Old power stations as industrial heritage and adaptive re-use challenges

Creator: Mateusz Grabowski, Bartosz M. Walczak

Source: Architectus

Publisher: Faculty of Architecture of the Wrocław University of Technology

Rights: Approval to upload a pdf of each article to the Big Stuff website provided by the Editor-in-Chief of the Architectus journal, with an acknowledgement that they were published by Architectus and the link to the Architectus issue they are in.

Date: 2020

Introduction: The problems of issues related to the re­use of post­in­dustrial buildings are closely connected with their loca­tion, spatial arrangement, structural solutions and produc­tion technology. These factors also have an impact on the successful protection of the buildings in question.

The Industrial Revolution brought into existence a number of new building types and affected the spatial arrangements of urban structures. In addition, the new socio­cultural context dramatically changed the meaning of architectural forms. In the periods before the industri­al transformation architecture developed linearly. Forms and styles evolved gradually, and characteristic features of a particular architectural period are generally easily recognized, providing spatial and temporal information on a building. For example, it is easy to distinguish the features of French Baroque churches from those of Italian provenance. What is more, architectural forms matched the urban context and vice versa.

Reference: Mateusz Grabowski, Bartosz M. Walczak 2020, ‘Old power stations as industrial heritage and adaptive re-use challenges’, Big Stuff 2019, Faculty of Architecture of the Wrocław University of Technology

DOI Link:

Grabowski, Mateusz, & Walczak, Bartosz M. (2019). Old power stations as industrial heritage and adaptive re-use challenges. http://doi.org/10.37190/arc200107