With the emergence of postmodern trends in historic cities, there has been a demand for the creation of shopping centres, i.e. the modern equivalents of ancient basilicas or 19th-century department stores. In Poland, a tendency to build more and more shopping centres emerged in the 1990s. Observing recent years, there has been an oversaturation in the number of facilities with this function being built. The shopping centre Galeria Malta in Poznan, which was the main object of the study, was losing customers over time which resulted in the progressive closing of further stores inside it. The only way to prevent the building from falling into a state of vacancy is to adapt it to another function. The issue investigated in this paper is the search for alternative solutions for the adaptation of buildings with such a well-defined function as a shopping and service centre. One of the research methods used in the study was urban planning analyses. Already adapted shopping centres and department stores to new functions were also analysed. Proposed functions could be museums, exhibition centres, leisure centres, warehouses, buffer car parks. Each idea is subject to a broader analysis and the creation of preliminary functional layouts for this, as well as proposals for possible changes to the building's internal horizontal and vertical partitions.