‘Insights on innerscapes in the change of use of post-industrial sites into public facilities: the case studies of C-Mine in Genk and the Maritime Museum in Barcelona’

Industrial buildings are usually designed as large-size projects to accommodate extensive spaces for production. During the last decades, parallel to displacing urban manufacturing processes, many urban development policies focused on the conversion of post-industrial properties and incorporating new uses. To optimize the program’s integration and spatial cohesion within its context, these recent changes demand new models of connectivity and socio-spatial interaction. Because of this, conflicts arise when these existing industrial structures are then adapted for collective purposes, demanding new public-private relationships. In the event these spaces change their use, most often the proportions of the spaces within the project need to change, as for example also small spaces need to be added to the spatial configuration or large spaces need to be sectorised through new programme. As a result, the level of domesticity of these large interior spaces can change in a drastic way. This itself gives rise to other spaces and needs, such as those related to the new concept of innerscape, creating spaces within spaces. The focus of this paper is to define innerscape in the framework of this change of use, while studying the necessity of carefully considering in-between spaces and the notion of collective spaces in relation to spatial bigness. The methodology is based on reviewing theoretical notions embedded in different projects, and on referring and updating H. Herzberger and A. van Eyck’ theories among others. Furthermore, we will also graphically analyse two relevant cases in different contexts: C-Mine in Genk, Belgium and Maritime Museum in Barcelona, Spain. We aim to detect architectonical strategies that define a sustainable transformation processes and simultaneously shape the discourse about innerscape as a necessity to guarantee an overall spatial experience at a human scale.

Publication year:2018