ReEmbodied Infrastructure

Abstract

The abandoned West Heating Plant site offers an enviable yet challenging opportunity to look beyond the proposed housing response and explore potentially unconventional options to integrate new uses into the building while also respecting the heritage significance of the existing shell. Dynamic explorations of design alternatives can provide insight into a a variety of creative, sensitive, and appropriate uses to breathe new life into Georgetown's last remaining industrial remnant and activate this neglected site. Interventions on the existing building and its site, ranging in attitude from the most "polite" and deferential to the more radical, can reintegrate the site into its contextual fabric and revitalize the plant by creating a new identity that is heightened by the contrast between the original and the new. This proposed creative process stands as a critical departure from more conventional preservation or program-driven processes that usually determine how these unique properties are redeveloped.