Industrial Heritage Rethinking: Flexibility Design for Eco-Friendly Environments

Abstract

The conscious and efficient reuse of historic buildings has turned out to be a fundamental point of European programs for the management and conservation of the Architectural Heritage. In this context, the Industrial Heritage shows architectural and spatial peculiarities that facilitate its change of use and performance updating. In fact, the large internal spaces limit the issue of material compatibility to retrofit interventions on the casing. Often the interventions of reuse of the industrial heritage are solved with new architectures designed to be completely inserted inside the original envelope, remaining independent from it. This work presents the reuse project of an industrial building in the city of Sagunto, Spain, where the logic of the “box within the box” is re-proposed with the aim of spatial and constructive flexibility. The research shows a design methodology that allows the new functional modules inside the old building to be designed according to flexibility requirements and how flexibility design is a means for environmental sustainability in the occasion of disused industrial heritage reuse.