To burn lime, several hundred mine-type kilns were built there. After the country began to implement policies to protect the environment, the structures decided to close forever and the area turned into an abandoned and neglected area, write Archdaily.
Currently, the site and the buildings on it are being prepared for use again, but instead of harming the environment, the furnaces will now serve as a cultural and educational center, where the concept of sustainable development will be popularized. The local authorities decided to build a thematic museum based on the project of Professor Li Baofeng's Studio of HUST.
This was the appearance of an abandoned complex of industrial furnaces before its transformation. Photo: Yilong Zhao
This is what the building looked like after its "reincarnation". Photo: Yilong Zhao
The project provided for the unification of the new building with the existing ones, as well as the use of several furnaces as an entrance group - the iconic gates of the geopark. An observation platform was created on the roof of the mine, and the place where ash was traditionally formed as a result of burning ash was taken for the central building.
Input group (inner side). Photo: Yilong Zhao
Interiors of the building. Photo: Yilong Zhao
At the entrance to the museum, the architects preserved the original brick ladder for supplying materials - thus the mine pit, half-destroyed gypsum kiln and the new museum form an organic whole.
"In order to emphasize the old industrial furnace, we deliberately weakened the shape and color of the museum, "hid" it behind the furnace, and "squeezed" part of the exhibition space into the ground, reducing the height of the museum, compared to the furnaces," says the archstudio.
Local landscapes and architecture that breathed life into an abandoned industrial zone. Photo: Yilong Zhao
The limestone, which did not have time to be fired once due to the closure of the production, has become an element of the landscape, which can be viewed through viewing windows and platforms in the appropriate places of the museum building.
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