Architecture in Transformation
Deconstruction and Reconstruction as a Strategy for Memory
The Henri Tudor site, a former battery factory, forms the starting point of this master thesis. The project grew from a fascination with decay and the unique experience of large-scale abandonment. Here, the dissolution of architecture is not erased but becomes a pathway toward an alternative approach to heritage.
The design trajectory adopts a double perspective: by juxtaposing deconstructivist ideas with the need for heritage care, a new design attitude emerges. Three themes — decay, the architectural promenade, and decontextualisation — guide the research and lay the foundation for a layered spatial intervention.
The final design focuses on transforming the site’s former office building. Although the industrial warehouses have now disappeared, their character is preserved within the project. By selecting characteristic elements and anchoring them in a new context, a condensed spatial experience arises in which the spirit of the site becomes tangible once again. In this way, the vanished industrial landscape gains a second life, while simultaneously opening space for a new chapter on the ground where the buildings once stood.
This master thesis proposes another form of preservation: the past is not frozen, but reactivated — as memory, as rhythm, as space.
