Chapter 1: Introduction
Ruins can hold a variety of meanings depending on their typology, location, and history. Even within individual cases, there exists a wide range of meanings; an ambiguity within the abandonment which allows visitors to attribute their own memories of the past, uses for the present, and images of the future. It is within the act of remembering or creating memories that a place finds its identity.
In the Midwest, where much of the former population has left and there is little documentation of the industrial landscapes of small towns, memories of the past exist almost solely in the form of architectural ruins. In this region, the role of remembering is just as relevant as the role of forgetting; the former population unintentionally removes intangible memories upon moving away while the region intentionally destroys the tangible memories in an effort to forget the hardships of deindustrialization. This simultaneity- the desire to both remember and forget our post-industrial ruins, is representative of the identity crisis that the region is facing.
In some cases, the ruins are so monstrous in scale and form as to have a foreboding presence- their tall, skyscraper-like structures resemble a forbidden city. It is the emptiness and inaccessibility that contributes to the ominous presence, because not so long ago, industrial landscapes were lively, active spaces that gave purpose to the surrounding community. These sites should be referred to as industrial or mechanical landscapes to differentiate them from singular factory buildings whose reuse and potential for repurposing is more straightforward. The fragmented nature of abandoned industrial landscapes suggests the range of interpretations that can be explored through complex, tangible layers of time.
We repurpose warehouses and vast factory buildings into housing and mixed-use complexes that effectively tie them back to their surrounding communities, but we are leaving out a range of other building typologies, including grain elevators and steel mills, that are historically significant but offer other challenges. Post-industrial ruins are palimpsests, consisting of layers of ambiguity, memory, and identity. Design shouldn’t be an act of creating something from nothing, but should instead seek to build upon the existing history and ambiguity of a place.
“The understanding and interpretation of a landscape are linked to the preservation of its material landmarks, the irreplaceable artifacts of memory” (Bergeron 238). In a region like ‘Steel Valley’, the entire identity has developed from the steel industry that once prospered there. Today, there are relatively few remnants left of this industry, leaving the valley with a meaningless moniker and future generations with little indication of the memories and identity of the place they live.
Part of the challenge in redeveloping industrial landscapes lies in educating the public about their value. It can be difficult for community members to see the potential in the ruins that exist in their own backyard, but it is in these small communities that the significance of both industrialization and deindustrialization is most evident and the need for redevelopment is most necessary.
Regardless of the public’s relationship with ruins and the stigma of the ‘Rust Belt’, we must find a way
to preserve the relatively few memories that remain of the region’s cultural heritage. In fragmented landscapes, ambiguity provides the potential to remember, create memories and stimulate imagination, all of which contribute to a sense of place; an identity unmistakably tied to history and cultural heritage. Without these places, there is a certain discontinuity— a gap in the understanding of landscape and history. Ultimately, the Midwest without its industrial ruins is a Greece without its Acropolis, an Egypt without its pyramids.
Chapter Overview
In Chapter 2: Industrialization, the history behind the Midwest’s industrial past is explored in terms of its impact on the region economically, socially and culturally. Coinciding with industrialization was an idealization of the region, a formation of the Heartland- a physical manifestation of American dreams and values. Establishing a timeline makes clear the distinction between the 19th century Midwest and the early 20th century Midwest, the latter consisting of a half- century of extreme transformation.
The varied industries of the region produced distinct building typologies; grain elevators, steel mills, warehouses and factories with innovative designs gave the Midwest an architectural identity of its own and contributed to its image as a place of extreme ingenuity. The buildings were not only influential to American architecture- they were perhaps most influential to the Modernist movement- the pure forms and functionality offered the very aesthetic that European Modern architects were searching for. With industrialization came a sense of regionalism; for the first time, the Midwest had an identity and a purpose which was overwhelmingly clear; factory life pervaded the soul of the community as well as the soul of the individual, and during this time, an end to the prosperity was utterly inconceivable.
This end is introduced in Chapter 3: Deindustrialization, where politics, economics, and technology are discussed as some of the causes for the decline of the region as the heart of American industry. This timeline is divided into twenty-year increments, beginning with the slow decline of the 1950’s and 60’s, contrasted with the hastened downturn of the 70’s and 80’s, and back to the slow decline of the few remaining industries of the 90’s and early 2000’s, ending with a look at where the region stands today.
The overall effects of deindustrialization in a region wholly dependent on its manufacturing industries were devastating. Widespread abandonment and decay were the physical effects, resulting in a stigma that has gone unchanged for roughly forty years. This stigma is at the very root of the Midwest’s identity today; the designation of the term ‘Rust Belt’ has only perpetuated the issues as the materials of industry and their subsequent ruination and weatherization are still struggling to compete with the appeal of materials that age more ‘gracefully’.
In Chapter 4: Case Studies, research has revealed that there has been shockingly little effort to preserve or reincorporate the ruins of America’s industrial heritage into contemporary society. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that we began to seriously consider the future of our industrial architecture, and this consideration mostly pertained to those monuments which were deemed ‘useful’, or whose inhabitation was straightforward in approach. One exception was Richard Haag’s crusade to save Gas Works Park, a historical gasification plant in Seattle. This effort is significant because it inspired other, more elaborate interventions that encouraged public interaction and posed the ruins as sculpture or anonymous art.
Many of the more involved projects inspired by Gas Works Park are occurring in the Ruhr District in Essen, Germany, where firms like Latz + Partners have educated and effectively sold the public on the potential and value of their industrial heritage. At Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, every aspect of the existing structures informed the repurposing, and the result reads less like a museum and more like a vast industrial playground that allows visitors to remember and create memories on their own terms. A similar approach was taken at Saarbrücken where the ruins of a former coal port were transformed into a park through selective demolition and alteration. The completed park resembles Renaissance gardens, where the old and the new were originally separate, but nature and weathering has begun to blur the lines.
Another study that is important to mention for its use of selective demolition and its understanding of the value of exploring and elaborating on the evolution of an object over time is the Castelvecchio Museum by Carlo Scarpa. During a period where preservation meant the reversion of something back to a specific (arbitrary) period of time, Scarpa chose to highlight different changes over time, including his own. This different interpretation of preservation led the way for other experimental interventions on historic buildings.
Chapter 5: The Significance of Ruins discusses the philosophical reasons behind valuing and transforming inaccessible ruins into accessible ruins. By first discussing the importance of ruins in general, it is established that, since the Renaissance, ruins have been perceived as having empirical value, whereas prior to this movement, they were valued only for their power to teach (Hui 67). This shift in valuing the experiential over the historical value is representative of the obstacle that the Midwest faces today. It is the difference between non-tangible history and tangible history.
The ruins of antiquity in places like Rome, Greece, and Egypt give these places their identity or uniqueness. Their ruins are almost synonymous with their names; when one imagines Egypt, they almost certainly picture pyramids and when one imagines Rome, they almost certainly think of the Coliseum. When one imagines the Rust Belt, they also picture ruins, however they are not viewed with the same romanticism.
In modern society, the reaction to post-industrial ruins is perhaps directly related to the reaction to Modernism. It is essentially a reaction to materiality and forms, as Modernism has still not been accepted by the general public as a valid form of architecture. The weathering of concrete, steel and glass can not compete with the weathering of stone, granite and marble in the traditional mindset. Additionally, the very idea of ‘contemporary ruins’ is a paradox, for ruins, historically, are the result of a thousand-year process. It is therefore important to make a distinction between ‘ruined’ and ‘ruining’.
The fact that the ruins of Ancient Rome took approximately 1000 years to gain the type of respect that we now attribute to them speaks to the need to take action in the Midwest. Our landscapes transform more rapidly now and our ruins face the very real threat of demolition. If the emptiness of the closed factory can be held responsible for a loss of identity and history in the Midwest, the emptiness of a completely demolished, flat, post-industrial landscape represents the ultimate form of loss in terms of culture, history, and identity. Without its ruins, what will the communities of the Rust Belt have to identify with?
In the Midwest, there are vestiges of the industries that once consumed the region. The vestiges are ambiguous; they offer glimpses of history but fail to tell the whole story. They are decaying, as ruins do, but exist as keepers of memory. They hold layers that reveal the history of a place not as an object frozen in time, but as a living, evolving, paradoxical thing whose value is dependent on its timeline.
Following a discussion on the topic of ruins in reference to their historical or geographical location, Chapter
5 continues with an exploration of the relationship between ambiguity, memory, and paradox. In vagueness, there is opportunity to ‘fill in the blanks’, to remember something from history or to imagine something, the difference being sometimes blurred but equally valuable. The experiential value of ruins is perhaps best exhibited by the fact that ruins evoke involuntary memories. While writing and photography can capture some of the historical data of a post-industrial landscape, these mediums fail to capture the essence and phenomenological aspects, and the paradoxes of the experience of ruination are lost.
From ‘Heartland’ to ‘Rust Belt’, the Midwest’s dramatic shift from successful to ruined represented a change in identity on both a personal and community level. In order for the identity to change, or for the stigma of the ‘Rust Belt’ to be replaced, the region must be able to recognize the value in post-industrial ruins. The factories were the identity, the abandonment of them is the identity, but now there exists an opportunity to exploit the ambiguity of the fragmented landscape in order to create meaning in today’s society. In order for a place to be relevant, it must be accessible and inhabitable, and this chapter finishes with ideas of how to make ruinous landscapes meaningful, even to those who fail to recognize their value on a purely aesthetic level.
Chapter 6: Mingo Junction introduces a specific site as a testing ground for the ideas represented in
the previous chapters. Site analysis will begin with extensive research on the ruin’s history and its place in the industrialization of the region, continuing with the subsequent deindustrialization, drawing on the research exhibited in Chapters 2 and 3. Parallel to the organization of the book itself, Chapter 6 then begins to look at the site in philosophical terms; what is significant about the ruins? Where does the ambiguity exist and how have the structures evolved over time?
One of the most important pieces of the site analysis is in researching the context/community. Post-industrial ruins are undeniably tied to place in a historical sense, but they also exist as alienating forms that are often on the edges of a town. In order to create new relevance for ruins, the community is of immense importance because success is dependent upon adding meaning and fulfilling community needs. An active site must be one of interest to people and their demographics, opinions, necessities and wishes must be considered when transforming such a sensitive site into something else, and beyond the location of the site itself, the transformation involves the neighboring cities and towns.
Chapter 6 concludes with a thorough documentation of existing conditions and a straightforward examination of traffic patterns, topography, soil analysis, sun and wind, and accessibility. The site is crucial to this project and extensive analysis will be required to develop a full understanding to move forward.
In Chapter 7: Program, my preservation theories based on previous research will be presented in reference to the site itself. Beyond introducing the ‘stuff’ that will be included in the transformation of the site, this chapter will include all of the research up to this point on brownfield site remediation, and will begin to outline the approach for activating the riverfront and to examine how the existing structures relate to memory and identity and the topics covered in Chapter 5.
The program is divided between master planning and small-scale planning, the former being where site- scale moves are established such as palimpsest, brownfield remediation, recreation and renewable energy. In terms of small-scale planning, existing spaces will be converted to small-scale manufacturing and business incubators, greenhouses and a museum of industry. The two scales will often overlap, creating a complex fabric that builds upon the history of the place.