Case studies

Before they draw the final scheme, Bérubé sends the students out to learn from buildings that have already been through what the Stanfield is about to undergo. 'Every one of these projects made choices you will have to make,' she says. 'Some made them brilliantly, some made them badly, and most did a bit of both. Go and look, read what was written about them at the time, and ask the people who use them now whether they work. Then tell me what you would steal.' Each student takes one case, visits it or studies it in depth, and presents it to the others. This lesson collects their findings.

How to study a case

Bérubé gives the students a common framework so that the cases can be compared. For each project they record the building's original use, date and significance; the reason it fell out of use and how long it stood empty; the new use and who made it happen; the heritage approach, what was kept, what was changed and what was added; the technical problems and how they were solved; the funding; and the outcome, judged by how the building is used today, how the public receives it and what critics and heritage professionals have said. They also record what they could not find out, because published accounts of reuse projects tend to celebrate and rarely discuss what went wrong.

Union Station, Winnipeg

Wren studies the railway station at the foot of Broadway, a few blocks from the school. Built between 1908 and 1911 to designs by the New York firm of Warren and Wetmore, which also designed Grand Central Terminal, it is a four-storey Beaux-Arts terminal of Tyndall limestone with a domed rotunda at its centre, symmetrical wings and a passenger tunnel beneath its tracks. It was designated a national historic site in 1976 and is also protected under the federal law for heritage railway stations. Unlike most of the cases, it has never lost its original use: VIA Rail trains still stop there, though many fewer than once did, and much of the building's space has long been underused. In recent years VIA has invested tens of millions of dollars in repairing and renovating the station and its train shed, and the building's owners have sought new tenants for its empty space.

Wren draws two lessons. The first is that keeping a building in its original use is the best conservation of all, but that a use which no longer fills the building leaves it vulnerable: a station built for dozens of trains a day must find other uses for most of its space. The second is that federal protection of a federally owned or regulated building brings both money and constraints, and that the heritage review of work on the station has kept its great public spaces intact while allowing services and finishes to be renewed. She notes that the project's limits are not architectural but programmatic: the rotunda is splendid, but there are not yet enough people in it.

The Distillery District, Toronto

Callum studies the Distillery District. The Gooderham and Worts distillery was founded in 1832 on the Toronto waterfront and grew into one of the largest distilleries in the world, with more than forty stone and brick buildings that make up what is often described as the largest collection of Victorian industrial architecture in North America. It was designated a national historic site in 1988, but the last distilling stopped in 1990. For a decade the complex was used mostly as a set for films. A development company bought it in 2001, and it reopened in 2003 as a district of galleries, theatres, shops, restaurants and studios, closed to traffic on its brick-paved lanes, with new residential towers later built at its edges.

Callum's lessons: a group of industrial buildings can be reused as a district, with the spaces between them, the lanes, yards and courts, becoming as important as the buildings; the industrial character can be kept by leaving machinery, signs, rough surfaces and the marks of use in place; and the economics of reuse can be helped by allowing new development nearby. He notes the criticism that the new towers at the district's edges overwhelm the low historic buildings in some views, a reminder of the previous lessons on additions and setting.

Evergreen Brick Works, Toronto

Ingrid studies Evergreen Brick Works. The Don Valley Brick Works was founded in 1889 in a ravine of the Don River and for nearly a century supplied brick for many of Toronto's buildings. It closed in 1984, and the regional conservation authority took over the site in 1986. The sixteen industrial buildings, kilns, drying sheds and a tall chimney stood in a flood plain beside the old quarry. The non-profit Evergreen, an environmental organization, leased the site and transformed it into a centre for urban sustainability, with a farmers' market, gardens, workshops, offices, event spaces and a children's area, opening in 2010. A team led by the firm DTAH planned the site. The industrial buildings were designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 2002 and the complex became a national historic site in 2011.

Ingrid's lessons are about how far a reuse can go in keeping a building's roughness. At the Brick Works, many sheds were left open to the weather, with their kilns and machinery in place and their walls covered in graffiti, which was kept as part of the site's later history. New construction was concentrated in one new building and in light insertions into the old sheds. The flood plain was not fought but accommodated: the buildings were designed to flood, with equipment raised and materials chosen to survive water. Ingrid concludes that a site's character can survive a new use only if the designers resist the temptation to tidy everything.

Mill City Museum, Minneapolis

Joon-ho studies a case across the border, the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis. The Washburn A Mill, completed in 1874, was destroyed by a flour dust explosion in 1878 that killed eighteen people, rebuilt by 1880, closed in 1965 and gutted by fire in 1991. The Minnesota Historical Society chose to make the ruin the exhibit: the Mill City Museum, designed by Tom Meyer of Meyer, Scherer and Rockcastle, opened in 2003, with a new museum of steel and glass inserted within and beside the stabilized stone walls and an open courtyard where the mill's interior had been. Joon-ho's lesson is that a ruin can be a powerful conservation outcome when the story it tells is the point, and that bold new work inside an old shell can be both distinguishable and deeply respectful when it is clearly subordinate to the remains.

An international benchmark

Bérubé adds one case for everyone: Tate Modern in London, converted by the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron from the Bankside power station, a vast brick building designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and completed in stages after the Second World War, and opened as a museum of modern art in 2000. The building's turbine hall, a space about 150 m long and five storeys high, was left almost empty as a public room for large works and for crowds, and a light box of glass was added along the roof. The conversion showed how an industrial building nobody had thought beautiful could become one of the most visited museums in the world, and it encouraged a generation of reuse projects. It also shows the value of keeping the great space whole, rather than filling it with program.

# Comparing the case studies: age at reuse and years without full use
cases = {
    "Union Station":        (1911, None, None),   # still in its original use
    "Distillery District":  (1832, 1990, 2003),
    "Evergreen Brick Works": (1889, 1984, 2010),
    "Mill City Museum":     (1880, 1965, 2003),
    "Stanfield (planned)":  (1911, 2009, 2029),
}
print("case                    built  ended  reopened  idle yrs  age at reuse")
for name, (built, ended, opened) in cases.items():
    if ended is None:
        print(f"{name:<23} {built}   still in original use")
        continue
    print(f"{name:<23} {built}   {ended}   {opened}     {opened - ended:4d}      {opened - built:4d}")

case                    built  ended  reopened  idle yrs  age at reuse
Union Station           1911   still in original use
Distillery District     1832   1990   2003       13       171
Evergreen Brick Works   1889   1984   2010       26       121
Mill City Museum        1880   1965   2003       38       123
Stanfield (planned)     1911   2009   2029       20       118

The table makes a point the students had not expected: most of these buildings stood without a full use for decades before they were reused, some for a quarter of a century or more. They survived because their structures were robust, because someone kept them standing and because public bodies or committed owners waited for the right use. Several cases lost far more during their idle years, to fire, weather and vandalism, than during their conversion. The lesson for the Stanfield, which has been empty for fifteen years already, is that the most urgent conservation work is to stabilize it now, as Lesson 4 recommended, whatever happens to the design.

What the students would steal

The students end the week by listing the ideas they will carry into the Stanfield's final design. From the stations and mills: keep the great spaces whole where they carry the building's meaning, and put new program around them. From the industrial districts: treat the lanes and courts as part of the project, and keep the marks of use. From the ruin: make new work clearly new and clearly subordinate. From the office conversion: design for more than one future, with a structure and services that can accept a different use if the first one fails. From all of them: count on long timelines, mixed funding and the need for a champion, a person or organization that keeps the project alive through its difficult years. For the Stanfield, that champion is Greenway Homes, and the students' final task is to give Greenway a scheme strong enough to carry the project through.

Exercise 11: a case study

• Choose a reuse project in your region and record it using the framework in this lesson.
• Visit it and interview at least one person who uses it, asking what works and what does not.
• Evaluate its new construction against the principles of the standards.
• Identify one idea from the case that you would apply to the Stanfield, and one mistake you would avoid.

Self-check

• Have I recorded the case's significance, vacancy, new use, heritage approach, technical solutions, funding and outcome?
• Have I looked for problems as well as successes?
• Have I judged the case against the standards, not only on its appearance?
• Have I drawn lessons that apply to my own project?

Common threads

When the four presentations are over, Bérubé asks the students to look across the cases rather than at each one. Three threads stand out. The first is that each project found a use that suited the building's strengths: great volumes became public rooms, galleries and markets; robust floors carried offices and studios; and in each case the most significant space was kept whole rather than divided. The second is that new work was concentrated rather than spread thinly. A single new building, a set of insertions inside a ruin or a group of towers at the edge of a site took the program that the historic fabric could not, leaving the rest to be repaired rather than rebuilt. The third is that the marks of the building's history were treated as assets. Fire scars, machinery, worn floors, faded signs and graffiti were kept where they carried meaning, and visitors respond to them as strongly as to any restored detail.

The students also notice what the cases did not do. None of them restored its building to a single moment in the past, and none disguised its new work as old. None was quick, and none was funded from a single source. And in every case the conversion was only the start: each building has needed steady maintenance and has continued to change as its uses have shifted, which is the strongest argument for designing the Stanfield's conversion so that it can change again.