Page 60 - Beyond Decommissioning

The fundamentals of industrial redevelopment 41

A building that has an established role in the community may mean that people reject its new
l
use. It may take years to change public perceptions and in the meantime the needed com-
munity support to the conversion may not materialize.
Room size and layouts, access and movements through the building, and light and climate
l
control, can all be conditions making plans for a museum difficult. In a ‘listed’ building
(see Glossary), one cannot easily alter these conditions.
l The demands of occupational health and safety are a strong issue.
The building can be in poor structural condition and require much remedial work to
make it weatherproof and able to manage a larger number of visitors. In these difficult
cases, one should assess whether the remedial work will be cost effective or whether it
would be more appropriate to demolish the old building and restart with a purposely
designed one (MGF/NSW, 2004).
A point of concern is about how things are going to be delivered into the building,
especially if large crates of temporary exhibitions are going to come in and out. More-
over, it is not always practical to have general access to all areas. Some fragile struc-
tures are not constructed to withstand the heavy traffic of visitors. The Migration
Museum of South Australia recognized that providing access to the first floor would
seriously endanger the fabric of the museum and heavier traffic through this area of the
fragile structure would create undue stress. Instead, the first floor has been utilized as
offices, which has limited access to that area.
The Inveresk Rail Workshop, NSW, Australia, provides a good example of how
various areas of a site can be interpreted to different degrees. The blacksmiths’ work-
shop (1870–1940) remains largely intact including both its work spaces and the tools.
This area was preserved in its current condition, allowing the visitors to walk through
and experience an active industrial workshop. The main workshop, which did not con-
tain much intact material, was adapted for use as a gallery space both for historical and
artistic collections. A large gantry was left in position, as well as some workspaces, to
get the visitor to understand what the space was used for. There are large open spaces
that are available for exhibitions, which can be readily adapted (National Trust of
Australia (NSW), 2000).

2.5 Indicators of success

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.
David McCullough (1933–)

What constitutes a successful adaptive reuse project cannot be determined through
one simple definition, but rather through a review of a range of factors, some relevant,
others irrelevant to a given project. For example, successful built heritage adaptive
reuse projects are those that “modify a place for a compatible use while retaining
its cultural heritage value.” Besides, “successful adaptive reuse projects require not
only good design for the building, but also careful planning that considers its