and is ready to argue for some flexibility in some categories.