Back to the future at the old Sugar Union Groningen Designing evocative spatio-cultural scenographies in and around the "Clouds Factory" monument by materializing invisible properties inherent to its erased past
Francesco Mino
Back to the future at the old Sugar Union Groningen Designing evocative spatio-cultural scenographies in and around the "Clouds Factory" monument by materializing invisible properties inherent to its erased past Francesco Mino
Master Dissertation
Academic year 2017-2018 Publication June 2018
Academic supervisor: Marc Dujardin arCsus Design Studio "Designing for Cultural Sustainability"
KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture, Campus SintLucas Gent International Master of Science in Architecture
The Wolkenfabriek, former sugar factory in Groningen, Netherlands.
Abstract The site of the Sugar Union in Groningen is just one example of the thousands of wasteland territories spread around the Netherlands. During almost a century of activity, the SuikerUnie was the face of a whole city: the summer sugar campaign where sugar beets were harvested, the boats, trucks and carriages gathering around the factory plant with the heavy beets loads, the sweet smell of sugar in the air, the white smoke comig out of the chimney are all elements that used to define Groningen. In 2007 the factory ended its production and its buildings were almost entirely demolished. Today the site is a suggestive venue for all sorts of open air events during the summer period, while still functioning during the rest of the year as house for all kinds of sub-cultures. Its future, though, in not certain yet. The vision of the municipality is to create a new dense city centre that threatens both the past history and the current socio-cultural situation. Working in the framework of RAAAF's Hardcore Heritage, that envisions a more dynamic dialogue between heritage buildings and their past, present and future narratives, special attention was put during the research phase on the demolition event that generated this drosscape, considering it as a positive event despite its destructive character, focusing on the relation between the former densely built critical mass that the factory was and the new potential offered by its clearance. Starting from studies about the morpho-typology of the former sugar factory, the focus was directed on the footprint of the first factory layout of 1915, becoming the starting point of the design process: new spatial experiences were created by the re-modelling of these buildings in close relation to the present context, while simple but effective design additives were placed to implement the space flexibility and the scenographic character of the project. The resulting design is an evocative building in close relation with the remaining industrial monuments on site, that recalls the complex morpho-typology of the former sugar factory by unveiling some of its volumes that the demolition took away while creating social affordances and multi-modalities for the sub-cultures operating in and around the Wolkenfabriek.
TABLEcontents of
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Research Framework
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The site: Sugar Union
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The current situation and future visions
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Demolition as positive event
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Following traces: morphology studies
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Back to the Future: Design process
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Multimodality and behaviours
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Bibliography
01 Research framework
RAAAF, Vacant NL, Venice Biennale, 2010. All the pictures in the chapter are taken from RAAAF studio website: www.raaaf.nl
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
01 Research framework
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01 Research framework
01|On Vacancy
RAAAF, Vacant NL, Venice Biennale, 2010. RAAAF, Pretty Vacant, Centraal Museum Utrecht, 2013(p.11).
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Vacancy represents a big issue in the Netherlands, where more than 10.000 public or governmental buildings lay vacant all over the country. Ranging from lighthouses to forts, bunkers or industrial plants, these buildings dating from the seventeenth to the twentyfirst century hold a great potential in them, and there is some realities that are already trying to tackle this issue. The Amsterdam based office RAAAF (Rietveld Architecture-Art-Architecture) represents without a doubt the most active and most effective reality that deals with vacancies. Starting with their exhibition Vacant NL at the 2010 Venice Biennale, the potentialities of these thousands of churches, palaces, prisons spread around the Netherlands have been unfolded for the first time, providing chances for the office to start a number of collaborations and follow-up initiatives with other actors of different disciplines in order to address this issues in the most various and complete ways. One example is the collaboration with Jurgen Bey at the Sandberg Instituut of Amsterdam where the Vacant NL Master’s Programme was held for experts from various disciplines to engage with the theme of vacancy and gain expertise in the theme of temporary use of vacant sites. This interdisciplinary collaboration was the base for the realization of their book called “Vacancy Studies”. As a part of the Vacant NL exhibition, the Dutch Atlas of Vacancy (a collaboration between RAAAF and Joost Grootens) catalogued and listed all vacant Dutch buildings by their special built properties or characteristics.
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
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01 Research framework
Vacancy Studies
RAAAF, Secret Operation 610, Airbase Soesterberg (NL), 2013: working station in Shelter 610 (top) and its interiors (bottom),
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In their 2014 book “Vacancy Studies: Experiments and Strategic interventions in Architecture” Erik and Ronald Rietveld - a philosopher and an architect, together with Jurgen Bey. they explore the potential that vacancy can offer in the discourse of the Dutch Knowledge and Innovation Agenda (KIA) and try to give a broader and more optimistic view on this theme: rather than envisioning vacant built heritage as a critical problem to be solved, they consider vacant plots or buildings as a big opportunity for new economies and multisectorial collaborations between designers, professionals and researchers. Conventional plannings and redevelopments aren’t the most efficient strategies to deal with vacant buildings, because of seemingly endless beaurocracy and plannings for renovation, redevelopments or demolitions. This period is generally called the ‘interim’, that is the period that goes from a building being declared vacant to its final stage of new use, reuse or disposal. The main theme of RAAAF approach is the ‘Sequential temporariness’. Vacant NL Studio team proposes to work with interdisciplinary teams in the timespan of the interim, experimenting short-term temporary uses of the sites until a clear future is given to them: this generates new insights on the possible uses of vacant buildings and allows-with the short term temporary use- “the continuous movement from building to building in the sea of vacancy”[1], providing initiators and designers with a wide range of shortly available buildings that can offer unique spatial qualities and opportunities because of the way they were constructed (castles, churches, bunkers). The best example of this initiative is the project Secret Operation 610, where a mobile working station for aviation studies by Delft University of Technology students for the innovative 21st Century aviation experiment ‘no noise, no carbon, just fly’ was designed in the former Cold War military airbase of Soesterberg.
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Hardcore heritage Amongst the great number of vacant sites, a big amount of these churches, forts, water towers and bunkers are shortlisted as municipal or national heritage buildings. Amongst the great number of vacant sites, a big amount of these churches, forts, water towers and bunkers are shortlisted as municipal or national heritage buildings. Conventional practices towards built heritage are way too often focused on a static restoration, engaging with the site in a conservative way, leaving them untouched and away from their current context. A new way of dealing with such sites comes from RAAAF and their so-called Hardcore Heritage. Their approach consists of a totally different way to handle these sensitive remainders of history: by alterations in their context, partial destructions or crucial additions they aim to create a field of tension between past, present and future, where narratives of past times blur in new spatial experiences. One great example of this approach is the project Bunker 599 – New Dutch Waterline (by RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon), where one of the 700 bunkers belonging to the Dutch Waterline military flooding defence line has been sliced open, revealing at the same time both its interiors and its direct relation with the 80km long surrounding natural reserve. In this way, a seemingly indestructible element in is now exposed to visitors and passers-by, and can be considered the first step toward uncovering and making a great part of Dutch history available to everyone. Eventually, this building has been listed as National Monument.
RAAAF, Bunker 610, Diefdijk 5 - Diefdijklinie nabij A2(NL), 2013.v
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De Wolkenfabriek, Groningen (NL), picture by Melvin Jonker http://melvinjonker.com/portfolio/ All the historical pictures of the Wolkenfabriek are taken from the book De Wolkenfabriek
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
02 The site: Sugar Union
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02 The site: Sugar Union
02| The clouds factory Europe
Netherlands
Province of Groningen
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The Sugar Union (Suikerunie) is a former sugar factory, created by a cooperative of sugar beet growers active between 1913 and 2008, sitting in the western border of the outer ring of the city of Groningen, between the shore of the Hoendip canal and the railway in the direction Groningen-Leeuwarden. For more than one century this sugar plant was the main economical source for the city and the biggest sugar production factory in Europe. Characterized by its high silos and chimneys, the only visible elements on winter foggy days, the factory started being famous with the name of ‘Wolkenfabriek’, the Factory of Clouds. Due to a World Trade Organization and European Union policy regarding sugar production (that asked for a significant reduction of beet sugar production in favor of cane sugar production instead) the factory closed in January 2008 and all the activities moved in another complex not so far away, in Hoogkerk. After that, a demolition process started being interrupted when the city bought the land and prevented the last buildings to be bulldozered. After the area became vacant, new activities started to grow on the site, hosting various events, festivals and cultural gatherings throughout the whole year. The future of this site, though, is still uncertain: the long term view is still an overlap of different and often opposing visions, with the main possible scenario to be focused on creating a new dense neighbourhood able to attract people from the city center and expand on the western and south side of the province.
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
53°13.1502' N
Groningen
6°34.0002' E
Suikerunie Terrain
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02 The site: Sugar Union
I
OUT OUT OF OFTHE THEWALL WALL
1870 Until the 19th Century, the terrain of the former sugar factory was just landfields in the countryside outside the walls of the city of Groningen. Several sugar cultivations, though, were beginning to grow all around the north of Netherlands in that period, opening the way for several cooperatives, in particular Dinteloord, Puttershoek, Zevenbergen and Roosendaal.
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II
AANEW NEWFACTORY FACTORYIS BORN IS BORN
1913-1914 On the 16th of May 1913 the Vereeniging Friesch-Groningsche Coรถperatieve Beetwoldel sugar factory was established for the construction and operation of a cooperative beetroot sugar factory. The first construction consisted in sugar warehouses, washing room, boiler room, lime ovens and mixers, machine rooms and a chimney. The project of the factory in a collaboration between J.J. van Doormaal, W.K. van Oort and G. Nijhuis
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
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THE THEFIRST FIRSTEXPANSION EXPANSION
1915-1917 After the decision to move from raw to refined sugar, from June 1915 an expansion took place, with the extension of the former warehouse and the addition of a refinery, a weighing house, two storage rooms, two offices, a machine building and a management chain. A small extension of the boiler room, two small soot chambers on both sides of the chimney and temporary storage followed in 1917.
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FIRST FIRSTSILOS SILOS
1921-1922 In 1921 the sugar warehouse underwent a second extension, and the boiler room as well, changing from 2 to 4 levels. Of the same period were also another warehouse and three molasses silos, all demolished between '60s and '70s, when the production process demanded many adjustments and additions.
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02 The site: Sugar Union
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RENOVATIONS AND RENOVATIONS AND DENSE PRODUCTION DENSE PRODUCTION
1924-1957 After a first period of difficulties in the Twenties, the production remained solid even after the WWII, when a change in the production was needed due to a higher demand. Big renovations started, and new functions appeared: bathing gutters for sugar beets, three weighbridges and a porter's lodge with a weighhouse, laboratiories, offices and temporary wooden sheds for the campaign staff
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NEW EXPANSION NEW EXPANSION
1958-1962 In this period renovations were frequent and aimed at keeping the pace of the increased scale of production. Between 1958 and 1959 the old warehouse from 1915 was raised of two levels, and filled with offices in four smaller floors. A pump house, three molasset tanks on concrete foundations and an adaptation of the technical offices followed. At the same time, two sugar silos and an elevator building have been realized on the southwestern part of the factory.
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
FINAL CONFIGURATION
Further renovations were needed in this period for even more modern productions: a third silo, a natural gas supply system(1967), a building for the installation of an air conditioning system in the silos (1968) central workshops, car beet storage facilities, a lime kiln station and lime bunkers (1971). An enlargement of the powder building, the beet storgae with a tipping station and a new conveyor belt date back from 1972 too.
"HET GROTSTE SUIKERSTAD VAN EUROPA"
The changes happened from 1977 onwards are the ones that characterize the latest look of the factory: the new office building, the new chimney, a steel pressing building and the pump and operating building for the beet mill (1977), another huge sugar house (1978) built right next to the south facade of the front building and a fouth silo (1979) in the place of the 1921 demolished warehouse.
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02 The site: Sugar Union
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CLOSING PARTIAL GATES DEMOLITION
2008 2009-2010 The Royal Cosun (the parent company of the Suiker Unie) in January 2008 officially declared the factory closed, announcing its dismantlement and demolition. After almost a century the factory symbol of the Groningen sugar cooperatives finally stopped working and all the activities were moved to the near sugar factory in Hoogkerk, also on the shores of the Hoendiep.
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DEMOLITION PERIOD THE CITY BUYS THE SUIKERUNIE SITE
2009-2011 2011 A two-year period of intense and spectacular demolition followed, including the famous demolition of the new chimney, highest point of the city of Groningen, attended by crowds of nostaligcs and curious who gathered on the opposite shores of the Hoendiep to immortalize the moment, symbol of an era that finally ended. The only two buildings spared from the demolition were the 1915 Sugar warehouse and the 1913 chimney
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
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XII 2013-(2030)
From the 1st of January of 2013 the management of the Voorterrein of the Suikerunie is given to the PloegId3 team (Dick Janssen Vastgoed, Hein Braaksma and Paul van Bussel, owner of De Unie Architecten architectural office, in charge of the temporary masterplan for the area, while events on the Wolkenfabriek are managed by the PloegId3 powered DeSuiker Events. Every year thousands of people visit the area for a techno festival, an art exhibition, workshops and many other events.
CITYSCAPE
CITYPL0T
(2030)-(...) Future visions foresee the site of the former SuikerUnie as part of a big development plan that will eventually transform the whole southwest area outside Groningen into new trendy neighbourhoods where mixed programs will densify an area mostly composed of low density factories and landfields.
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02 The site: Sugar Union
Factory layout
The Wolkenfabriek
The floodfields
The huge complex has a first main division, consisting of two main environments: on the one hand the floodfiels (vloeivelden), extensive water collection basins linked to the waste of the sugar production, and on the other hand the core of the factory, consisting of all the mills, pipes, silos and in general all the machinery that is needed to complete the cycle of the sugar production (full scheme on p.22). At the moment the floodfields, once linked to one another by plain concrete paths and small bridges are now entirely covered in spontaneous vegetation and an interesting biodiversity started to appear, due to sweet soils and a unique post-industrial natural landscape. On the other side, the industrial core of gigantic volumes that were the heart of Groningen businesses is now just a wide spread of concrete and spontaneous green, with the huge sugar warehouse dating 1915 and the 1913 chimney, shortened in its height after the demolitions. New realities on the site are now populating the neighbouring areas between the two remainders.
The vloeivelden in 2011
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
The Wolkenfabriek
What remains today
The sugar warehouse in the 20th Century
From sugar warehouse to festival venue
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02 The site: Sugar Union
Beet sugar production scheme, in B.D. Swanenburg, Beeld-encyclopaedie van onze Industrie, Amsterdam-Brussels 1953 (pag. 234).
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Top: Engine room | Bottom: Boiler room
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02 The site: Sugar Union
Pictures from the sugar campaigns: sugar beet growers gathering on the SuikerUnie terrain by boat and train
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Beets harvesting (Sugar campaign)
Factory activity
Beets growing
Scheme of the seasonal sugar beets production.
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02 The site: Sugar Union
Distance between the Suikerunie site and the city center: 2km
Water morphology: the site faces the Hoendiep canal on the northern edge.
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Car infrastructure: the ringroad N370.
Train infrastructure: the artery line Groningen-Leeuwarden
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02 The site: Sugar Union
Entry points to the site: The bridge on the Hoendiep and the access from the N370
Bus accessibility: the circular line 8 and line 35 for Oldenhove
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
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03 The current situation and future visions
De Wolkenfabriek, Lustrum Albertus Magnus, June 2017, in De Suiker Events - Portfolio, https://desuikerevents.nl/portfolio
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
03 The current situation and future visions
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03 The current situation and future visions
03| Temporary management of the site
Logos of the three main groups that manage the events on the site: ploegId3, De Unie Architecten and De Suiker Events
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After the demolition, the Suikerunie site became vacant, under the property of the city. The municipality of Groningen then decided to give the temporary management of the site to the group PloegId3 , run by Dick Janssen, Hein Braaksma and Paul van Bussel, experts in area development, cultural projects, care programs, architecture and urban planning. Under the supervision of the architectural office De Unie Architecten, run by Paul van Bussel too, a temporary masterplan for the area was made. The intent was to manage all the different realities that were gradually growing on site, give a fixed temporary placement by paying a monthly rent and let them grow further and contaminate with each other. The management of the events was then given to De Suiker Events, an organization that rents the space of the sugar warehouse, now called “De Wolkenfabriek� for all the events that are external to the realities that operate in the masterplan.
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Temporary masterplan designed by De Unie Achitecten and PloegId3
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03 The current situation and future visions
A rich variety of events happening in the SuikerUnie.
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Kadepop festival: the Wolkenfabriek lighted up by the artwork of Ypsilon2 https://www.ypsilon-2.de/s/cc_images/ cache_12909884.jpg?t=1475521547
Timmerdorp kids wood workshop: the chimney as background for the creative process http://timmerdorpgroningen.nl/wp-content/ themes/timmerdorp050/media/photoright-0010.jpg
Paradigm festival: chillout area inside the Wolkenfabriek https://imgn.rgcdn.nl/c4d88e63ec 6d4cb1b73093879f3d8cec/opener/Foto-Paradigm. jpg
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03 The current situation and future visions
PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE REBEL REBEL HOSTEL
DE UNIE ARCH.
EM2
PARADIGM FESTIVAL
DE WOLKENFABRIEK
Area of use
Active buildings
Surroundings
Temporary situation map
ON
JUNE-SEPTEMBER
OFF OCTOBER-APRIL
Short term events during the year 2017: On season (Jun-Sept) and off season (Oct-Apr)
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
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03 The current situation and future visions
In the Wolkenfabriek
On the Voorterrein
Two locations
All year long
Day by day events
Two timespans
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Residents
Groningen citizens
Festival followers
Tourists
Creative industries Five groups of users
Various activities
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03 The current situation and future visions
a new hotspot for creative development and social interaction in the city of Groningen
One place for a great number of subcultures and activities for the city of Groningen
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
The plans of the city: Cityplot & Cityscape The vision of the city of Groningen for the entire site is aimed at creating a new urban center, with mixed use plots that varies through five different typologies including low and mid rise buildings, as well as privatized dike houses on the vloeivelden. Even though the present realities populating the site are considered as the starting point for the future placemaking, the long term vision sees these realities slowly fading in the new densification process, going to completely mutate the site and its surroundings.
Cityplot&Cityscape: models for the different plot typologies for the Suikerunie terrain
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03 The current situation and future visions
Masterplan of the development.
? A problem of identity: three different Cityplot projects in Amsterdam, Arnhem and Groningen
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Erasing planning: gradual disappearance of the subcultures populating the Suikerunie terrain in the Cityplot vision
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04 Demolition as positive event
De Wolkenfabriek, Demolition of the latest chimney, highest point and landmark of the city of Groningen (NL), 2011 picture by RAAAF studio http://www.raaaf.nl/nl/projects/976_after_image/982
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
04 Demolition as positive event
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04 Demolition as positive event
04| The poetics of decay
Roberto Rossellini, Germany,Year Zero , 1948
Non-sites, New Jersey, artwork by Robert Smithson, 1968
Central Harlem, picture by Steven Siegel, in NY in the 80s, 1980 ca.
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During the years, a feeling of fascination towards ruined landscapes, derelict parts of our cities has always been source of inspiration for creatives, narrators or just passers-by. This tendency can find its beginning in the 18th Century, with Piranesi's Vedute di Roma where admiration for ancient Roman Empire mixes with the critic he moves towards the state of decay and abandonment these ruins are, or with Joseph Gandy and his depiction of the Bank of England as a sort of future ruined landscape. In general, before the end of WWII ruins were sources of inspiration and admiration of past magnificence for creatives of all kind, architects included: the best example can be found in the Theory of Ruin Value by the master builder of Hitler, Albert Speer, who stressed that a great and magnificent design should be thought also in the perspective of future decay, resembling the greatness of the past times. But after WWII, cities and territories were shook by destruction and a bigger, different decay. It's in this period that we had a switch in the poetic of decay: there's no more space for the romantic exaltation of ancient societies, but rather for the scars that a war just left everywhere or for the decline that financial crises brought in major cities. In the 20th Century we can talk about the postwar scenarios of Berlin in Germany Year Zero, movie of 1948 by Roberto Rossellini, the Nonsites series of the American artist Robert Smithson in the Seventies, or the struggling images of New York's decay in the 80s by the photographer Steven Siegel in his series called NY in the 80s. In the end, 21st Century literature is also full of works related to the fascination towards ruins, like Christopher Woodward's In Ruins: A journey through History, Art and Literature (2003), Brian Dillon's Ruins (2011), and Ruins of Modernity by Julia Hell and Andreas Schรถnle (2010).
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Book cover of Ruins, by Brian Dillon, 2011.
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04 Demolition as positive event
Demolition in architecture
Gordon Matta Clark, Conical Intersect, Paris, 1975
RAAAF&Atelier de Lyon, Deltawerk, Waterloopbos, Noordoostpolder (NL), in progress
Hannah Schubert, Tweede Natuur, Master thesis in landscape architecture, Amsterdam Academie van Bouwkunst, 2014
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Architecture is also one of the fields where the fascination towards ruins brought innovative ideas and insights on the theme. One of the best examples is the work in the Seventies of Gordon Matta-Clark, who had his very on take on the temporary use of buildings soon to be demolished. By appropriating them some months prior their demolition, Matta-Clark had the chance to operate spatial experiments that would be impossible or difficult to be approved on other buildings: by removing or cutting holes in part of the facades, walls or even floors, he used to create these unique spatial experiences of scenic light games and volume alterations both in and around the buildings. Another approach towards-or against demolition can be found in the work of the landscape architect Hannah Schubert who, in her Master thesis Tweede Natuur at the Amsterdam Bouwkunst Academie, merged together nature and ruins as an alternative to demolition: her choice for the Sheringa Museum of Realism in Opmeer (NL) was to leave the majority of the structure as a run, removing walls and roofs, but organizing the spaces and circulation in such a way that nature could gradually inflitrate the built mass, take over the place and taking back that part of environment, in a process of "ruinification". Demolition, even if partial and selective, can also be the strategy to deal with a 40 years vacant site with a glorious history. That is what RAAAF, together with Atelier de Lyon is doing with their project Deltawerk//. In the 40 years old former Dutch Hydrodynamics Laboratory, the two offices are planning to work on the Delta Flume, a 250m long wave-testing open tunnel, and by cutting some parts of the long retaining walls and replacing them in a 90degrees angle, they aim to create a new monumental park where nature and biodiversity will spontaneously work together through the years.
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Groningen: is demolition a negative event? In less than two years, the place that once was a dense big scale factory, a jungle of silos, pipes and huge volumes, has become a desolated land, where only two of the oldest buildings stand lonely as survivors of this violent and gradual destruction process. But, aside from being an objective act of tearing mass apart, can this demolition be considered as a positive event? Numerous can be the questions and considerations that open up once we stop for a second and look back at this phenomenon.
Sloop Schoorsteen Suikerfabriek Groningen by Frenk Volt, 20 March 2011, Groningen
Would the factory future be the same if the demolition didn't happen at all? And what if the demolition didn't stop and included the chimney and the sugar warehouse? What is the new spatial quality of the area now that almost the entirety of the factory setup is gone? The question that such event opens up, and the possible scenarios are potentially infinite, and in the following pages I tried to answer in a visual way to some of these in the following pages, but rather than answers I just let the imagination work through the impressive images and the narratives of this factory.
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04 Demolition as positive event
Would the factory future be the same if the demolition didn't happen at all?
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Top: Amusement factory | Bottom: Boiler room dj set
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04 Demolition as positive event
What if the demolition didn't stop and included the whole site?
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Top: Tabula rasa drosscape|Bottom: Vertical living factory
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04 Demolition as positive event
Demolition as revelatory act
What is the new spatial quality of the area now that almost the entirety of the factory is gone?
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The event of the demolition can be observed under the point of view of its spatial qualities. Once, when the factory was still operative, the core of the operations was a dense mass of wide and tall buildings that intersected each other, and crossed in all directions by ventilation pipes, cooling units, water tanks and monumental silos. Of course this huge complex wasn't always that dense and intricate, but it was the results of years and years of renovations and changes in favour of an always modern productive process. But what the demolition brought is a total switch in the spatial experience that now can be lived on the site. The sugar warehouse is now directly facing both the chimney and the canal and is now playing a main role in the surrounding landscape, as a unique lone building, but at the same time exposing its (once) internal walls to the outside, "like a lizard that just got its tail ripped apart". As a conclusion, this incomplete demolition can be considered as a revelatory event rather than just a violent destruction process.
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
The demolition finally reveals the hidden volumes and unveils new spatial qualities
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04 Demolition as positive event
Demolition as the game changer for the future of the Wolkenfabriek, the clearance act that allows new social affordances for the post-industrial subculture growing on the site.
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
"The city’s scars are stimuli for the mind. They raise questions, about memories and imaginations of a foregone past, and of potential futures."
Mark Minkjan, The poetry of decay, in FailedArchitecture.com, 12 April 2013 on https://www.failedarchitecture.com
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De Wolkenfabriek, Lustrum Albertus Magnus, June 2017, in De Suiker Events - Portfolio, https://desuikerevents.nl/portfolio
05Morphology Following traces: studies
05 Following traces: Morphology studies
1913-1914
Studies on the morpho-typology of the factory core: first development phase
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1915-1917
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
1921-1922
1924-1957
Studies on the morpho-typology of the factory core: second development phase
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05 Following traces: Morphology studies
1958-1962
1967-1977
Studies on the morpho-typology of the factory core: third and final development phase
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
2018
(2030?)
?
?
?
?
?
Studies on the morpho-typology of the factory core: overlapping of latest factory layout with the present condition (left) and with the future city plans (right)
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05 Following traces: Morphology studies
?
Conclusion on morphology studies: the new placemaking strategy envisions a plot that lies on the edge of the former factory boundaries, both ignoring the site specificity and threatening the presence of the present subcultures.
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Preliminary action: removal of the instrusive plot from the Cityplot masterplan, with clearance of the former factory footprint
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05 Following traces: Morphology studies
RESEARCH QUESTION
Is it possible to rethink the surroundings of the Wolkenfabriek in such a way that the historical aspect as well as the socio-cultural present situation are both addressed, preserved and synthesized in a new design?
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Overlapping narratives: the former 1915 boiler room hosting the kids wood workshop Timmerdorp
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05 Following traces: Morphology studies
fdifferent layout sketches for the area
First forms of free wheeling through the factory morphology
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fdifferent layout sketches for the area
fdifferent layout sketches for the area
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06 Back to the future: Design process
06| Setting the perimeter After testing the site's morphology in different ways and layouts, the trigger for a site specific intervention comes from the discovery of the map immortalizing the first ever factory layout, dating back 1915. This layout has special features thanks to its position in the context and the direct vicinity to the two sites that are still standing nowadays. In this layout, the chimney is still a single standing element and the other buidlings are laying down in such a way that a certain routing is guaranteed. With the addition of this particular buildings layout, we go back in time and bring the site's monuments back in time, freezing the context into its first ever spatial distribution.
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First ever factory layout, 1915 Washing room (A), front building (B, also called the main building), sugar house (C), sugar warehouse (D), engine room (E), boiler room (F), building with lime ovens (G), lime mixers (H), laboratory (I), local for pumps (k), privates (L) and chimney (M)
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Conceptual view of the project area
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Abstraction and sub-division in four different groups of spaces
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Architectural gesture #1
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Architectural gesture #2
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Architectural gesture #3
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Architectural gesture #4
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06 Back to the future: Design process
Iometric view of the overall structure
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Hardcore heritage and After Image As a result of this first architectural transformations, volumes and spatial qualities of the past have been brought back on the site in an evocative and symbolic way, the same way that another project is being carried out in the same site. Starting from the foundation plan of one of the big silos that were characterizing the site in its past, RAAAF studio came up with After Image, the project for a public space just next to the Wolkenfabriek, where they unveil a forest of pillars that lies thirty feet underground, by diggind out the earth covering the poles foundation of the big silo. In the same way, these architectural gestures help to create an evocative and ideologically strong design that, thanks to the fact that the foundation still lies under the whole factory footprint, doesn't impact on the site in an instrusive way but, by reusing the existing foundation it holds both a physical and ideological bond with the site itself.
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Page 93, 94: After Image, longitudinal section and atmopshere in the pillars' forest.
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Foundation plan: the new designed structure stands on the existing foundation, minimizing costs and impact on site
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Design additives: curtains
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In order to allow a high degree of flexibility of uses, the open structure is being characterized in the different floors by the addition of different typologies of curtains, each holding specific qualities: - (1) steel mesh wires curtain, framing the void that outlines the way up to the last levels; - (2) a yellow PVC curtain mounted on a looping railing and cut out of two circles; - (3) a system of three curtain in red cloth that can be arranged to facilitate multiple events - (4) two systems featuring PVC blue curtains that can open up to the site or close in themselves - (5) one black fiberglass curtain that covers two levels and blocks light from the sides.
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06 Back to the future: Design process
Design additives: white steel mesh and retractible textile roof
Steel mesh reference: Sou Fujimoto, Naoshima Pavilion, Kagawa, Japan. Picture by Jin Fukuda in https://worldarchitecture.org/architecture-news/cgzpp/sou_fujimoto_s_naoshima_pavilion_explores_different_spatial_ experiences_with_its_irregular_topography.html
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Retractable folding textile root reference: HVB Forum, Munich, Germany by Guido Canali and Gilberto Botti with textile v , in http://www.architectmagazine.com/project-gallery/hvb-forum
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Intervention plan
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From top to bottom: firstm second and third floor plan
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07 Multimodality and behaviors
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Multimodality and behaviors
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07 Multimodality and behaviors
07| Architectural behaviorology for multimodality According to the Japanese architectural firm Atelier Bow-Wow the term Architectural Behaviorology indicates the combination of the different behaviors of users, climate and the building that need to be addressed with a multi-layered design. Starting from this concept, the project focuses on the duality between ON and OFF season: during the ON season the site is filled with visitors from all around, either locals or foreign tourists, while in the OFF season the site is still functioning, used by locals in a more informal way, reaching a multi-modality of uses thanks to the different design elements that characterize the project.
Atelier Bow-Wow, Behaviorology.
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This duality in the site use is reflected also in the historical narrative, dating back to the seasonal production periods of the sugar campaigns, when the site was gathering all people for the sugar beets collection and then kept functioning on a tight rythm during the industrial production season.
Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen
Atelier Bow Wow, Miyashita Park, Tokyo, Japan. Axonometric view displaying the behaviours of the users in the park
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On Season: The site is fully crowded with people for a music, culture, arts festival
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Off Season: Locals appropriate of the space and use it for their everyday needs
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On Season: Music festival modus, with big concert area, tiny concert square, rooftop bar and suspended balcony dancefloor
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Off Season: Neighbourhood festival with market, movie screenings and art exhibitions
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Different behaviors and haptic experiences in display between On and Off season.
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Views from the new project towards the neighbouring context: [Left] The ramps that gently climb up the metaphorical void, opening views on the new development housing neighbourhood [Right] "Floating" terrace that open the view to the Wolkenfabriek and beyond
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07 Multimodality and behaviors
Off season [Left] Informal uses: grinding at the Wolkenfabriek [Right] Events: Apero after the sunset
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Francesco Mino | Back to the future at the old Sugar Union - Groningen On season: [Left] Tiny concert in the square [Right] Sunbathing on the terrace
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On season: [Left] Festival vibes [Right] Jazz duo in the moonlight
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07 Multimodality and behaviors
Final considerations The real message that this project tries to send is that it doesn't matter how much of a place or a building is taken away, its morpho-typologic history will always be present and can always be brought up back again, making sure that a true understanding of the place and its on-going dynamics is achieved. In this way even the smallest intervention can have a powerful meaning in the discourse of heritage preservation and historical conservation. In the specific case of Groningen, this was made possible by replacing a plot of the city placemaking plan with a building that has a low impact on the surroundings thanks to the reuse of the existing foundations, that materializes the invisible properties of the erased past by creating a new world on the factory fooprint, whose properties are the exact counterpart of the only two elements laying on the site. Ephemeral and completely open on all views on the surrounding context, the project is deeply related to the chimney and the sugar warehouse, framing them in the landscape and being their back cloth scenography. In the end it is the home for the social affordances for all the users of the area.
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08
Bibliography
08 Bibliography
Bibliography
Rietveld R., Rietveld E., Zoeteman M., Mackic A., editors. (eds.) . Vacancy Studies: Experiments & Strategic Interventions in Architecture, nai010 Publishers, 2014, Rotterdam Atelier Bow-Wow, Behaviorology, Random House Incorporated, 2010, Tokyo Dillon B., Ruins, issue 18 in Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art, MIT Press, 2011, Cambridge MA
Web references RAAAF website: https://raaaf.nl Minkjan M., The Poetry of Decay, in Failed Architecture: https://failedarchitecture.com/the-poetry-of-decay/ Schubert H., Tweede Natuur, Master Thesis at Amsterdam Bouwkunst Academie, via Issuu: https://issuu.com/bouwkunst/docs/hannah_schubertmaster_of_landscape DeSilvey C., Edensor T., Reckoning with ruins, research volume 37, issue 4, Sage Publications Ltd., 2012, London, pp. 465-485 https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512462271 Rietveld E., Kiverstein J., A rich landscape of affordances. Issue 36 of Ecological Psychology Journal, Taylor and Francis Online, 2014, pp. 325–352 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/104074 13.2014.958035?scroll=top&needAccess=true
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I would like to thank my parents for their unconditioned support and
love during all of these years, without you I would never be where I am today, I love you.
Special thanks and gratitude go to my academic promotor Marc
Dujardin, , for always reminding me to think outside of the box and for being the mentor that everyone should have .
Thanks to my second family in Seghersplein, for these last six months, and hopefully for many more yet to come.