Industrial Heritage Assessment and Guidelines for the Architectural Conservation of Hydroelectric Plants

ABSTRACT

Hydroelectric plants, constructed as modern, industrial, innovative and technological structures of the 20th century, after approximately a century of existence, have become subjects of industrial heritage. Within the article, the interdisciplinary field is approached through the perspective of architectural conservation with consultancies of experts from related disciplines. The study discusses hydroelectric facilities of the past century in terms of industrial heritage focusing on their features, types and elements, investigates the theoretical framework in order to specify criteria for their assessment as cultural heritage, and develops a guideline for the architectural preservation, conservation, restoration and re-use of these structures. The proposed set of criteria and the guideline are applied for 17 selected case studies of dams and powerhouses in Northern Italy. The process and the results of the study are discussed with a purpose of serving as a model for further studies on the preservation, conservation and restoration of hydroelectric plants.

KEYWORDS:

• Architectural conservation
• assessment criteria
• dams
• hydroelectric plants
• industrial heritage

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Dams and related facilities can either be used solely for production of electricity or in some cases they can also be utilized for additional purposes, such as irrigation, flood control or supply of drinking water.

² There are cases where a single dam is constructed to produce energy; whereas in other cases a cascade of dams is built in order to constitute a connected hydro electrical system.

³ The International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) defines a large dam as: ‘dam with a height of 15 metres or greater from lowest foundation to crest or a dam between 5 metres and 15 metres impounding more than 3 million cubic metres’ (ICOLD 2011a). Whereas small dams are defined as: ‘a dam with a height between 2.5 meters and 15 meters above river bed level to maximum crest level and a storage volume between 2 million m3 and 200 million m3ʹ (ICOLD 2011b).

⁴ Turbines convert the kinetic energy of water into mechanical energy, and the generators convert the mechanical energy into electrical energy. The whole process is conducted in the control room of the powerhouse.

Additional information

Funding

This article is an output of a research project supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) under Grant 2219 (International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme).