Industrial heritage - unwated heritage - unknown heritage

Industrial heritage is often treated as a worse category of heritage itself. The cause of this state of affairs should be seen in the lack of necessary technical knowledge (“technical component”)and misunderstanding of the value of industrial heritage. The consequence of it is accepted or even intentional displacement.
Any attempt to describe the heritage of the industry by using an art historian’s scientific and conceptual approach is a mistake. It is a “technical component” of the research that shows an extremely significant value in the process of the proper recognition of the industrial heritage.
It allows to understand the relationship between the shape, form and the location of industrial buildings with their machines and devices conditioned by the nature of the technological process. It also allows to understand the relationship between the spatial layout of the industrial complex and the communication requirements inside the factory and its connection with the outside world.
The legacy of industry is governed by four fundamental change’s directions:
– revitalization,
– restoration,
– abandonment,
– liquidation.
Revitalization or restoration often takes place in the most brutal way – demolition of everything that is a historical remnant of a factory’s layout and the erection of a shopping centre on such a “tidy” site. Furthermore, the old name such as “printing house”, “brewery”, “manufactory” is frequently preserved. There are also positive examples of revitalization, e.g. the right approach to the authenticity of the historic industrial construction.
Abandonment and liquidation deny the right of the industrial heritage existence, declining any
value of it.