Page 208 - Beyond Decommissioning

Experience and lessons learned 189

The environmental quality of the building is poor. The apartments have high ceil-
ings (3.75 m) with large light openings due to the existing building structure.
The height of the apartments makes it difficult to heat them in winter. The windows
used for reconstruction were single glass aluminum framed and not of a good quality,
Energy conservation is very poor because of the low insulation of the materials
used. The inhabitants made a lot of spatial changes to their apartments: they closed
loggias to use them as bedrooms, and altered interior walls to connect dining with liv-
ing rooms (these changes were due to being the existing interiors insufficient for large
families); they added tents at the facade to shield direct sunshine; and they installed air
conditioning or wood stoves for heating purposes. Many families had their apartments
oriented to north and complained for the high humidity: they also complained for
insufficient lighting. Due to the wide use of hollow bricks many complained about
noise. This case study highlights that adaptive reuse of industrial buildings for resi-
dential purposes should be done with proper materials and allocating sufficient living
spaces.
The artist Alberto Burri founded the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini “Collezione
Burri” in 1978 in Citta’ di Castello, Italy, as a tribute to his birthplace. Since 1990,
part of his collection has been exhibited in what were the drying sheds of the tobacco
factory. Alberto Burri used these sheds as a laboratory for the production of large
works from 1978 (Umbria Tourism, n.d.).
A tobacco factory was built at Krems, Austria in 1922. The reinforced concrete
framed build is noteworthy for its “third baroque” style, and its enormous size makes
it a Krems landmark. When the production ceased in the late 1980s, the local council
utilized the empty spaces for the Provincial Scientific Academy. The grid-like ground
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plan facilitated the conversion. The project was finished in 1995 and the 15,000-m
floor space began to host a number of Departments of today’s Danube University
(Stadler, n.d.).
The following story has a bit of irony in it. At Winston-Salem, NC, a factory that
once produced almost half of the cigarettes in the USA has been converted into Wake
Forest Biotech Place, whose mission is to cure diseases. The 2.25-ha Biotech Place
had been two tobacco facilities once owned by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., which
donated the dilapidated and unused properties to Piedmont Triad Research Park,
who later sold them to Wexford Science & Technology, LLC. (The building is leased
back to Wake Forest.) Redevelopment of the buildings was done in 18 months and was
financed through the North Carolina Mill Rehabilitation Tax Credits program and the
federal New Markets and Historic Tax Credits.
The buildings were gutted and stripped to the core on the interior (one wonders
whether the principle of preservation was really complied with…) and then
refurbished with new mechanical, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning
(HVAC), electrical systems, fire protection, and goods-lift systems to upgrade them
to current standards. Biotech Place comprises 80% labs and 20 and office space. It has
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a 700-m glass atrium that illuminates the building’s center, is five-story high on the
south side and three-story high on the north side. The south end of the building was
built in 1937 with a distinctive glass block exterior, which had to be retained as his-
toric heritage. Each glass block was individually surveyed to decide which to retain,