FROM DISMISSAL TO DEVELOPMENT: THE CHALLENGE OF ARCHITECTURE

The re-use of dismissed buildings has been discussed on an international level and model interventions such as the successful re-design of the Tate Modern (which is housed in a former power station) or the ionic High Line have revealed the approach to re-using abandoned buildings to the wider public. Starting from the state of the art, this paper will highlight the efficacy of the urban regeneration approach and its implications on a socio-economic level. What kind of projects can architects carry out, but more importantly, is it possible to identify different classifications based on the tangible results of the transformations? This paper will discuss the results of case studies based on research conducted over the past few years in two post-industrial cities in the U.S. These case studies identify specific design strategies as tools for selecting and classifying project output. When it comes to the abandonment and decay of industrialized cities, Detroit is the poster city and it represents an exceptional site of experimentation and reflection, both for its present meaning but also for imagining future scenarios of transformation and for identifying intermediate paths between conservation and demolition. Is adaptive re-use the only approach or are there different declinations of re-use which are influencing international research in architecture? The urban renewal project can be a tool worth using in the cases of different buildings or building complexes, even recent ones with uncertain or even non-existent restraint systems, so as to identify new uses which can reintroduce the buildings into today’s urban metabolism, while preparing them for possible future transformations, considering how rapidly their intended use changes in this day and age.