scholarly journals When the  Tank’s Empty: Design Strategies  for the Adaptive Reuse  of Urban Tank Farms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rob Bruns

<p>Urban tank farms, technically known as bulk fuel storage facilities, have been a feature of the urban industrial landscape for close to 100 years. Often established in prime waterfront locations near city centres, their future in these locations is uncertain. The toxic and volatile nature of their operations pose a threat to the environment and public safety, while many of the sites they occupy are being vacated as the oil industry consolidates and their activities are moved elsewhere. City waterfronts and industrial areas are also undergoing regeneration as urban centres increase in residential density and change in use from industrial and commercial activities to those based more on leisure and lifestyle. Tank farms and similar industrial ‘non-buildings’ have only relatively recently been recognised as having significant industrial heritage and cultural value, often only attained after a period of abandonment. Adaptive reuse of industrial buildings has long been applied to factories and warehouses but industrial non-buildings present greater challenges for a reuse project. Built with a singular purpose unintended for human inhabitation, the uncompromising nature of this type of structure and the difficulties in reusing them means few have been retained for reuse. The poisonous legacy of contamination further reduces the opportunities for retention of this heritage and reuse of the structures. Such sites and structures often face conflicting notions of site rehabilitation, industrial heritage retention, urban redevelopment and adaptive reuse. The design exercise of this thesis attempts to reconcile these notions by combining strategies of existing models and precedents with the necessities and aims of a continually evolving urban environment. Alongside these strategies, a step further than the typical landscape park and industrial sculpture of earlier examples is taken, proposing a new multi-use solution for an existing tank farm on Sydney Harbour. An architectural intervention for several of the largest tanks is presented, together with other elements of urban infill, environmental regeneration and public access and recreation.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rob Bruns

<p>Urban tank farms, technically known as bulk fuel storage facilities, have been a feature of the urban industrial landscape for close to 100 years. Often established in prime waterfront locations near city centres, their future in these locations is uncertain. The toxic and volatile nature of their operations pose a threat to the environment and public safety, while many of the sites they occupy are being vacated as the oil industry consolidates and their activities are moved elsewhere. City waterfronts and industrial areas are also undergoing regeneration as urban centres increase in residential density and change in use from industrial and commercial activities to those based more on leisure and lifestyle. Tank farms and similar industrial ‘non-buildings’ have only relatively recently been recognised as having significant industrial heritage and cultural value, often only attained after a period of abandonment. Adaptive reuse of industrial buildings has long been applied to factories and warehouses but industrial non-buildings present greater challenges for a reuse project. Built with a singular purpose unintended for human inhabitation, the uncompromising nature of this type of structure and the difficulties in reusing them means few have been retained for reuse. The poisonous legacy of contamination further reduces the opportunities for retention of this heritage and reuse of the structures. Such sites and structures often face conflicting notions of site rehabilitation, industrial heritage retention, urban redevelopment and adaptive reuse. The design exercise of this thesis attempts to reconcile these notions by combining strategies of existing models and precedents with the necessities and aims of a continually evolving urban environment. Alongside these strategies, a step further than the typical landscape park and industrial sculpture of earlier examples is taken, proposing a new multi-use solution for an existing tank farm on Sydney Harbour. An architectural intervention for several of the largest tanks is presented, together with other elements of urban infill, environmental regeneration and public access and recreation.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Claire Alana Krejcisz

<p>The aim of this research is to explore an adaptive reuse approach as a way to enhance industrial buildings in New Zealand. As in other parts of the world, New Zealand has accumulated industrial buildings which are now in disrepair. Many of these buildings appear to be undervalued by their local communities and are often demolished with little consideration given to other options. There are missed opportunities here to create composite architectures which make use of these somewhat curious buildings. This thesis initially investigates the significance that these buildings may hold for society and suggests reasons why they ought to be reused. The research then questions how an adaptive reuse approach could be used to enhance industrial structures. By combining the research into the importance of older buildings, particularly industrial buildings, with international case study analysis, a set of design approaches are developed. These approaches offer concepts and techniques for the conversion of industrial buildings which pertain to physical factors such as proportion and form. The design process is informed by these approaches, where they are expanded and tested for their relevance in a New Zealand context. The site for this design exploration is the Lower Hutt Railway Workshops which were selected to reveal the challenges involved in a large-scale project and because they embody the typical issues of industrial disregard. The intended function is a film complex which has specific requirements necessary to probe change in the buildings. However, this design example does not suggest that one-approach-fits-all. Rather, these approaches are developed to provoke thought in designers embarking on industrial conversions. Due to a widespread lack of appreciation of industrial buildings, there is typically more creative freedom in the way they are adapted, compared with non-industrial buildings. This suggests that more innovative conversion methods can be used. The approaches developed in this thesis advocate for an amalgamated adaptation which has a well considered relationship to the existing building and site. Overall this research reveals that there are a number of significant factors to consider when converting industrial architectures. When these factors are included in the design process, the experience of aged materials and the heritage-value encompassed in these buildings can be further enhanced.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-350
Author(s):  
Marcello Vecchio ◽  
Godwin Arku

The exodus of manufacturing jobs from industrialized cities has increasingly altered the way municipalities plan and cope with buildings and areas that once served as industrial and economic centres. Now these often derelict and costly structures sit as an eyesore in many communities which experience symptoms of post-industrialism. The practice of adaptive reuse is a unique concept of city building, where demolition and traditional brownfield redevelopment have been common practice. Though an already established method, adaptive reuse is becoming increasingly popular due to a greater intensity to protect heritage, reuse materials and structures, and offer unique architectural spaces, there has been a demand to reuse former industrial buildings for other uses such as commercial and recreational spaces. To achieve this, there must be sufficient policy in place to incentivize and mitigate the increase cost and risk which are usually associated with this type of development. This article will focus specifically on Ontario, Canada, and the current Official Plans of all 51 of the province’s cities, and how they are addressing adaptive reuse in former industrial areas and unique ways in which they address this problem. A content analysis of the documents showed that there is a wide difference in reuse contextualization and suggested policy directives. However, Cities in Ontario have proposed that affordable housing, intensification, revitalization in the urban core, and creating spaces for creative and vibrant industries can be addressed by the promotion of reuse in the community. For those with strong industrial history, the applicability of reuse allows for communities to preserve their industrial heritage, while at the same time shift uses to the new economy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-54
Author(s):  
Elena V. Alekseeva ◽  

The article is devoted to the problem of revalorization (actualization of value) of the industrial heritage. Based on the analysis of the latest foreign and Russian publications, the author shows a wide range of options for repurposing industrial heritage objects, implemented in different countries for more than half a century. The attention is focused at some of the features of national approaches to the preservation and new use of old industrial buildings and territories. The author emphasizes the implemented and proposed projects for the adaptive reuse of factory buildings and sites in the Sverdlovsk region. Systematization of the studied material resulted in a classification of potential new functions for abandoned industrial facilities. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that typologization contributes both to a holistic understanding of the implemented solutions, specific achievements and miscalculations in the process of transforming territories, buildings, structures that lost their production function into modern objects which combine the memory of the previous stage of history and new useful functionality. The paper draws attention to the effectiveness of combining the efforts of professionals and civic initiative, cultural and government institutions, local, regional and state structures for the preservation of the national heritage of the industrial era. It emphasizes the integration of this underestimated resource into modern planning solutions for large and small cities, the creative social function of collective interaction in the process of revalorization industrial heritage.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Claire Alana Krejcisz

<p>The aim of this research is to explore an adaptive reuse approach as a way to enhance industrial buildings in New Zealand. As in other parts of the world, New Zealand has accumulated industrial buildings which are now in disrepair. Many of these buildings appear to be undervalued by their local communities and are often demolished with little consideration given to other options. There are missed opportunities here to create composite architectures which make use of these somewhat curious buildings. This thesis initially investigates the significance that these buildings may hold for society and suggests reasons why they ought to be reused. The research then questions how an adaptive reuse approach could be used to enhance industrial structures. By combining the research into the importance of older buildings, particularly industrial buildings, with international case study analysis, a set of design approaches are developed. These approaches offer concepts and techniques for the conversion of industrial buildings which pertain to physical factors such as proportion and form. The design process is informed by these approaches, where they are expanded and tested for their relevance in a New Zealand context. The site for this design exploration is the Lower Hutt Railway Workshops which were selected to reveal the challenges involved in a large-scale project and because they embody the typical issues of industrial disregard. The intended function is a film complex which has specific requirements necessary to probe change in the buildings. However, this design example does not suggest that one-approach-fits-all. Rather, these approaches are developed to provoke thought in designers embarking on industrial conversions. Due to a widespread lack of appreciation of industrial buildings, there is typically more creative freedom in the way they are adapted, compared with non-industrial buildings. This suggests that more innovative conversion methods can be used. The approaches developed in this thesis advocate for an amalgamated adaptation which has a well considered relationship to the existing building and site. Overall this research reveals that there are a number of significant factors to consider when converting industrial architectures. When these factors are included in the design process, the experience of aged materials and the heritage-value encompassed in these buildings can be further enhanced.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Stanojevic ◽  
Aleksandar Kekovic

Buildings preservation by the conversion of their function has become a domain of interest in the field of industrial heritage. Due to the need to expand existing housing capacities in urban areas, a large number of industrial buildings are nowadays converted into multi-family and single-family housing. The paper deals with the analysis of the functional and aesthetic internal transformation of industrial into housing spaces. The research goal is to determine the principles of conceptualization of housing functional plan within the framework of the original physical structure of the industrial building, at the architectonic composition level and housing unit (dwelling) level. Besides, the paper aims to check the existence of common patterns of the aesthetic transformation of converted spaces, examined through three epochs of the development of industrial architecture: the second half of the XIX century, the first half of the XX century and the post-WWII period.


Heritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 1375-1387
Author(s):  
Jiazhen Zhang ◽  
Jeremy Cenci ◽  
Vincent Becue

As the material carrier of industrial heritage, industrial landscape planning integrates industrial heritage, post-industrial, and industrial tourism landscapes. In this study, we define the concept of industrial landscape planning. As a subsystem of urban planning, we study industrial landscape planning by using the theories and methods of urban planning. As an example, we consider Belgium and identify the main categories of industrial landscape planning as industrial heritage landscape and industrial tourism landscape. We use an ArcGIS spatial analysis tool and kernel density calculations and reveal the characteristics of four clusters of industrial heritage spatial layout in Belgium, which match its located industrial development route. Each cluster has unique regional characteristics that were spontaneously formed according to existing social and natural resources. At the level of urban planning, there is a lack of unified re-creation. Urban planning is relatively separated from the protection of industrial heritage in Belgium.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monther Jamhawi ◽  
Shatha Mubaideen ◽  
Basem Mahamid

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a framework for the adaptive re-use of wheat milling buildings setting in modern urban contexts in Jordan. This paper also aims to highlight the industrial heritage with a focus on wheat milling buildings, which date back to the beginning of the 20th century, as they document and represent significant aspects of the socio-cultural history of Jordan.Design/methodology/approachThe approach to this statement will be through a theoretical investigation into the notion of industrial heritage, a historical overview of wheat milling in Jordan, as well as a case study analysis to support the theoretical framework following a value-based approach for the case of Baboor Al-Qisar. Baboor Al-Qisar is a wheat milling structure that the Department of Antiquities (DoA) is willing to adaptively reuse as an industrial museum that tells the local narrative of wheat milling and points out the non-physical values associated with the building’s original use.FindingsThe paper introduces a framework for wheat milling buildings incorporation within the modern urban context as industrial heritage museums or socio-cultural facilities. The findings offer a reflection on approaching similar case studies as a tool for their conservation, management and promotion to create new tourist destinations as a form of sustainable urban regeneration.Originality/valueThis research bridges the gap between practice and theory in terms of adaptive reuse strategies within the Jordanian local context. No similar studies have been done on wheat milling structures from the 20th century in the country with local community engagement as an integral part that is carried out within the functionality and future use of the site.


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