Research Design on Adapted Reuse

This workshop, ‘Industries of Hope, ’ envisages exploring and repurposing derelict places at specific sites in Ghent in 2024 and later in Torino and Dessau (2025 and 2026).

How can places linked to (former) industrial activities (wholesale trade, chemical plants, etc.) and nearby waterways (such as the harbour site, i.e. Noorderdokken in Ghent, the former train station in Dessau, and the Iveco site next to Lungo Stura) foster hope and provide welcoming meeting places for people and (non)-human? What architectural and interior-architectural strategies can we develop to bring people and non-human elements (such as canal, buildings, non-human)  temporarily together in (formerly) industrial areas?

The overarching framework that we present in this workshop is the central notion of Cultural Sustainability, a term coined by Bob Van Reeth, former Bouwmeester of Flanders.  

'A building can only be repurposed if it contains a certain degree of cultural sustainability. Everything that is sustainable (of long term) carries a cultural meaning. A Belfort  is not only important because it remains, but also because it carries a manifold of historical and cultural meanings - it signifies something else.   

Buildings that lose their meaning, are vulnerable buildings, subject to destruction. That's why it is important that in the process of safeguarding the landscape and its architectural and urbanistical heritage does not lead to a freeze: we must take up responsibility to change the unchangeable and to adapt an old building to new functions.   

At the same the government must make sure that new buildings contain enough cultural sustainability to become the monuments of tomorrow.  

In this way, cultural sustainability links past and future by taking the utmost care of the present. ' 

The BIP ‘Industries of Hope’ offers a blended teaching activity that aims to give students experiences of the design process, from the acquisition of knowledge and skills to the implementation stages.

The objective of the intensive educational program is manifold:

1. Repurposing: we envisage working near anonymous industrial sites and connected to waterways,

2. Placemaking: We want to create informal and local meeting places, emphasising compactness and high resolution of the intervention.

3. Engaging with local actors (inhabitants, workers, factory responsibles)?

4. Questioning the balance of heavy industry and lightweight industry; balance between human and non-human presence.

5. Adaptive reuse: adding contrasting new components, maintaining the architecture’s initial aspirations.