THESIS
- IN PROGRESS -
RE-USE OF TEXTILA FACTORY, LUGOJ
ALEXANDRA STAN Tutor : Bogdan Demetrescu Architecture and Urbanism Faculty of Timisoara, 2019 Special thanks to : Cristian-Oliviu Gaidos, Zenit Management SRL, Ing. Dragota from Textila, Dragos Nistor and my father.
SITE - TEXTILA, LUGOJ TEXTILE FACTORY
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URBAN ANALYSIS
POPULATION
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CONNECTIVITY IN THE TERITORY
LUGOJ : THE CITY OF BICYCLES AND WOMEN Lugoj is a small town in the western part of Romania. It is situated 60 km away from Timisoara, the most important city in west Romania, and also one of the biggest cities in Romania. A big advantage of Lugoj, is the fact that it has always had a good connectivity in the territory, something that has helped the economical activity of the city. Giving the fact that it is a small town, it is very easy to travel from one part to another by the bike, which made Lugoj very famous for the big community of cyclists that started to appear. In addition, a very familiar and cosy atmoshpere is present everywhere in the city, as everybody knows everybody. Lugoj has also been known as “The city of beautiful girls�.During the communist period (1948-1989), the main industry in town was the textile one (as the object of study), where most of the employees were women. 4
INTERBELIC DEVELOPMENTS
The Textile factory was founded in 1907 by an austro-hungarian developer, who was very famous for his extravagant lifestyle. The interbelic period (from 1918 to 19 vestments - both in the factory itself, but also in the colony that was situated just across the factory. The first buildings that appeared in the colony were houses for t in Romania from Hungary and Austria. Most of these buildings can still be found nowadays, especially the ones that used to accomodate the specialists and the eng grow and to hire more people, the colony developed as well, and new facilities started to appear. At the beggining of the Second World War, the community that lived for washing clothes, a football team, a first aid point, and a Red-Cross Sisterhood. The thing that best describes this period, is the forming of a tight-knit community
HOUSING
PUBLIC SPACE
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939) was the period of intensive development and inthe emplyees and for the specialists that were brought gineers of the time. Gradually, as the factory started to d here had a canteen, a kindergarden, a common place y, where people enjoyed working and living together.
70% OF THE EMPLOYEES WERE WOMEN
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A VERY TIGHT-KNIT COMMUNITY
COMMUNIST DEVELOPMENTS After Second World War, communit took over Romania, and the communist philosophy started to be introduced in every aspect of people’s lives. Firstly, the private property- and especially the private businesses were nationalised and started to be administrated by the state. This was also the case of Textila Factory. Another very important task on the communist agenda, was to industrialise Romania as much as possible and to create a strong, independent economy, based on internal exchanges. In the towns, cities and even villages where no industrial activity took place, communists opened new factories, or if new opportunities of industrial activities, were found in places too far from a town, then towns were inveted. This very articial and radical development, started to affect also the colony of Textila. The number of pleople that worked here started to grow in size (at the end of ‘80s there were 5000 employees, ten times more than at the beggining of ‘50s) therfore the small houses that populated the colony were not enough anymore. 4 floors block were build, to accomodate as many people as possible.
HOUSING
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TECHNOLOGY In order to keep up with the new needs of the economy, production had to grow. That’s why performance was very important, and keeping up with the new technologies became a priority. New weaving machines were brought from Sovietic countries such as Russia, or Social Germany. In addition, as economic independency was a slogan of the Romanian Communist Party, many new machines from romanian production, were prefered, even though they were not as performant as the other ones.
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TODAY After the fall of the communist party in 1989, and the privatisations that followed, Textila factory started to decay. First the production slowed and decreased, people were dimissed, and then at the end of ‘90s the factory was sold to some italian investors. The weaving machines and the whole equiment that existed in the factory was sold to scrap metal, so that today you can’t see any sign of the textile factory that used to be one of the biggest and most important economical activity of Western Romania. The new owners, started to renovate only a few of the buildings (the ones that used to be used for storage), and let the old, beautiful buildings made of bricks, to decay. In the renovated ones, they opened a shoes factory, much smaller than the textile factory. In 2018 the italians closed the shoes factory (as they went into insolvency) and now the whoe factory is abandoned and in an advanced state of degradation.
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RE-USE STRATEGY
slowing down industry
restructurating agriculture
controled growth of th service sector
DEINDUSTRIALISATION MODEL by Tomasz Mickiewicz Ĺ&#x;and Anna Zalewska
INCLUSIVE STRATEGY
The strategy of intervention is based on a teoretical research I have made during the first semester. After studying the issue of deindustrialisation in postcommunist countries, th situations pre and post communism, and came up with an ideal model of transition for these overindustrialised countries : balancing very well the main sectors of the economy (in nism, goverments didn’t strat any real strategy for helping agriculture resurect. The main purpose of the factory will be agriculture related functions, but also complementary acti Given the fact that the site is very big (more than 60 000 square meters), and the buildings are in different stages of decay, the re-use plan will be implemented in more phases, a work on detailing only one of them - the one that is the most important in terms of historial value, architecture and representativeness.
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PHASES
he most interesting thing that was found was the efficient model of deindustrialisation proposed by Tomasz Mickiewicz Ĺ&#x;and Anna Zalewska. In their research, they analysed the ndustry, agriculture and services). Therefore the strategy of the project starts from the intention to improve rural and urban agriculture, given the fact that after the fall of commuivities that were found to be needed for the site. The strategy of reuse is therefore based on concept such as : ecology, culture, education, social and of course economic concepts. and will work both on the factory site, but also in the colony, where many people still live today. This is why, I have split the site in 4 zones, and in the final part of my thesis I will
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PROPOSED SITE PLAN
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MAIN FUNCTIONS AND ATMOSPHERE PROPOSED FUNCTIONS Greenhouses Seed Bank Market Argriculture research center + Museum Giftshop Restaurant Exhibition Spaces Park and Landscaping
MOODBOARD
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ATMOSPHERE
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PROPOSAL
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TO BE CONTINUED
allexandrastann@gmail.com