Il recupero di un simbolo dell’opera di Albert Kahn e la valorizzazione del patrimonio industriale

The reuse of the Ford Assembly Building in Richmond, CA, means taking away a testimony of industrial architecture to oblivion, transforming a car assembly plant into a reference model of sustainable urban regeneration, aware of the pre-existing values. Facing the deterioration caused by the plant abandonment and the severe damages inflicted by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the architects Marcy Wong and Donn Logan designed convincing solutions both in the preservation of existing buildings, in compliance with the regulations of the National Park Service and the State of California Historic Preservation Office, as well as in giving contemporary form to new insertions. The solution adopted for the fruition of large spaces with a steel frame truss saw-tooth roof is remarkable, in fact, the arrangement of small-scale buildings, which serve as offices or conference rooms, makes up a small human-scaled village. Thus, the primary interest relates to the industrial plant as a whole (i.e., buildings and machineries), but not secondary is the attention to the social role of the site, concerning the landscape values and the cultural activities promoted by the new destination.