Restoring Community and New Meanings of the Ironworks Ruins

The town of Neath Abbey is known for its industrial past. Following Aldo Rossi’s ideas of architecture as a record of past lives, the project challenges ideas of why people working in the Ironworks factory became forgotten and how this is reflected in the current community. The comprehensive scheme focuses on the idea of a “pyramid of needs” for Neath Abbey inhabitants. Starting from providing necessities—through the food bank, not existing in the area. The scheme uses the ruins as the base, helping to create new elements on the site, treating the reminiscences of the past as another element.

Place development was focused on ideas of openness, honesty and being welcoming, highlighting the users and their needs. The hope of the projects was to give the community the power to decide and have a say in the design, as well as fulfil their primary needs and later enable progress in skills, together with community making. The use of the old structure of the factory and furnaces reverse the narrative of the site's old workers and gives them new tasks.

Exploration of connections with landscape, existing landmarks, a form of spaces and their connections through sketching (tracing paper) and iterations of digital models allowed to create a proposal. New entrances to the site were developed to provide various experiences of arrival. Each area of the scheme has a different use and supports others. The open space design of an honesty café and exposed materials emphasise ideas of being welcoming and inviting while removing shame around a collection of food. Other spaces of the scheme—workshop and learning areas, provide a space to develop the site and one’s skills in a welcoming and human environment. Planting fields area retrieves wildlife and enables people to be more self-sufficient. The whole scheme can be constructed using simple tools and materials widely available. Ease of assembling and use of base timber frame module does not limit the architectural language of the proposal, but give community tools and a way to make something for themselves on site.
The project was looked at as only another layer in Neath Abbey's history. Through reclaiming the site via primer, developing a comprehensive scheme until its decay, and being taken over by nature, after fulfilling its task.

The scheme is another step in the town’s and community history, reversing the past narrative, showing a new way forward and creating a new footprint in Neath. Not only did it enable me to develop a stance on working with the historic fabric. It also forced me to, in a way, rethink the architect’s role, placing them more on the level with the users, as someone helping them and enabling their plans—highlighting how that does not mean taking away from the quality of the architecture.