Research on the transformation of industrial heritage into residential building: taking Barcelona as an example

Abstract

The urbanization of China is developing rapidly, and the situation of construction and destruction without layout is very serious. In the modern city, many industrial heritages were dismantled completely. The negative impact is the separation of culture context and structure. And this, in a great degree, resulted in the waste of resources. With the changing from the industrial society to the post-industrial society and the adjusting of industrial structure, the traditional industry is fading away, more and more industry heritages are losing their production function, a lot of old industrial heritages are becoming useless. In the day of advocating the circular development, the reconstruction and recycle of the useless old industrial heritages become necessary. Multiform cultures of the context of post-modernism also affect the reconstruction and recycle of old industrial heritages, and offer the new mode and way in the mercantile situation. Hence, many industrial heritages, as a result, have been transformed into different forms such as creative industry park, "Loft", exhibition buildings, office buildings, leisure and entertainment places, residential buildings and so on through functional replacement. The transformation of industrial heritage into public building provides the possibility for the diversification of urban space, but the market demand will eventually be saturated while excessive amount can also cause difficulties for lease. However, for residential buildings, the demand is huge, and this way can provide people a kind of dwellings with artistic value simultaneously. The transformation of industrial heritage into residential building has gradually become an important means of urban renewal and reconstruction. But viewing from China's relevant practice, the reuse of industrial heritage is confined to the field of public building which has just begun in the field of residential building. In contrast, relevant practice of foreign countries (such as Barcelona) is not only involved in the field of public building, but also in the ascendant in the field of residential building. While addressing a certain social housing problems, the value of industrial heritage can be more fully tapped and utilized. In this paper, the applicability of industrial heritage transformation as well as the characteristics of residential building is used as clues. After studying the historical evolution and the corresponding characteristics of related transformation in Barcelona and with the support from Barcelona related transformation cases, it will analyze and study three cases which are totally different in the terms of the relationship of the old and the new, that is, ‘installation’, ’intervention’ and ’insertion’. Then, according to these cases, it will summarize a series of specific transformation strategies from four aspects - urban design, space reconstruction, function improvement and skin replacement. At last, compared with China's relevant transformation, with the guidance of the design principle, it is expected to apply these useful design strategies for China's transformation of industrial heritage into residential building combined with the current situation in the future and the application also will be reflected on the design project in Wuhan, China. Finally, with the help of the main design principle and these specific transformation strategies from Barcelona, the paper would provide some meaningful help for the update of the city and the development of cultural undertakings in China.