C O N T E X T 1 2 5 : J U LY 2 0 1 2 29 Conference report: Industrial heritage, Berlin A new spin on creative industry The symposium ‘Cities and Change and Challenge: industrial heritage sites between monument protection, urban development, creative industries and contemporary architecture’ was held at the Georg Simmel Centre for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, in April. It was part of a continuing research initiative aimed at exploring opportunities for economic development and heritage objectives to coincide. A distinctive feature of the presentations was the diversity of financial models that lay behind the developments, conditioned more by long-term viability – at whatever level of the market works best for individual sites – than on standardised models geared to maximising short-term gains. The advantages are self-evident: less volatile development markets; less risk of the paper value of derelict sites overtaking their re-use value (as at Battersea power station); and more scope for imaginative solutions. A common theme was the coincidence between the recycling of buildings and the agenda for sustainable development. As Jörg Haspel, a leading conservation architect and art historian, put it: ‘Why build new spaces when we have so much existing space?’ The multiple definitions that can be applied to creative industries were evident, including music and entertainment, artists and photographers, graphic designers and architects.These industries favour space over location. Redundant heritage sites can prove inspirational to their image and brand. Flexible management regimes have an important part to play in developing a dynamic economy. Examples cited in the presentations included the conversion of a former electricity generating station at SaintDenis, Paris, into the European cinematograph centre, combining the low-cost re-use of existing volumes with contemporary architecture. In the Stéphanoise area of the Massif Central, France, an emergent centre of design, a cluster approach has been adopted for complexes of similar size and typologies. At a factory site at Winterthur, in the Swiss canton of Zurich, the developer has provided transitional low-cost, startup spaces as a catalyst for fostering second-generation established businesses. Industrial complexes were both hosting and inspiring creative industries. The Leipzig Baumwollspinnerei (cotton mill), founded in 1884, was the largest spinning mill on the continent by 1909. Finally closed to cotton production in 1993, it remains largely unaltered from the principal period of its construction, 1884–1907. It is now a major arts complex. Perhaps the derelict mills of the Canalside conservation area in Burnley, not to mention surviving terraces of the defunct Pathfinder, could take some hints from Leipzig? Dennis Rodwell, architect-planner, consultant in cultural heritage and sustainable urban development The Baumwollspinnerei, Leipzig, pictured here in 1909, is now a major arts complex. Derelict mill buildings in the Canalside Conservation Area, Burnley
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