Page 176 - Beyond Decommissioning

Experience and lessons learned 157

with it. Their goal was to convert it into a depot and they thought the local community
would want it to be a sports hall, quite easy to fit into a power station. Surprisingly
people voted for a cultural center. The budget was minimal, the uses were quite
community-based, and the architects worked on a kind of loose-fit, low-tech, maxi-
mum flexibility, retrofit of this plant, preserving its patina which they thought was
essential to the structural charm. The renovation grant included the conservation of
the stack, which had no real use even in a cultural center, but everyone thought it
was vital as an advertisement for an industrial relic.
The architects preserved the major interior volumes, cleaned up the outside, and did
beautiful artwork on the windows facing the railway line. To make it with the tight
budget, they cheapened building finishes so as they could pay for some artworks.
Some 5% of the budget went into establishing trunk services to the building because
it had no electricity and all the sewerage used to go into the George’s River. The major
turbine hall became a flexible party venue, theater, exhibition space, corporate func-
tion room, and wedding space for the local community. In conclusion, one could not
build a new structure with the limited budget available, and certainly not gain in a new
building the same atmosphere the old building possessed.

6.2.1.8 Santralistanbul, Turkey
The Silahtarag ˘a Power Plant was the Ottoman Empire’s first urban-scale electrical
power plant. It was Istanbul’s sole electricity provider from 1914 to 1952. The plant
was decommissioned in 1983.
The 11.8-ha plant site comprised engine rooms with turbine generators, boiler
rooms, administrative buildings, workers’ quarters, and large coal yards. It is today
one of Turkey’s industrial heritage sites.
Converting the Silahtarag ˘a Power Plant into Santralistanbul was carried out with
most of the original elements being retained. Work began in May 2004 and was com-
pleted in September 2007. Currently Santralistanbul serves as a center for education,
culture, and arts (Santralistabul, n.d.).

6.2.1.9 The Trojhalı ´ site, Czech Republic

The former industrial area Trojhalı ´ is situated near the center of Ostrava, Czech
Republic. Trojhalı ´ has two indoor-type objects, the former electric switchboard and
the power plant Karolina. The set of buildings is a unique industrial monument,
pointing out at the glory of a past industry. The complex covers around 60 ha.
The power plant Karolina was built in 1905. It is a single-nave rectangular hall
with a gable roof with a central projection and a steel support frame. The building
is an architectural composition with the axial articulation of facades, plaster sur-
faces, and decorative colored glass blocks. The power plant was shut down in
the 1980s.
The energy exchange no. III is situated behind the hall of the power plant. The
large two-nave hall was constructed in the late 1920s. It served as a blower into
the furnaces of a smelter, where gas as a by-product of metallurgical production