Cities in Transformation: How Industry Can Shape Urban Futures
An essay by Martin Henn
Industrial architecture was once a backdrop to urban life—necessary but peripheral. Today, it is becoming a key driver of urban transformation, blending industry with public space. As industry and cities become increasingly intertwined, how can industrial architecture not only serve economic needs but also create vibrant, sustainable, and resilient urban spaces?
Historically, industrial parks were built in isolated zones outside cities—loud, polluting, and disconnected from daily life. Today’s knowledge-based and technology-driven economy has shifted industrial architecture towards integrated urban ecosystems, fostering collaboration, innovation, and sustainability.
Both in Germany, where HENN was founded in 1947, and in China, where the first HENN office opened in the early 2000s, the industrial transformation has unfolded over the last decades – at different speeds but along similar trajectories. In the following, a selection of key HENN projects in Germany and China showcases how industrial spaces have transitioned from the periphery to the heart of urban life, not only adapting to economic and technological shifts but actively driving urban renewal and societal change.
Industry on the City’s Edge
After the Second World War, the industrial boom in Germany led to a prioritization of efficiency. Inspired by Frederick Winslow Taylor’s principles of optimizing workflows, developed in the early 20th century and known as Taylorism, mid-century industrial architecture was largely characterized by mono-functional spaces, designed purely for productivity. Industrial zones were placed outside city centers to maximize efficiency and minimize disruption, reflecting the structured, hierarchical nature of mid-century work environments and reinforcing the separation between industry and society.
HENN’s Siemens Telecommunication Plant, completed in 1957 outside the city gates of Braunschweig, Germany, embodies this era. In the early 1950s, Siemens & Halske AG's telecommunications equipment plant thrived on the enormous demand for security systems, so much so that by 1955 it needed a new production hall and warehouse.
With a clear focus on effective workflows, the design by Walter Henn for a new plant combined function and aesthetics and is regarded as a foundation stone for HENN’s aesthetic of functionality. The shed hall has proven its enduring qualities over time and, to this day, claims a special position among the studio’s first-generation works.
The Telecommunication plant was a highly efficient, structured environment – but factory work was still isolated from urban life. This was typical of the time: industry was essential to economic growth but remained physically and socially detached from the city.
The Factory Opens Up: Industry and the Public Realm
As cities grew and economies evolved, the stark separation of industry from urban life became increasingly unsustainable. The need for more integrated industrial spaces grew—leading to a fundamental shift in how factories were designed and perceived. The Transparent Factory for car manufacturer Volkswagen epitomized this shift: the fully transparent production facility in the city center of Dresden, Germany, merged manufacturing and public space.
Unlike traditional factories, the Transparent Factory was designed as a place of encounter and dialogue to make the experience of automotive production tangible to the outside—to actual and potential customers as well as passers-by. When it opened in 2001, it brought industry back into the city, making manufacturing visible and interactive.
Car manufacturing is presented much like other traditional professions—from shoemakers to jewelers, whose work is often visible to passers-by—allowing onlookers to appreciate the craftsmanship involved. In addition to that, spaces for cultural activities such as art exhibitions, music concerts or even television talk shows invited not only customers but the general public into the building, making the factory part of public urban life.
Situated in the dense city center, the limited available space had to be used intelligently. Instead of expansive, single-story production halls, the design employs a vertical stacking of production floors to make the most of limited urban space. Becoming part of the city network, the Transparent Factory also leveraged Dresden’s tram system for sustainable logistics, demonstrating how industrial architecture could integrate with existing urban infrastructure.
Blurring the lines between industry, culture, and urban experience, the Transparent Factory has subsequently become a prototype for urban production.
Immersed in the Urban Fabric: Industry 5.0 and Human-Centered Innovation
This evolution aligns with Industry 5.0, which marks a shift from large-scale manufacturing focused on automation and efficiency to a human-centric and research-based approach, integrating advanced technologies like AI, robotics, and Internet of Things (IoT) while prioritizing creativity and innovation. Industrial buildings today require less physical space, but they must foster a sense of connection with the urban context, agility, and adaptability to thrive. Innovation is the cornerstone of today's economy, and architecture has the potential to be a powerful catalyst for driving creativity and fostering groundbreaking ideas.
The Innovation Center for High-Performance Medical Devices (IHM·GBA), completed in 2022, exemplifies this model. Located at the heart of Guangzhou’s international Bio Island—a dedicated hub for biomedical research and technology—the building serves as both a development center for high-performance medical devices and a startup incubator. By bringing together companies, experts, and researchers, it fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration, the backbone of innovation-driven R&D. Designed to be an active participant in the innovation process, the IHM·GBA building promotes synergy across departments and organizations, accelerating the development of ideas. By bringing together students, scientists, startup founders, company employees, and even customers, the building enables a seamless transition from idea to prototype to marketable product, ensuring close collaboration and short distances at every stage.
The design weaves areas for informal communication and open office spaces together in an X-shaped floor plan. Each bar of the “X” is devoted to either laboratory or workspaces, while the intersections function as communal spaces. These hybrid spaces blend all functions, including administration and public interaction.
The building's location within Bio Island’s dense innovation hub fosters collaboration even beyond the building’s walls. Integrated into a lively ecosystem, its high-rise structure establishes the Innovation Center as a new typology in high-density vertical architecture.
The shift to compact, people-centered research hubs mirrors the transformation of the industry sector: from Taylorism’s hierarchical efficiency-driven models to networked, flexible, and intelligent work systems. This evolution also prioritizes employee well-being: Industrial parks integrate facilities for daily life—ranging from grocery stores and hair salons to sports centers and relaxation areas—while also offering high-quality landscaped environments within the complex.
Transformation and Reuse: The Future of Industrial Architecture
In Germany, the primary focus is on adaptive reuse—transforming existing industrial sites rather than constructing new ones. While aspects of human-centered design are considered, this approach mainly seeks to preserve architectural heritage and reduce environmental impact.
The 2024 competition-winning design for a Vertical Farmhouse in Berlin illustrates this strategy. Behrens-Ufer, a former industrial site located in southeast Berlin, is set to transform into a new urban technology hub over the next few years. On the banks of the River Spree, research, development, and production will converge within listed historical buildings alongside new additions. Behrens-Ufer is one of the largest industrial monument ensembles in Germany, characterized by its buildings designed by Peter Behrens—a pioneer of early industrial design whose work has defined the area since 1917.
Over the next few years, the site will transform into an energy self-sufficient urban quarter, aiming to set new urban planning, technological, and energy standards centered on people’s needs. In the eastern part of the site, the Vertical Farmhouse will emerge as a hybrid building featuring an innovative working and research environment centered around a fruit garden. This garden will serve as a space for outdoor communication, inspiration, and recreation for both building occupants and visitors and will become part of a network of pathways that weave through the entire Behrens-Ufer complex. Beneath this gardenscape, the design envisions a vertical farm for food production, synergistically paired with a fish farm. Here, the building becomes an integral part of the Behrens-Ufer ecosystem, which aims for maximum self-sufficiency by generating, using, and recycling resources and valuable materials on site—including food.
Technology, nature, and agriculture merge into a holistic urban experience at Behrens-Ufer, exemplifying the next phase of industrial transformation. Rather than expanding outward, industrial architecture is increasingly integrating into the urban fabric, fostering new synergies among technology, sustainability, and public engagement. By rethinking industrial spaces as multifunctional, people-centered environments, projects like this set a precedent for future urban developments in both Germany and China. In cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong, where dense urban cores necessitate innovative reuse of existing building fabric, transformation projects are already underway. The potential for transformation and reuse is enormous.
Industrial Architecture as a Catalyst for Urban Renewal
As projects like the Transparent Factory, the IHM·GBA, and the Vertical Farmhouse demonstrate, the future of industrial spaces lies in their ability to adapt, engage with the public, and drive sustainable urban transformation. No longer confined to the periphery, industrial buildings are becoming catalysts for innovation, community, and ecological responsibility—redefining not only how we work but how we live.
These are the key takeaways:
- From mono-functional to multi-functional: Industry should blend with residential, cultural, and commercial spaces.
- From isolated to integrated: Industrial zones must enhance urban life, not disrupt it.
- From efficiency-first to people-first: Industrial spaces should prioritize collaboration and opportunities for sharing knowledge.
- From gray to green: Employee well-being and sustainability are strategic and economic advantages, not afterthoughts.
This essay is a shortened and slightly adapted version of the essay originally published in Architectural Practice in March 2025.
Click here for the original version in Chinese.
