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NEW LIFE OF POST-INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS

E. Weclawowicz-Gyurkovich

Abstract

European residents and international tourists often visit European city centres, breathing in their atmosphere, searching for memorable places with cultural and historical distinctness. Downtown urban complexes, where works of architecture create a substance layered across centuries through urban regulation and parcellation, create a material record of history, exceptionally valuable to national culture and the familiarity and identity of cities. Fascination with history and the past, drawing on them and their contemporary interpretation, as well as initiating dialogue with the context of surrounding spaces - is a method of creative pursuits to many contemporary architects. The observed widespread fascination with historical buildings and the more reserved attitude of the majority of the architectural audience to completely new solutions encourages developers to search for memorable, romantic sites, with that peculiar magnetism of tradition, an unforgettable atmosphere and magic. In a period of the territorial expansion of cities - also European ones - and ceaseless urban population growth, post-industrial sites associated with the relocation of inconvenient functions outside of central zones often remain inside them. This was the case with the adaptation of enormous abandoned port and dock areas in London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Lyon and countless other post-industrial sites in many European cities. Restoring a building can cause more difficulties than erecting a new one, not only because some elements must be protected and secured, but also because the architect does not always have complete knowledge of previously undiscovered relics of prior structures. The functional changes of many historical structures, introduced through adaptation, often save them from demolition and are a pretext to obtain a unique and unconventional massing with additional value, secured by preserving or creatively interpreting the tradition and ambience of a place, its distinct textures and materials, memory of events - addressed to a contemporary or future audience.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018/5.3/S21.052

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