This project examines how community led design practices can dictate the reimagining of disused industrial sites in a post-petroleum Aberdeen.
Within Aberdeen lies the semi-autonomous town of Torry. In the 1970s the decision was made to demolish the historic heart of Torry, Old Torry Village, to accommodate harbour expansions required by ever growing oil and gas industries. In this process, whole streets of homes and shops were bought by compulsory purchase, destroyed, paved over and fenced off.
Positioned in 2045, this project imagines a future where the oil industry is in decline and the land where Old Torry Village once stood, now called the Torry Marine Base, is underutilised. In 2045 the government reacquires the land and initiates the process by which a community can reemerge on the site.
This project investigates what that process should be, the methods by which it could be achieved and the timescale across which it might take place. Through a series of theoretical excavations of the site, three key qualities of community or ‘carings’ were identified and have been used to inform all subsequent architectural and placemaking processes. These ‘carings’: preparing, growing and articulating, manifest themselves in a series of architectures across the site: the New Torry Parliament, Jessie Petrie’s Recycling Facilities and the Togail Buidhne housing scheme.
