MOTIVATION AND METHODOLOGY
A bridge between cultural survey and architectural potential can be forged through a heterogenous and non-linear representation strategy, such as sketches, annotated drawings, inscriptions on video vignettes. Emergent visual epistemic strategies can create a design space able to generate and sustain solutions for the reanimation and transformation of vulnerable sites. Their aim is to reach beyond formal interventions that fail to address the cultural and social meanings of the collective memories held by the local population and embodied in post-communist industrial ruins.
Diaphanous and diagrammatic illustrations, sketches and annotated drawings form a link between artistic survey and architectural potential.
They serve as a visual representation of the wasteland heterotopias (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986, pp. 22-27) and as thought protocols that can be arranged to fit within a spectrum of potentials and fill the gap between chaos and plan. They encompass atmospheric surveys as well as a planning strategy as they emerge and become inextricable from another.
The use of drawings formed a habitus for design and subsequent design-driven research, following Pierre Bourdieu's argument that such practices take time to engage in, as they are "systems of durable, transposable dispositions, predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organise practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them" (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 53).
These representations can be interpreted as design proposals but also as systemic frameworks that facilitate further exploration and invention of more clearly defined design problems and their subsequent solutions.
For the purpose of this work, design-driven research is seen as a speculative and ludic heuristic process, which does not define dogmatic strategies but rather illustrates the process of searching for problems and finding solutions through the assemblage of methods that will be further elaborated on in this exposition. The non-linear and process-oriented focus of this methodology facilitates the transfer of tacit knowledge (Polanyi & Sen, 2009, p. 14) by allowing the observer, as well as the immersed author-researcher, to experience a plurality of ‘dirty concepts’ (Frichot, 2019, p.131) such as gaze, representation, analysis and design process, rather than compelling them to draw conclusions from a final product which might obscure relevant insights that were discarded along the way. As Helene Frichot argues, “Making concepts dirty requires putting them to use, accepting they will suffer from the wear and tear of the many jobs that need getting done” (Frichot, 2019, p. 96). This requires embracing methodological entanglements whose purpose is not “the investigation of design outcomes, but in the designing and making of the artefact itself” (Ballestrem & Gasperoni, 2023, p.23).
The artefact here is not a physical object, nor is it a ‘presentable’ design proposal postulating a solution to a set of related architectural problems, but instead, employing the parlance of Marcelo Stamm, a ‘situated artefact’ - an entire practice “understood by practitioners holistically as complex epistemic artefact” wherein “a subclass of these practices is also regarded as consisting of comprehensive cognitive tools” (Ballestrem & Gasperoni, 2023, p.147).
IN BRIEF
“The grief and pain associated with ruination is not only triggered by (the ruins’) decay but also by our inability to interact with them.” (Pușcă, 2016)
While intra-urban industrial ruins have been a focal point of architectural research and planning in Central and Western Europe over the past decades, Romania’s institutional culture has not yet aligned with contemporary discourse. “Until recently, heritage designation was mainly granted to sites pertaining to faith, the Romanian nation, and historic and prehistoric pasts. Industrial and mining heritage registered at the Ministry of Culture listed nothing production or labour-related” (Wicke, Christian et al., 2018, p. 126). This absence calls for a novel method of approaching local industrial heritage.
The initial aim of the research was to counteract the widely occurring process of post-communist cultural amnesia, and to reframe Romania’s particular relationship with its dilapidated industrial sites. The goal was to develop modes of action to protect intra-urban wastelands, enabling the local population’s engagement with their heritage so that these spaces, if maintained and occupied, could be extricated from predatory real estate development schemes.
The post-communist industrial ruin was viewed through the lens of the heterotopia (Foucault, 1970, p.10) to foster an understanding of the complex social, political and spatial entanglements it embodies and to facilitate a multi-layered methodological approach toward its potential for reanimation.
So far, the established methods that have been employed on Romanian derelict industrial sites have oscillated between invasive building practices or fetishisation masked as documentation through film or photography. From this, museumisation (Pușcă, 2010, p.10) was identified as a central strategy, yet the practice fails to evolve and progress over time, and can be overridden by financial imperatives. The missing link lay in a design-oriented approach able to mediate between representation and architectural intervention, which would catalyse a ‘shift of the gaze’ (Ranciere, 2005, p. 13-25) by showing modes of reflection and possibilities for further action.
Following these observations, non-linear and process-oriented methods, as well as the emergent methodology proposed by this research, aim to facilitate the transfer of tacit knowledge by allowing the viewer and reader, as well as the immersed author, to experience the ‘dirty concepts’ (Frichot, 2019, p. 34) of representation, analysis, and the design process, rather than compelling them to observe a final product which might obscure relevant insights discarded along the way.
Self-authored design case studies, all located in the Transylvania region of Romania, constitute the basis of the work: one case study could be observed as it functioned in real-time, while the other others served as speculative design sites and were used as experimental playgrounds for various design tools, as well as allegoric canvases for the representation of the disruption of traditional narratives about and approaches to industrial wastelands.
This research situates itself between auto-ethnographic study, atmospheric representation and tactical design, and operates in the voids that weave ruins and salvageable buildings into a non-binomial system of transitional objects (Pilia, 2019, p.71). Ultimately, the project illustrates a new methodology for engaging with neglected industrial heritage and presents design strategies for approaching and transforming endangered sites.
COMMUNIST INDUSTRIAL RUINS AS HETEROTOPIA
The post-communist industrial ruin site can be viewed as a Heterotopia (Foucault, 1970, p.10), particularly as a Heterotopia of crisis, as well as a Heterotopia of time and nature (Vidler et al., 2014, p.20).
Considering the "Communist Utopia" inscribed in the industrial site (Pușcă,2016, p.63) and the subsequent decay of both, these sites can, post-1989, be defined as ‘othered’, alienated from their initial function and symbolism and therefore deviant and estranged within the regulated urban fabric. Foucault describes the crisis heterotopia as "reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis" (Foucault, 1986, p.4) as he also points out that crisis heterotopias are constantly disappearing from society and being replaced by heterotopias of deviation.
The juxtaposition of spaces within the heterotopic space, which appear incompatible (Vidler et al., 2014), such as spaces of production, decayed buildings reclaimed by natural agents, totemic relics, functional structures and zones appropriated by humans and animals who exist at the peripheries, whether by temporary occupation, artistic exploration or other uses, requires a design-driven approach that can operate within continuously shifting and mutating environments.
In essence, these hetero-topologies are rarely tidy and linear, so the aforementioned cultural practices they are being approached with cannot follow linearly ordered paths and methods either.
The missing link between the immersive but ultimately content-sterile interaction of physically experiencing, documenting and analysing them and intervention-heavy architectural approaches can be found in design-driven representation and spatial practices.
Design can be a vector for translating the aestheticising practices previously mentioned into community-viable action; in this case, however, design is to be understood as a dynamic process whose first act is represented by the inscription of intention, for instance, through drawings (Paans & Pasel, 2018, p.2) that capture and translate the heterotopic nature of the problem to be addressed.
Standard methods of approaching industrial wastelands from an architectural perspective oscillate between invasive architectural constructive practice or fetishisation masked as documentation by external agents, through film/photography (Pușcă, 2010, p. 244). In the midst of this spectrum, museumification is positioned – yet this practice is can be overridden by financial imperatives; for instance, the sites being deemed valuable as real estate assets and erased by speculative development.
