LIST OF APPENDICES
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
3.3 FICTION .1 Introduction
3.4.5 Adaptive Reuse
To best define adaptive reuse one can refer to David Woodcock who says adaptive reuse is where old buildings, parts of the built environment, are renovated to meet contemporary standards, where their functions are altered to “provide stimulating environments for uses unheard of at the original time of construction-” [Woodcock in Austin 1988: viii].
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Figure 4.15 Simple reuse of waste, tyres as planters [Source:
www.greendiary.com].
Adaptive reuse prioritizes the preservation of buildings within the urban environment over reconstruction because preservation focuses on maintaining the character of the
environment, the ‘sense of place’, which allows for better community support and aesthetic continuity.
Industrial ruins generally have a strong
history within the community, they are structures at a scale that cannot help but be a major influence on the immediate area. How adaptive reuse helps these ruins be productive can be seen from a social and economic perspective; when an old building is to be reused there is a need for skills development, workers/contractors need to learn the old techniques used to create the building. If the building is a landmark within an area then its reuse and reactivation can lift the local society’s perception of the area and of themselves; “We will shape our buildings and our buildings will shape us-”
[Woodcock in Austin 1988: x]. There is also the obvious economic productivity that will come from a building that moves from disuse to use but there are several other
benefits; the environmental cost being one of them. Calvert and Galveston mention how such ruins have an abundance of existing materials to work with, they make the example of how eight bricks reused amounts to one gallon of gasoline that would have been burnt to remake those bricks [Calvert & Galveston in Austin 1988: 13].
The notion of reusing elements of a dystopian environment to build something new speaks of the productive dystopian narrative; the dystopia transgressing itself.
Adaptive reuse can also be productive in that it is a simple process that people can easily identify with and learn from; old tyres stacked up to create planters [Figure 4.15]
or oil drums cut up to make furniture suggest to the viewers that there is a lot that can come out of waste and ruin.
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Using the existing rubble and ‘waste’ to build new spaces with new functions that can begin to change the overall perception and social/economic value of the environment;
the recreation of green spaces within the urban environment to heal both the
environment as well as the people within it. These are two very positive and productive things that can be born out of the dystopian environments that exist in the city; their location and nature allow for changes to be made within the built environment that could not happen elsewhere.
To conclude this section on the non-fictional dystopia one can say that within the contemporary built environment there are a multitude of perceivable dystopias that architects, urban planners and designers can engage with; one such dystopia is the brown field or industrial ruin. One of the research questions asks what the connection is between brown fields and dystopia; one can now say that a brown field is a type of ruined landscape and therefore a type of dystopia, they share common aesthetic and experiential qualities that are often identified as ‘bad’.
These environments have a huge amount to offer as they can be looked at as examples of places of transgression and resistance that give clues to new ways of existing and designing within the urban context; they also offer a place for the
marginalized community within the city, a place of work and a place to call home. They are places of countless possibilities and contain energy, a tension and excitement that cannot be found in other parts of the city; definitely not within the pseudo utopias that are the gated estates and edge cities.
These real dystopias are sites for responsible, positive and productive architectural intervention; they have a catalytic nature that can be used to stimulate the rejuvenation of the immediate area and society surrounding them. While on the topic of
rejuvenation it should be mentioned that the title of this dissertation is in part ‘the rejuvenation of brown field sites’; this means that some research into how that is accomplished was necessary. This section has began to show how concepts like phytoremediation and adaptive reuse can be used when designing on a brown field
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site; they are concepts that can successfully rejuvenate both the natural and built environment on the sites that desperately need it.
All of the mentioned theories and concepts will be further analyzed in the following chapters through the study of relevant precedents and cases; this analysis will be done with the reviewed literature in mind such that an even deeper understanding of how the theories and concepts apply to design can be achieved. This process should begin to condense the literature into a framework for designing on brown field sites that speaks of local and contextual rejuvenation, as well as the creation of a narrative architecture that may allow the users to engage with the dystopian issues of the city.
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The link between fiction and architectural expression
This chapter will be looking at the Narrative Theory as it will support the understanding and application of dystopian theory in architectural design. First one will explore
narrative as a part of storytelling and the traditional mediums of literature and film then these principles will be extended to Narrative Theory in architecture; this looks at how one can tell a story with built form.
3.5 STORYTELLING