The Building As Casco
Transforming industrial heritage into live-work spaces that grow with its user over time
B. Roelse (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
T.P. Bennebroek – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Hilde Remøy – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
Housing needs shift, work patterns evolve, and yet architecture continues to design for a single moment in time; producing buildings that cannot always adapt when needs and wishes change.
This research asks: how can industrial heritage buildings be transformed through adaptable design into flexible living-working spaces that can evolve with their users over time?
A solid framework provides both structure and freedom. By separating the permanent support layer (structure, shafts, and floor system) from the adaptable infill that each occupant shapes independently, buildings can absorb change without demolition. This pace layering principle, introduced by Brand (1994), is well established in new construction. This research tests it in industrial heritage, where spatial generosity already exists: generous heights, large spans, and robust structure; qualities that flexible architecture must otherwise deliberately engineer.
Katoenveem, a monumental cotton warehouse in Rotterdam's Merwe-Vierhavens area, is the test case. The design delivers a bare casco with a secondary spatial grid, demountable partition walls, and prefabricated service modules. Users determine the rest: where walls go, how space divides between living and working, and how the unit changes over time. Flexibility is understood here as functional dynamics: the capacity to shift between working and living, to split or merge, and to hand the framework on to the next occupant without loss of spatial freedom.
This user agency is central. When people actively shape their own environment, they develop genuine attachment to it. That attachment strengthens community, encourages long-term occupancy, and ultimately extends the lifespan of the building itself.
This research also raises a question about the architect's role: should architecture determine everything in advance, or deliberately leave space for users to complete? And if the answer is the latter, the architect's responsibility does not end at delivery: it extends to ensuring that each successive generation of users inherits the same freedom as the first.