The Architecture building of Inner Mongolia University of Technology is reconstructed from a former machinery factory of the university, which was used to be a practical education base, and its production was an integral part of the mainstay industry of the university. The casting workshop in the machinery factory was built in 1968, put into production in 1971. It was abandoned in 1995 due to the Industrial restructuring that gradually demolished unwanted sections. In early 2008, the university decided to reconstruct the workshop to endow it a new life.

The former casting workshop had stood in the campus for more than 40 years. The historic red brick walls, the mottled rust machine, the crane beams covered in green, and the chimney among them…. All of these are evoking the deepest memories. When we walk through this today, we would be delighted to appreciate a space image that we have never experienced. It’s obvious that if people plan to ensure a long life of the building, this special space should be replaced by a specific function. Thus, the reconstruction work becomes a causal thinking of space and function and its creating process of the interactive adaptation.

The first thing that architects should do is to consider the appropriate positioning of the workshop’s new life with the university, whether it should be derived from the passive behaviour of the limited reconstruction or the active thinking of the 'green' idea. Besides, architects should tailor proper and specific functions for each space where people will have different experiences. In other words, the design process of the reconstruction not only creates a place for a certain function but more often identifies existing spatial features and replace new functions in guiding or inducing. Therefore, the starting point of the overall reconstruction comes from a flat strategy: identification.

From campus cultural activity centre to the architecture building

In the very beginning, many reconstruction cases came to our minds, such as the 798 district in Beijing, No.8 Bridge in Shanghai, SOHO District of New York and the Tate Museum in London. They all have fantastic new functions that made mediocre spaces into amazing ones, which became our direct examples of the initial design. In view of this, the initial location of the workshop is a campus cultural activity centre. The consideration, of course, was based on the lack of space for humanistic function.

However, we soon discovered that the function of a cultural activity centre could not fit the transparency and openness of the workshop well, because the music, sports, arts and other components need places where different users do not interfere with each other. The excessive separation will violate the original intention of 'green' to utilize the space, so the design work went back to the starting point - seeking a more suitable destination for the workshop. At that time, the architecture school was under the evaluation of national education, and the professional teaching facilities were urgent to be improved. The open space and the naturally exposed structural details of the casting workshop could be adapted to the characteristics of architectural education, which emphasizes communication, experience and practice. We immediately realized that it is a natural Architecture Building. Individual spaces throughout the workshop also have better compatibility: the upper space close to the skylight, is a natural art classroom with proper light; the quiet, lower corner with adequate sunlight could be a reading room; the independent workshop in the south has a perfect scale for a lecture hall with great quality of sight and sound. The following work became easier, that is, analyzing and experiencing each existing space, and “checking in” the functions of teaching, exhibition, critiques, and experiments in an architecture school building.