Page 41 - Beyond Decommissioning

22 Beyond Decommissioning

environmental agents or vandalism. The owner may recognize their potential for the
redevelopment, or view them as a burden and a liability: in the latter case, demolition
may appear the logical approach if other players take no action. In a number of long-
forgotten sites, no liable owner can possibly be identified and the risk of deterioration
beyond remedy, uncontrolled demolition, or simply loss of information and knowl-
edge is higher. When the owner (if one can be identified) fails to adequately maintain
a heritage site, it is generally up to public institutions to take over: to this end, specific
legislation is needed.

The industrial heritage is the evidence of activities which had and continue to have
profound historical consequences. The motives for protecting the industrial heritage
are based on the universal value of this evidence, rather than on the singularity of
unique sites. The industrial heritage is of social value as part of the record of the lives
of ordinary men and women, and as such it provides an important sense of identity. It
is of technological and scientific value in the history of manufacturing, engineering,
construction, and it may have considerable aesthetic value for the quality of its archi-
tecture, design or planning. These values are intrinsic to the site itself, its fabric,
components, machinery and setting, in the industrial landscape, in written documen-
tation, and also in the intangible records of industry contained in human memories
and customs.
TICCIH (2003)

In all countries, criteria have been promulgated for a site to be designated of her-
itage interest. A slightly rephrased taxonomy of criteria from (Michigan State
University, n.d.) follows:
l The building or site is associated with events that have marked history.
l The building or site is associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.
l The building or site incorporates the distinctive features of a type, period, or method of con-
struction, or represents the work of a master, or possesses high artistic values, or represents a
whole meaningful and recognizable entity.
l The building or site has yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in history.
A brief digression is needed here to illustrate the evolution of industrial architecture in
support of the third bullet above (Jevremovic et al., 2012). The embryo of industrial
beauty goes back to the mill buildings of late 1700s, simple wooden or masonry build-
ings with repetitive forms and regular openings. These elongated buildings fitted
nicely into the landscape. In pre-electricity days, flooding workspace with as much
daylight as possible was key. Long and narrow, these buildings had open and
unobstructed interiors to accommodate many machines and workers. Their narrow-
ness not only allowed light into their central spaces, but also enabled machines on
either side of the building to be powered from a central shaft down the floor. Early
industrial buildings were simple because their utilitarian nature placed them low in
the social and therefore, aesthetic ranking. Since the remotest antiquity, the buildings
have reflected social importance.
The risk of fire was so overwhelming that it shaped much of the industrial archi-
tecture of the 1800s. Fire concerns discouraged interior wall coverings as well as