Chapter 4: Case Studies
Researching case studies has helped to determine and highlight what little effort has been made in America to preserve industry, compared with larger, more creative and effective efforts in Germany. By studying a range of examples, some of which have been left out of this document, we can begin to paint a picture of efforts in America against efforts in other parts of the world, both in terms of post-industrial sites as well as other types of buildings, showing potential for improvement and adaptability.
Other research included Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama, Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania, Steelyard Commons in Cleveland and Carrie Furnace in Pittsburgh. There were also other preservation theories that have contributed to my research, including the work of Inger and Johannes Exner at Koldinghus Chapel, Sverre Fehn’s Hedmark Museum, and the relevant writings of John Ruskin and Viollet-Le Duc, all of whom offer different perspectives on the ideas of preservation and restoration.
Gas Works Park
Gas Works Park. Photo by Helen Holter.
Gas Works Park, a former gasification plant built from 1906 and into the 1940’s on a 19.1-acre site, was decommissioned in 1956. The city wanted to use the site for a public park with the intention of demolishing the existing structures and starting with a blank site. Thus, Gas Works Park, one of the first post-industrial landscapes to be transformed into public space, faced its biggest challenges in the effort to change the popular opinion surrounding the value of the structures.
Being the first project of its kind, it was highly influential to other projects of the same nature that soon followed and proves the ability to persuade political and public opinion by including them in the design process. Simply gaining approval of the project involved coordination among multiple disciplines: scientists, engineers, politicians, photographers, architects and landscape architects.
Haag describes the site as he found it, “no sensuous earth forms, but a dead level wasteland; no craggy outcroppings, but peaks of rusty roofs; no thickets, but a maze of tubes and pipes; no sacred forests, but towering totems of iron; no seductive pools, but pits of tar; and no plants (not even invasive exotics) had been able to secure a root hold in 15 years” (Weilacher 108). His affinity for Gas Works Park was in the artificiality of it- its ability to invite awe and wonder at its alien structures and conglomerations.
Gas Works Park set a precedent for the very possibility of preserving and repopulating post-industrial landscapes. Because this project was so early in the timeline of post-industrial reuse, there is less interaction and intervention with the existing structures than projects that came after it, thus the influential power of the design is largely symbolic. One of the greatest benefits of preserving physical ruins such as those at Gas Works Park is in the tangibility of the structures, but this project did not allow for direct interaction between visitors and the structures. Like many efforts to preserve post-industrial landscapes in America, a fence is eventually erected around the structures and they exist as simply a backdrop to daily life, limiting the amount of meaning that the site can add to the community.
Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord
Piazza Metallica, Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord. Photo by Latz+Partner.
Landscape Park, formerly the Duisburg Meiderich Ironworks in the Ruhr District of Duisburg, Germany, was originally constructed in 1902 on a 568-acre site and decommissioned in 1985.
Like Gas Works Park in Seattle, the public wanted to demolish the existing structures in order to revert the site to an idyllic, “natural” state that may have never existed in the first place. This project argues that the need for these picturesque parks was a thing of past centuries, while this century has its own needs which differ significantly.
Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord proves that, by setting up physical interactions between visitors and structures, post-industrial landscapes can become accessible, inviting, and extremely interesting sites that allow people to create their own interpretations of their industrial heritage. In the Piazza Metallica (above), found materials on site were relocated to create a gathering space, putting the materials and their weathering properties on display and adding meaning to both the objects and the lives of the people who use them.
The formerly inaccessible, daunting site now attracts more than 500,000 visitors per year. Again, much like at Gas Works Park, the public can be convinced of the merit of something once they are shown the potential. Through intriguing graphics and diagrams, Latz + Partners made the public excited about what the site could become, and convinced everyone of the value that the “meaningless” structures could have. By allowing the existing structures to determine the site, program, park and structures are totally interwoven and functional.
Latz + Partner used vivid graphics to convey their ideas and excite the clients and the public about their plans. Graphics by Latz + Partner.
A slide goes through an existing concrete wall as part of the playground at Landschatfspark. Photo by Jane Sebire.
This project introduced me to the idea of using the existing intricacies of a fragmented, artificial landscape
to create new relevance in a community. Visitors are encouraged to explore the depths of the steel mill, introducing people to new experiences and encouraging curiosity and imagination. “Everyone who uses the park has a different park. Someone is coming to study old blast furnaces, and someone is coming to plant a small garden. Totally different” (Lubow).
Like at the Coliseum where exotic plant species grew from the imported animals, exotic plants grew
in the former steel mill that were incidentally shipped in with imported aggregates; around 200 plants found at Landschaftspark were not native to Northern Germany (Weilacher 124). Latz + Partners design “displays [the site’s] temporality as proudly as its artificiality” (Lubow), which is perhaps the ultimate takeaway; when a landscape has been extremely altered, it will never be returned to its ‘natural’ state, whatever that state may be. We should learn to embrace this fact in landscape and site design.
Castelvecchio Museum
Castelvecchio Museum façade layers. Photo by Roberto Ruager.
Castelvecchio is a 14th century castle located in Verona, Italy and restored by Carlo Scarpa between 1958 and 1974. The castle underwent many changes over the centuries before Scarpa was hired to restore it and renovate it to be used as a museum. Scarpa’s work represents a different position on restoration, one in which the history takes precedence over the more formal (and common) definition of preservation, in which architects would ‘restore’ a building to a specific, arbitrary time period.
Restorations at the time were usually very conservative in their interventions, never incorporating modern materials but instead sticking to historic, period-specific materials. Scarpa chose to make deliberate interventions including selective demolition, removing the previous renovation almost in its entirety, peeling back layers to reveal underlying materials, and using steel and glass that subtly highlight the new against the old. By revealing joints and using contemporary materials, he successfully created a dialogue between historic and contemporary, one that is clearly legible for visitors, but not overwhelmingly obvious or heavy-handed. “Castelvecchio is a densely layered ‘spatio-temporal’ experience, filled with innumerable details revealing the laminations of the history of human occupation of this place, allowing the building to be experienced as a series of spatial joints, simultaneously new and old, thereby weaving history into the present moment” (McCarter 159). This idea of emphasizing the ‘spatio-temporal’ as a new way to think about architectural restoration was highly influential to my project.
Scarpa’s work at Castelvecchio introduced another compelling idea that may be applicable to reusing post- industrial sites: selective demolition. By highlighting certain moments in a fragmented landscape, designers can create a story for visitors that helps them understand the context of the site throughout history; a story that may be otherwise lost through the cluttered masses of heavy industry. Scarpa was consistently inspired by different parts of the site which he discovered over his sixteen years there; the idea to use polished, ‘shimmering’ concrete floors was inspired by the moat that surrounded the castle and the image of that moat once filled with water (McCarter 158). Post-industrial landscapes can be viewed in the same way as Scarpa’s medieval castle at Verona: as works whose value lies in the history of human occupation and intervention, and whose story can be most effectively told through a series of experiences.
Ruhr Museum (Zollverein Coal Mine)
The new entrance elevator, as seen among the architectural language of the coal washery. Photo by Anselm van Sintfliet, OMA.
The Ruhr Museum is located in Essen, part of the Ruhr District near Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord. The museum is housed in the former coal washery of the Zollverein Coal Mine, and the renovation was designed between 2001 and 2007 by OMA. The museum displays the natural and cultural history of the region, as they are inseparable from the region’s rich industrial history.
The building is largely left untouched; machinery and weathered walls exist among artifacts gathered from other parts of the Ruhr District. In this way, the building itself becomes part of the exhibit, and an ambiguity is created between the objects on display and the parts that were original to the building.
The most noticeable design intervention by OMA is the entrance. The original form of the building consisted of chutes and conveyers connecting various buildings on site, and the new entrance continued this dialogue by acting as another ‘leg’ extending out of the building.
The former Zollverein coal mine now attracts over 500,000 visitors a year, and adds to the impressive cultural preservation that has been taking place in the Ruhr District over the last few decades. Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, the Ruhr Museum, and many other post-industrial monuments create a place where the community can reflect on their past, using it to create new uses for the present and imagining its future. The Ruhr District celebrates its past prosperity, and actively makes efforts to preserve its history, turning post-industrial spaces into lively, active destinations for every type of person.
Artifact exhibits live among the historic remains of the coal washing plant. Photo by Brigida González.