Adaptive Intervention

Tian, Hao M.Arch I

The juxtaposition of the old and new allowed us to reveal the in between architectural spaces and turn those spaces into the place of the program. architecture is a place of events rather than of form.—Bernard Tschumi

In downtown Montreal abandoned or vacant factories constructed during the industrial development of a bygone age, and once heavy polluters, have good potential for reuse and revitalization, based on the various needs and goals of contemporary communities. However, buildings are valuable historical heritage of the city. To deal with this issue, the thesis proposes the Industrialization Museum—with a branch for the Interpretive Center of Lachine Canal and a public park of the museum for the city of Montreal and Parks Canada. This museum would be established in the obsolete buildings and site of Redpath Sugar Refinery (built in 1854, closed in 1979), both located between Rue Des Seigneurs and Rue de Montmorency and along the waterfront of the canal, close to Lock 3.

This thesis concerns itself with the architectural type that has variously been referred to and labeled as renovation, rehabilitation and restoration, because it attempts to question the sensitive relationships between existing architecture and new program, between space and its reuse. In order to visualize the reuse of the Redpath complex for architectural advantage in new programs, and to establish strategies of adaptive intervention, it is useful to treat the existing buildings and site as given but changeable, constraining but potentially beneficial conditions. Thus, a new program and function can be adaptively introduced to existing buildings. The abandoned industrial complex can evolve into a new public space, while demonstrating the dialectical aspects of industrialization: social development and its consequential impact on nature. In addition, the design would aim to invent new and unitary space for the industrialization museum through the overlapping of seemingly contradictory programs, which juxtapose with existing elements—a public park (for the purpose of decontamination) and the museum of industrialization along the greatly contaminated canal.

The purpose for reclaiming Redpath Sugar Refinery and its site is to draw people throughout the area for informal observation, conversation, interactive learning; and to provide an open forum of exploration to celebrate industrialization changes; to demonstrate its negative effect on human beings and nature; to present a positive attitude in the project design toward the relationship between machines and nature.

There is now less dependence upon the changes of nature because nature can be controlled more, but this has also made humans more dependent upon the production system. Proponents and opponents of industrialization argue as to which of the two dependencies (nature or machines) contributes more to the advance of humanity.
--Industrialization, Canadian Mennonite Encyclopedia