Industrial Revival

Abstract

"At the beginning of this graduation year, there is a theme: Glaneurs, Glaneuse.
‘We are concerned with the city as a man- made landscape. The studio intends to reap and sow pieces of the city, to work with the existing and make use of its resources and potentials.’

In this case, gleaning is interpreted as an attitude to valorize residues, leftovers, what people would consider as non-space. By looking more deeply, diving into the site, and progressively identifying different layers of value (political, economic, architectural, etc), this research aims to discuss the image of industries in urban districts. Sometimes discrete, sometimes prominent, we often only remark their existence once they are gone.
‘There is a need to invent new processes and business models, more gradual and cooperative transformations working with existing building stock {…}.’

What Markus Schaefer (Hosoya, 2021) suggests in the book “Industrious city” is to better consider the value existing buildings instead of too simply decide to tear them down. He suggests elaborating new reconversion strategies, especially in urban environments which consider social, cultural, and societal parameters, more than only looking for financial profitability. Looking at former" "industrial campuses anchored in urban tissues, too often their reconversion has been oriented towards a tertiarization of city districts, somehow replacing a monofunctional industrial campus by another one.

In that respect, the case of Maastricht is particularly interesting to investigate. Considered for a long time as the first industrial city in the Netherlands, such slogan as become more a marketing strategy to develop tourism than a real representation of what the job market looks like. In December 2021, one of the biggest employers of the city, Sappi, a South-African paper company, announced leaving its historical situation in North Maastricht (Philippens, 2021). The departure of the paper mill, beyond the social disaster the loss of more than 600 jobs represents, also brings back on the table the status of industrial spaces in urban environments. It also offers an opportunity to draw a more inclusive strategy, as suggested by Markus Schaefer, for the redevelopment of this testimony of the industrial prosperity of Maastricht.

In that respect, this research aims to evaluate the potential interest in redeveloping productive activities in the Sappi campus and to elaborate a strategy for the reprogramming of the industrial site into a more inclusive productive urban environment."