Merits of repurposing forsaken industrial sites extolled in essay

The creation of dynamic architectural spaces from hulking, abandoned industrial buildings can help preserve a city’s industrial heritage noted Gabriela Campagnol, assistant professor of architecture at Texas A&M, in an essay published in the January 2014 issue of ja+u, a Japanese architecture and urbanism magazine.

“Vacant industrial sites have charmed architects, urban designers and artists as a new creative and exploratory platform,” wrote Campagnol, and their repurposing also saves historically important buildings for posterity.

The [Pearl Brewery] (http://atpearl.com/) , in San Antonio, an example used in her essay, was abandoned in 2001 and thought by many to be headed for demolition until it was transformed into a lively new urban district created from a master plan by Lake|Flato Architects .

“After a year of site inventory and two years of reuse plan development, Pearl has become a flavorful, lively, food-oriented urban district,” said Campagnol, “with restaurants, shops, office space, a weekly farmers’ market, residences and a branch of the Culinary Institute of America.”

A city’s industrial heritage, she said, is a rich resource for architects, offering a creative opportunity, like a blank canvas for a painter.

The trend began in the 1960s in New York, she said, when Andy Warhol and other artists took advantage of low rents in abandoned cast-iron factories in a depressed commercial slum that had been nicknamed “hell’s hundred acres.”

In these types of projects, said Campagnol, architects can bring a simultaneous perception of past and present and create new interpretations and interactions with urban areas’ industrial histories.

Campagnol, who earned a Ph.D. in architectural urban planning history and theory from the University of Sao Paulo in 2008, is interested in Latin American architecture and urban planning in addition to industrial heritage and adaptive reuse.