Blast Furnance

The “A” blast furnace was built in a record time of 105 days. Paradoxically, its maintenance will take decades and will never end. The 65-meter furnace dominates the panorama of Nowy Bytom; it is too important to be transformed into a sentimental, unproductive relic of the industrial past.
Our project is a proposal of an endless process of revitalization, variable search for new productivity and renewing the meaning of the Blast Furnace. A positive scenario for its life after life.

The project considers four issues:

1. Third sector. The post-industrial shift towards the economy of the third sector is accompanied by a kind of gentrification of jobs, dispersion of knowledge and practical skills, and increasingly – growing awareness of this loss. In our eyes, the deprived industrial infrastructure is becoming an alienated and incomprehensible object of sentimental delight, fascination, posthumanist scenery design for entertainment (urbex). What new type of productivity can we offer for an object whose past becomes the only plan for the future?
2. Fourth nature. Deserted, post-industrial areas quickly cover themselves with young grooves. The new vegetation consists mainly of invasive and pioneer species, capable of living on ruderal, often contaminated soil.
3. Rust. The entire blast furnace complex is made of steel. It has been deprived of ongoing maintenance since the oven closed. When exposed to rain, snow and UV radiation – it rusts and threatens the safety of users. Adapting the building to modern security and tourist traffic requirements will create a paradox: adding security measures to visitors results in the loss of an authentic substance (which we decided to protect). Preservation of the historical form – will prevent their safe use by tourist traffic.
4. Movement. Since the creation of the Blast Furnace, the movement has become its inherent feature. In the 1960s, the entire completed 65-meter furnace was moved to a new production site. Its revitalization (recovery) means restarting – using different energy.

Concept design assumptions:

1. The Blast Furnace “A” as a laboratory for transformations of the anthropogenic landscape (built and open) as well as a catalyst and sign of social change in New Bytom.
2. Opening the area for residents and nature as a public garden. Support and management of natural ecological succession processes.
3. Endless conservation process, combating time and entropy as a tourist attraction.
4. The building-machine in constant motion and constant transformation. A dynamic element in the city panorama.