When the Tank’s Empty: Design Strategies for the Adaptive Reuse of Urban Tank Farms

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.