Abstract:
Urban tank farms, technically known as bulk fuel storage facilities,
have been a feature of the urban industrial landscape for close
to 100 years. Often established in prime waterfront locations near
city centres, their future in these locations is uncertain. The toxic and
volatile nature of their operations pose a threat to the environment and
public safety, while many of the sites they occupy are being vacated as
the oil industry consolidates and their activities are moved elsewhere.
City waterfronts and industrial areas are also undergoing regeneration
as urban centres increase in residential density and change in use from
industrial and commercial activities to those based more on leisure
and lifestyle.
Tank farms and similar industrial ‘non-buildings’ have only relatively
recently been recognised as having significant industrial heritage and
cultural value, often only attained after a period of abandonment. Adaptive
reuse of industrial buildings has long been applied to factories and
warehouses but industrial non-buildings present greater challenges for
a reuse project. Built with a singular purpose unintended for human
inhabitation, the uncompromising nature of this type of structure and
the difficulties in reusing them means few have been retained for reuse.
The poisonous legacy of contamination further reduces the opportunities
for retention of this heritage and reuse of the structures.
Such sites and structures often face conflicting notions of site rehabilitation,
industrial heritage retention, urban redevelopment and adaptive
reuse. The design exercise of this thesis attempts to reconcile these
notions by combining strategies of existing models and precedents
with the necessities and aims of a continually evolving urban environment.
Alongside these strategies, a step further than the typical
landscape park and industrial sculpture of earlier examples is taken,
proposing a new multi-use solution for an existing tank farm on Sydney
Harbour. An architectural intervention for several of the largest tanks is
presented, together with other elements of urban infill, environmental
regeneration and public access and recreation.
