Leon Vöckler

Urban Architecture

The Readymade Approach: An Adaptation of Disruptive Artworks to Overseen Structures

Facing a decline in industrial production and potential vacancy in the north of Maastricht, the ‘Readymades’ by French artist Marcel Duchamp were investigated as an approach to the reuse of industrial architecture. With the artworks being mundane, mass-produced objects positioned in unusual contexts like art galleries and being only slightly modified, they manage to create new associations in an exciting contrast to their still recognizable, original utility. At the core of this graduation project stood the question of how this approach to art can be transferred to an architectural scale, providing the opportunity to revive leftover structures without disguising their history.

After choosing the concrete silos and metal cranes of an abandoned clay storage building as architectural ‘Readymades’, the acts of repositioning and recontextualizing were applied by forming new contexts around the heavy silos through repositioning lighter parts, ultimately forming a multi-stage theatre as an alternative approach to adaptive reuse.