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Designed by Peter Behrens and Karl Bernhard; completed 1910

Berlin, Germany

Largely misunderstood by the historians of the Modern movement who celebrated it as the first major work of frank industrial architecture endowed with exceptional “functional directness,” the AEG Turbine Factory—designed by Peter Behrens and Karl Bernhard and completed 1910—remains the most admired and most influential of Behrens’s works.

 

Designed between 1908 and 1909 for the Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesesells (AEG)—a German electrical concern founded by Emil Rathenau in 1883—the factory was placed strategically at the southern edge of the factory complex along Huttenstrasse and Berlichingenstrasse, facing Berlin and the world as a show front of the prosperous industrial magnate. Complying with such expectations and following his own ideological stance, Behrens built a magnificent iron and glass hybrid of two eminently classical temple traditions—the Greek and the Egyptian—meant to glorify industrial might.

 

In accepting the challenge of designing his first industrial building, Behrens’s concern was not to recast all of architecture in terms of industry and the machine, as was most often the case with the next generation of modern architects. Rather, “his concern was…levating so dominant a societal force as the factory to the level of established cultural standard” (see Anderson, 1977).

 

As an adept of the Austrian art historian and critic Alois Riegel’s theory of Kunstwollen (literally, “artistic will” or the evolutionary force of style) and of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s aesthetic historicism, exemplified in the concept of the Zeitgeist, Behrens applied in the design of the Turbine Factory the principles that he had evolved as the leader of the Darmstadt artists’ colony after 1901. In direct opposition to Gottfried Semper’s “materialism,” central to Behrens’s approach was belief in the force of the artist, and art, to transform brute everyday life into a dignified existence. Akin to the carbon transformed under extreme conditions into a praised diamond, everyday life—and in this case raw industry, the factory, and the machine—could be transformed under the artist’s  into an entity of high culture. Such an ideological position, applied to industry, spread into a number of aesthetic and symbolic themes clearly reflected in the Turbine Factory. Far from depending on primary concerns for material, technical, and functional purposes, the factory was, in Behrens’s mind, the result of a specific concretization of selected industrial features, filtered through the artist’s transcendental will to form. The result was a vast crystal symbolizing the victory of art over the banality of life in an emerging machine society. If the industrial fact at hand could not be ignored, it was not the role of the artist to succumb to it helplessly, either. It is largely because of this position that Behrens’s first industrial building was unprecedented in industrial architecture and design.

 

In aesthetic terms, the central conflict that Behrens faced in the design of the Turbine Factory was the tectonic character of the ferro-vitreous wide span offered by his engineer, Karl Bernhard, as the necessary solution for mastering the vastness of the structure and Behrens’s adherence to the concept of Stereotomie since his 1905 pavilions at the Oldenburg Northwest German Art Exhibition. The challenge was, therefore, to find a solution that would be flexible enough to accommodate the dictates of a particular technology—including the use of given industrial materials—while preserving architecture as the eminent symbol of established cultural values of a modern capitalist state. The culmination of this synthetic process was expressed in the factory’s triumphal templelike facade with its crystalline central window of staggering dimensions that only advanced technology could have brought about.

 

With his limited knowledge of any kind of building technology, Behrens had to rely on the support of an engineer for such a vast and technically complex building. The shifting priorities between ideology and technology in the conception of the building necessarily resulted in a series of ambiguities and concealments that Behrens provoked rather than avoided in a strained collaboration with Bernhard.

 

The structural makeup of the factory consists of an asymmetrical three-hinged arch reinforced by a transversal tie-rod. The longer half of the arch springs vertically up to the second hinge and then breaks in three facets before reaching the third hinge at the apex of the arch. In properly structural terms, there was no reason for breaking the second arm into segments. The decision was a willful intervention in the engineer’s work by Behrens the artist. Historically, a variety of reasons have been advanced as an explanation for such a move. Whereas Kenneth Frampton, for example, refers to a rather improbable desire to create the shape of a farmer’s barn with its typical polygonal gable, Reyner Banham offers a technological explanation: the need for clearance for the huge internal traveling crane—even though the section shows that the tying rods forced the crane to run much lower.

 

The chiseled gable was, in fact, the result of two specific exigencies of Behrens’s Kunstwollen: the urge for enforced Stereotomie and the evocation of Zeichen (sign), the crystalline symbol of life as art. Indeed, the comparison between Behrens’s earlier representation of the priestess of Darmstadt carrying the redemptive crystal high above her head, as well as the majestic front of the temple-factory, reinforces the idea of a crystalshaped gable springing high above the ground in delicate balance over the equally crystalline abstracted robe of a priestess.

 

Furthermore, using the given technology for more ambitious aims, Behrens concealed the fact that the actual structural system of the factory was made up of a series of hinged arches by capping the building with a voluminous cornice cutting the arch at the top of its vertical member. In so doing, Behrens created the visual impression of a trabeated system in which the vertical members of the arches represented so many columns of a classical temple. By the same token, the somewhat inwardly inclined glazed surfaces between the structural members of the side elevation, along with the blown-up roofline and the massive concrete nonbearing “corner stones” wrapping around a streamlined trapezoidal silhouette, created a convincing case of a perfectly “stereotomic” volume inflated with space. Thus undermining the iron framing, Behrens prevented the construction from dematerializing into a dispersed tectonic grid—as would have been the case with the Dutert-Contamin Gallerie des Machines—and clearly subverted any engineering directness. The formulation of a symbolic structure, however, did not preclude Behrens from addressing forcefully the nature and purpose of the building.

 

Still remaining in the realm of powerful symbolism, Behrens allowed the function of the building to express itself allegorically not only through the exclusive use of industrial materials on a large scale but also by evoking forcefully the dominant societal role of the machine in the most memorable details of the building, such as the giant base hinges of the arches set on high concrete pedestals. As has been noted, what makes the significance and the importance of the AEG Turbine Factory, aside from actual achievement, “is that Behrens understood that the established cultural standards must be transformed in the process of assimilating modern industry.”

 

 

Compared with the rest of the continent, the countries of North Africa form an immediately recognizable region and appear as a more cohesive bloc than do their neighbors south of the Sahara Desert. They derive their apparent cohesion from a common language (Arabic), a common religion (Islam), and a shared cultural identity as heirs of the Ottoman Empire. Like their sub-Saharan neighbors, all shared the historical experience of European colonialism and of the struggle for independence. Unlike their sub-Saharan neighbors, however, pan-Arabism has been a more powerful force than African unity.

 

On closer examination, all the countries of North Africa have developed their own distinctive cultural identity and historic perception of themselves and their role in the world. Egypt, with its overpowering legacy of its Pharaonic past and its small but influential Coptic Christian minority, has always perceived itself as distinctively different from the Maghreb (the countries to the west) and more naturally internationalist in outlook. Morocco, which was the only country in North Africa that did not suffer the experience of Ottoman rule, prided itself on the purity of its national culture and the dignity of its sultanate.

 

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was collapsing all around the Mediterranean: Its final death throes came after it allied itself with the German and AustroHungarian Empires at the beginning of World War I. Egypt had effectively become a protectorate of Britain in 1882, to the intense annoyance of France, which had enjoyed most-favorednation status in Egypt since Napoleon’s short-lived expedition to Egypt in 1799–1801. Algeria (or at least the coastal strip) became a French colony in 1830, to which the mountainous hinterland and the desert interior were added in 1848, and by 1900 it was effectively part of metropolitan France. Tunisia, as a consequence of the dey of Tunis’s indebtedness to French bankers, was annexed by France in 1881. The Sudan, over which vast territory British troops had campaigned sporadically for 20 years, was absorbed into the British Empire in 1899 as an Anglo-Egyptian condominium. Libya was invaded by Italy and incorporated into the infant Italian Empire in 1912; in the same year, Morocco became a protectorate of France by treaty, proudly safeguarding its cultural independence as the brightest jewel in the French imperial crown.

 

The European colonial experience was, with the exception of Algeria, short-lived and, again with the exception of Algeria, relatively bloodless. Egypt gained its independence in 1922 under the Albanian dynasty, whose founder, Mohammed Ali, had seized power from the Ottomans and imposed himself as khedive on the long-suffering Egyptian people in 1805, shortly after Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt. Effective independence was not really secured until the revolution under General Neguib and until Colonel Nasser overthrew King Farouk and seized power in 1952. With the exception of Algeria, all other North African states gained their independence in the 1950s: Algeria, after a long, bloody civil war between the European settlers (10 percent of the population) and the indigenous Africans, finally followed suit in 1962. (A couple of insignificant Spanish enclaves on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco still owe allegiance to Europe.)

 

For the first half of the 20th century, the architectural and urban development of North Africa was European directed and European driven. At the beginning of the century, European imperialism was at its apogee, and between 1900 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, with a few significant exceptions, colonial governments, architects, and developers aimed to recreate Europe in Africa. By 1900 regionalism and vernacular revivalism had become respectable, even fashionable, architectural styles in Europe in a period when eclecticism reigned.

 

Physical manifestations of imperialistic rule, such as the Union Jack-inspired town plan of the new capital of the Sudan (Khartoum) and the Hausmannesque boulevards imposed on the organic city plan of Algiers were characteristic of this period but by no means were universal. Equally popular were the garden suburb, garden city developments that were fashionable in Europe: the Garden Suburb along the Nile in Cairo, the more ambitious New Town of Heliopolis on the desert fringe of the same city, and the Parc d’Hydra and the hilly suburbs of El Biar in Algiers were laid out in European lines for a mainly European settler population.

 

(Arabism) and the Hispano-Mauresque Revival were eagerly adopted by French architects in Algeria, as the Saracenic, Coptic, and even Pharaonic styles were adopted by the polyglot architects practicing in Egypt.

 

Representative buildings of the pre-World War I period, when European imperialism reigned supreme, were the Post Office (1890–1900, Algiers) by Tondoir and Voinot, the Galerie Algerienne (1902, Algiers) by Voinot, and the Prefecture (1904, Algiers) and the Hotel St. Georges (1910; now the Hotel El Djezair, Algiers), all in a highly decorative and stylized part Ottoman, part Hispano-Mauresque style inspired by the wealth of handsome 18th-century Ottoman buildings in the city. Also representative, in Cairo, are the eclectically classicist Egyptian Museum (1900), the vernacular revivalist Coptic Museum (1910), and the Beaux-Artian, symmetrically planned buildings of the Cairo University (founded as Fuad University in 1908); in Khartoum, the neo-Byzantine Anglican All Saints’ Cathedral (1909–12) by Robert Weir Schulz and the late Ottoman-style Gordon Memorial College (c. 1905; now the University of Khartoum) by Fabricius Bey and Gorringe are representative.

 

Lieutenant Gorringe was a British army officer serving with the Royal Engineers; Fabricius Bey was architect to the khedive in Cairo and of southern European (probably Maltese) origin. Under the autocratic rule of Lord Cromer, British consul-general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907, whose job title concealed the virtually absolute power he wielded, Cairo and Alexandria were boom cities, and architects and engineers flocked to Egypt from all over Europe. The indigenous Egyptian elite—the educated middle classes who had enjoyed a privileged position in society under the Francophile rule of Khedive Ismail before the British invasion of Egypt in 1882—were increasingly sidelined under Cromer’s administration and agitated for a national university and for a school of fine arts under Egyptian control. The foundation of the École des Beaux-Arts in 1906 and of Fuad University in 1908 were the results of their efforts. By 1920 both institutions (now the University of Helwan at Zamalek and Cairo University, respectively) had schools of architecture. Not until the 1920s, therefore, were indigenous Egyptians able to study architecture in their own country. The few Egyptian architects who were in practice in the early decades of the century had studied abroad at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris or at Constantinople. A similar situation prevailed throughout North Africa: not until the École Polytechnique d’Architecture et Urbanisme (EPAU) was founded in Algiers after World War II were there any schools of architecture in North Africa outside Egypt. Inevitably, it was well into the second half of the century before indigenous African architects were able to make a major contribution to the physical development of their homelands.

 

If the period before World War I was the high point of European imperialism, the period between the world wars was the decline of empire; however, the architectural and urban development of North Africa was still almost entirely European driven. Morocco, under its first French resident-general, Hubert Lyautey (1912–25), pursued a clear-sighted policy of state intervention in urban development (as did Libya) after Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922 and sought to revive the splendors of Rome’s imperial past in Africa.

 

Marshal Lyautey sought conscientiously to conserve what remained of the Moroccan architectural heritage—Hispano-Mauresque, Arab, and Berber. He stated, “While in other parts of North Africa we only found social debris, here…we have found a constituted empire, and with it a beautiful and great civilization…. A remarkable Morocco can be created, that will remain Moroccan and Islamic” (quoted in Betts, 1978). However, he was not averse to contemporary architectural developments: Auguste and Gustave Perret designed and built the Dock Installations and Warehouses (1915) in Casablanca, but the cities of Casablanca and Rabat were replanned on grandiloquent lines and had public buildings that were both neoclassical and embellished with Hispano-Mauresque decoration, as in the Law Courts (1915) in Casablanca by J.Marrast and the Post Office (c.1920) in Rabat by J.Laforgue.

 

The Italian administration showed no such sensitivity in Libya, except toward the imperial Roman sites. Tripoli was replanned as the colonial capital, and the new town was created on provincial Italian lines, designed by the architects A.Novello and O.Cabiatti; in building during the 1920s and 1930s, it was a prototype of Giovanni Pellegrini’s Manifesto dell’ architettura coloniale (1936).

 

No such high-mindedness drove the architectural development of the other North African countries. Where appropriate, arabisance prevailed, as in the Waqf Ministry Building (1925) by Mahmould Fahmy Pasha and the Bank Misr (1927) by A. Laseiac in Cairo; in general, however, North Africa followed European precedents: a pared-down Neoclassicism in the 1920s with some commercial Art Deco in the downtown streets of major cities, a tentative adoption of modernism, and the International Style in the 1930s. Algeria generally set the pace: the Palais du Gouvernement General (1930; now the Palace of Government) designed by M.J.Guiauchain with A. and G.Perret, the Maison des Etudiants (1933) by C.Montaland, and the Town Hall (1935) by L.Claro, all in Algiers, are no less advanced than are their contemporaries in Europe. In addition, Algiers was the subject of Le Corbusier’s most sustained urban-planning initiatives. Between 1933 and 1942, he published no fewer than three major plans for the city; formal concepts first proposed for Algiers were eventually realized elsewhere (such as the Ministry of Education building in Rio de Janeiro and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris).

 

The struggle for independence and the consolidation of power after achieving it preoccupied the governments of all North African countries during the first decade and a half after the end of World War II (part of which was fought over North African terrain), and the series of Arab-Israeli wars, culminating in the disastrous war of 1973 and the devastation of the Suez Canal Zone, deprived the region of the economic security and political stability that is a prerequisite for sound and sustained physical development. In contrast, the final quarter of the century saw massive investment in building and a transformation of the built environment throughout the region (with the exception of Sudan, where a civil war has been waging for 20 years).

 

The provision of adequate housing for the mass of the people has been a major priority of all governments in the region since independence. The rehousing of immigrant squatters on the outskirts of all major cities, the protection of the limited areas of fertile agricultural land from population invasion, the reconstruction of the devastated Suez Canal cities, and the creation of new towns to accommodate the overflow of population from the major cities have become major areas of architectural activity. Hassan Fathy was one of the first North African architects to engage seriously with the problems of popular housing: his modest book Architecture for the Poor, which describes his attempt to create a humane environment in the resettlement village of New Gourna on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes in Upper Egypt, has been acclaimed worldwide and has transformed architects’ perceptions of their social responsibility as housing providers. Hassan Fathy was also one of the pioneers, along with his contemporary Ramses Wissa Wassef, in the revival of traditional materials, constructional systems, and craft skills. The bulk of his practice, however, was the design of individual houses and villas for private clients. Abdel Wahid El Wakil is an accomplished younger Egyptian architect designing in a similar manner.

 

Inevitably, however, given the enormous shortfall in housing provision, the emphasis in most state-funded social housing schemes has been on quantity rather than quality, and four-, five-, or six-story walk-up blocks of apartments have become the norm. Some architects have handled such assignments well (for example, Elie Azagury’s apartment blocks in Rabat and Casablanca [1960s] or Candilis, Josic, Woods and Pons’s residential estate Sidi-bel-Abbes in Oran, Algeria [1950s]), but the scale of most state housing schemes necessitates the formation of large international multidisciplinary teams of architects and engineers, as in the huge new cities in the desert hinterland of Cairo established by the Egyptian Ministry of Reconstruction, New Communities, and Land Reclamation in the 1980s: Sadat City, 10th Ramadan City, and 6th October City.

 

Also in the state sector, major building programs for education and health care have sought to remedy the neglect of these areas by the colonial authorities and to demonstrate governments’ commitment to the provision of education and health care for all. Provincial universities and regional hospitals are perceived as flagships of government policy, and architects of international reputation are commissioned for major projects (such as James Cubitt and Partners for the University of Garyounis, Benghazi, Libya; Oscar Niemeyer for the University of Constantine, Algeria; and Charles Boccara for the 1982 Regional Hospital, Marrakesh, Morocco).

 

Tourism has generated large downtown hotels and holiday resorts. Good examples of the latter include work by architects A.Faraoui and P.de Mazieres in Morocco, Fernand Pouillon in Algeria, and Serge Santelli in Tunisia. In addition, the demands of tourism undoubtedly generated several major historic and archaeological conservation projects, the most spectacular being the UNESCO-sponsored re-erection of the temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel on an elevated site overlooking Lake Nasser in Upper Egypt.

 

A major factor that was instrumental in the evident raising of standards of architectural service and of the quality of architectural design in the last 20 years of the century was the institution of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA). Conservation of the environment, community involvement in the design decision-making process, and the appropriateness as well as the quality of the executed design are among the criteria for selecting buildings for an award. The patronage of the Aga Khan through this award scheme has both publicized and promoted, as models for other architects to emulate, several excellent buildings and conservation schemes in North Africa, among them the Arts Center at Harrania near Giza in Egypt by Wissa Wassef, the revitalization of the Hafsia quarter of the Medina in Tunis, and the Dar Lamane Housing Community in Casablanca, Morocco.

 

Finally, two outstanding buildings that have become icons of their countries’ commitment to excellence in architecture and the arts are the new Cairo Opera House and Cultural Center (1987–92) on Gezira Island by the Japanese consortium Nikkei Sekkai Planners Architects and Engineers and the Great Mosque (1986–93) in Casablanca, commissioned by King Hassan II from the French architect Marcel Pinseau. By way of postscript, with about 20 schools of architecture in the region at the turn of the millennium, the 21st century can expect a much higher proportion of buildings in North Africa to be designed by indigenous architects than was true in the 20th century. ANTHONY D.C.HYLAND.

 

 

Buildings often outlive their function; however, their inherent durability often gives the building another life. There is a long tradition of buildings being adapted to suit new functions. Roman basilicas were converted to serve as worship spaces for the nascent Christian church. In medieval times, Roman fortifications were resurrected to form part of the fabric of the mercantile cities. It was not until the advent of ready demolition and the mechanization of the building process during the Industrial Revolution that the practice of adapting old buildings to new uses became less the norm.

 

Following World War II, the pace of change in urban form, precipitated by technological advances and social upheavals, quickened. As buildings became obsolete and shifting land values directed economic development away from central cities, particularly in North America, large-scale demolition became commonplace. In some cases, well-built warehouses and industrial structures stood on land that had become more valuable for other commercial and office uses, further accelerating demolition. Housing that stood in the pathway of proposed highways was also torn down. Urban renewal stopped short of its promise, and vacant buildings quickly became vacant land. To combat these failures, preservation strategies were developed that employed the existing built environment to suit new uses.

 

There are four distinct building types in which adaptive re-use of older structures can be seen. Public buildings, which includes large transportation facilities like train stations and civic buildings built in the 19th and 20th centuries being converted to new public and private uses. Industrial buildings, with their large clear structural spans and, typically, large expanses of windows or skylight, lend themselves particularly well to housing an enormous variety of new use groups. Private buildings, like large houses, can serve multiple functions because of the inherent flexibility of the prototype. Finally, commercial buildings, the structures that are so emblematic of the advances in architectural technology in the 20th century, are being recycled with different uses, presenting unique preservation problems, as architects must address issues related to preserving buildings that employed contemporary technology.

 

The U.S. government owns many magnificent historic structures and has taken the lead in finding new uses for its stock of buildings, serving as an example for private sector development. In Washington, D.C., the Pension Building, an imposing brick edifice, was constructed shortly after the Civil War to provide office space for agencies distributing pensions to war veterans and their families. Its primary distinctive feature is a large, central skylit atrium space that allows the ring of offices access to natural light. The building stood dormant for many years until a major restoration project started in 1984 enabled the National Building Museum to occupy the lower floors of the building, with the bulk of the building retained for government offices. The soaring splendor of the building’s interior serves as an excellent advertisement of its function as a museum for the built environment.

 

Also in Washington, D.C., is the Old Post Office Building, another atrium building. Completed in 1899, the neoRomanesque building was almost demolished in the early 1970s. Fortunately, as a result of the dedicated efforts of local preservationists and the daunting cost of demolishing such a huge structure, the building was renovated in 1978. The three lower levels of the building, including the atrium, were converted to restaurants and retail, with the perimeter of the building on the upper level retained as office space.

 

One of the most well-known re-uses of a dormant train station is Gae Aulenti’s remaking of the Gare d’Orsay in Paris as the national museum of art and civilization. Originally opened for train traffic in 1900, both the building’s short platform lengths and changes in travel patterns lead to the abandonment of the station shortly after World War II. Reopened as a museum in 1986, the renovation makes use of the original attached hotel within the head house as exhibition space. Built within the volume of the train shed are smaller structures that house more intimate display space for sculpture. Despite the somewhat awkward intrusion of these galleries within the shed, the sense of the original great volume of the space is still preserved.

 

In the United States, the nation’s private railroad system developed a legacy of magnificent structures throughout the country. When train traffic declined following World War II, these buildings, centrally located in the downtowns of virtually every American city, sometimes were virtually abandoned or, worse, torn down in the case of McKim, Mead and White’s Pennsylvania Station in New York. Union Station in St. Louis (Theodore C.Link), built in 1894 and renovated and modified in the early 1980s, is a good example of an important building restored to a new life. The barrel-vaulted Grand Hall functions in much the same way as it was originally intended, now serving as a hotel lobby and entrance to a multiuse complex that includes a parking garage and a restaurant and retail center within the former train shed. The shed, the largest of its type ever built, is organized into “neighborhoods” to make the integration of the building’s multiple functions more coherent. When Union Station was renovated, the ornate and eclectic spaces within the head house were restored and glass was inserted into the vaulted train shed, flooding the interior with natural light.

 

Philadelphia, a large commuter train station built for the Reading Railroad in 1893 became redundant in 1984 when a subterranean tunnel was constructed below it, linking the area’s railways to a regional network. The beautiful steel and glassvaulted shed and Renaissance revival terra-cotta facade were empty for several years as several different alternatives were studied for a possible re-use. Critical to the success of the project was the maintenance of the historic food market below the train shed. The Pennsylvania Convention Center, built in 1992 (Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback and Association), incorporates the Reading Terminal into the new construction, maintaining both this vital piece of urban architecture and the market’s social importance in the city fabric. The head house serves as the ceremonial entrance for the convention center as well as a hotel. The train shed links the entrance from the principal street to the new large convention center that spans over two adjacent blocks.

 

The first International Style skyscraper, the PSFS Building (George Howe and William Lescaze), also in Philadelphia, was constructed in 1932 and served for many years as the headquarters for a local bank and office building. The building had retail on the ground floor with a cool modern banking hall on the second floor. After the bank went out of business in the early 1990s, the building stayed dormant for many years. Despite the high esteem held for the building locally, its relatively small floor plate did not attract the interest of businesses seeking space where the need for a large floor negated the desire to have ready access for natural light. Fortunately for the building, developers converted it to a hotel that uses the original banking hall as a multipurpose room. The former retail space now serves as a ground floor lobby and restaurant. The renovation is truly successful and the building retains its landmark neon sign, first lit to advertise the bank during the depths of the Depression.

 

Private buildings that have been adaptively re-used range in size and character from urban townhouses to urban palaces and castles set alone in the countryside. Museums are the most common new use for these buildings, often commemorating the house and holdings of the original occupant, as in the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, and the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina. Alternatively, the urban mansions are often converted to art museums, making use of the variety of spaces, both small and grand. Institutions like the CooperHewitt Museum in the former Carnegie mansion and the Frick Museum, both in New York City, serve as excellent display space for sculpture and paintings of all manners of style and size. In European countries like France, Spain, and Portugal, châteaus and castles have been converted into hotels. The Spanish government, in particular, has made the conversions of these castles into paradores for the latter half of the 20th century a matter of restoration policy.

 

Industrial buildings offer the most flexible typology for conversion. Mills and old factory structures are typically solidly built and often offer large expanses of natural light. Industrial buildings are generally anonymous buildings that, in the early part of the 20th century, were executed, if not by architects, then by highly competent vernacular builders. The prototype was a relatively recent phenomenon, and the pace of construction of these buildings accelerated during the time of great urban industrialization that coincided with a particularly eclectic period in architecture. Consequently, these buildings hold important social and physical significance in the urban context. The solid structures of these buildings may have contributed to their longterm survival; in some cases, the cost of demolition made their destruction not as viable an option, allowing time for alternative uses to be found.

 

Housing has been a popular choice to occupy these spaces. In the United States, the vanguard of the movement to convert former industrial properties to housing was the SoHo neighborhood in New York City. What started as flexible and inexpensive space serving as artist studios became coveted by those looking for expansive living quarters in neighborhoods that the artists had helped to become fashionable. Outside of New York, one of the better-known early preservation and conversion projects is Lowell Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, a mixed-use complex that helped to revitalize a portion of that moribund town.

 

These mill buildings are now also adapted to house the industries of the information age, the economic successor to the industrial revolution. Offices for computer technology firms, professional offices, and material and product showrooms in early 20th-century industrial loft buildings are such a commonplace sight in urban centers that it is often forgotten that those buildings were not originally constructed to house those functions. One particularly striking conversion is the Templeton Factory in Glasgow, Scotland, a former carpet mill built in a colorful and stylized Venetian Gothic style in 1898. The building complex was considered for demolition following its abandonment in 1978 as the result of changes in manufacturing technology. Preservation as a museum was rejected. In the early 1980s, a scheme was devised to convert the building into a hybrid research and business incubator center run by a local government development agency.

 

Winston Churchill’s aphorism—“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”—rings true. Preservationists seeking to link the past with the future take exception to this rule as we continue to shape our buildings, adapting them to new functions. Adaptive re-use as a tool used by architects, like the larger preservation movement, is a 20th-century phenomenon. The preservation of older buildings by giving them new uses also serves as part of an overall strategy for urban designers, city planners, and the consortium of public and private forces that view this approach as a tool of economic development. The supply of older and significant buildings is a source of sound urban ecological regeneration. As preservation practice evolves, the emphasis is shifting away from strict restoration to an attitude that frees the building from its former use.