| Résumé: | As industry is shifting its concept, the spatial characteristics should also adapt. The general argument of this thesis shows a set of urban interventions, which encourage architecture as urbanism, as a material practice, to drive change. With the ambition to extract architectural and urbanistic principles, digital fabrication processes are used to reason about the challenges that arise from the combination of industrial with living environments. Furthermore, through a typological approach, the main goal of this exploration is to define what the main interfaces are, and how they can be altered in order to use these industries as an urban attractor, transformer and intensifier, leading to new types of neighbourhood. Nowadays, it appears that major industrial sites have the capacity to generate change and enhance socio economic processes, which affect the city on multiple levels. In order to test these principles, the area between Hackney Central and Cambridge Heath, in the eastern part of London, appeared to be an appropriate testing ground. This decision was not only based on the visible traces of light industry in the area, but also due to the strong effort of Hackney Council to retain and provide new family housing. Through the combination of all these elements, the main target of this proposal is to use architectural typologies as the main driver in redefining legibility to the wider context, establishing new hierarchies in the street pattern, and suggesting differentiated methodologies for the next urban interventions on industrial sites in the inner city. Since relatively little has been written on the subject in relation to Digital Fabrication concepts, this thesis uses its hierarchical diagram to rethink and question the different levels of interaction between public interface and private spheres. In this context, it aims ro redefine the role of industry in educational and recreational terms and to emphasize the potential of using industry as an urban asset to give character to a neighbourhood. This dissertation is a collective work conducted by three individuals. The book is divided in four main parts. In the first one, the thesis is setting up the main argument on digital fabrication, while in the following chapter individual architectural exploration are taking place. Finally, in the last part a common conclusion is provided in order to inform, support and enhance the initial reasoning of the urban scale.
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