Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Ruhr area was headquarters of German industry before Second World War. That area had a lot of colliery and ironworks with the railway connections. Because Ruhr area had mine core along to Emscher River and because of hard coal ironworks companies also settled in that area. With the influence of changing mining policies and globalization, the Ruhr basin became a rapidly growing region of unemployment after 1960. Hard coal production moved to other Far East countries because of cheap workforce. Collieries and ironworks started to be closed. After the hard industrial period, Ruhr area needed to new livelihood strategies. With the decline in the production of coal and steel, different policies have been researched to solve both unemployment and the rehabilitation of industrial zones. It is aimed to protect industrial areas and bring them under a project and to provide economic transformation in this context. One of those strategies is adaptive reuse of industrial buildings and miners’ colonies settlements. In this sense, the Ruhr region has shown a successful policy, the region has been revitalized with different livelihood strategies when coal and steel production have been reduced and turned into de-industrialization. Although the companies have been closed the region has continued to migrate instead of emigrating. Today transformation strategy of Ruhr is one of the most successful approaches of adaptive reuse. This study examines transformation strategies of industrial areas in consideration of adaptive reuse and rehabilitation of Ruhr industrial region.