Adaptive Reuse of Amman Electricity Hangar & the Building of Ras al Ein Gallery

TURATH: Architecture & Urban Design Consultants
Amman, Jordan

The main idea behind the project is granting voice to, and adapting Amman’s heritage of “modernity” in general and its “industrial facilities and architecture” from the Modern period in particular to contemporary new uses of gathering and culture. The Project is about adapting and conserving Amman Electricity Hangar, which was built in the 1930s, into a contemporary public space hosting socio-cultural and art related events that are more inclusive in nature. The Project also includes the building of a new edifice, which is Ras al Ein Gallery that is replacing an older structure that was scheduled for demolition due to its lack of merit or significance and unsafe structural and other environmental conditions.

The new adapted functions for the Hangar will form a continuous carnival providing an inclusive space for Ammanis to hold various socio-cultural and art related events. The design is based on minimal intervention and a spatial flexibility where the main space could be used for art installations, public lectures and gatherings, and other usages as well. The main front façade of the Hangar is made completely transparent and is gradually recessed to provide complete visual connection between the Hangar space and the public piazza in front of it during the day and also at night. Metaphorically, the Hangar represents, and especially at night” a temple of electricity that celebrates the City, the story of its electrification, and local arts and culture.

The Project also includes the building of a new structure that would function as artists’ workshops and art galleries. The design is dynamic and uses concrete as its main building material to echo and celebrate the Modernity logic prevailing in the existing Hangar Building. While the existing Hangar Building represents a monumental monolithic structure (an industrial shed), this new building is dynamic in its composition and attempts to connect (at least at a formalistic level) with the cubic houses on the edge of the mountain in Jabal al Natheef, therefore, the houses on the edge of the mountain together with the dynamic masses of this new structure cascade down to meet the Hangar Building at the public plaza between them.

Plan