Int. J. Hum. Capital Urban Manage., 9(2): 279-298, Spring 2024 Internatonal Journal of Human Capital in Urban Management (IJHCUM) Homepage: htp://www.ijhcum.net/ ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER Assessing user’s satsfacton in innovaton centers with industrial heritage renovaton S.S. Madani 1 , H. Kamelnia 1, * , A. Ghalehnovi 2 1 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran 2 Department of Architecture, Khorasan Insttute of Higher Educaton Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Adaptve reuse of heritage buildings is important because of their impact on preserving the city’s identty and urban integrity, as well as their hidden capabilites and values. In recent years, one of the adaptve reuse projects in existng factories around the world and also in Iran is transforming them into innovaton centers. Thus, it is necessary to investgate the efectve indicators of designing innovaton centers and adaptng the industrial heritage buildings to these criteria. This study aims to investgate and prioritze the criteria and indicators of designing innovaton centers with industrial heritage renovaton. METHODS: The current study is performed in two phases. First, the related literature was studied and criteria regarding industrial heritage and innovaton centers were distnguished. In the next phase, post-occupancy evaluaton of two cases of innovaton centers in Tehran and Mashhad (Azadi innovaton factory and Mashhad innovaton factory) was carried out and the results were gained by applying structural equaton modeling method using SmartPLS sofware. Thus, users’ satsfacton level of these criteria and the importance of each criterion from the users’ point of view were investgated. FINDINGS: The results revealed that, for designing innovaton centers in industrial heritage sites, four main criteria such as environment, technology and energy, aesthetcs and socio- cultural could be discussed. According to the presented structural equaton modeling, according to users’ opinion, environment criteria with Path coefcients of 0.4 in both cases is the most important factor while technology criteria with Path coefcients of 0.3 ranks afer it. The factor loadings show that atenton should be paid to the appropriate dimensions of work spaces (0.8), fexible and appropriate furniture (0.7-0.9), and providing service areas (0.8). Also, creatng a sense of place and increasing productvity and improving social interactons were very important from the users’ point of view while designing adaptvely reused heritage as innovaton centers. CONCLUSION: For designing innovaton centers the environment criteria are more important in users’ opinion and more atenton should be paid to greenery, space and mass and access to the complex. The environmental comfort factors for users are also of high importance and the users’ satsfacton level reveals that in these two cases users are almost satsfed with the design. ARTICLE INFO Artcle History: Received 22 August 2023 Revised 17 November 2023 Accepted 27 November 2023 Keywords: Adaptve reuse of industrial heritage Innovaton center design Post Occupancy Evaluaton Smart Partal Least Squares ABSTRACT DOI: 10.22034/IJHCUM.2024.02.07 NUMBER OF REFERENCES 78 NUMBER OF FIGURES 11 NUMBER OF TABLES 4 Note: Discussion period for this manuscript open untl July 1, 2024 on IJHCUM website at the “Show Artcle. *Corresponding Author: Email: Kamelnia@um.ac.ir Phone: +989155177608 ORCID: 0000-0001-9339-9118