Courses

Topic 16. Heritage of Industrial Enterprise in the Postindustrial Period

Read: Sklokina, Iryna. Jam Factory (Lviv, Ukraine). Observatory Case of the OpenHeritage Project. Lviv, 2019. 32 p.

The paper tells a story of turning a building complex of a former vegetable processing unit into an art center, called “Jam Factory Art Center.” The site is located in the historic industrial district of Lviv called Pidzamche. In 2015, the Harald Binder Cultural Enterprise purchased the building and started the revitalization project. The case reveals the difficulties during the process of getting all necessary permissions from the state departments. It also demonstrates difficulties in finding a balance between conserving industrial heritage and adapting the building to serve as a public space and a host of creative industries. The paper puts the case of adaptive heritage reuse in a broader social, legislative, political, economic, and cultural context. Overall, it demonstrates how a dilapidated building or abandoned industrial sites can be converted from a burden into a social and economic resource.

Questions for preparation:

1. How does adaptive re-use contribute to the conservation of tangible and intangible industrial heritage?
2. The reuse of buildings brings many challenges: what is the acceptable level of change? What kind of new functions is acceptable for historical buildings? How did the Jam Factory decision-makers address these challenges?
3. How can one find a balance between the principles of heritage preservation and the needs of the community? Who should be involved in the decision-making process? How did the Jam Factory project managers engage the local communities?
4. What is the financial model of the project? Can this model be characterized as financially sustainable?
5. Can you suggest some other examples when temporary reuse helped to preserve industrial built heritage?

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