Industrial Heritage: Regeneration or Preservation
This blog is part of my university assignment about global and cyber heritage, I have decided to look at the issue of industrial heritage and its preservation and if this can be combined with regeneration.
Industrial heritage gives us connection to our past and future in a way that more traditional forms of heritage cannot. Industrial heritage is the story of the people who made nations.
Welcome
Please follow the link below, watch the presentation and then follow the link back to the blog to register your views and answer the questions that were posed in it. Please feel free to share this blog with others you feel have an interest in the preservation of industrial heritage.
You can navigate through the presentation using the arrows which will appear at the bottom of the screen, if you want to look at the images in more detail just click on them. Moving the cursor back to the bottom of the screen will return you to the navigation arrows.
There are links in the presentation which may not work if it is not run in the 'Full Screen' mode, to do this, click on the 'More' button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and select 'Full Screen'.
Yes. There are a lot of places that are regenerated sites that still offer varying levels of information about it's original use. eg isn't there a restaurant somewhere that still has all the big steam pump pistons in it as part of the ambience and decor?
I do think that a careful balance needs to be kept as the sites are so large that to preserve all of them would take up a massive amount of space.
Also regeneration in some places like the ones mentioned in your prezzi would probably have benefited far more from regeneration over preservation. Jobs and economy being injected into an area would probably be of a greater scale if the site is reused for other commerce than if it became a heritage site. Think about a building that was reused as a shopping mall eg. It may be distastful to some but if that mall had 200 shops in it and each shop employed approximately 5 people, you can start to see the point i am making. If it were soley a heritage site that maybe employed 15 people to run it and maintain it, you start to see a more long term inject of income to the area but it is far less lucrative potentially.
It absolutely can, but it requires a very clear objective, and a defined sense of the audience you're aiming for, as I said on the previous question it may well be very difficult to balance the needs of the tourist audience and those who lived and worked in these communities.
Sure they can - to a point. No point in re-generating steel production at Kelham Island but to preserve the heritage as part of perhaps economic regeneration of an area a Sheffield is laudable. The Chicago river is a great example of industrial heritage from factories to railways to feedlot / abattoirs yet is a focal point of urban regeneration and recreation - the architecture is stunning alone!
Yes, for I. H. to survive it must be embraced within regeneration plans & projects. Albeit that small islands of the past amidst modernity may look like a sentimental waste of time & money to some, once it has gone, it's gone !! A plaque and a few pictures on a board cannot substitute for a tangible part of the past. By the fact that so many Far Eastern industries are a technologically updated version of how we used to do things in Britain shows that we must have once got it right.
Adding to a previous comment, the Albert Dock area of Liverpool, St. Katherines Dock in London,Saltaire are all areas that have successfully 'regenerated'.
It can and it does, but you need a clear view and clear objectives.
ReplyDeleteRegeneration at Hull seems to work, they now have an arts and culture area along the dockside! So yes it can and has to.
ReplyDeleteYes. There are a lot of places that are regenerated sites that still offer varying levels of information about it's original use. eg isn't there a restaurant somewhere that still has all the big steam pump pistons in it as part of the ambience and decor?
ReplyDeleteI do think that a careful balance needs to be kept as the sites are so large that to preserve all of them would take up a massive amount of space.
Also regeneration in some places like the ones mentioned in your prezzi would probably have benefited far more from regeneration over preservation. Jobs and economy being injected into an area would probably be of a greater scale if the site is reused for other commerce than if it became a heritage site. Think about a building that was reused as a shopping mall eg. It may be distastful to some but if that mall had 200 shops in it and each shop employed approximately 5 people, you can start to see the point i am making. If it were soley a heritage site that maybe employed 15 people to run it and maintain it, you start to see a more long term inject of income to the area but it is far less lucrative potentially.
It absolutely can, but it requires a very clear objective, and a defined sense of the audience you're aiming for, as I said on the previous question it may well be very difficult to balance the needs of the tourist audience and those who lived and worked in these communities.
ReplyDeleteSure they can - to a point. No point in re-generating steel production at Kelham Island but to preserve the heritage as part of perhaps economic regeneration of an area a Sheffield is laudable.
ReplyDeleteThe Chicago river is a great example of industrial heritage from factories to railways to feedlot / abattoirs yet is a focal point of urban regeneration and recreation - the architecture is stunning alone!
Yes, for I. H. to survive it must be embraced within regeneration plans & projects. Albeit that small islands of the past amidst modernity may look like a sentimental waste of time & money to some, once it has gone, it's gone !! A plaque and a few pictures on a board cannot substitute for a tangible part of the past. By the fact that so many Far Eastern industries are a technologically updated version of how we used to do things in Britain shows that we must have once got it right.
ReplyDeleteYes – if not we may end up with neither!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the last comment. Without a use a building will always be at risk. You need to give it a reason to exist!
ReplyDeleteYes, there are ways of re - using buildings whilst acknowledging their original function.
ReplyDeleteAdding to a previous comment, the Albert Dock area of Liverpool, St. Katherines Dock in London,Saltaire are all areas that have successfully 'regenerated'.
ReplyDeleteThey're a marriage made in heaven. You cannot have one without the other.
ReplyDeleteHeritage without even elements of regeneration become devoid of meaning as society progresses and will eventually lapse into the ether.