A Fiction of Refunctioning: Analysis of a Late Modern Industrial Facility in Sivas with Studio Experience

ABSTRACT While cities expand their borders with new development areas; the urban space is gradually positioning in hybrid zoning, and thus, the collapse zones between new constructions are emerging in the urban space. These collapse zones are being restructured with important showcase projects in the future of cities under the name of gentrification. This text deals with the re-functionalization of a small local industrial production facility located in the Sahtaboğan locality of Sivas Kılavuz District and surrounded by new buildings such as health facilities and housing today. In the architectural design studio, the transformation and re-functionalization proposals prepared by the 4th-grade students for the re-functionalization of the facility, which is not functioning today, presented an experimental field for both the diversification of design research in architectural education and the creation of potential design outputs for the future of the city. Three kinds of tendencies were observed in the outputs of the design research, which was based on a real transformation in a problematic area of the city. The first concept of re-functionalization is to analyze the structures in singular relations by staying within a rational planning mechanism and in the second design approach, a more intrusive attitude has been exhibited in terms of understanding of the field and planning principles. Finally, cross-sectional examples that intervene in the area have emerged. As a result, the industrial production facility, which was located in the industrial zone of the city until the 1980s, was comprehended both in the modern architectural culture of the city and the possible roles that the city could play in the future with the design proposals for the re-functionalization of the inactive construction group.