Cultural warehouses and the new industrial paradigm

This article depicts how different design strategies can be implemented in the conversion of an industrial building to other functions after it has ceased its activities. To this end, four contemporary post-industrial conversion projects are analysed, and different stances are described in relation to three aspects. The first is the spatial relationship between the old industrial buildings and the new elements needed for their ‘adaptive reuse’, whether one is encased into the other or they are mutually intersected. The second is the interaction between the different codes of existing and new: for instance, what is often a stark monumentality vis-à-vis to new outlandish hi-tech additions. The third aspect describes how the inevitable frictions between the old and the new are exhibited, hidden or neglected. The four projects presented here offer a set of different approaches that relate to a subtler understanding of the life cycle of urban industrial complexes and their transition. These namely stem from places for the production or transformation of material goods; hence, they are organized around a logical series of repetitive activities that takes place in a rigid spatial dimension, to places of cultural consumption, social interaction and business fostering which are, in contrast, subject to extemporary actions and unstable configurations. In short, they represent the economic transition from the material to the immaterial, from the hardware —structural, strong organization— to the software —light, liquid and unstable.